The Open Book Podcast w Jay & Nia Floyd
Welcome to "The Open Book Podcast," where real talk meets real life. Join us, a dynamic couple with a knack for authentic and lively discussions, as we dive into the complexities of love, family, and personal growth. Each episode explores topics like marriage dynamics, financial management, health challenges, and cultural issues, all served up with a healthy dose of humor and heart. Whether you're navigating your own relationships or just love a good conversation, we're here to share, inspire, and keep it real. Tune in to join our community of listeners who are as thoughtful and curious as they are diverse.
The Open Book Podcast w Jay & Nia Floyd
Reasonable Doubt Season 1: In-Depth Review
Have you ever been hesitant to embrace a new show based on preconceptions, only to find yourself captivated by its unique storytelling? That's exactly what happened to us with "Reasonable Doubt," so we decided to review it on our show.
Join us as we unravel the intense relationship dynamics and emotional entanglements within the show, drawing attention to the evolving roles of characters like Jax, Lewis and Damon. We discuss the exploration of past traumas and toxic relationships, and how these themes resonate with the struggles of balancing professional ambitions with personal fulfillment. Tune in to discover how these narratives reflect broader societal themes, offering a poignant mirror to our own experiences and leaving us contemplating the power of storytelling to illuminate the complexities of human life.
just break things. Feel free to break everything. Really, what's up love? Hey honey, how's it feel to be in a new studio?
Speaker 2:it feels great to be in a new studio yeah, does this feel like? Have we started? Um, maybe maybe, maybe, okay it's up to us you know, whenever we say whenever we say we're going is when we're going it's like E40.
Speaker 1:What do you say? Tell me when to go, gow, gow, gow. Tell me when to gow. How you feeling, babe, I feel good love.
Speaker 2:How do you feel?
Speaker 1:I feel, off and on but I feel good right now. Okay, I am eager to do the show. I'm excited.
Speaker 2:I'm excited that my babe is excited because we got to get to season two, we do we do.
Speaker 1:I'm behind the eight ball y'all. Y'all hear all of that ratcheting and stuff. That's me getting the studio together. Yo, welcome back welcome fam, hello, hello book podcast it's been a while it's been a while we are here recording live from wake forest, north carolina. Now we we're in a different location. We pick things up and drop things off and now we down here south of the Mason Dixon and doing our thing in the US south. Do we feel south?
Speaker 2:But you got a southern accent yet I do not have a southern accent, yet it's coming y'all.
Speaker 1:Babe can pick up accents. I can pick them up quick, Just like that. What was we at, babe?
Speaker 2:Was it? Orlando it was, and we was talking to this Jamaican lady. Was she Jamaican?
Speaker 1:Somewhere around there and I had to stop myself.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh no, I started talking exactly like her and I'm like, oh, I don't want to be offensive, I know, because she might think you was clowning I was not.
Speaker 1:I was just so fascinated at her beautiful accent and I just picked it up like oh, yes, yeah, you do that, though. You absorb energy and you start reflecting it back yeah, I try yeah I think I don't even think you try?
Speaker 2:I think it's you think it's just part of me.
Speaker 1:I think it's part of who I am yeah, because I think I see it happen a lot and I'm like she don't even know what she's doing.
Speaker 2:No, I just be, I just be being me.
Speaker 1:You do, you do. So we're going to give you all a quick update. We did move during the summer. We moved. It's been taking up a lot of our time. We've had some, some health journeys. We've been, we've been growing, We've been doing. God called us and said you know what? It's time to step into some new territory.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Um, I need y'all to go out to a new place. Um, I will show you the way if you stay close to me. And we just kind of it took us a while, took us a few years, and now we in a new place. Yes, I've been back and forth to Cleveland, quite often actually since August I've been back and forth to Cleveland quite often.
Speaker 2:Actually, since August I've been back and forth to Cleveland for work, for medical reasons. So we have relocated me. But it's a lot for all of us. It's emotionally draining, physically draining. I'd be like where my wife at. It's a lot. The kids don't like it, babe don't like it, I don't like it. But you know we got to do what we have to do for right now.
Speaker 1:We do and it's a blessing, you know we always got to be reminded to count our blessings.
Speaker 2:And God is with us through this. I mean, he's been with me every travel that I've been there. He's been, you know, in the midst of me building a great support system in Cleveland. Shout out to my sis Q, my sis Kim, my auntie Kim. You know my sister, my sister, I do, I had. You know, it's one of those things where you don't realize my sister Simone, you don't really realize that you have a great support system until you have a great support system. You know, it's one of those things that smack you in the face and I'm just so thankful to um, to God, for me having a really great circle of people that really care about me. I've had a lot of people reach out to me just to check on me, to see how I'm doing, and I'm very, very grateful for that. So, thank you all, appreciate y'all, love y'all, and so yeah.
Speaker 2:So here we are. We are able to finally be back in the lab. We've been planning this for a couple months now, but time has just not really been on our side to do it. So we decided that we were going to come to y'all with a review, since, you know, we've been on the times that I have in here we've been able to kind of, you know, spend some QT and catch up on some some TV, and we have been watching Reasonable Doubt. So I've been watching this with Babe, season one, but I have already plowed through season two with my sis Q.
Speaker 1:Y'all go too fast. Listen, women want it. Where my fellas at? I'm sure y'all understand Women go fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't play no games Like when we in it, we in it And'd like to chat about it and and and have a conversation. So, yeah, it's been interesting and, um, you know, I saw this series a while ago and I don't really watch a lot of TV. To be quite honest, I'm usually on my phone, um, and so I don't really do much TV. But my sister told me about this show. She was like you really got to check it out and I was like I don't really know, but I got to season one and watched it and was like hmm, and then got to season two and start telling babe about it and then was able to pull him in. So we just thought it'd be a great idea for us to come together and and really talk about our thoughts about season one before we head into season two, since it just ended.
Speaker 1:How did it feel? How hard was it to pull me in?
Speaker 2:Very. He was not even remotely interested at all at all, but I think it was the hype, it was a lot of hype around season two. He was just kind of like you know, let me check out season one. You think that's what it was the hype, it was a lot of hype around season two that he was just kind of like you know what.
Speaker 1:Let me check out season one. You think that's what it was. Be honest with me, what do you think it was? I think that.
Speaker 2:I think was the hype. I think you saw a lot of people talking about it and he was like you know what?
Speaker 1:all right, all right, I'll watch it all right, I'm gonna tell y'all what it is. Man and I told you this. I talked about this while we was watching it. I was very hesitant to get into this show. I mean, I don't want this to come off wrong.
Speaker 2:Say what you feel.
Speaker 1:It felt like a woman-y show. I mean it can be. It felt like insecure, yeah, or scandal. It felt like a woman just having a lot of sex with a lot of dudes in a lot of scenes that are made for women to really appreciate and I got no problem with that, but you don't think you did demographic for it. Yeah, I'll be like I don't really want to see. No, no, yeah, that ain't my thing but it didn't happen like that stuff off the kitchen counter and let's have sex with this person, I mean.
Speaker 2:And even if it was that, so I'm asking you to hey, babe, why don't you check this show out? And first off, I'm not going to have you watch a show that I do think is specifically for my demographic, or a woman I shouldn't even say my woman's demographic. I wouldn't even think that you would be interested and I wouldn't try to get you to watch it. But this show is not that, and we've watched tons of shows together. It's a lawyer show. We've watched Lincoln Lawyer. We've watched quite a few shows together that I mean. Granted, lincoln Lawyer, isn't this like this. But I just thought that the culture of the show would interest you, would be appealing to you. The show has a great soundtrack.
Speaker 1:And that was to be fair. That was one was the first thing you told me it was like the music dope, you're gonna dig it. And when it first came on it was like jay reasonable doubt. I was like I know, I see what babe doing, I see this. I see the connection she made in my mind. I was like it ain't gonna work. It ain't gonna work. This is not gonna get me to like a woman he show just because they got jay-z on the soundtrack.
Speaker 2:That's what I was thinking that's what he was thinking at first, but by the end of the season he was like so let's get into season two. So there we go I cannot lie.
Speaker 1:I cannot lie, so with no further ado, let's let's get into what we're talking about. Right, the show reasonable doubt created for Hulu. Right, let's give the IMDb tagline says in the high stakes world of LA law, jack Stewart is your go-to defense attorney, who fights against the odds both in and out of the courtroom. What you think about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can agree with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the out of the courtroom it's a lot, a lot of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a lot. Who went a?
Speaker 1:whole lot of courtroom for a while yeah, but that's okay. They had to set up the story they did all right, so let's go with a full description. Right, reasonable doubt. It centers around jack stewart, an exceptionally talented defense attorney in la, known for her unorthodox methods and tenacity. The show delves into her complicated personal life and how it intersects with her professional responsibilities, navigating intense legal battles and personal crises yeah, yep, I can agree with that. All right, the creator. You know, my thing is, I'm always like the first thing I thought who made?
Speaker 2:this show.
Speaker 1:Right, who made it? You know we watch a lot of shows right. Sometimes it's what's my man that made Black-ish. I can't recall his name right now. You know the guy, though. And he ended up making Mixed and grownish and black af and all that yep or you know, sometimes it's uh, shonda, right, we all know shonda do her thing.
Speaker 1:Shonda land productions. Hopefully they sign our show one day. So shonda, let's doing her thing, love it. But you can tell a shonda created show, you know, it's trademarks, right. So my first thing was who made this? And so turns out the series was created by ramallah muhammad and correct me if I'm getting this wrong, but ramallah, ramallah muhammad, she's a writer and a producer renowned for her work on scandal so here we go with the shangitais and little fires everywhere yeah, so kerry washington
Speaker 2:is also very much involved in both of these, yeah right.
Speaker 1:So it says ramallah is. She is of somali descent and she's from la. So here we go. You know a lot of her story is tied in there, so she often infuses her own narratives with deep cultural and social themes. She's noted for saying I write from what I know, and what I know is complex characters and complex situations, and I think that shows up here I agree you know to her credit. I apologize, rambler, if you listen to this.
Speaker 2:It wasn't what I thought it was no, you just need to give it a chance.
Speaker 1:It wasn't what I thought it was gonna be, because even I was opposed to watching it I remember when you watched it, when you watched the first season, because you watched the first season before I did.
Speaker 2:I did. I did Again. My sis Q recommended me to watch it and I just I had a very difficult time but I'm glad that I did and moved into season two. And you know it was great because season one was filmed, I think, two years ago. It was filmed a few years ago, see, for season two to come in and just be finishing up this year, just this month. So that worked out great for me to be able to just catch right up. I did that with Insecure as well. I didn't start that until late and then by the time it came back.
Speaker 1:No, you didn't.
Speaker 2:By the time it came back, it was right there at the final season, so I was able to be right where I needed to be.
Speaker 1:I got a question for you, since you did watch it before me. This is a phenomenon I've seen happen. I don't know if it happens all the time, maybe it don't happen to you, but I remember when you was watching it you was like in the other room and I was like, hey, how was it? I wasn't. You was like I don't know, and then by the end of it you was locked in. But you still didn't know if you loved it, loved it, right, and I kept thinking like, is it that she really don't love it, or is it that we're not watching it together? Because I've seen, and I'm not saying this just about me.
Speaker 1:I've seen it plenty of times, where I've seen a show where I'm like, yo, this is going to be dope, me and babe can watch it. It don't end up working and we can watch it. So I watch it, and then I'm like halfway in, I'm like I wonder how I would have felt if we actually would have watched it together. Oh, that is so sweet. That is not how it was for me.
Speaker 2:She's like nah, bro, I was all the way in. It would have been great to watch it with you. I thoroughly enjoy watching it with you, so I'm glad that you did come back around because it helped me appreciate the season a lot better watching it with you than watching it by myself because, like I said, I you know, um, I actually missed one of the episodes. I had to go back and watch it and so it didn't get the same feel.
Speaker 2:But like going back and re-watching it, it was just and so. Just so you guys know, as we were watching, because I was kind of telling jay about it as we, as I was watching it and my feelings and thoughts I don't think he remembered half the stuff I said, though when we watched it together, but we did not talk about the episodes as we went through each one, because we wanted to save it for this review.
Speaker 1:We was looking out for y'all.
Speaker 2:So yeah, you want to jump in.
Speaker 1:Let's go into the. Wait one thing I want to do really quick. I want to jump in. Let's go into the. Oh wait, one great one thing I want to do really quick. I want to talk about these actors, because I've never seen these people before.
Speaker 2:Yes, amyazi cornoldi, I've not seen her in anything yeah, what that name did she just say, or? Um mckinney um mckinley, mckinley freeman. I haven't seen him in anything as well. Now. The children, I think I've seen them. I think I've seen the son in something I just can't recall what it was.
Speaker 1:I thought the son did a great job um, and the daughter. I can't remember if I've seen her in anything either but let's, let's back up to the first, the main three that I consider. Right, imyatsi cornyaldi, who plays jack stewart right, she's the star. She kind of reminds me of the lady who plays the mother on power book 2 uh, raising canaan but um, she is an american actress. She's of panamanian and african-american descent. She's known for compelling performances. She brings depth and complexity to the character.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she did a great job.
Speaker 1:Fierce and brilliant defense attorney.
Speaker 2:She looks like a baby doll to me. Her face is pretty.
Speaker 1:She is known for her roles in Middle of Nowhere and the Red Line. I've never seen those.
Speaker 2:No, I've not seen those either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this was a completely new face for me.
Speaker 2:Yep, same for me, and I thought that they did a phenomenal job with her. Her fashion, her style, her wig was a different story, but her fashion was amazing. She rocked every single outfit.
Speaker 1:I loved her face.
Speaker 2:I mean, she just fit the part.
Speaker 1:Well, she got the body of a model.
Speaker 2:She just looked phenomenal.
Speaker 1:She did Super tall, beautiful, super long and lengthy.
Speaker 2:Cultured. Yeah, she just fit. Everything about her fit.
Speaker 1:I did think her face. It took me a minute to get used to it because you know you're used to seeing a familiar face in that starring role. To see a new face took me a minute, but I do think she brought a lot of complexity to the role. Her face her wig, like you said, was another thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, I got it. She had to have her work do and her not work do and her girl do, and you know, I get it, and they did do a good job of showing the difference between the two the flashback do.
Speaker 1:They did a good job and then McKinley Freeman is her husband, louis Stewart another phenomenal actor.
Speaker 2:He did such a great job with this role, just perfect.
Speaker 1:That was a very complex role, they said this dude played in Hit the Floor and Daytime Divas. I'm not familiar with either one of those.
Speaker 2:Me either.
Speaker 1:So it looked, you know.
Speaker 2:Nice to see fresh faces.
Speaker 1:Fresh faces. Very, very nice to see fresh faces you know, I saw a quote from 50 Cent recently where he was saying if you got really good ideas, you shouldn't try to make a movie, you should try to make a show, because you can't make a movie without stars, but a show you can make with fresh faces, and I thought that was pretty interesting and you can see a good example here. Um, although this next name about the name is the is the star power, michael ely michael ely plays damon cook, or as I called him the first five episodes prison bay listen
Speaker 1:this is the reason why I thought the show was what I thought it was, because so much of what I had seen centered around basically a prison bay love story. Right like this successful, powerful attorney is gonna fall in love with this dude from prison. So michael ely plays that damon cook. We all know michael ely, um super complex actor, brings the whole crazy eyebrow thing that he do where his eyebrow be looking like a w and into all this scene a lot, a lot of pain and complexity in it. You know I'm always looking at faces because a lot of actors it starts with your face. That's how you get cast and you can see why he gets cast. He's a very interesting face and he shows a lot of complexity in his face but he's played in everything Y'all know Barbershop, think Like a man, almost Human, bel-air.
Speaker 2:He's been in everything right. Michael Ealy is.
Speaker 1:Michael Ealy. He does his thing. A very nuanced performance was asked for him here, and let's get into it. Let's get into the story.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we start off with episode one. We go right into meeting Jax and Louis, and you know the dynamic of their family right now. They're separated, you know, even though right into that they go, they go right into it?
Speaker 1:how are they? What are they? What happened?
Speaker 2:it's just, we hit, we already separate yeah, they go right into showing them still doing life together, separated, separately, deal doing life together, kind of having their kids go back and forth, um, you know, between homes I thought it was interesting that they showed that church thing so early, like it looked like they was living together because they all getting ready in the same house. Yeah, but he don't live there well, I think it was the, did not the dynamic of them still trying to, you know, be committed to their marriage even though they're separated?
Speaker 2:they're still trying to, you know, be committed to their marriage even though they're separated. They're still trying to do things as a family and you know, church being one of them. And you know, of course, they don't want to have a broken home for the kids, even though obviously they're going through some things and the kids are affected, still trying to make things work and try to operate normally. And you know, maybe some of that has to do with the kids are affected, still trying to make things work and try to operate normally. And you know, maybe some of that has to do with the kids, maybe some of that has to do with her career, because she's, you know, in the public light and she may not want anybody to know that she's going through a separation with her husband right now. And, you know, are they trying to make things work. So, even though they're living separately, how can they come together, um, and kind of get that fire back, even though you know things are a little rocky right now?
Speaker 1:it was definitely interesting. You got to see um again. I went. I wanted to know who wrote these things right, like who does every episode out of the same writer. Uh, I thought it was really interesting that the creator wrote the first three episodes but she did not write the other six and it's interesting, obviously, that this whole album, or this whole show, is based off of jay-z's album yeah because all of the episodes have a title from one of his songs on his album.
Speaker 2:So the very first album is can't not. I mean very first episode is can't knock the hustle, and we're just kind of introduced to jacks who jacqueline, but they call her jacks we are introduced to her, her like her life her work, life her work life, what she has to do and deal with while she's at work, being the only black criminal defense attorney in the office yeah with all of these white males right, right away immediately her and her um her black team or her her color team because, daniel is not.
Speaker 2:He's um korean he's a plc, though he's a person of color yeah, he's a person of color, so you have him, and then you also have her assistant, crystal. So you know she they call it the black world of the office Right and them having to. Yeah, the first episode was something you know was pretty interesting. Um, I wouldn't say it started out slow, I think it was just a lot that kind of happened in the first episode because you got a chance to meet her mom, who was denzel washington's wife right, so that was really cool to see her.
Speaker 1:How many, how many of y'all knew that was her? I did not you know what?
Speaker 2:I saw? That she was in something and it did not click that that was who she that was until I watched it with you yeah, yeah, it took me a second.
Speaker 1:I saw her the first time and then the second time I was like I literally did see the name Pauletta Washington in the credits.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's her yeah, and we and I mean it was so much, I mean we got to see her, her mom, her stepfather paul, and you know, seeing that there was some you know, tumultuous things going on there, we got to see the turmoil.
Speaker 2:They don't tell you how, you don't get to know the depth of that, they just flash that for a second at first yeah, you just get to see that she got a lot going on yeah and that she not really being I mean, you see her sister friend group you get to see that she just got a lot of stuff going on and she really don't have the capacity to deal with everything as a wife, as a, as a daughter, as a mother, as a professional, a lot as a friend.
Speaker 1:Everything is complicated right. So I and to me I think, like you said it, not necessarily that it was a slow burn, but it was a lot I do think that's one of the things that kind of caught me off guard, because I felt like it was a slow burn too, but when I, when you really think about it, it just had a different. It feels to me like it was different than most shows, whereas most shows is like here's the main plot and then here's one or two side plots, whereas this one was like they, almost all was the main plot, like, yeah, her I mean, because I still don't know what would you say is her and Damon the main plot or is her defending the dude the main plot?
Speaker 2:no, she has so many things. I mean you got her and her husband, her and her children. You got her and her work life. You have her in this high profile case that she's about to pick up with Braylon. She got um Damon. That comes back into the picture from her having his case 16 years ago. You have her and her girlfriends. You have her and her mom. You have her and her stepfather. I mean, no, she is literally trying to juggle all of this at once.
Speaker 1:And that's that was interesting. Interesting, but I mean it.
Speaker 2:It goes back to this quote that I pulled from, uh, the lady who created it, where she said I write from what I know, and what I know is complex characters in complex situations and I mean I think it remember originally, I thought my first thought about this show was like okay, this is kind of like a rip of scandal, right, like I mean, it's just kind of like and I can't even say the show didn't start, the show wasn't fast-paced, it was just a lot going on. It wasn't, like you know, like a scandal where it's like boom, boom, boom, boom. It was just like, okay, this has happened, oh, and this is happening and this didn't happen. So it was just kind of like girl, when do you have a second to breathe, right?
Speaker 2:but yeah you can't see that on her because she coming in there sharp booted you know what I'm saying? She looking the part until after hours where you see she drinking, she smoking. She got all of this stuff going on. She got what? Does she have a um personal night guard on the house?
Speaker 1:it's just a whole series of things see, I will say, like that, that part, like for the first three episodes and, like I said, that's why I always want to know who wrote it. So the creator creates this whole story and she wrote the first three episodes. So, as you're adapting it for tv, she was the one who created those first three. And that's when that storyline really heated up about her husband's not in the house. He hired a professional guard to sit outside the security dude, by the way, who sucked like when he first had a chance to actually fight. Dude lost in like three seconds. What you go?
Speaker 2:yep okay, he sucked. You didn't like him. He was horrible. Okay, come on, you're professional.
Speaker 1:We ain't there yet okay, so the first three episodes. This dude's sitting outside, you know. You know she gonna have sex with the dude. It's just if they spoon fed it to you that's not no, they didn't.
Speaker 2:But okay, keep, maybe. No, I mean, yes, let me tell you what happened at the end of the first episode.
Speaker 1:I had no doubt she was going to have sex with this man. I knew it and when it played out, that was one of the reasons why I was like oh man, this show about to be exactly what I thought it was, but it didn't.
Speaker 2:It grew and you know it wasn't like she was doing it. Now this obviously is not something that I'm condoning, but you could clearly see because lewis got the house all rigged up with all these cameras you could clearly see that she wanted him to see that she was doing what she was doing and he wanted to see and he wanted to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was literally like a game for them which was also interesting in itself.
Speaker 2:It was yeah because it's like what type of stuff are y'all into, right, like y'all ain't together. But you know you ain't super upset about to run over there because she got some man on the couch.
Speaker 1:You like smiling at the camera.
Speaker 2:Y'all both smiling at the camera, so interesting okay and that's I think you know.
Speaker 1:Obviously she's showing that these are very complex characters, right like this is a complex woman. She has a complex husband. Everything about this situation is complex. Their, their marriage, is in a complex state. We come right into it right in a complex state. You're not even gonna get to see how it got there, we're just gonna jump right in. But they do say why?
Speaker 2:because he gave her an ultimatum. He felt like that she was putting work over him in their, their home life, which is you know her feeling like. But you had no problem with me doing these things to get us here. But now, all of a sudden, you have a problem with it, and I'm. You can't give me an ultimatum. I'm always going to choose what I'm doing. You shouldn't even be putting me in a position to choose which is why they're separated because she didn't choose him. She chose work.
Speaker 1:So so we go from kane knocked the hustle to family feud and 99 problems. Those are the. That's like the three episodes that the creator wrote. I don't know if maybe that's what she wrote to pitch the story, to get it picked up. But other writers and directors come in later. Specifically, other writers come in later for every other episode.
Speaker 2:Now, this one was interesting because we got a chance to see. You know, she had to team up with another. Was it rich she?
Speaker 2:had to team up with one of the guys in her office and you know you got to see like immediately her get rejected by Brayden because he didn't really want to work with her. Right, because you know you see this black guy, you see him making all this money and now you know he don't really want to deal with the other black person in the office because he's used to dealing with white people.
Speaker 1:He's looking at her like why are you even here?
Speaker 2:He was disgusted with her her like he didn't like her. He didn't like who was she represented like. She came into that meeting, like you know oh, a fellow black person and he was looking at her like nah boo, that ain't what this conversation is about.
Speaker 1:Like you could have stayed where you was at or that's how he presented it because later he said he just didn't like her because he knew that she was see-through.
Speaker 2:Because all he wants he was around was white people. That was one of the things that was highly stressed through the series is that, through this season anyway? Is that he? You know what did? She call him An Oreo.
Speaker 1:Yeah Now. So ultimately, the story revolves around Jax being chosen to represent this dude who Braylon, who's basically like a mogul Right, he's like a diddy type of whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he has a club. His company, his liquor company, is called.
Speaker 1:Clout Company.
Speaker 2:And he essentially had his.
Speaker 1:Married to a white woman.
Speaker 2:He's married to a white woman. He has Kalisha, who was on his staff, who essentially helped introduce him to the urban community, which is what drove his sales up in the liquor community, you know, for his liquor to really be put out there in the urban community, which really kind of pivoted him from just being, you know, struggling to get into the industry. So now he's about to be a billionaire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so kalisha she ends up dead at the end of this episode?
Speaker 2:yeah, and so at the end of last episode, yeah, so he's he's on trial. Braylon's on trial and now he needs jacks, he's done it right, right, because before he ain't need Jax, he was just there to have Kalisha sign an NDA, but now Kalisha came up dead.
Speaker 1:He wants Jax.
Speaker 2:He need Jax because she's the criminal defense attorney and now he want to be bothered with her. Now, in the midst of this, we got Damon. Now last episode, in episode one, he was in jail. This was a former case that she had. He was in jail for 16 years. He did not commit the crime, see if he can get out on parole. And he told her that that was what she was gonna do and she was like, well, if you do that, then I'm never gonna talk to you again and I ever, never. And he did and he got out.
Speaker 1:So that's, we get a chance to see him in this episode so now we're set up for all of the storylines except for the last one which doesn't come up till later in the season. So essentially you get to see her and her marriage to lewis, which is on the rocks, her and her parenthood to her two kids. She has a daughter and a son. It's on the rocks because of her marriage, so the kids are going back and forth. The son is really to the father and the daughter is kind of just floating in between she actually ends up having her period for the first time.
Speaker 1:So it's's like really a stressful moment. You also get to see Jax as a professional in her law firm. She's a criminal attorney and the most seasoned criminal attorney. So she gets called to a case and at first the dude doesn't want her. Then he does want her, so we get to see it and then we also get to see that she is, although she's a high-ranking criminal defense attorney for this big firm. Now in the past she was kind of broke and she was a public defense attorney and she had been assigned to be the public attorney for Damon Cook, who was played by Michael Ealy, public attorney for Damon.
Speaker 1:Cook, who was played by Michael Ealy. He ended up he had to go on a trial for murder in like this rage kind of a fight in a bar. He claimed that he didn't do it. She felt like he didn't do it, told him to not say not cop a plea. He said I got a cop a plea. And she ends up feeling a lot of regret over the fact that dude goes to jail when she felt like she could have really got him out. Those are the storylines, right, she felt like if she did more she really could have got dude off. So you get her past and as a as a public defender, her present as a criminal defense attorney in this all-white firm of real, really corporate law, and her motherhood of her, of her kids, who are kind of at odds with her, and her marriage to her husband, which is in a separated state. We get to see all of those in the first three episodes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And again, like we said, there's no primary no.
Speaker 1:They all competing to be the main storyline.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, she's the primary.
Speaker 1:She is the primary and you get this other storyline of the fact that her husband is not in the house and he has another man watching over the house at night who she is hooked up with. So those are the competing storylines, the first few episodes, right.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because I mean after they had interactions, then he kind of went away. I mean he popped up in and out but he kind of went away.
Speaker 1:Well, he went away, but he went away with his nose open.
Speaker 2:With wide, so she got him Boasty wide.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she got him. So she chasing at that point she like nah, that was it, you know one time and it's a wrap.
Speaker 2:And dude's like nah and you know he do a little popping up. He not very present after that first episode, he just kind of pop up in and out yeah, not like a crazy stalker pop up, but just like a I'ma keep texting.
Speaker 1:You type that yeah all right. So then we get into state of emergency which, when I saw that, I was like jay got a song called state of emergency. It must be on an r kelly album and we had to look it up and it was on the r kelly album, right date of emergency I think it's on the state, I think it's on the rk, the album jay. It was R Kelly album. Yeah, it was yeah.
Speaker 2:The one he did with R Kelly. Yeah, what, what shot was that? The one he did with the artist that will not be mentioned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh man.
Speaker 2:We have four right Guilty until proven innocent.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, because this is when Jack's dad was the jury selection. Oh, it is called Guilty until proven innocent. We have four. Yeah, oh yeah, because this is when Jack's dad was doing jury selection.
Speaker 1:Oh, it is called Guilty. Until Proven Innocent right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because they doing jury selection. And then she gets this text message from her dad to say that he wanted to meet with her for dinner, and then her mom oversteps and messes that up for her.
Speaker 1:So that's the last one, right that I was saying. The one storyline that we don't really get introduced to too much in the first three is her as a daughter right aside from with her mom, not her dad.
Speaker 1:You get a little glimpse, but from episode four on they built that up to where that is competing right alongside the other ones. Her as a daughter is also, you know, her with her mom, her with her father, her her parents are split up a long time ago, and her with her stepfather, her white stepfather. So we add another racial dynamic in there and um.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we get to see all of that right and her having this um tension there with her stepfather and the fact that her mom is still with her stepfather. Yeah, so that's also. That's a lot for her she's been dealing with on her own. She hasn't told anybody, only Chanel knows.
Speaker 1:Well, she hates her stepfather. We just don't know.
Speaker 2:We don't know why, but and whenever she's around him you can see that she's like just all over the place. But we don't know why we don't get any information. But we do see that her mother is a bit overbearing. Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1:Her mom is an overstepper.
Speaker 2:All the way overstepper yeah.
Speaker 1:So her mom oversteps in a lot of in a couple of ways, Right. So her mom oversteps in her marriage. She clearly likes her husband and wants them back together. She never really sits down to talk to her daughter about why, what happened, what's going on. She really just like you need to fix this. You need to work it out, because it's a good man and I like him and I've been talking to him Good man. Savannah and she even hit her with the. I was just talking to him and y'all need to get this back.
Speaker 2:Well, he said, and I think and okay, mom.
Speaker 1:And she is their primary babysitter.
Speaker 2:She is and she's there, but not so much she's the primary, but it it doesn't seem like they're as open to like letting the kids stay the night or anything like that.
Speaker 1:facts but we, we don't see that at first.
Speaker 2:No, we don't see that, we just see it later.
Speaker 1:And this is kind of where I feel like this is where the other writers came in. Right, and I can understand this. Being a writer is hard to bring the point home and not have no holes left in your story. Right, you need a lot of people coming in to patch stuff up. So some things you need to add a little more weight to, especially if you're going to turn your idea into a nine episode. She may not have came up with this idea as a nine episode play, you know playing out that way. Maybe she wrote it as a movie.
Speaker 2:you don't know you know.
Speaker 1:So how do you make this become nine episodes? Well, that's when the other writers come in and you start having to plan things out.
Speaker 1:So some things we had to ramp it up right it's like okay, now we got to explain that they don't really like the kids going to her house, right? So this guy we gotta head, we gotta make this a little more understood by the audience and I think they did that right to show that, yeah, she goes, they go over there, but they would prefer the kids not spending the night, and it's because of her husband great, but nobody knows why only jacks has this.
Speaker 2:You know, apprehension? It's not shared by anybody else in the house because the kids love him. That's granddad.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we also get to kind of. We get a lot more of her being with Damon, more Like she's helped him. He had an incident with the parole officer. She had him a new parole officer. They then met at the beach. By now They've, you know, um had lunch or dinner together. She paid for the dinner with her money and he like, well, you know, give me your address, give me your address so I can mail the money to you, right? And then, oh boy, just pops up at the house and you know they have. You know he realized that her husband ain't home and she ain't wearing a ring. And you know, she telling him he can stop by any time. And it's like, wait a minute, your husband gonna be cool with that. And then that's when it's kind of sad that, oh yeah, we're separated now.
Speaker 1:So I let me just say let me just put that out there for the audience I knew they was gonna have sex on some kind of table that didn't happen yet I'm just saying, I'm just, I just gotta be real with it. I just gotta be real with it. I knew that before the show even started, before I pressed play on episode one, I was like michael ely is gonna have his shirt off and they're gonna have a sex scene. They're probably gonna slide some seasonings off of a table oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Okay, I did not. I was coming into. It was an open mind, because michael has played other parts. He has not just always been the crazy guy. He has played other parts where he was the nice guy we knew he was prison bay in this okay, yes, it was very clear that he was prison bay, but they didn't have him coming across as some type of you know. You could see that he was a little emotionally unstable but true.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't think the emotionally unstable part really is kind of like to me. That's the part that saves the story, that's the part that makes it a cautionary tale. Without that it's just like, oh, she fell in love with this dude because she likes criminals and that's it, um. But I think, you know, I thought they did a good job of showing, in the present day he reaches out to her and he been in prison for 16 years 16 years y'all. That is a long to any of y'all.
Speaker 1:Reach back and tell me what was y'all doing 16 years ago, right, you know? So, even in prison, 16 years, he reaches out to her and was like yo, I can get out if I just admit or just say that I did it.
Speaker 2:and she like, nah, don't do that but I mean, I've been in here for 16 years. I may die in here like I need to get out and see life. Like and experience life and even him getting out and how much has changed over the 16 years. Like they have an episode where they're at the coffee or a scene where they're at the coffee shop and he's just trying to order coffee and she's like what roast and you know what type of milk, you know, and it's like what.
Speaker 1:What is all of? What are these things? He's like Encino man or something. He's like the caveman that they defrosted.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, man, or something. He's like the, the, the caveman that they defrosted, right exactly, or like you know, he hand her her debit card at dinner and it's like no, this has to have a logo, master car, like. He's like what it? There's money on the account. I don't understand. So he's just so out of touch with everything, like everything costs more. You know, things are different. His brother, who owns the um, the mechanic shop that you know he used to own, but now his brother has taken over, he's into other things now, you know. So he's just the criminal pool.
Speaker 1:So if you've been in prison anymore you have to show that, that that attraction back to the criminal life is natural. You got, I thought they did a good job with that. Um, I thought they really did. They did a good job showing here's what they are right now. Right, and it kind of makes her look like what. Why would you do that, like you're a high-ranking professional la attorney, why would you you be dating and going back with some dude who's been in prison 16 years? But I thought they did a good job of doing the 16 years ago flashback.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, episode five, I think, was a turning point for me because, honestly, episodes one through four, I was struggling to decide whether or not I was going to finish watching the series because it was just too much going on. Daniel I did not really her private investigator. He was super irritating. None of his jokes fell through, they all fell flat. I just didn't really. His part was just kind of like eh, okay, and you know, things were kind of just moving.
Speaker 2:Crystal was fine but you know, again, she was like the typical black assistant. I thought that her girlfriends were cool because they were all different. You sally, autumn and chanel you could tell that they all had something different going on and brought a different element to her that she needed. But it just, you know, it really wasn't enough for me. I was just kind, kind of like I don't really know. This is still kind of like flat for me. It wasn't until we got the flashback and again. So episode five I didn't see. This was the episode that I missed and I didn't see it until I watched it with Jay. So like going back and seeing it where it needed to be really helped me because it made so much sense the second time around. And I agree with you, bae, I think that they did an excellent job with the flashbacks of this episode so that we can really get an understanding of why she was so invested with Damon.
Speaker 1:Yo, and my apologies to Tim Joe who played Daniel, but yo.
Speaker 2:His part got better.
Speaker 1:Man yeah.
Speaker 2:When they first introduced him it was like. I think after he got beat up. Maybe I think that's what it was. But before he got beat up he was just all over the place. But once he got beat up, I don't know if that just kind of toned his personality down, but it just changed after that it made it too stereotypical for me.
Speaker 1:When he first came in it was like, okay, he's like the asian sidekick guy which is typically like it's the gay sidekick to the the strong black female lead. It's like it was a little too stereotypical for me at first, um, but I do think, like you said, after he got beat up it was like, okay, they take it a little more serious, but it was obviously he's injected for comic relief yeah, it was a bit much and I mean you could see like him getting beat up the way that he did, I feel like it just just overall it kind of dimmed his light a bit.
Speaker 2:So maybe that you know, because when he had that meeting with the cousin he came there with the pepper spray.
Speaker 2:He was terrified yeah so I think that you know, I just think overall it was probably just a toning down of his character and maybe he was just on eggshells after that and maybe that's why you know we didn't get to see a lot of all of that extra that he had going on because, you know, he was just probably like having to reevaluate, like, oh man, you know this is real, out here people is on some crazy stuff although I will say he should have got murked.
Speaker 1:No, I mean I'm not saying I'm not wishing that on. I mean he's a character in the story. I think to make the story more realistic, he wouldn't have got just beat up.
Speaker 2:Well, he got beat up pretty bad. He had some broken ribs right. He was in the hospital for a while.
Speaker 1:It was a way to. It was almost like not a Hulu show, this was like a ABC show. At that point it was like this is a little too sanitized. But yeah, I feel them. I feel them.
Speaker 2:So yeah, episode five. You could definitely see that that was written directed by someone, somebody different. She had some help with this one. It played differently, it looked differently. I mean, the whole episode was way more tracking, attractive than the first four.
Speaker 1:Yeah, written by Erica Harrison, and we got a great idea of just the overall dynamic between these two.
Speaker 2:The next one, I think, is what? Forever Young, yeah, but I mean you know what episode five, and you have brought up some really good points about this episode where we talked about Was it six?
Speaker 1:I think it might've been six.
Speaker 2:Five is so ambitious, oh yeah. So five is the one where we kind of get to see her friend Sally going to the altar and you know her um Jackson Damon forming this bond of you know them essentially dating, while they're kind of going through the case and heard them having late night phone calls and her getting really connected to him.
Speaker 1:This is the first time. This is 16 years ago 16 years ago. So you can see all the flashbacks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they kind of went past lawyer client. This is like boyfriend, girlfriend. At this point it was absolutely was.
Speaker 1:And then they show like they actually have like a jail masturbation scene to show them really doing the phone sex and really like I mean it was like this, she was his girlfriend yes I thought it was really interesting that last uh meeting they had where she sat down with him and she was like all right, we got to go over the case and he distracted her from it.
Speaker 2:He said no, and I think that was really what cost them the case, because she didn't get a chance to prepare him to be questioned at all, because he was not ready, and that's essentially what lost her that case and she knows it, she knows it she knows it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because they was too busy. Lovey-dovey, let's touch feet under the table and hold hands and kissy face. You know they wasn't focused on his case. Um, you know they was focused on learning each other and building a relationship and not really trying to make sure that he got out of jail. So, yeah, I thought you made a really good point. You know, at the end, after he loses the case and then you know you can see him going back to jail and then she meet up with him once he's in there to kind of file for an appeal and have that conversation with him. I thought you brought some really good points up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know that whole thing. I thought it was written very well. It got me with the visual storytelling really good. Um, you know, she, I and I.
Speaker 1:One of the things that stood out to me at the beginning was like she's married, she's married to lewis. Like why is she acting like this and why is like, yeah, I get it. You know, people have think, people that they had crushes on before or they had inappropriate feelings or whatever it was it's like, but why is this so interrupting of her current life? So when they went back and played it, it was like really for them to show like the whole build up, she really fell for this dude and he really fell for her. They really actually got married.
Speaker 1:They married each other and I think it was in such a spiritual sense. It wasn't grounded in anything else, it wasn't grounded in any reality, in any practicality, and that's kind of the most dangerous kind when it's like it's only grounded in their heads, right, like they had the whole phone sex scene. They had all of that stuff. They had ignored the fact that he was on trial for murder, ignored the fact that he was on trial for murder, ignored the fact that he was in jail and they fell in love on this thing. That couldn't stand on anything, yeah, but they lit, but they did fall in love and I thought when he, like you said they skipped preparation for the trial and he got ripped up and they found him guilty, the moment they found him guilty, they were sitting side by side visually and they held hands, you know, and the judge was right there and to me it was like that's the real marriage and that's the reason why she can't be fully married to lewis. She is married to damon.
Speaker 1:it's just on this like ethereal plane where it's not ground like lewis's her marriage to him is grounded in things and she wants that ethereal part to be part of it. And it's like the opposite with damon. It's like she married to him in this imaginary lovey-dovey part. But nothing on the real world can stand with it.
Speaker 2:So it's like because and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that damon understood who she was now I think lewis understands who she is too, but I think that he saw through to a space that not a lot of people touched, like he really kind of got. He really got personal with her and she was really able to open up to him, probably in a way that she hadn't opened up to anyone at the time. So they made sure to show like this was her first love and Louis coming in to save the day, you know, really kind of opened up things to show, okay, this is the guy that comes in and really saves her, but damon was her first love absolutely and they don't give us like a time frame of how long it was between him because they show it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they show it immediately, like she's leaving him going to jail and have an accident to Louis?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't think it happened that fast you could see she was struggling and even when she went back to see him, like she wanted to tell him that she was in love with him and she wanted to tell him like hey, no, I really want to work to get you out, but he wouldn't let letter. He was like you know, I need to serve my time. I lost his case and I know you want to tell me that you love me, which I think is what she was trying to say in that letter that she wrote. When she said I love criminals, I don't think she necessarily meant she loved criminals. I think she meant that she loved him. But she couldn't say that because she didn't. You know who's gonna pick up this letter? You, my lawyer, what you talking about.
Speaker 2:So yeah yeah, I think that was her way of telling him that she loved him and that she was there for him. Regardless of the fact, and although they didn't make like they kept in touch for that 16 years, she ran to him as soon as she got that call ran so she kept tabs on him, if nothing else I think it's even more impactful that they didn't I think, if had, it would have been fizzled out. Because right after that she went into private practice.
Speaker 1:I think a couple of things. I think one. I think that after he went to jail and they met for that last time in front of the glass, obviously you got to have the glass window set.
Speaker 1:You have to. They both were wearing white. I thought it was very like a heavenly type of a spiritual visual. I thought it was really good. Damon said some stuff, right, and all my fellas out there. Anybody listening? Y'all know, come on. There are things that men say. Sometimes we say it on purpose, sometimes we just getting lucky, just saying stuff. He says some stuff, stuff. I won't call it gaslighting, but it definitely set it up so that she was ready 16 years from now. He was like oh, the next time I see you, I'll be a nobody yeah, and you'll be this famous big shot lawyer.
Speaker 1:I'm sure he meant that, but that's what locks it in but she was though because it was absolutely true.
Speaker 2:It locked it in and maybe that was I don't think it was gaslighting, I think it was him telling her. I mean, maybe she needed to hear that because she just lost this big case, that probably the biggest case of her life not just careerized. But you know, emotional wise, and he probably was just trying to pump her up to say hey, this is not your first rodeo but that's why I say sometimes we're doing it on purpose and sometimes we're not.
Speaker 1:And, like I said, I don't call it gaslighting, but it does extend some toxic things. Those kind of things will do it okay. It will lock it in that, especially that I'll just be somebody you walk past on the street. You won't even know who I am, come like. I'm not saying he was full of it, but fellas, you know what I'm talking about. You know there are things men can say that will have you could. It will last 20, 30 years. I'm telling you. I got taught this when I was young and I've seen it play out over and it's true. That's why people got to be careful about the things you say. I do think he was trying to pump her up but, as we see later, on in his mental state.
Speaker 1:He was speaking from a broken mental state, and that's dangerous. That's true. So how does this wrap up? We got.
Speaker 2:Song Cry Renegade and Already Home right? No, we got Renegade. Are you going off the album?
Speaker 1:I thought maybe I got it out of order.
Speaker 2:So episode six is Renegade, 7 is Nigga what, Nigga who, and then 8 is Song Cry. So you got them.
Speaker 1:Some of them you don't.
Speaker 2:The other one you had mentioned that's not on here, so Episode 6. Episode 6 is the one. So episode 6 is probably the most sexual episode of them all, because you see her and damon and damon all the way in they go all the way in. Then, lewis, he's trying to fight for the. The relationship finds out that she's kind of with someone else and he starts getting into it. You see chanel's husband jt, who's this big football star or diddy parks.
Speaker 2:He essentially invited lewis to this party. Yes, you get to meet sally's husband, chris, who is trying to encourage him marriage counseling this is not the place you want to be.
Speaker 1:You know all these characters out with your wife, one dude trying to do some healthy stuff. He was a little character man, but shout out to him, shout out to that so, yeah, we do get to see that. I thought one not to go back too far, but really good storytelling when it comes to foreshadowing of the dude. What is his name? Will the dude?
Speaker 1:who was watching her door, yeah, of her having sex with will and him chasing her right. And then you get to see you. They've already foreshadowed in your mind that that is not the road to go down. And she goes down again with damon and you get you know that this is way deeper. Yeah, so this is good. The backlash is going to be way more than just somebody texting you too much, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2:and I think, too, a thing that you know is, we see it in every episode is that she's on. She doesn't understand why Lewis won't come home right um, because Lewis is present in every single one of these episodes. She's not fully grasping the fact of why he won't come home. She just keeps saying you don't understand me, you don't get me. But you know she doesn't even understand or get herself at this point in time. She's trying to figure things out. She's doing everything that she can.
Speaker 2:She grabbing here, there and everywhere, because she doesn't really understand what's going on and I think a lot of that has to do with her not addressing things that happened in her past, which come up in in later episodes, the elephant in the room, but lewis is really like he's telling her like I love you but I can't be with you right now because you got too much going on, um, and like things kind of start to get easy with them, like she's not as argumentative anymore and you know, chanel kind of brings up like she's so kind. Now I'm so glad that you guys are working things out in your marriage.
Speaker 2:And once that said, it's like well, wait a minute, what's really going on with her? Because, you're right, she is smiling a lot more. Is this me? I don't know if this is me, is this something else? What new has been present in her life? And then that's when we get to see like okay, she's kicking it her and damon is in this situation ship where she's finally found something that's kind of helping her iron out. Everything else is going on Right, because Damon is a necessary for her, like she's essentially allowed to have this relationship that she wasn't able to have 16 years ago, and Lewis kind of pretty much gets put on the back burner.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Even though he's her husband. Like she didn't invited this man over to her house. Then the bed Her and Lewis sleeping on the table that her and her kids is eating on.
Speaker 1:Told y'all I was going to be on the table.
Speaker 2:Like she's like officially, like full fledged, invited this man into her space, not really realizing, like, what she's doing. She's just trying to fulfill this thing in her that's missing and not really realizing what she's doing to him.
Speaker 1:Huge. I think she's a fractured person like anybody in her life.
Speaker 2:It's affecting her kids, like what you brought up with naima and that whole situation. Like her baby girl was on her pier. She was bleeding for days until somebody kind of you know paid attention to a spencer and him doing all of this stuff at school and you know lou Louis. So it's like so many things going on, but she got time for Damon.
Speaker 1:She got time for what she got time for and I mean I think she, like you said, when she met Damon Damon got a chance to speak directly to her to her right because he met.
Speaker 2:We need to do this, her Her. He met broke her, he gets her.
Speaker 1:By the time she was with Lewis and I don't know what. Like you said, we don't know what the details are. The main thing that Lewis keeps saying to her is you won't open up with me, you won't talk to me.
Speaker 2:So he can't even meet her, nope.
Speaker 1:Damon did. Damon, did, did so it's like, it's almost like just she's fractured. So she got like this one relationship where she allowed the dude to meet her, but it's not, it's toxic for her. Then she got one relationship that she's built so much on, but she won't allow the dude to meet her. So we have to start understanding well, what is it? What's the problem here? Obviously she keeps saying I like criminals, what's driving her like that?
Speaker 2:and all of that stuff yeah, and you know she's been able to, um, really kind of fulfill this space, like she probably never really imagined that she would be able to feel with him, and and the fact that you know she's kind of I don't know, it's like, I agree, she's very fractured, like she's just kind of going through the motions.
Speaker 1:She's a mirror image of old boy that runs clout. What's his name?
Speaker 2:Brayden.
Speaker 1:Brayden, which is why they have them, they clashed they clashed. They are a mirror image of each other. They you know, damon is doing the same thing. He's fractured, he's got this marriage that's not standing on anything, and then he sets up this relationship with a woman that does mean something to him and it ended up being poisonous and toxic and he ended up killing her. So it's like that's the way. That was the mirror image that they're playing.
Speaker 2:That's right, yeah, because he fell in love with her right. And then now you've got this wife who's trying to make like she ain't know nothing was going on, when actually she reached out to Kalisha through email telling her to stay away from her husband. And then she throw in Kalisha's husband.
Speaker 1:Just like Louis, do everything going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right. And now Kalisha husband is involved, she trying to. Well, my husband messed with your wife, so I'm a mess with your wife, so I'm gonna mess with you. Yeah, so it was. It's all types of stuff going on, and so now we kind of move into, like the final couple episodes where, uh, song cry, which is the pivotal one, because we learn in this episode what happened with paul so paul is step daddy's stepfather, right the white stepfather.
Speaker 1:She was with her dad. It didn't work. She ended up. Her dad was an addict. She ended up leaving him and going to Paul. So in this one, paul in the present time is dying in a hospital. Start having flashbacks to what happened between. Why does Jax hate Paul? What's behind this? And we get to see a lot of flashbacks to her as a teenager, where he doing some inappropriate things to her right, like he did the old, the oldest trick in the book, right like let me try to bump, try to bump you bump into your titty or let me try to rub you here as I scoot past you and yeah and ultimately, I climb in bed with you.
Speaker 1:And then, oh, my fault, yeah, and I'm on bed.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I'm drunk this was once he told her that he was trying to buy her a car. That was when everything kind of started. Like you gotta, let me do these advances right in order for you to get this thousand dollars for this car. And, of course, her mom is like oblivious to everything. But then when it comes up like him walking in on her in the bathroom, the mom is just like well, you should have locked the door and it's like, but old boy just seen, almost seen her naked.
Speaker 1:And it's just recurring, recurring, and each time it's one of those situations where they are alone.
Speaker 2:And it's just recurring, recurring, and each time it's one of those situations where they're what'd you do to my daughter? It was, oh, he was just drunk, so everything's. You know, don't blame that on him as a person, he's just an alcoholic. Like he made the decision that he needed to leave and go get help. What's his name? His name is, uh, chris beck. He made the decision, like, let me go and get help. And then, you know, he gave her that money and ripped it up. But the mom was devastated, like completely, totally devastated, that he left and I mean, I can't even imagine what, jack. Oh, even in that moment you've seen that the mom was crying, crying, crying. And instead of the mom comforting Jack, she's the one that is, like you know, just gonna suck it up and say I'm here for you, mom, whatever you need me to do. So her and her emotions and her feelings got put to the back burner.
Speaker 1:It didn't even matter so the dude Paul goes to the hospital.
Speaker 2:He's old by now they, yeah, they are back together, all jacked up obviously years of whatever he was doing, drinking and whatever.
Speaker 1:Obviously her mom had one husband who was an addict and then went to Paul, who obviously had some problems here too. So she has a cycle history going on and Jax is dealing with all of that right. So everybody's going to the hospital to check on Paul. Her mom is there, louis is there, her kids are there, everybody's over and over except for her. I think she told Damon about it, right? She told Damon, not really.
Speaker 2:She just kind of said that he was one of the people that hurt her. She didn't get into like why.
Speaker 1:But this is one of the things you know in every show is going to be something for me. It's going to be something where I'm like, explain this to me, why ain't nobody saying nothing? And she finally goes to the hospital and she kills the dude.
Speaker 2:She murdered the dude. She didn't murder him, she didn't know he was going to die, but he did.
Speaker 1:He did, but she didn't know. That's manslaughter.
Speaker 2:She didn't know that he was going to die.
Speaker 1:That is legally manslaughter. She didn't premeditate. She is a criminal defense attorney. If you walk into a person's hospital room who's on a deathbed and you do things, he wasn't on his deathbed. Well, he was pretty sick.
Speaker 2:He was sick, he went on his deathbed.
Speaker 1:Even worse If somebody pretty sick and you do what did she do? She threw something or whatever.
Speaker 2:No, she didn't allow him to press the nurse's leg.
Speaker 1:He in there dying, you know that's murder.
Speaker 2:She said a couple things.
Speaker 1:It took probably like six seconds, and then she finally let him call the nurse. She was like yo, you groom me, you are abuser, which is all true. He was like that's your truth. And she was like nah, bruh, you ain't about to call for no ambulance, no nurse. You got to deal with this pain and then he died and then she walked out he did not know he was dying. He presses the nurses button. He pressed the nurses button and she leaves.
Speaker 1:The nurse comes in she walks out as her mom and everybody else is rushing in. She's walking out slowly and calmly as everybody else is panicking and rushing in, and the next scene is his funeral. It's like she killed him no if that ain't, listen y'all if that happened in anybody's family he died from guilt, of course he did I would kill him but he also died because she wouldn't let him call the nurse.
Speaker 2:That had nothing to do with it. If he was going to die, he was going to die.
Speaker 1:If that happened in anybody's family, people would be like why were you?
Speaker 2:literally calmly walking out right before he died. What were you doing?
Speaker 1:You've never come here to see him. This whole time we're all wondering why you haven't visited him. I've even called you and said why haven't you visited? All of a sudden you do show up and he's dead now and you're walking out.
Speaker 2:I mean we at least gotta ask the question I mean they swept it under the rug, right, so they she's walking out. He can't breathe. Next thing, you know, the mom is like laying on his shoulder. It's a wrap, but they tucked it in real tight. They ain't say like she did this. It was just kind of like he died and we're moving to the funeral and that's pretty much that.
Speaker 2:No, because very next thing was like, let me tell you about your husband yep this dude was grooming me this whole time and she still was kind of in denial and she still was in denial I mean even when she told Lewis was upset, like when she finally told Lewis, you know he's like, why didn't you tell me he was? Like I know you weren't going to let me see them and you wouldn't let the kids be around them, and I didn't want to do that, but as a person, and how much it affected their marriage. Because she keeps saying like I'm doing so much for this marriage but it's like you're this elephant, you can't count that if you're not telling him what exactly is going on.
Speaker 1:She told him she finally told him and he was like why wouldn't you tell me? Why you ain't tell me that's why we didn't. We don't like the kids going over there why wouldn't you let me know?
Speaker 1:so let's bring it home because there's a big scene we got to talk about. But I do want to ask you a question, not knowing knowing now about paul's, now that they've resolved that elephant in the room. Paul had been grooming her as a teenager and caused her for one. She's already got some issues with her dad, who's not there. The replacement for her dad is grooming her sexually. How do you think that's impacting her ability to have relationships or her interactions with men? What do you think?
Speaker 2:that's detrimental to her. I mean, because she did, she didn't tell anybody. So she's holding all this in, you know and that could also be why she's having such a hard time at work is she's in the office with all of these white men, you know she is. It's it's hindering her to be able to grow and move forward. She's literally, like we said, fractured. So she's walking through life fractured. She's not letting anybody in, she's not letting anybody know what's going on, she's kind of just existing.
Speaker 2:I mean, even when Damon started wilding out and acting all crazy and will come over and he beat him up, and then she go see him to have the conversation. She's telling him like you know, this isn't cool, and then he's like I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, still not hearing her and she still has to just kind of like okay, let me just digress. I mean her. Everything since Paul has just been a digression. You know I'm feeling this way, but I don't have anybody to really voice it to Like. You can clearly see she didn't do therapy, her and Lewis hadn't done therapy. So she's just kind of walking through life broken and trying to hold things down in this broken state, without really being true to herself and, you know, just trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1:And she has issues with her father has issues with her father.
Speaker 2:Brayden hits on her. She was able to try to forgive her father she was trying to, but her mother stepped in her mother kept stepping in and stopping it, but her mother kept forgiving paul yep.
Speaker 1:So all of that is just is not showing her a healthy way to really hold people accountable and that is I think it is fueling her, her desire to be with or love criminals. Right here she kept saying I like criminals. I think it's this confusion over forgiveness and guilt versus innocence. I think she is struggling with it. But let's talk about last episode. What happens Actually? I guess this is the last episode and a half right, because this all comes to a head with one incident.
Speaker 2:Well, we find out that Brayden did kill his wife.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And that he is.
Speaker 1:Or he killed Kalisha oh yes, he killed Kalisha.
Speaker 2:Yes, he killed Kalisha. He is innocent, he's found out not guilty, so he gets off Because Jax is good. She does a great job of getting him off, despite she figuring out that he did it, but listen. This is the thing that made me so irritated With this season she never looked at the NDA. That should have been the very first thing that they looked at with the nda it was crazy that you don't look at the nda until the last episode to see that the signatures don't match I was one.
Speaker 1:I was like that would have been the first that would have been the first thing.
Speaker 2:But obviously you know it couldn't have been the first thing because how would they have an episode, a season? But it was just completely ridiculous. Like what?
Speaker 1:and again. I think this is coming from the fact that you got six, seven, eight writers trying to bring this story home in nine episodes. Make it all fit together. That's fine, because that was just totally right. That work that plays on tv.
Speaker 2:It was dumb. It was just like what? Like why didn't y'all do that? You kept, and it was so big. That's all they kept talking about. She believes he's innocent because the girl signed the nda. Why did have you not ever looked at the nda that you are so sure?
Speaker 1:yeah is so he was able to pull this off by forging her signature on the nda, and nobody caught it until after the jury was already out. So they find him not guilty. He gets off. He tries to. He actually right before that tries to hit on Jax. She pushes him away. So now we go into.
Speaker 2:Damon.
Speaker 1:Boom Jax gets kidnapped.
Speaker 2:Kidnapped because she tells Damon that she's going to get back with Louis, she's going to try to make her marriage work. Of course Damon is upset because again he's been trying to get with her, he's been trying to spend time with her. He's been trying to be her man and she is not fully telling him that she's going to try to get back with her husband. This is like not until Will come over and he get beat up. Damon shows up at her house.
Speaker 1:We can't forget this right beat up will this is again like I said, it was foreshadowing, right. So she has an interaction with will. Will chases her for a minute. Then she got an interaction with with damon. Damon chases her for real, for real, and then they both end up at her house at the same time. Right, like so, really good, foreshadowing bringing it to a head. They both end up at her house at the same time. Right, like so, really good, foreshadowing bringing it to a head. They both end up at her house. Damon dismantles this dude Will physically in like three seconds, almost kills the dude. Like how in the world is dude a professional like security, whatever he robbing people?
Speaker 2:for money. But you know he got that prison strength. So who?
Speaker 1:knows what he was doing in prison.
Speaker 2:He caught him off guard too.
Speaker 1:He did catch him off guard.
Speaker 2:It was one of them things where it was like wait a minute, how are you at the door?
Speaker 1:But like what is he? Some kind of Jedi, he said he trained.
Speaker 2:What is this? Nobody should be able to catch you off guard.
Speaker 1:You're a professional. Come on man, you're a professional security. He was top flight security.
Speaker 2:He was top flight security he didn't do nothing but smoke cools he was top flight he smoked some Newport.
Speaker 1:That's all he did with a K-Town squabble.
Speaker 2:It was a wrap if he was really that deep in it. There's no way she would have been able to get Adderall from him, cigarettes from him, everything from him like dude was not on his job.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that shit is told you right there. So Damon Michael Ealy, 5'7", 170 pound, michael Ealy dismantles this dude in three seconds. Then they proceed to go forward and Jax gets kidnapped. Oh wonder who it could be? Ah, man, of course Damon kidnaps her, right Right.
Speaker 2:Of course Louis finds her. Louis is doing everything he can to get his wife.
Speaker 1:He is all in for his wife. Y'all, he's all in for his wife.
Speaker 2:That's his girl. He gonna do what he gotta do he gonna do what he gotta do. Even though he was out creeping like she was.
Speaker 1:Kinda.
Speaker 2:Just a little bit. He was creeping.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't say like she was, but he was creeping. Well, not like she was.
Speaker 2:He did creep Once he realized that she was creeping.
Speaker 1:Nobody on this show creeping like she was.
Speaker 2:Once he realized that she was creeping and then talking divorce, that's when she was like oh no, I'm out here tripping, I need to get my husband back.
Speaker 1:Even when he had his first opportunities he was uncomfortable. He could tell he did not want to go out there stepping around, she gets kidnapped. Damon got her in the back of the shop which Louis comes to.
Speaker 2:He comes to the shop, he confronts Damon, which he doesn't know is Damon, but he's got an idea right and he, like you know Because you got to have the two men.
Speaker 1:You always have to have a, and this is my thing, right? Y'all can say what y'all want about my opinions. This is my opinions. Whenever you have a show directed towards the female demographic like this, they're going to have multiple men and it's going to you're going to have a face-to-face. It's got to be that. It's almost like this is part of some kind of a fantasy or fetish or something. It's going to be a face-to-face.
Speaker 1:They got to see each other, and it was multiple face to faces in this. You saw Damon and Will. Boom, boom, boom. Now you get to see the upstanding man fighting for his wife coming to confront the crazy dude that she thought was her soulmate, and that confrontation happened. But it didn't turn into a confrontation, but at least you got to see him face to face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, got to see him face to face. You kind of get to really hear what Damon is saying, like I live for you. I needed to get out of jail because I wanted to see you, even if I couldn't be with you. I just wanted to be able to experience life knowing that you were good and you know you were married and you were fine. But I think that once you know, she gave him hope that there could be a them. That's when things took a turn for him.
Speaker 2:I don't think she really understood that this man had been in like you moved on with your life. This man is in jail. He's probably reading your letter every single day. You were the first person he thought of when he said I need to call her and let her know. I'm just going to do parole. So he has. This is 16 years of build-up, so the fact that you would even give him a second glance, he's going to take fully advantage of that. And for her not to have the emotional intelligence to understand that anything, anything with this man is not gonna be a good idea.
Speaker 2:Anything. If you gave him a pinky toe, he gonna try to get the whole foot and then some, which he tried to do yeah but we got a chance to understand that like she's just all over the place where this man is just sat letting her know like I love you and I I would give anything to be there if I mean he was dipping out on his brother cj and what they had going on just to spend some qt with her.
Speaker 1:He was ready to risk it all he was risking it all.
Speaker 2:He what? Yeah, he was risking, he was risking it all, I mean already put everything that there was to live for out for her, he only wanted her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is and he didn't have much to live for why he killed himself yeah.
Speaker 1:So I thought you nailed something on the head where you said earlier that she came running. As soon as he called, after 16 years, she came running. I thought that was that was key because, like he said, and when I, by the time I get out of here, you're going to be this big fancy lawyer and you probably walk by me and not know who I am I'm pretty sure he was expecting to get some big law firm and get pushed to the side. She's too busy for you, man, who are you? But he didn't get that.
Speaker 2:She came from.
Speaker 1:Soon. As her assistant gave her the name she showed up.
Speaker 2:And you got to remember that he didn't see her at church. She see him, she saw him, she went to his place.
Speaker 1:She confronted him. Yeah, that's still kind of.
Speaker 2:How would he know that she go to that church? How would he know?
Speaker 1:How would he know anything? 50 to that church? How would he know? How would he know anything? 50-50, when you crazy, how would he dismantle the security guard in three seconds?
Speaker 2:easy, he's a Jedi cause he been in jail for 16 years. So I mean, I like the way they played. Obviously, yeah, he could have probably seen her there with her family, but that's not the way they spun it. They spun it like she seen him. She followed him to the halfway house and told him to stay away from my family.
Speaker 1:And then she did him a favor.
Speaker 2:And then she did him a favor Right, because he like you in my house.
Speaker 1:Instead of pushing it off on somebody else. I didn't know that was your church.
Speaker 2:How was I supposed to know that was your church?
Speaker 1:She could have easily assigned it to somebody else.
Speaker 2:So she submerged herself into that.
Speaker 1:Another mirror image. When Dame came looking remember, he said I got an issue with my halfway house. I need a new PO. She sent her person.
Speaker 2:She did it.
Speaker 1:She put her person on it.
Speaker 2:She did it.
Speaker 1:But remember when Kalisha's cousin came to her.
Speaker 2:She gave her the information she gave her somebody else, Remember?
Speaker 1:Yeah, she did. She was like I got somebody else that can help you, but when Damon came she could have sent Damon to somebody else who could have handled this case. She didn't.
Speaker 2:No, because that's her boo.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I mean even with that, she came through for her. In the end she was able to, you know, send her all of the information on Brayton to get his business to be, you know, seized up and for him to go to jail. So it still worked out in the end. So, yeah, ultimately, I think that um you know, season one was.
Speaker 2:I mean, it didn't pick up until, like I said, episode five for me, and then it just kind of really went really really fast. Um, you know, I thought that, uh, there was a lot of flips and turns and things that happened. I thought it ended. Well, I was this is like really when I came to Bay like, uh, let me give you the synopsis of the episode, I don't really know, or their season, I don't really know if I'm gonna watch season two, but then I did, and I'm glad I did, and I can't wait for us to watch it because I think you'll really like it we don't see.
Speaker 2:But um, yeah, I thought this was this. This this season was good. If I had to give it a rating from one to ten, I probably would have given it a six, because I was just halfway in and halfway out and I didn't really get both feet in until maybe you know, like fully in probably seven, eight, and that's only nine episodes.
Speaker 1:I would say about the same thing. It got me, probably after episode six, and I mean I just honestly felt like this was originally written prison-based stylish and it was stretched out and fleshed out and given more strength, and shout out to the creator for, uh, having flexibility to her vision yeah and letting that become a more full story. I think after it became a full story, the last few episodes really was like more of my steez where it's like, all right, you can have all of that, but you got to balance it out with some reality.
Speaker 1:I need to see the whole story. I want to see the backlash, I want to see all of that. I don't want just a fantasy. So I thought, yeah, it ended well Overall, I would probably give it maybe six and a half, but yeah, the first five episodes was tough.
Speaker 2:Yeah it was just so many decisions. It was just like, girl, why is you doing this? Like what are you doing? I was so many times that I was just like shaking my head, like what are you doing? Like what's really happening here?
Speaker 1:One thing that I find. I mean, the one thing that I always think about is, like you know, there ain't been a lot of shows with female leads. Well, tv been out for like what? 70, 80 years now, and there's almost always been male leads. Male lead do whatever they want to do, have sex with a bajillion women, do whatever. Now you get female leads, and so I ain't got no problem with taking it to the other side, Showing the female leads doing what they want to do and have sex with whoever they want to have sex with. But why do it always seem like the female leads make stupid decisions? When they do it, though, it's like why can't they just be like James Bond? James Bond used to be like the smartest man in the room, and he have all the women. When it come to the women, it's like we give you the dudes, but you're going to be stupid about them, though.
Speaker 1:It's like why do I always got to be like that? I don't understand. Even like to take it back to Scandal with Carrie Washington's character. She was originally shown like this superwoman who crashes in and saves the day, but you didn't get to see a whole lot of her backstory, but you did get to see her vulnerability. At the end of the day, she's sipping wine and eating popcorn sitting on her couch at the end of the day, Right, and then you get to see her later on making these bad decisions you know, especially when they come to the relationships or the situationships or whatever they are yeah, yeah I don't know.
Speaker 1:Just the thing that annoys me kind of is like I I'm all for like the liberation of female characters, but why I gotta be in the dumb way like what?
Speaker 2:I don't think it's a dumb way I think it just shows, you know, I mean, especially with this up this season and this series is just showing again she's broken, she's fractured and her working and operating in this brokenness is going to have her to where she's not making some of the best decisions. Because I mean, you know, her first real relationship was already in her brokenness and it was with somebody that was going to prison. So you know, she's just kind of plowing forward in discontinued brokenness that she's experienced without really getting any healing to show her how to make better choices, better decisions. Because I mean, even her friends said it like you know, you're always judging, you always got all this stuff going on. You know she doesn't really know how to be her in her own skin.
Speaker 1:So you know, maybe it's just a sign of the times too. Yeah, you know that's how the characters are, I don't know. It just always stands out to me, Like you don't you don't see Shaft's brokenness?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, he's a man. Yeah, that's just not how it works. They got to highlight Because women are perceived to be emotionally unstable.
Speaker 1:That's my problem, though. Like, why, Like, why can't it just be that she's super smart and super dope and then she just happens to be attractive and get men?
Speaker 2:Because nobody's going to want to see that, and that's just what it is. People tune into these sitcoms. You know these types of shows because is? People tune into these sitcoms? You know these types of shows because they want the drama.
Speaker 1:yeah they want to experience the craziness right. People wouldn't believe it and people won't believe it.
Speaker 2:It's got to be brokenness for women that's unfortunate, but yeah I think it should be a little brokenness for everything, I think maybe just men characters, just because I mean, you don't see lewis's backstory they don't show us the backstory of what his life is or two. Yeah, maybe we will, maybe we will. So, yeah, I love the, the music, the culture of the show. Wait, wait, you forgot the intro song um, I hated the intro song.
Speaker 2:I did not feel like that song fit at all the show itself. I I'm not saying that it's a bad song. I I don't think it fits the show, which doesn't make it a good song for the show. I was not a fan at all.
Speaker 1:I agree. I thought, like you call the show Reasonable Doubt, obviously Jay's best album, you use Jay-Z songs as song titles, as episode titles. You, you gotta keep going with that theme. In my opinion, you gotta bring in Swiss Beats and bring somebody in the J vibe to do the theme song, like they did it for Godfather of Harlem, where you got Swiss Beats and Rick Ross. I think you gotta do something like that.
Speaker 2:I think maybe they used that song to show like it's a woman's world. She got all these things going on and you know they tried to soften it, but I just didn't think it's a woman's world. She got all these things going on and you know they tried to soften it, but I just didn't think it was a good fit.
Speaker 2:I love the fact that Kerry Washington got to work with Sean Patrick Thomas again from Save the Last Dance, because you know they were brother and sister on that movie and so for him to come back as an actual character, I love that. It was really nice to see them working together again. Like I said, I love that you know that there was cultural. You got a chance to see how they pick juries, especially if it's black against white Right, and she's working with Rich, who is totally white and it's probably like a lot of this is racist and kind of seeing the play on black, black woman, white man and how they're going to have these um disagreements and you know just what that looks like, what it could possibly look like for us working in a white world, but, um, I really appreciate it too.
Speaker 2:Um, like I said, she was dressed to the nines and I loved it. I thought some of it, though, um, like it was a lot of blackness right, and I think, like from some of the reviews that I may have seen earlier, a lot of people did not like that, and I guess it really just depends on, like, what your audience is. I don't think that this show was trying to be an audience for everybody. You know it's not shameful in the fact that it's for the, for the people it was somewhat.
Speaker 1:It was a little more black than scandal, oh way more black than Scandal.
Speaker 2:Oh way more black than Scandal, yeah, but I think it wanted that audience that was probably more like 80-20. Yeah yes, I think that was absolutely what they were going for, and it seems like a lot more people are starting to get hip to the show and yeah, so I can't wait to watch season two with you and see, see what's going on with the season two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for rocking with us again y'all. Thanks for y'all patience and waiting for us to get back. I'm glad y'all are still following the show. Uh, if y'all new to the show, welcome aboard. This is the the open book podcast and we got. We really just try to be open book. You know we are a married couple. We've been married for like 50 11 years and uh, we try to be open book.
Speaker 1:You know, we are a married couple. We've been married for like 50 years and we try to examine everything from the perspective of what a married couple can and should talk about. Right, like there's no one way to do things. But this is what we do. We talk about some Bible verses, we talk about some movies, some books, some phenomena. Actually, one of the things I think could come out of this show is one of the things that I really want to talk about we don't have enough time so we're going to branch it off Is the idea like every, almost every do, yeah, nearly every there's a lot of dudes on this show that all came on to Jack's. They all try, they shot, they shot, even the prosecuting attorney.
Speaker 2:Yes, he did.
Speaker 1:Go to the flashbacks he shot his shot and my thing as a man was like what does that feel? Like right, like growing up and knowing as one of the shooters right, knowing you you're gonna shoot your shot, sometimes just for the excitement and fun, like we do that, what does? It feel like for a woman to go through life surrounded by shooters, like dudes, constantly shooting a shot even when it's appropriate or inappropriate or completely out of bounds.
Speaker 1:What does that feel like? So we're going to talk about that a little bit more in another episode, and those are the kind of things I think we just want to deal with, man, things that really, uh, affect and impact our lives and we should talk about more. All right, Word. Word up.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning in. It's exhausting. By the way, I guess it just depends on who's shooting the shot, right? But yeah, I love the fact that we're back and can't wait to tune in to the next episode with y'all. Whether it's this or whether we're getting into season two or we just kind of Getting into life, we'll see. Until next time, folks, we out Peace.
