Welcome to Thanks, I Love It, our series highlighting something onscreen we’re obsessed with this week.
On My Block Season 4 hit Netflix on Monday, closing out the series about four L.A. teens and their high school hijinks. The show always shifted tone between characters’ love lives and friendships and the battle of territory in their neighborhood between rival gangs the Santos and the Prophets.
But there’s one thing we’ll miss most of all, and that’s the gnomes.
The gnomes of On My Block — affectionately “gnomies” — were introduced back in Season 1, when Jamal’s quest for the RollerWorld money led him to Chivo, played with delightful dryness by Emilio Rivera. Chivo’s small ceramic friends are a big swing for a show that otherwise fits neatly into “teen dramedy,” but the magical realness somehow fits right into On My Block’s world. We don’t need to know how or why Chivo is friends with the gnomies, or how he and Jamal communicate with them. By the time Chivo tells Cesar “They’re my friends,” they’re our friends too.
In Season 4, Chivo introduces a little gnomie that looks like Cesar’s brother Oscar, the sweetest possible way for him and the show to pay tribute to this character played by Julio Macias. A wayward Jamal questions his approach to sex and relationships, and wonders if he should just go back to the comfort of his relationship with Juanita (again, not something we question, and we’d be concerned if we needed to).
The bit works because the gnomes themselves are adorable — tiny and cartoonish, not so lifelike or uncanny as to cause discomfort (like say, dolls or clowns). The fact that we never hear them speak to Jamal and Chivo adds just the right amount of mystery to each mischievous appearance. There’s also the music; every impromptu gnome cameo comes with a familiar riff from the soundtrack — playful and a little eerie, but not menacing. The worst thing the gnomies will ever do is show up outside your window in the middle of the night, but they probably want attention, not blood.
Gnomes are widely considered symbols of good luck, which adds huge emotional significance to Chivo’s attachment to them. He himself tangled with the Prophets and Santos back in the day and lost friends to gang violence in Freeridge. The gnomes offer Chivo safety and comfort; they can’t leave him in the same way as humans, and he can keep them close and protected. It’s no wonder Chivo went into a shock-induced coma when Jamal hurt Julio in Season 2.
On My Block also never stigmatizes Chivo or Jamal for their gnomie connection. For Chivo, it’s a coping mechanism, whether to redirect pain from his past or simply distract from it. People have their own methods of tending to their mental and emotional health, and this is his. When Jamal joins the gnome lifestyle, it creates a kinship that helps Chivo trust him and feel safe with a flesh-and-blood person after a long time.
On My Block is now streaming on Netflix.
