'Queen Sugar' Season 2, Episode 16: Dreams Deferred

Here we are Sugar babies. We’ve made it through to the end of Queen Sugar’s stellar second season. The conclusion of tonight’s episode ‘Dream Variations’ means that we’re still 6 good months away from the premiere of Power. Damn it!

But on to Queen Sugar. We start off this week with Blue (Ethan Hutchinson) in Aunt Vi’s (Tina Lifford) garden playing with his doll, Kenya. As is the case with most children, he knows something’s wrong in the family and that it has to do with his mother. But no one has talked to him about it.

His mother, Darla (Bianca Lawson) is at her home hoping to get in to pick up a few things. Nova, (Rutina Wesley) however is also there, with a farmer, both of them talking to a reporter trying to salvage the harvest for the Queen Sugar mill.

When Nova sees Darla, she stops her at the door. She’s not coming in without Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) there. The Bordelons have closed ranks on Ms. Darla. While that’s gratifying for Ralph Angel, it’s pretty sad to see how Darla’s telling the truth has set her outside the family. She drives over to Aunt Vi’s and sees her, Hollywood (Omar Dorsey) and Blue together. She sits in her car and cries and screams, then drives off.

Finally, somebody has some good news. Hollywood gets a phone call from his lawyer. They’ve settled with the workers on the rig explosion. And they’ve settled big. Hollywood has what he needs and now that’s he’s solvent, he wants to get married. Where oh where are the loving, sincere brothers out here like this dude? Aunt Vi says Yes. These two are so sweet together.

Charley is wrangling with Jacob Boudreaux. (Lea Coco). He wants them to partner. The Black farmers have turned their backs on Charley. They can’t risk their acres for something that sounds twitchy. It’s all a lie, but they believe it. Charley thinks Boudreaux is a slithering snake. The woman has balls – she’s not doing a deal and she tells him so. But Jacob’s turned on by her refusal and not just by the business possibilities.

But as much as Charley tries, the farmers are scared. One comes to Ralph Angel and tell him that although Nova helped our her son when he was imprisoned, she still won’t grind with Queen Sugar. Charley is now down to three farmers. It’s really a shame that the Black farmers have bought into the rumors, but it gives you a sense of how hand to mouth these farmers are living. They just can’t afford to risk it.

News travels fast in the Bordelon family so Nova sets up a family dinner to celebrate Vi and Hollywood’s engagement. Aunt Vi has on a red curly wig for the occasion – gotta love Vi and the diversity of her wig collection. Ralph Angel and Charley are tied up with the harvest, so they don’t end up making it. Remy (Dondre Whitfield) does, however.

And – hold onto your wigs – he and Nova, both nursing the disappointment of their troubled relationships, seem to connect on a different level. Yes, I mean there is an intimate little scene in the kitchen with just the two of them and it looks like one of those ‘What just happened’ moments. We haven’t seen them interact much before, so this is an interesting twist.

It sure looks like Remy and Charley are not going to move forward. Remy has finally figured out that Charley, after 20 years of running an NBA player’s brand, is a real G. He’s not so sure he wants that. He says he doesn’t really know her. I think it’s that he wanted her to be someone other than who she is.

He straight up tells her he can’t support her in whatever Machiavellian scheme she’s cooking up to take down the Boudreux/Landy families. She’s going to sell a portion of Queen Sugar to Boudreaux. She’s going to have Ralph Angel grind with the Boudreux mill. She’s playing chess not checkers, baby. Ralph Angel doesn’t know the full plan but he’s backing Charley on her ‘Godfather’ shit.

I’d bet on Charley, too. She tells Ralph Angel she has his back also and that she fired Darla. No one’s seen her, not even her sponsor, when Ralph Angel heads to a NA meeting to see if she’s there. When she’s not, he thinks, l think, everyone watching thinks that Darla has likely relapsed. So RA goes looking for her. He goes to every motel, crack den and drug spot in the city, but he doesn’t find her.

I’m as nervous as he is as to where and in what condition he’ll find her in. Finally, he does and she’s doing something completely unexpected. She’s swimming at an indoor pool. I hope they give us some more back story on how Darla and Ralph Angel met, because it’s never been quite clear. But obviously, Ralph Angel knew she was a swimmer and where she would head for a late night swim.

The couple then proceeds to have one of the most raw, emotionally charged conversations ever between an estranged couple on TV. I credit Ava DuVernay, who wrote this episode, for her mastery of the small moment. This scene never borders on soap opera drama or cheap emotion.

It is devastating and powerful and if you don’t cry while it plays out, you must be in a coma, or have never loved and lost. All praises due to the acting skills of Kofi Siriboe and Bianca Lawson who blow this scene out of the park. But sadly the heartbreaking but not totally unexpected end result is that they won’t be together anymore.

Darla’s going to go back home to her family in D.C., but she wants Ralph Angel to keep Blue and not to reject him if he’s not his biological father. Ralph Angel, as we expected, loves Blue regardless. So nothing changes there, thank God. It’s the right move on so many levels, but it comes at an extraordinarily high cost for Darla.

In the middle of all this loss, Nova has been inspired to write a blazingly honest column about the world under Trump. She turns it in, unassigned, and her editor loves it. He’s going to run it, and in the most visible position. It’s nice to see Nova getting back to what she loves to do after so much emotional turmoil this season.

We end the way we started – with Blue. Ralph Angel tells the story of how he got his name. When they were in the process of naming Blue, Aunt Vi, whose name is actually Violet, told the story of how she felt special because her name was a pretty color.

So Ralph Angel decided, despite all the folks weighing in on the name of his firstborn son, to give him a unique name that rhymed with his own mother’s name and represented all the good things in life, including ocean and the infinite sky. I mean, DAYUM AVA, did you have to break my ENTIRE HEART this episode? Yes, I guess so, because in real-life and in families, that’s what happens. And sometimes we can reconcile that and sometimes we can’t.

There are so many questions for next season. While I thought that the show lagged at points this season, the second half certainly stepped things up. And the pace of this show, unlike others, means that there is an emotional payoff when things go very wrong or very right for the characters. We earned Darla’s admission and we earned Ralph Angel’s recognition that the lie caused irreparable harm. We earned Nova’s return to triumphant work.

We earned Hollywood and Vi’s reconciliation and his enduring love for her. We earned Charley’s professional revenge and her personal disappointments, especially with Remy. Queen Sugar never shortcuts a moment or plays out any false resolutions. It’s a show that requires you to pay attention and to invest in each character.

Next season should be interesting. The show, characters and storylines have evolved. Both Omar Dorsey and Dondre Whitfield have expressed that they hope for more back story for their characters. What went on between Remy and Nova, if it were to escalate, would certainly set up an interesting dilemma between the sisters.

Although it would likely be difficult for Darla and Ralph Angel to find a path to reconciliation, she’s still Blue’s mother. And Bianca has made such a mark on every character that seeing her leave Queen Sugar altogether would be sad.

Micah (Nicholas Ashe) and Davis (Timon Kyle Durrett) will have their own feelings about Charley’s scheme to overthrow the Boudreaux/Landry family. And is this an avenue for Davis and Charley to fall back together? It would be nice to see some exploration of how people, even after betrayal, can, and do, reconcile. Will Ralph Angel start seeing someone new and if so, how will that impact Blue? How will Darla leaving impact both of them?

We’re sure the writers will have ideas and will make the next season as beautiful as the first two have been. We’re looking forward to the next chapter!

What did you think of the season finale, Sugar Babies?

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