Nosing Around

On the sitcom Blackish, the Johnson family lives in a predominantly white neighborhood and has a nosy neighbor named Janine. The final episode of the series begins with Janine walking over with extra moving boxes after she assumes (adding some jabs about a meth camper) that the Johnsons are moving. She’s wrong, but she has more time to make judgments about them than to address her own issues (a significant drinking problem, comically portrayed by all her moving boxes being wine boxes for her book clubs) (season 8, episode 13, “Homegoing,” directed by Anton Cropper, aired April 19, 2022, on ABC, 0:00–2:15). How often are we like Janine, nosing around in other people’s business, judging situations we have little understanding of, rather than dealing with our own stuff?