The mid-season return of Starz Power Book II: Ghost saw a crime mob family unravel at the seams in a treacherous, yet philosophical episode emboldened by the battle between good versus evil. In episode 6, Tariq (Michael Rainey Jr.) sat on the sidelines as the power tripping Cane (Woody McClain) eagerly took the reigns of his family’s empire, at least for a moment.
It all started with there being a miscommunication about Diana (LaToya Tonodeo) sleeping with her crush Tariq. Unbeknownst to Cane, the one who is doing the sleeping around is the adorably conniving Dru (Lovell Adams-Gray), who can’t seem to leave his secret beau, Everett (Bradley Gibson), alone.
In an incandescent moment of irrational thinking, Cane rushes over to Tariq’s Stansfield College dormitory to give him the business, only to find two white males fighting on the floor. With the privileged Weston brothers, Gianni Paolo as Brayden Weston and Cory Jeacoma as Trace Weston, coerced under his rule, Cane takes the bickering brothers to his side of town and forces them to deal a bag of drugs on the jagged city corners.
Meanwhile, a court case is brewing with the self-serving attorney Davis Maclean, played by Method Man, making a pact with his opposite Cooper Saxe (Shane Johnson). The scheme…free Tasha St. Patrick (Naturi Naughton) by checkmating her son, Tariq, using the manipulated testimony of former drug cartel gunman 2-Bit (Michael Ferguson), who, in return, is being promised an early release from prison. By doing so, all sides win at the expense of Tariq, of course. While Maclean is making a clean getaway with his plot, it leaves Saxe perplexed, in so many words.
Back to Cane and the Weston brothers — Brayden proves that he is made for the game when he effortlessly moves all his weight and gives a convincing display of power over his weaker brother. By this time, the other Tejada siblings have discovered Tariq’s method of selling drugs using a college app. When Diana confronts Tariq about it in a surprise visit to his dorm, while he’s begrudgingly entertaining Saxe’s nosy niece Andrea Lee Christensen, she seeks revenge by telling her mother Monet (Mary J. Blige).
Watch The Mid-Season Trailer To ‘Power Book II: Ghost’
In nearly every episode, the character Monet takes us out of the scene with an overly angry disposition each time she is faced with a challenge. For someone with so much power, Monet gives the impression that she has nothing under control and is always chasing orders made by amateurs instead of being the captain of the ship. This is far removed from the put-together Ghost — who seemed to always know what to do and when to do it.
Even with her position on the streets, what little power she does have is undermined by the constant confirmation needed from her imprisoned man Lorenzo Tejada, played by Berto Colon. Even Monet’s badge-wearing slide, Officer Danilo Ramirez, confirms this when he converses with Cane during a police stop.
By the end, Tariq still can’t decide whether he is innately good or bad, 2-Bit gets his freedom, Monet is at odds with Cane but cool with Tariq, and Cane gets the ass-whooping of his life after a prison visit to see Lorenzo, a reprimanding for Cane hitting his mother after a verbal altercation.
The episode was a good start to a hopeful second half of the first season leaving us to wonder whether Brayden will be strong enough to live up to the infamous reputation of the beloved Tommy Egan or if Tasha will ever be fully immersed in the main storyline again.
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