This episode opens with a reading of Ernest Bordelon’s will. Ralph Angel, Nova, Aunt Vi and Charley are present.
Aunt Vi gets the boat. The kids get the land, and Ernest wants them to farm it. Charley and Nova want no part of it. First order of business is to take care of business (i.e., sell the land) so Charley can return to her mess of a marriage in Los Angeles, and Nova can to back to her life in NOLA.
Ralph Angel gets upset because his sisters don’t want it. He’s looking at this inheritance as a chance to start fresh.
As the siblings tiff it out, Charley calls Sam Landry, who says he’ll make them an offer in person.
Vi didn’t purposely shut the door… she just didn’t expend the energy to leave it open for him.
Back at Vi’s house, Davis shows up. Vi ain’t feeling his tail, not even enough for the perfunctory response when Davis says “Hello.” She turns around, puts her watering can down and walks into the house. Davis follows her… and meets a screen door slam. Vi didn’t purposely shut the door… she just didn’t expend the energy to leave it open for him.
Inside, Hollywood offers Davis some coffee. Auntie Vi let everyone know all the coffee is gone… and the sweet tea. She kind of sounds like the cafeteria lady from Cedric The Entertainer’s short-lived sketch comedy show.
Charley walks into the room, basically seeps from her pores that she doesn’t want anything to do with the air that liar breathes.
Davis tells Charley the Houston police want to question him… They walk outside for a more private chat. He and the teammates on the video are getting suspended… He admits to her that they all went for drinks and then hired an escort service. But they didn’t rape her. Of course Charlie is going to ask if he boned the woman. (Yup.) This fool had the nerve to crack his lips to say “It was just once…” I’m sure his wife would have preferred to hear “I screwed the prostitute only ZERO times, baby.”
With that tidbit of information, it looked like Charley was assembling a bag of truncated cuss words stuck together by ellipses band-aids: “What the figgedy-fuc…mutha..summuva-bitc…as…bitc…shi…dam…utha-fuc…in…well, damn.” She didn’t actually say any of this, but my Inner Charley sure did.
Ralph Angel got a compassionate but real-talk warning from his parole officer. He must work 40 hours a week in a job that gives him a pay stub. If he doesn’t, it’s back to prison. Ralph Angel tells the parole officer about his dad’s death, his inheritance and the chance to farm the land. But parole stipulations are set. He’s got to get a job.
So, more stuff is coming out in the wash… Ralph Angel gets pissed because Nova and Charley are packing Ernest’s things without him… and we find out a little more about the family dynamics. Apparently that quick liner from episode two…the one about Charley’s mamma and the flowers… is starting to bloom… Looks like she does have a different mother, and looks like she lived with her mom and only visited the Bordelon farm each summer. And Ralph Angel also snaps at Nova, too, because RA says she couldn’t wait to get out when she turned 18. He contends he’s the one who’s been present.
So they hear the sound of a truck backing up and go outside to find out who it could be on their daddy’s farm. A couple of white men showed up to repossess Ernest’s tractor. Ralph angel pulls a gun on them and kindly (????) informed them they weren’t taking a thing his dad worked for all of his life. Well, one of the contractors pulls a shotgun. There’s this dramatic standoff for a few minutes… And it looked like this:
So I only have one question and concern: I hope Ralph Angel ain’t no felon. If he is, he’s on parole, so what’s he doing with a firearm?
The kids go by Sam Landry’s home to hear his offer to buy Ernest’s farm. Of course you know that fool ain’t offering what the land is worth. Later on, Charley finds out from Remy Newell that targeting black farmers in distress is Sam Landry’s way. The kids consider his so-called deal.
Lingering questions
What’s up with Ralph Angel and Blue’s mamma?
It seems they have this way with each other… Even though he can’t stand her ass…
After the gun-pullage incident, Ralph Angel stops by his baby mamma’s trailer… It seems they have this way with each other… Even though he can’t stand her ass… There’s still some sort of drama and bone-jump inducing tension… It looked like their special kind of dance. He he shows up at her door. She tries to kiss him, he moved his face away, she starts unbuckling his belt, he hoists her up, they go inside the trailer and… they…dance. It’s implied. I’m sure after that and the sexy music track, they didn’t talk out their feelings over herbal tea. So I need to find that song playing during that scene, because it was just perfect. From the words to the rhythm. It seemed to describe their relationship… the words something like this: “I see the dark inside of you, woke from dreams, pulled up like weeds, never knew no better there was no such thing I reached for you like a child that clings oh how we saw in each other everything, everything…” It’s my guess these two stumbled of age in each other’s loving arms—with all the “young and dumb” scars to prove it. And this song—it was just perfect. It told part of their relationship story.
In the end (of this episode—cause we know this AIN’T the end…)
Ralph Angel has a pay-stub type job, which is one of his parole requirements.
The kids don’t bite… and give Landry’s offer the boot. Landry leaves them with some sort of veiled threat….that folks do business differently in their neck of the woods than it’s done in L.A. So Charley tells this man (pardon my translation) “Fool you don’t know what I know…” Of course, she said it with tact… Again, that was my Inner Charley translation.