Woke season 1 recap: Keef Knight stands against racial injustice

In Woke season 1, cartoonist Keef Knight decides to stand against racism after experiencing something traumatic.

At the end of Woke season 1, Knight decides that a bogus apology issued by the San Francisco Police Department is not satisfactory, as he has been experiencing trauma after his wrongful arrest months earlier, he is then arrested for assaulting an officer after flicking beer in the officer’s face.

He leaves the jail with a mass of reporters ready to hear his side of the story, prompting viewers to wonder what Knight will do next.

Knight will now have a platform to speak against the injustices against black Americans and he will take it by the reigns.

Woke Season 1: What led to Keef Knight vs. the SFPD?

Up-and-coming cartoonist Keef Knight was hanging flyers to promote his appearance at Golden Con before he was tackled and mistaken for a criminal. After tackling and hurting Knight, the cops realize that Knight is not the suspect they are looking for.

The trauma of the wrongful arrest causes Knight to open his eyes to racism and becomes “woke” as he starts thinking about the racial inequalities many people in America are suffering. As his trauma becomes more difficult to handle, he begins to hear inanimate objects speak to him, trying to influence him to make a change.

Knight has a breakdown and rants about racism during his comic-strip panel, Toast & Butter, at Golden Con. These actions prove to be the end of what Knight envisioned as his career.

Knight tries to go and reason with his publication company before getting a harsh rejection. Knight finds inspiration to draw with a new Toast & Butter strip that provokes people to think about racism in a different way.

The publication company informs Knight that they now own his characters and strip, which causes Knight to go searching for a part-time job so he can attempt to buy them back.

Knight finds a part-time job working as an Uber-esque driver when he runs into an art connoisseur. After mentioning that he’s an artist, the lady invites Knight to an art event(she even offers to pay him). Knight notices something is off, he happens to be the only black guy there.

Woke Season 1: Keef creates a new project.

At this art event Knight realizes he is only there to make other people feel cool, where other art connoisseurs are constantly barraging him in questions and race-related questions. Knight does meet Adrienne, an Australian girl who points out that he was hired to come and diversify the event. These realizations inspire him to draw his next piece based on the event called Black People For Rent.

Knight begins to make waves as his Black People For Rent goes viral as there is such a variety of reactions. Some people reach out to Knight, genuinely looking to hire black people to diversify their work events, some black people reach out to Knight looking for work and some people leave Knight ignorant racist messages. The work creates a reminder that society loves black culture but doesn’t always love black people and it gets some backlash.

A few days later his publications give his characters Toast and Butter to another artist and Knight gets a free appointment to meet with a lawyer so he can fight to get them back.

Later, Knight is stopped on the bus when a Koala bear named Kubby escapes from the zoo and everybody in the city cares more about this animal than for racial inequality. Kubby is killed by animal control and there are crowds of mourners as Knight feels a wave of frustrations about societies care of a Koala over him. Knight rants to the crowd about how little he cares about Kubby before getting knocked out by a man wearing a Koala suit.

Knight decides to get therapy and turns his pain and trauma into artwork. Months into his new work he gets hit with a lawsuit from the San Francisco Police Department for portraying the officer that wrongfully tackled him as racist.  Knight is given a choice: for him and the officer to publicly apologize so the case can be dropped. After receiving a fake apology from the officer, Knight flicks beer in his face several times which results in him getting arrested for assaulting an officer.

Woke season 1 received a pretty good 77% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes and the audience score is in the high 80s range. With the age of entertainment connecting to politics and beliefs, I’m positive that the show will be renewed. Woke does have some very thought provoking points and is mostly enjoyable.