Stream It Or Skip It: ‘On My Block’, A Netflix Dramedy About Growing Up In South Central L.A.

Coming-of-age shows seem to be all the rage, especially on Netflix, who has seemed to corner the market with shows like Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why and Everything Sucks! Now it presents On My Block, a collaboration between two writers from Gang Related and the creator of Awkward. Can this interesting team create a unique story?

ON MY BLOCK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A tracking shot of a party, with all the requisite sights: people drinking, smoking, snorting, etc. Couples kissing, music blaring, people having fun. Then the sight of four teens watching the party from next door, peering over the fence.

The Gist: The kids watching over the fence are a group of friends who are just starting their last summer before high school. They live in South Central L.A., where there’s a good chance that any party will end in gunfire, which is so common that the kids can identify the caliber of the gun by the sound.

The group is very tight-knit: Cesar (Diego Tinoco), whose brother is a gang member who is in prison; Monse (Siera Capri), who sees herself as the strongest member of the group; Jamal (Brett Gray), who, despite being a violence-averse hypochondriac, feels pressure to join the football team in the fall because his dad was a star at the same school; and Ruby (Jason Genao), whose brother is going to college, meaning he gets a room to himself in order to entertain the ladies.

When the summer ends, though, things have changed: Monse has blossomed while away at camp and now feels vulnerable to the leering eyes of gang members and her fellow 14-year-olds. She’s also dealing with the fact that Cesar has been declared “dead” to the group because he said something about Monse that Jamal and Ruby won’t tell her about. For his part, Cesar is feeling pressure from his now-free brother to join him in his gang. Jamal quits freshman football due to fears of CTE as well as his general inability to play but lies to his dad and tells him he’s doing great. And Ruby’s plans for his bachelor crib are ruined when his abuela has to move into his room.

Monse confronts Cesar for making a “sit on my face” comment to her when he’s hanging with his brother and the gang members and then after she finally finds out that he told people that they had sex before she left for camp. Eventually, he comes to her and says he’s under pressure and that gang life is in his DNA. But — surprise — the two did hook up, and she won’t give up on him.

Our Take: Unlike shows like Stranger Things and Everything Sucks!, which play on nostalgia in order to attract viewers, On My Block takes place in the here and now, in a place where most of the country thinks of as a hotbed of violence and misery. That’s the refreshing aspect of the show; these kids are just living their lives, with a lot of the same worries kids that are entering a new and scary phase have, no matter where they live. Their lives just happen to be a bit complicated by gangs and gunshots. This is likely due to an interesting balance among the show’s creators: Eddie Gonzalez and Jeremy Haft (writers for Gang Related and Empire), and Lauren Iungerich (Awkward.).

It helps that all four leads are both funny and compelling to watch. The funniest is Gray, who commits to his nerdy conflicted character, complete with some quality hyperventilation at the thought of getting a football-related concussion. But the one who we wanted to see much more of was Capri; she conveys both sides of Monse — her fierceness and strength, as well as the sudden vulnerability she feels now that she’s attracting unwanted attention — with equal effectiveness.

But the small moments from the pilot, like when Ruby and Jamal pretend to drink tall boys out of a paper sack in order to look more bad-ass, are what translate well here. It’s along the same lines as Showtime’s The Chi, where it’s less about the problem and more about the people who are living their lives in spite of the problems around them. And that’s something we don’t see much of, especially on a service like Netflix which seems to engineer its shows within an inch of their lives.

Sex and Skin: Some kissing between Monse and Cesar, but they’re interrupted before they can go any farther. Curious to know if the show will actually “go there”, considering they’re both supposed to be 14. We hope they don’t; we can hear about it, but don’t really need to see it.

Parting Shot: Monse, Ruby and Jamal walk to the first day of school. Monse is sure Cesar will join them, and he does… for a moment, until his brother drives by the group and Cesar reluctantly gets in the car. The remaining three watch the car go by, and Monse says, “Cesar… we need to save him.”

Sleeper Star: Jessica Marie Garcia as the overeager, asthmatic hanger-oner Jasmine is a fun character that we somehow relate to, but are not sure why.

Most Pilot-y Line: You need to get past a blizzard of slang in the first few minutes that will probably flummox anyone who is older than 25 that lives east of California. But once you get past that, the show is a lot of fun to watch.

Our Call: Stream It. On My Block has four great leads and its overall light tone give the dramatic moments even more impact. Let’s hope the tone can be maintained throughout the season.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch On My Block on Netflix