Queen Sugar is one of my favorite shows. So much so, that I do a whole-ass podcast about it and never miss an episode. I have kept up with Charley, Nova, Ralph Angel, Aunt Vi, Hollywood, Darla, Prosper and the assortment of other folks who weave in and out of storylines since the show debuted in 2016. When people complain about not having Black television shows with varied storylines that don’t rehash the same old tropes and stories, I always point them to Queen Sugar because it’s an original story with original characters. Shout out to Ava DuVernay, Oprah Winfrey, Anthony Sparks and the amazing writers, directors and cast that bring it all together.
With that said, this latest season—Season 6—is a haven for shenanigans. Oh—spoiler alert(s): Ralph Angel Bordelon (played by Kofi Siriboe) is struggling mightily. His soil has been poisoned so his crops ain’t coming in right, so the boy done resorted to livin’ life the ski mask way—except he forgot his ski mask and during a whole-ass pandemic robbed a warehouse without a mask on. The one era where you can literally wear a mask and nobody will say anything, and here he goes, right there on the closed-circuit security footage, stealing things. Ralph Angel’s whole storyline this season is one that involves a lot of struggle and trying to push past it.
I bring this up because the show’s main character, Charley Bordelon, has decided to run for Congress with this as a backdrop. She states that she wants to do so—the Democratic National Committee known on the show as “the Party” is fully supporting her run—because she realized she doesn’t have the power to help the people she loves most.
Since the show started, Charley has taken on the Landrys, the Bordelon family’s arch-nemeses, such that they have one. And she’s done it all with dignity without losing herself. She’s a professional.
Here’s the thing: Charley running for office puts all that family’s business on front street, and whew, chile. So here’s a brief rundown of what whoever her opponent is can use against her—ON DAY ONE.
Charley’s sister, Nova, has already written a tell-all memoir—Blessing and Blood—about ALL of the family’s dirty laundry, by the way, so Charley’s opponent’s work has already been done for them. For instance, Charley’s ex-husband/renewed-boo cheated on her, had an outside child AND basically set up a situation where some of his teammates on his NBA team sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room. Charley paid this woman off, for the record. Ralph Angel has been to prison (more on him). Nova alleged that her father murdered a man and buried him on the family land (more on this later), and even though her father’s oldest friend, Prosper, said it wasn’t true, do politicians need facts to wage war? No they don’t.
As an aside, I’m actually surprised “the Party” wants her to run AFTER having read Nova’s book. I’d be like, is there no one else?
In this same book, Nova outs Ralph Angel’s now-wife Darla as a drugged-out, strung-out stripper who had to be pulled from a hotel room AND talks about the fact that their son, Blue, isn’t even Ralph Angel’s but a child fathered by who knows who. Oh, and Ralph Angel? Ex-con. The whole family catches it; IN THE BOOK.
Now, in their personal lives, they’ve all seemed to have gotten over—or at least moved past—the hurt of Nova putting all their business in the street. Nova, though, has now waged war on policing via her new website Tru Papers, so named after her and Ralph Angel’s mother Trudy. So Charley Bordelon, running for Congress in the state of Louisiana, is the sister of a woman who has taken on the police, so much so that Nova (her sister) was raided by the police on a tip about her having marijuana.
Ralph Angel just robbed the Landrys and in order to make the case go away, he has to give up the family farm. A family farm, for the record, where HUMAN BONES were just found. Now, they weren’t able to determine who those bones belong to—I’m guessing this will end up saving the farm, as they’re probably bones from an old slave graveyard, causing the land to be a historic site or some such. I have no idea how this saves the farm from being handed over; I’m not a show writer—but do you need to know whose bones they are in order to use them in an attack ad? And while Ralph Angel’s case might go away, I don’t doubt for a second that the fact that he robbed somebody recently won’t make its way into speculation and into an ad.
Not to mention that Charley and Davis are publicly back together, sharing black heart emojis on social media.
Look, I have no doubt that Charley will run and probably win; it is television, after all and there is a story to tell. But in real life, there is no way Charley is making a run for Congress with the amount of public foolywang that has befallen this family. Hell, Charley’s family is basically the attack ad.
Look, maybe she ain’t the worst candidate of all time. But she’s a Black woman running in Louisiana whose sister is taking on the police, whose brother has made some questionable decisions regarding the legality of some things and who is rekindling her love with her ex-husband who fathered an outside child and participated in some nefarious activities causing Charley to pay off somebody. And a lot of it is in a book you can buy off of Amazon.
I hope “the Party” knows what it’s doing.