Star: Season 2/ Episode 3 “FUA… Good Night!” – Recap/ Review (with Spoilers)

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As Alex begins breaking under pressure, the girls continue to push Ayanna’s buttons and leave Carlotta to clean up their mess.

Previous Recap: Star: Season 2/ Episode 2 “Insecure”

A Burden To Carry: Cotton, Alex, Simone

The weight of people’s decisions, usually out of love or protection, begin to weigh heavy. For Cotton, it is her prison relationship with Omari. Someone whose sister visits her at work and she hands her something. As well as passes along Omari is getting out soon. Something Cotton may have mixed feelings about for while she gets off to the idea of Omari, does she really want to associate with him out of jail?

As for Simone, well, after Dee’s death, there is a bit of guilt there. However, according to Karen, Simone’s new roommate, she and Dee had a suicide pact. It isn’t 100% clear why, to me anyway, but Karen had a bag of multicolored pills ready to go through. Problem is, she chickened out. However, it seems Karen may finally be open to Simone being her friend now. So while she may have lost Dee, she might have gained Simone.

Leaving Alex. With his grandma being a drunk, and despite not being married to Derek, on top of Derek having seemingly nothing to do, she is handling all his affairs. I’m talking about calling insurance companies, helping him move about, and more. Of which, combined with Big Trouble’s stagnancy, it is pushing her to the brink.

Failing Upwards: Ayanna, Star, Alex, Noah, Carlotta, Jahil

If you believe Carlotta, one of the key reasons Ayanna doesn’t like the girls is they are too similar to her. They speak up, do what they want, and can’t be managed or controlled. However, that isn’t going to keep her from trying to reign in these wild mares. Such as making the girls sing backup for Noah after Alex goes off and destroys a $10,000 speaker.

But, as usual, even when the girls are down they know how to make the best out of a bad situation. So, while singing backup, they decide to take over Noah’s set and use his song for a platform. Pissing off Noah in the process, but Star knows how to stroke any man’s ego to the point of forgiveness. And with them deciding to go off script, yet again, their new A&R person, Maurice Jetter (Lance Gross) gets them producer approval. Meaning a few things might come down the line.

First and foremost, Jahil may have an in. For while the girls don’t want him as a manager, his beats are undeniable. Plus, there is still his nephew who is bound to meet the girls and he seems to have sweet talked Ayanna. But, most of all, what this also means is the girls may finally get somewhere and maybe can do and say more than “But we won Atlanta’s NextFest!”

Blast From The Past: Brody (Stephen Dorff), Star, Carlotta

You know, sometimes it is easy to forget both Star and Simone aren’t necessarily orphans. Star especially for with her being introduced to us as a foster kid, you could easily forget she has a father. Well, wakeup call! Brody shows up at Carlotta’s doorstep and Star is as surprised to see her dad as Carlotta. Leaving us to wonder: What in the world does he want?

Highlights

Alex Breakthrough

While I wouldn’t call Alex an ice queen, as Ayanna did, I will say that with Star and Simone’s drama, she often became eclipsed. After all, she isn’t promiscuous or a hustler like Star, she doesn’t have multiple issues like Simone is always going through, and she is a bit of an introvert. However, with us seeing all she was doing for Derek, she became the type of character who may not gain your interest due to her latest crazy outfit or the latest sad or hilarious thing in her life, but because she is struggling.

Granted, not financially, per se, nor does she have the mental baggage of Simone or Star, from what we know. However, imagine being part of the reason your boyfriend is now paralyzed. Imagine being the only one he knows that knows how to deal with insurance companies and all that. And you can say, as I alluded to, it being ridiculous she is doing all this despite not being married to the boy, but its love and love makes you do some things which seem crazy. Though really, only the people not in the relationship may ever call it that. You just call it commitment.

Cotton

I’m not going to claim to know a whole lot of trans characters. However, one thing I do know is that we rarely see them in relationships, much less have moments like we see other actresses have where they just fantasize. Never mind masturbating. So, to me, Cotton being one of the few, if not first, to be a main character who is trans and a sexual being, is noteworthy. I don’t think it’ll become a norm anytime soon, but it always takes one to make a crack before ceiling can be broken.

On The Fence

Are Ayanna and Jahil Going To Become Something?

You can’t deny when Jahil was associated with the girls he brought them far and also produced better tracks for them (outside of “Ain’t Thinking About You,” the rest of the music has been meh to me – probably to signify the girls losing their authority over their sound). Yet, with them rejecting him and Carlotta trying to play gatekeeper, naturally, Jahil is going to be sneaky. But the way he does it is through Ayanna who he has a very flirtatious scene with.

Leading to the question: Are they going to end up dating? Is he going to be the one to melt the true ice queen of the show? God, I hope not. Which I say not because I want Jahil and Carlotta together, but because I just find myself unable to appreciate Jahil’s role on this show when he is doing anything besides hustling music.

Star

One of the things which sort of made season 1 of Star a difficult watch was Star herself. As for season 2, thus far, it seems precautions were put in place so no one can usurp Star from being the focus of the show. Yes, Alex may have an interesting storyline as does Simone but they are made to now be unable to compete with Star. She is the one doing thotty things, wearing outfits which draw attention to her, and yet I feel like she is losing her luster now.

In my mind, all this flashy and suggestive stuff they are doing with Star, it is making her seem predictable. It’s like, if she has a problem, we know she is going to get mouthy, play some guy, and eventually get her way. Which was why Hunter in the first season seemed low-key essential because he was a monkey wrench. Not to imply I was in any way for him being abusive. More so, through Hunter, we got to see a different side of Star. We got to see her as unsure, vulnerable, and when things were good, with her guard down. Leading us to at least feel like there was some attempt to switch it up with the character a little bit.

Brody

If I had the time I’d look into whether this man was mentioned in season 1 at all. For him just showing up as a cliffhanger gives me pause. Reason being, I feel like there are way too many shows which decide to dump as much drama early on and then shift through everything as possible. Which, to me, is just a terrible way of doing things.

Heck, it is one of the reason I love how OWN handles Greenleaf and Queen Sugar. When it comes to issues and drama, things are long term. It isn’t like Star, among many other shows, where everything is about a pop. Drop a bomb before commercial break, before the episode ends, and then give us a lackluster follow up the next episode. As if there is no long game because they want that ratings spike now rather than build up to a big finale.

But I digress, I just hope this Brody introduction does more than just introduce new drama to remind us that Star is Beyoncé and Alex and Simone are Kelly and Michelle.