Black sisterhood is something we can never see enough of in the media, especially in today’s TV Real Housewives/Basketball Wives landscape. Seeds, a web series by Deja Harrell and C.J. Thomas, aims to give viewers thirsty for content featuring black female friendships precisely what they want.
The series follows Jade (Harrell), Beth (Dionne Addai), Maya (Kyra Jones) and Danielle (Adia Alli), four college-aged friends whose relationship is put to the test after an accidental tweet. Spoiler alert: their friendship makes it through, but not without some trials along the way.
As the series’ website states, Seeds aims to be a “bold and dynamic narrative that explores their conversations through a hilariously authentic lens,” and it succeeds in accomplishing that goal. Its cool style and unapologetic tone must be why the series was an Official Selection for the New York TV Festival Independent Pilot Competition, GlowFest and SeriesFest, where the series won Bustle’s Best Emerging Female Creator Award. Despite each episode being between five to seven minutes long, the characters are well-rounded individuals who draw you into their world.
The first episode, in particular, sets up the friendship in a raw and realistic way. It’s difficult to tell just how much of the scene is acting and how much of it could be improv. The episode feels as if one of the friends, in their marijuana high, just decided to turn on a camera to record their girls’ night in.
SEEDS — Episode #1.1 We’re All Hoes from OTV | Open Television on Vimeo.
The series only lasts for five episodes, but within those episodes, Seeds covers a lot of ground, from skewering hoteps and vapid white feminists, to calling out racist white “liberals” and white men with fetishes for black women. The series, of course, takes on dating life as a whole. Through this group of friends, we see women who are ready to find pleasure and love on their terms.
The only drawback with Seeds is that it has such a short first season. Despite this, there have been plenty of web series like Seeds that have managed to captivate with a short episode length. Avant-Guardians is one such web series, which had only seven episodes, that each lasted from two minutes to five minutes. But with the scope of the characters and the amount of topics Seeds covers, it feels like the season needed to either have more episodes or make each episode within its five-episode season between 10 to 15 minutes. That way, we could get to know the main characters even more and understand more of the challenges going on in their lives. Also, tertiary characters like the hotep who hits on Beth and the white feminist woman who tries to school Danielle could be given more breathing room instead of feeling crammed in so the series could quickly make its cultural commentary.
Overall, though, Seeds has a lot of promise and tons of potential for a hopefully forthcoming second season. I want to know more about these characters and the world they inhabit. Most especially, I want to see more of their sisterhood in a society that often derides and objectifies black women for daring to be multifaceted human beings.
You can watch the entire first season of Seeds at the series’ website. You can also follow Seeds on Twitter and Instagram for series updates.
