Now that ‘How to Die Alone’ is hitting its stride, let’s talk about it

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Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

I’m a huge fan of Natasha Rothwell. Full stop. She was my absolute favorite character on “Insecure” because she was in many of my absolute favorite scenes on the show. In fact, whenever something isn’t going my way, I often tell people to “remember me different” in a nod to a scene where Rothwell’s character, Kelly, was tazed at Coachella and peed on herself. Even now, I laugh hard enough to draw tears watching that scene. Since “Insecure,” I’ve felt that she needed her own television show, so when the promotion for her upcoming show on Hulu, “How to Die Alone” aired, I was 100% all in. 

The show, which premiered on Sept. 13, follows Melissa (Rothwell), an airport employee at New York City’s JFK Airport whose life is pretty mediocre until she has a life-changing experience that sets her on a course to want more for herself. This “want” includes her deciding to take her first ever flight — a vacation to Hawaii to attend the wedding of the guy, Alex (Jocko Sims), that she’s in love with and that she pushed away so he wouldn’t get the chance to leave her. Rounding out the cast of characters are several other employees at JFK with varying levels of significance in the live of Mel.

And then there’s her brother, Brian, played by Bashir Salahuddin, who was absolutely HILARIOUS as Officer Goodnight on the show “Southside.” In one of Mel’s attempts at taking back some portion of her own joy, she ends up on a dating site, sees her brother (who is married) there and proceeds to catfish him, leading up to an episode that takes place during Thanksgiving that is absolutely impeccable. 

As of this writing, the show has aired six episodes (the latest being the Thanksgiving episode, “Let Fear Win”), and I’m going to go on ahead and say what I didn’t want to say out loud until now: The show started super slow, and I was very, very concerned. As a matter of course, and unless absolutely necessary, I don’t like to be overly critical of Black creative arts; anybody who knows my love for artists like Ray J can attest to this fact. I tend to find joy in the existence of Black art and creativity, and I am largely always going to default to being happy that something exists regardless of how good or bad it is. That includes any and all works written, directed and produced by Tyler Perry, a phrase I once called the scariest in all of cinematic history. 

Here’s the thing though. Because I’m such a huge fan of Natasha Rothwell, I wanted the show to be amazing because I want everybody else to love her work as much as I do. I wanted to watch the first four episodes (they all dropped the same day) and then scream from the mountaintops that everybody needed to watch this show. Except that didn’t happen for me. I found the first few episodes to be largely uneventful and not very comedic, even where they attempted to be. There seemed to be something missing and because I don’t like to speak ill of Black art, remember, I just decided to keep quiet. I was fully prepared to only have conversations about the show during gatherings, which did happen, and see what others felt about it. It seems I wasn’t alone; the few people I spoke to who had seen it felt like I did, and I saw almost zero chatter about it on any of my social media apps. It was as if the show didn’t even exist; I wondered if others were doing what I was doing; Natasha Rothwell seems to have a 100% approval rating amongst the Black community. 

And then episodes 5 and 6 dropped — “Trust No One” and “Let Fear Win” — and the development of Mel’s character and the people around her started to build. The funny turned up a few notches, and the show felt like it was hitting a stride. Episode 6, though, as I said was on another level of quality. Brian and Mel’s super contentious relationship was on full display in a very familiar way with the right amount of comedy and solid writing. Now I’m over here looking forward to the next batch of episodes because “How to Die Alone” now feels like the show I was hoping it would be out of the gate. Perhaps that’s my own fault for expecting amazing right out of the gate, but four episodes feel like enough to gauge where a show might (or might not) be going. But I’ve spoken to other people, at this point, who are also watching and, well, it seems that we all feel the same way again. The consensus is that we’re cooking with gas now. 

Now that I can exhale and say, “he’s a good man, Savannah” (in this case “How to Die Alone” would be Kenneth; though I suppose in this case the statement is actually true), I’m excited. I’ve even gone back and rewatched the earlier episodes; that’s where I’m at with this show now. Natasha Rothwell impressed me so much with her work on “Insecure” that I’ve been waiting for her chance, and she took that opportunity and is putting up a good show that I hope gets a chance to fully spread its wings. 

I’m all in on “How to Die Alone” now, and hopefully, lots of other people are, too. 

Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).