‘Dave’ S2, Ep1 – “International Gander” Review: “Calling Out Culture Vultures”

The last time we saw Dave Burd aka Lil Dicky, he was freestyling for the Breakfast Klub. A well-known, very controversial morning radio talk show hosted by Charlamagne the God, Angela Yee, and DJ Envy. The first season ended and it looked like Dave’s career was going to take off and he was going to become a successful artist. Everything looked to be on the up and up.

Fast forward to the premiere of season two; Dave (Burd), Mike (Andrew Santino), Gata (Gata), and a new character Dan (Ki Hong Lee) are in Korea. Dave is shooting a video and presenting an award at the  Korean Music Awards. The episode follows the crew around and also shows the gap between international artists and artists from the states. Dave is hoping that a K-Pop song with artist CL (as herself) will help take him to new heights.

There ends up being a crazy mix-up, and CL doesn’t show up to the video shoot. They go searching for CL, and Dan gets arrested. He explains his arrest to the crew, and Dave reveals a secret. They eventually go back to the video shoot and find CL after Dave admits another secret. Things kind of fall apart from there.

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The episode has a lot going on, but it reveals so much. Namely, cultural appropriation and using aesthetics to gain fans to your base. The writers, Sung-Jin Lee, Burd, and Jeff Schaffer did an incredible job putting this episode together. The jokes are still there, the authenticity is still there, and they captured the controversial topic of appropriation perfectly. Especially Dan and CL calling out Dave for how offensive the idea and video were and essentially being a culture vulture. It’s been a trending topic for years and to see this show bring it up in the way they did was incredible. They also touched on writer’s block, when artists can’t seem to create their own music at times. They stuffed a lot into this episode, and it worked perfectly.

Hip-hop culture is the most appropriated culture in the music industry, and Asian culture is also appropriated heavily. In light of the violence against the Asian community recently, it was really amazing to see Dave tackle how they are perceived in the United States by white people. There’s a lot of dialogue in this episode that calls out stereotypes, and just makes you cringe. This was a well-written episode with great directing from Jake Schreier.

Dave works because it captures a lot of how the music industry works, but it also shows you that these artists aren’t superhuman. They are regular human beings like you and me, and they go through so much. This being the first episode of the season has me extremely excited for the things to come. I think we are in for a treat this season, and I hope we all enjoy it as much as we did the first season. – Rascal F. Kennedy

Rating: 10/10

New episodes of Dave premiere Wednesdays on FXX and Thursdays on FX on Hulu!!