WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Season 1 of Woke, now available on Hulu.
Season 1 of Hulu's Woke finds Keef (Lamorne Morris) growing from a nervous cartoonist to someone who hits back at the system for allowing racism and oppression to grow in America over the decades. He starts seeing objects coming to life after a run-in with some ignorant cops, and after some time, he turns screws on them, parsing through different ways to make San Francisco's bigots uncomfortable.
However, in his journey, the biggest social justice warrior moment is wasted when he and his roommate Gunther (Blake Anderson) have a massive disagreement over Keef's use of his art to make sociopolitical statements.
Gunther doesn't mind Keef sticking up for himself. In fact, he welcomes the movement as it allows Clovis, the other roommate, to sell merchandise, while they also plot to use it to get girls. As for Keef, he just wants to find some sort of balance, but after a weird upper-class party where he was invited to be a novelty guest as the token Black man, he realizes he has a higher calling. There, he felt like he was being rented for the elites so he starts a project called "Black People For Rent!"
He starts putting out flyers all over the city, and while confused folks call in asking for jobs, Ayana (his reporter friend) is excited as these posters are how they'll get people to chime in with meaningful contributions on how they feel used and appropriated for their culture. That is, of course, once they understand the concept as she knows it's flying over some people's heads. White people are clearly missing the point, as they hate seeing these posters around. Some take interest as they see what Keef is trying to do, but others hate it because they think it's a slap in the face.
They don't want to be reminded about the issue and Gunther's around some of them when they start making racist comments. But rather than defend Keef, he feels awkward he's hearing this and goes back to argue with his buddy. Despite Keef wanting to elicit this kind of reaction to expose racists, Gunther is offended and hurt by having to deal with these comments. Keef's shocked at this newfound trauma as he cannot fathom why Gunther's so thin-skinned all of a sudden.
In fact, Gunther even tells him how he should find other avenues for his art, which Keef sees as similar to people telling Black athletes to "shut up and play" when they protest such as Colin Kaepernick or NBA stars. Keef's in disbelief and laughs it off as Gunther storms off, as he knows his friend's heart is in the right place. But the show never has them coming back to properly address these comments and Gunther's insensitivity. He comes off tone-deaf, so it would have been powerful hearing them be civil as he learns of his white privilege.
This is actually a huge problem with non-POC and non-minorities who feel inconvenienced like this, not considering how painful it is to be those that actually experience the racism. It's a wasted opportunity to educate Gunther, which would have fit perfectly per events from the premiere. Because while Keef was being tackled for putting up flyers there, Gunther got violent with the cop but wasn't even roughed up. He ran into the melee and a cop actually put his gun away, yet that's never really discussed in depth by the guys.
It shocked the hell out of Keef as he realized he could be killed for his skin color, triggering his "wokeness," while Gunther's kind will always get handled with tender, delicate care. To make it worse, Gunther doesn't stick up verbally for Keef when he publicly melts down over animals being treated better than his people, or when he's around other white people hating on the flyers. And it's shocking because he knows his friend's circumstances and the mission he's on. On top of that, at the end of Season 1, Gunther doesn't want Keef reconciling with the cop who pinned him down because he knows cops somehow find ways to shoot unarmed Black people, so he should get the intentions of the posters. It would be good to know why Gunther couldn't see the root cause of all this distress from the visuals, and how, by lashing out as Keef, he actually came off as part of the problem by trying to make himself a victim.
Starring Lamorne Morris, T. Murph, Blake Anderson, Sasheer Zamata and the voice of J.B. Smoove, the eight-episode first season of Woke is currently available on Hulu.