Mary Jane has to be Olivia Pope’s long-lost friend. Like the D.C. fixer, M.J. is always making it her business to fix everyone else’s life while her own is messier than an Amanda Bynes Twitter meltdown.
M.J. makes it her mission to have a chat with Niecy about her weight after the maid finds empty Coke cans under the bed. A spiel on cholesterol and diabetes and “every overweight black woman in the hood” thinking she’s thick wasn’t what Mary Jane had rehearsed in the mirror, but it got her the desired results. Niecy agrees to a healthier diet and exercise, since trying to be an “ass model on Instagram” is probably not in her near future, but not before delivering the perfect rebuttal about waif models not being healthy, either.
Can we just shout out Mara Brock Akil and her writers for their ill pen games? Bravo to that opener.
M.J. has moved on from stealing sperm. The 38-year-old is undergoing a two-week course of cryopreservation, aka egg freezing. She does all this with the TV cameras rolling because ratings are the name of the game. The matriarch of the family thinks her daughter has lost her everlasting mind letting the world into her private life.
When M.J. drops in on baby brother Paul, she sees an invite to a fancy-schmancy Gifting Alliance event where civil rights attorney Sheldon Dewitt will be the keynote speaker. M.J. is desperate to be Paul’s plus one because she’s been trying to interview Sheldon for forever. Baby bro is like, nah, sis.
No one has extra tickets for M.J., so it’s back to Paul to beg. P.J. answers his sister’s call midstroke, only to tell her that she needs to ask David because he has an invitation. M.J. is shocked that her brother still talks to “the Ex.” I guess she expected her family to break up with him, too, because don’t we all?
In a moment of desperation she calls “Let Him Go”—David’s pseudonym in her phone. While he’s accepting this one-night-only date with M.J., his live-in girlfriend-slash-baby mama is sitting in the room ready to grill him. Anna is cool with the plus-one scenario as long as David knows she’s meeting up with her ex when she goes on a modeling trip to Florence. Now, you know Anna is not a sister because in no world of Black Girls Are Magic would this arrangement fly.
Wonder if Anna would have been cool if she’d known about the calla lilies David sent Mary Jane earlier with a handwritten note that M.J. had tossed in the David “memento” box. On their “date,” David’s a little salty because she didn’t thank him for the flowers. M.J. brushes it off to focus on the task at hand. Before the night ends, she waltzes over to Sheldon with witty banter to inform him that she’s not taking no for an answer. He has never granted an interview his entire career, but something tells us M.J. will have him wide open by the next episode. Or he’ll have her wide open.
Unemployment has left Niecy with a lot of time on her hands, so she casually rummages through her aunt’s things. Under the bathroom cabinet she finds M.J.’s liquor stash, then realizes she’s being recorded. Watching the security tape, Niecy learns that her aunt is a Rihanna song (“Po’ it up, po’ it up”) and loves to pleasure herself. This will not be the last we hear of M.J.’s alcohol consumption.
David runs out to walk M.J. to her car. “You tell Anna I was your plus one?” He did. M.J. takes a jab at what appears to be his open relationship. When David hurls out the childish Facebook status “It’s complicated,” M.J. has had enough: “We are too damn old to be complicated.” If that ain’t a word! David pulls her in for a kiss to silence her before going into a sob story about messing everything up. M.J. doesn’t want to hear it, though. Finally! And the church says glory, hallelujah! There is hope for the I’ll-sleep-with-your-man Mary Jane Paul after all.
With David out of the picture, M.J. still has needs. Who knew she had her very own cutty buddy in the form of built, fine and chocolate on speed dial? Mary Jane won’t even spend the night with him because she’s crystal clear on what it is and what it isn’t.
Sometimes a drawerful of vibrators just won’t do. There’s nothing like the real thing, baby.