A Heartfelt Sitcom That Still Leaves Some of Us Out: A Review of One Day at a Time

One Day at a Time is a thoughtful and refreshing take on Latinx family life, blending humor, heart, and real-world issues. While the show offers meaningful representation and important conversations, it reflects a common trend in Hollywood where Latinidad is portrayed through a limited lens—missing an opportunity to fully reflect the diversity of the community.

One Day at a Time, the 2017 reboot of the beloved 1975 sitcom, is one of those rare shows that managed to blend comedy, culture, and compassion in a way that genuinely resonated with many Latine audiences. Reimagined by Gloria Calderón Kellett and Mike Royce, and centered around a Cuban-American family living in Los Angeles, the show brought a warm, multilayered approach to classic sitcom storytelling. It was sharply written, emotionally intelligent, and often revolutionary in its ability to address complex issues with heart and humor—from PTSD and immigration to mental health, queerness, and intergenerational trauma.

Starring Justina Machado as the tenacious Penelope Alvarez, a veteran and single mom raising two kids with the help of her fabulous and dramatic mother Lydia (played iconically by Rita Moreno), One Day at a Time carved out space in the American sitcom canon for a Latine family that felt familiar and authentic in many ways. Its strengths are undeniable: it gave voice to issues that Latinx families talk about behind closed doors and brought them to national television. The writing was clever, the acting compelling, and its sincere handling of queerness through Elena (Isabella Gomez), Penelope’s teenage daughter, was especially groundbreaking for Latine TV.

The show’s creators deserve flowers for pushing nuanced conversations forward in primetime. The fact that topics like nonbinary identity, machismo, and undocumented immigration status were explored without flattening the characters is no small feat. The inclusion of Rita Moreno, a legendary Afro-Puerto Rican actress who has spent her life confronting barriers in Hollywood, also gave the show gravitas, history, and charisma.

But here’s the thing—and it’s a critique that’s become far too common: One Day at a Time, for all its strengths and good intentions, ultimately reflects a larger, harmful pattern in media representation. The entire core cast, while Latine, is either white or very light-skinned. Once again, Black Latinos are left out of the picture. The family is coded as Afro-Caribbean (Cuban-American), yet visibly Afro-Cuban people are absent from the central family dynamic. This decision reinforces an all-too-familiar message in Hollywood: Black Latines can exist as legacy footnotes, background players, or ancestors—but rarely as the face of the story.

This absence is more than just symbolic. Representation in media affects perception, power, and opportunity. When Black Latinos are consistently excluded from depictions of Latinidad on screen, it reinforces the whitewashing of our diverse communities and erases the realities of Afro-Latine identity in everyday life. It’s especially jarring when the narrative is set in Cuba’s diaspora, where Blackness is woven into the very fabric of culture and history. And though the show does some commendable work to talk about colorism and racism—especially in later seasons—it still doesn’t do enough to course-correct the fact that its central characters reflect the narrowest slice of what it means to be Latine.

To be clear, One Day at a Time still deserves credit for what it did accomplish. It gave many Latine viewers space to feel seen in their mental health struggles, their queer identities, and their intergenerational family dynamics. It introduced important conversations in households that may have otherwise resisted them. It gave Latinas starring roles, employed Latine writers, and opened doors in a historically white-dominated genre.

But it also leaves behind a whole community of Afro-Latines who deserve to see themselves in these everyday family stories. Because visibility isn’t just about being included in trauma-heavy plots or positioned as symbols of struggle. Sometimes, we want to be the kid at the kitchen table. The parent with the bad dating history. The grandma with the big entrance. The family member who is funny, flawed, and full of life—just like everyone else.

So, yes—One Day at a Time made us laugh, made us cry, and gave us plenty to celebrate. But for many of us who exist at the intersections of Blackness and Latinidad, it’s also another reminder of how much further we still have to go. Representation matters—and until our screens reflect the full range of who we are, there will always be a missing piece in the stories that claim to speak for us all.