[8.0/10] On Black Monday, the line between someone who loves you and someone who will fuck you over for their own ends is blurry, and sometimes downright invisible. Mo and Dawn seem to genuinely care for one another, but have also had a long list of reasons to ignore that and hate each other. Blair and Tiff seem to harbor some genuine, platonic affection for one another, but when their wants and wills conflict, the accommodations disappear.
Both stories are interesting and a little heartbreaking. The show continues to get the Mo and Dawn dynamic just right, where one minute they’re back in their old playful patter, the next they’re bringing up every stubbed toe and knife to the ribs they ever inflicted on one another, and the minute after that they’re back to doing business. The show plays the complicatedness of their relationship -- romantically and professionally -- extraordinarily well, and Regina Hall and Don Cheadle rock their scenes together.
There’s a lot to like about the pairing after all that’s happened. Mo seems genuinely joyous to see Dawn again. The mercurial shifts in tone of their conversation are a delight laden with so many memories both good and bad. And Dawn buying Mo out, echoing his own “you can shop the deal, but where will you go?” is devastating but fair.
The line between friendship and utility, between business and pleasure, has always been fuzzy for the two of them, as is evident in their beachside flashback. That manifests in Mo’s ultimate decision here. He seems genuinely happy to be out of the rat race, willing to leave the beach bum life and make peace with it. But then Dawn returning stirs something up in him. Maybe it’s a reminder of the life he used to have, maybe it’s anger and a desire for revenge, or maybe it’s just a reminder that love him or hate him, it’s the only way to keep Dawn in his life.
Blair has the opposite problem. He and Tiff are house-shopping, which leads them, by a bizarre set of developments, to possibly buying Tiff’s parents house. There’s a lot of good humor here, from Scraps the denim pony, to Barbie’s friend midge, to “come on, we’ve all seen it.” But the emotional quotient is really good too.
Tiff has a quality monologue where she basically acknowledges that as perfect as their life looks on the outside, the fact that it’s not real on the inside leaves her feeling just as empty. She wants to reconcile with her parents because it’s the chance to connect with something real, to the dream she harbored since she was a little girl, not just the outward appearance of it.
Given the choice between vindicating his wife’s deeply-felt life desires and continuing to have sex with Congressional boytoy, Blair lies to Tiff so that her parents’ old apartment can be his new private love nest. It’s maybe the most heartless thing we’ve seen from Blair on the show. He lies to Tiff about her dad wanting to reconcile in order to be able to keep sleeping with his boyfriend, causing her to sever those ties in the name of soundproof walls. It’s not exactly Machiavellian, but it’s harsh and duplicitous in a way that feels less like turnabout as fair play in Blair’s prior schemes.
All while this is going along, the show brings the fire with the comedy. It’s such a boon to get IASIP’s Artemis Pebdani on the show. She gets maybe three minutes of screen time in the episode, but they’re the funniest three minutes. And it’s just as fun to see Kieth in his Freddy Mercury-imitating, beachside roller-skating, cartel coke-dealing Miami guise. His shtick is as fun as ever, and him playing third wheel to Mo and Dawn is a laugh too.
Overall, this is another winning episode, with good complex relationship between two couples who are a particular kind of dependent on one another, but whose blurred lines between mutual care and pure self-interest threaten to sink both.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-03-18T02:05:18Z
[8.0/10] On Black Monday, the line between someone who loves you and someone who will fuck you over for their own ends is blurry, and sometimes downright invisible. Mo and Dawn seem to genuinely care for one another, but have also had a long list of reasons to ignore that and hate each other. Blair and Tiff seem to harbor some genuine, platonic affection for one another, but when their wants and wills conflict, the accommodations disappear.
Both stories are interesting and a little heartbreaking. The show continues to get the Mo and Dawn dynamic just right, where one minute they’re back in their old playful patter, the next they’re bringing up every stubbed toe and knife to the ribs they ever inflicted on one another, and the minute after that they’re back to doing business. The show plays the complicatedness of their relationship -- romantically and professionally -- extraordinarily well, and Regina Hall and Don Cheadle rock their scenes together.
There’s a lot to like about the pairing after all that’s happened. Mo seems genuinely joyous to see Dawn again. The mercurial shifts in tone of their conversation are a delight laden with so many memories both good and bad. And Dawn buying Mo out, echoing his own “you can shop the deal, but where will you go?” is devastating but fair.
The line between friendship and utility, between business and pleasure, has always been fuzzy for the two of them, as is evident in their beachside flashback. That manifests in Mo’s ultimate decision here. He seems genuinely happy to be out of the rat race, willing to leave the beach bum life and make peace with it. But then Dawn returning stirs something up in him. Maybe it’s a reminder of the life he used to have, maybe it’s anger and a desire for revenge, or maybe it’s just a reminder that love him or hate him, it’s the only way to keep Dawn in his life.
Blair has the opposite problem. He and Tiff are house-shopping, which leads them, by a bizarre set of developments, to possibly buying Tiff’s parents house. There’s a lot of good humor here, from Scraps the denim pony, to Barbie’s friend midge, to “come on, we’ve all seen it.” But the emotional quotient is really good too.
Tiff has a quality monologue where she basically acknowledges that as perfect as their life looks on the outside, the fact that it’s not real on the inside leaves her feeling just as empty. She wants to reconcile with her parents because it’s the chance to connect with something real, to the dream she harbored since she was a little girl, not just the outward appearance of it.
Given the choice between vindicating his wife’s deeply-felt life desires and continuing to have sex with Congressional boytoy, Blair lies to Tiff so that her parents’ old apartment can be his new private love nest. It’s maybe the most heartless thing we’ve seen from Blair on the show. He lies to Tiff about her dad wanting to reconcile in order to be able to keep sleeping with his boyfriend, causing her to sever those ties in the name of soundproof walls. It’s not exactly Machiavellian, but it’s harsh and duplicitous in a way that feels less like turnabout as fair play in Blair’s prior schemes.
All while this is going along, the show brings the fire with the comedy. It’s such a boon to get IASIP’s Artemis Pebdani on the show. She gets maybe three minutes of screen time in the episode, but they’re the funniest three minutes. And it’s just as fun to see Kieth in his Freddy Mercury-imitating, beachside roller-skating, cartel coke-dealing Miami guise. His shtick is as fun as ever, and him playing third wheel to Mo and Dawn is a laugh too.
Overall, this is another winning episode, with good complex relationship between two couples who are a particular kind of dependent on one another, but whose blurred lines between mutual care and pure self-interest threaten to sink both.