What I saw: Queen Sugar

With another rain filled weekend I somehow managed to not watch a whole lot of TV. However, I did watch the first couple of episodes of an Amazon TV show named Queen Sugar, which covers a spectrum of different characters as told through a southern family. I have fallen behind on The Walking Dead, but am hoping to catch up and post about the latest two episodes this week sometime. Other than that, it’s just been me avoiding going out into the rain because I had just cleaned my motorcycle and I don’t want to get it dirty again so soon.

What I Watched:

Queen Sugar S1.E1&2 “First Things First” and “Evergreen”

What I Saw:

Starting off with a brief synopsis, the show follows three siblings, Ralph-Angel, Charley, and Nova, who all lead vastly different lives. Ralph-Angel is a struggling single-dad who can’t seem to find work and will do petty crimes to try and contribute to the care of his son. Charley is living it up in Los Angeles as the wife and legal advisor to her basketball star husband and his team. Nova is a journalist who also has a side-hustle of selling weed, all while being a side-ho for a cop.
The first thing I will mention about the show is that it has a slower pacing, which means you really have to be invested in this show to get the pay off in the long haul. The whole hour-long first episode took it’s time introducing the characters and the event that ties them all together. That incident comes at the very end with the death of their father, who just before was reaching out to Charley for legal advice on how to keep his sugar farm; his legacy. With that being said, the show runners did a good job of making you invested in each of the characters by investing time in each of their struggles.
Ralph-Angel’s struggle is figuring out how to be a good parent and making decisions on what is best for his son, Blue. Charley is struggling with the idea of being out of touch with her family members due to her seemingly perfect life; which gets shattered when it’s discovered her husband and his team are alleged rapists caught on camera. Nova is struggling with the fact that she is in love with a married man and not being able to be in a “real” relationship with him. All of their struggles, even with Charley’s bourgeois lifestyle, are relatable to the audience in some way. Even if you don’t have a kid, it is easy to imagine the complexity of trying to make the right decision. Everyone has been in some kind of relationship where trust is broken. And who has not been guilty of at least having a crush on someone who was already taken or otherwise unavailable. Each character has real human problems with unclear answers as to what is the right thing to do; with complex actions which make some things better and some things worse.
In the second episode, it was all about reconnecting as a family. Charley and her son go back to their hometown for the funeral and to escape from dealing with the shit-storm her husband brought on them. She faces some moments of cultural dissonance,where she forgets what certain things are like in the South. Her siblings give her the cold shoulder by leaving her out of the funeral planning because she left them a long time ago; and her forgetting some of the details of their culture just made it more obvious that she did not give them or their way of life any second thoughts.
 The most powerful moment of the episode came when Nova chastises her sister for hiring a catering company to serve the guest at the repast (what many would call a wake).

She reminds her sister the importance of the family being the ones to serve, with their own hands, those who wish to honor their father’s memory; because serving friends is itself an honor. Tradition is a powerful experience, and shapes who we will become. Having servers at the repast would break the tradition of friends and family coming together during difficult times, and destroy the sense of community along with it. Charley became so accustomed to paying others do things for her that she lost that sense of identity.
Ralph-Angel portrays an emasculated man who is struggling to take control of his own live while guiding another life through the world. He leans on everyone for everything. His aunt provides the housing and food for both him and his son. His sisters are providing the financing for the funeral, a burden he should be helping to bear. As a result, he wishes to protect his son from having to deal with adult struggles like seeing the grandfather in the hospital, or the funeral. His aunt calls him out by telling him he can’t protect the child from life, and he needs to experience it whenever it happens and learn from the example Ralph-Angel sets through those hard times. I think that since he feels he has no control over anything else in his life, he desperately wants to be able to raise his son his own way while in control of his son’s life. Parents only want the best for their children, and will protect them as much as they can; even if it is inevitable that their children will have to see suffering. However, I feel the aunt was right in letting Ralph-Angel know that life has suffering, and avoiding that suffering will only hinder Blue later on in life.
Nova is the middle child as well as the middle character. She is not as well off as Charley, but not lacking direction like Ralph-Angel. I am curious to see how her infidelity with the police officer will shape who she becomes throughout the rest of the season. I do like how strong she is in defending their culture despite her sister’s actions and the protest of others. She created a spell bag to help protect their father in the after life, and defended the tradition to the Christian fundamentalist funeral director. I think she will continue to be the voice of her people’s culture, which is fitting for her character since she is also a journalist and provides a voice to many others through her work.

In conclusion.

Queen Sugar biggest strength is in it’s complex characters. They all have a sense of depth which can be easily lost in the early (or even later) stages of a TV show. The only criticism I would give is the predictability of some of the story’s direction, at least so far. The husband wasn’t accused at first but then later on there was video to suggest otherwise, predictably. Blue’s kindergarten (or maybe First Grade) teacher seems to be drawing closer to Ralph-Angel and will probably build into a romantic relationship. And when Charley’s son Micah answer’s the husband’s phone call and tells him what happened to the grandfather the husband shows up to create more drama. But to be fair, it is definitely hard to make honest to goodness “I did not see that coming” sort of twists, and they can’t really happen in every episode otherwise the audience will lose trust in what they are witnessing.
Anyways, which character do you find relatable? Let me know in the comments!