For “black-ish,” its characters and its audience, it was finally time to have The Talk.

Within the show, The Talk was the conversation that African-American parents have with children about the realities of police brutality against black citizens. Between the show and its audience, however, The Talk was the acknowledgment that “black-ish” is about a family in which that conversation was eventually going to happen.

Wednesday’s remarkable episode, “Hope,” pulled off both about as well as you could imagine: It was funny but heartbreaking, nuanced but not mealy-mouthed, blunt but not despairing. It firmly established “black-ish,” if there was any doubt, as a sitcom that’s not just timely but up to the challenge of its times.

The action in “Hope” started as a lot of topical sitcom episodes do, with a family watching the news on TV. The story was about a young black man brutalized by the police on video, with an indictment decision pending — but which one? The episode made the confusion part of the joke: Was it Chicago? Cincinnati? Charleston? Who can keep track? (Watching the episode, I had to Google whether the case — with familiar scenes of protest and coverage from CNN’s Don Lemon — was fictional.)

We’ve lived this scene many times, after all, since “black-ish” began in September 2014, a month after unrest broke out over the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. On the one hand, its timing was perfect: Here was a sitcom that was not only about a black family but asked what it means to be black today.