'Queen Sugar' Recap: Season 2, Episode 13: Confessions

We have now been through 13 episodes of Season 2 of Queen Sugar, with three more to come, including an hour and a half season finale. The show has only grown in fans who love seeing the Bordelon family struggle with life’s challenges as well as each other. While recapping isn’t meant to be a critical analysis of the show, there are a multitude of things in this week’s episode “Heritage,” that require some unpacking.

First, is that we are finally provided with a diagnosis for Aunt Vi (Tina Lifford) who has struggled with symptoms that she thought might be fibromyalgia. Turns out, she has lupus. If you watch Being Mary Jane, you know it’s also the illness that Mary Jane’s mother struggled with, at least in early seasons. Sadly, it is one that Black women are at higher risk for.

While it’s a devastating diagnosis for Aunt Vi, whose face instantly reveals her fears both about her relationship with her younger lover, Hollywood (Omar Dorsey) and her growing pie business, thankfully, lupus is not a fatal diagnosis. However, it is a serious one, so it’s kind of good news/bad news for Aunt Vi.

This is the episode where Darla’s parents, Darlene (Michael Michele) and Quincy Sutton (Roger Guenveur Smith) finally arrive. As you may have predicted, it is both happy and heartbreaking for Darla (Bianca Lawson). More is revealed about just how far Darla had fallen from a clearly privileged family with high expectations. What is also revealed is her parent’s side. Though we thought she had been abandoned by high-achieving parents because she didn’t live up to their expectations, it turns out that Darla’s addiction drove a wedge between them as she alternately asked for help and then refused it.

In a beautifully moving scene between the still gorgeous Micheal Michele and Lawson, Michele details the behavior anyone recognizes who’s dealt with an addict – the cajoling, the manipulation, the money requests coupled with calls of pain and devastation with a helpless parent on the other end. It is commendable that Queen Sugar provides addiction from both viewpoints and shows also that addicts can be pretty, light-skinned girls from high-end families instead of what we often see on TV and film– hardcore hood addicts who come from poverty. This scene will likely have many a family bawling in its searing honesty and much-needed redemption for Darla.

Darla’s boss, Charley (Dawn Lyen Gardner) is finally ready to give Remy (Dondre Whitfield) some of that good good, so much so that she’s wearing some lovely lingerie when he shows up for his much awaited adult playtime. But needle scratch – when Remy says he’s looking for ‘forever” Charley’s taken aback. She’s looking for a nice night, not the rest of her life. She’s just getting out of a relationship and doesn’t know what she wants.

Sigh. Don’t we all know the feeling of right person, wrong timing? Poor Remy is never going to get some. But they do things the adult way and put the brakes on the lovin’ (daggone it!) to talk about what it is that they both want and can wait or not wait for, which is absolutely right. It’s nice to see grown people acting grown.

There’s another long-awaited reunion on the horizon. Nova (Rutina Wesley) is sitting in a New Orleans restaurant having lunch with her homie, when who walks in but Calvin (Greg Vaughan) a.k.a. White Kang. (It’s our affectionate nickname for him, y’all.) He is looking like a snack, lunch and dinner. Nova’s friend immediately sees the chemistry popping between them, even though all they can say is ‘Hello.’ You know how some people just have a thing and no matter what, that thing will never, ever die? That’s Nova and Calvin. So when he comes over to see Nova, we figure it’s going to be one of those ‘Baby I missed you’ types of all –night lovemaking nights.

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