OWN’s ‘Greenleaf’ returns August 15 and 16!

I wonder what Ms. O aka Mavis McCready is thinking here?…

Hello World,

Can you believe it?! Half of 2017 is ova!  I hope you’re accomplishing your goals for this year! With God’s help, I’m making progress on mine…

Anywho, so although it’s the start of July as of this weekend, I’m looking forward to Tuesday, Aug. 15 and  Wednesday, Aug. 16 because those are the dates that OWN’s “Greenleaf” returns, according to Deadline.com!!!

Of course, now that I have a date in mind, I’m brainstorming about my “Greenleaf” recaps. If you have any feedback for me, please let me know. Do you like the length of the recaps? Do you prefer character analysis or a straight recap of events or a mixture of both? Any feedback is welcome and appreciated!

And if you’re in NOLA TODAY at the ESSENCE festival with half of America’s black population, the cast of OWN’s Greenleaf will be up in there!!!

Below is a juicy preview video from the Facebook page of OWN’s “Greenleaf!” The countdown to Aug. 15 and 16 has officially begun!

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

Greenleaf Mid-Season Finale Recap, Season 2 Episode 8: And the Sparks Fly Upward…

Hello World,

Saints, pull up real close to your laptops or your phones because I’m about to serve you from the sumptuous feast that was laid out in this OWN’s “Greenleaf” mid-season finale !!! And you gon be licking your fingers too because it was sooo juicy!!! Taste and see that the Lord is good! LOL

Crash…

Remember at the end of episode 7, last week’s episode, Grace sped off the Greenleaf estate in a Greenleaf security truck to chase down Mac after he boldly sent flowers to the estate in honor of the one-year anniversary of Faith’s passing? Well, this week’s episode starts off with Grace careening through the woods, pressing her foot on the gas until she loses control of the truck. The truck catapults into a tree and Grace’s face lands on the steering wheel with the air bag deployed. For a second, I wonder if she is dead. But I’m like the heroine of the show cannot be dead at this point. And as soon as I have this thought, she stirs and then wakes up, stunned to realize what happened. She crawls through the window and then calls Darius the journalist on her cell phone. (Am I the only one who thinks the truck was about to blow up? I guess I’ve seen one too many action movies! LOL!) I thought Darius and Grace were through, but obviously, I was wrong.

He takes her back to the estate, where he is enthralled by the grandeur of the Greenleaf home. I guess it’s one thing to write about the Greenleaf dynasty, but it’s quite another to see it up close. He tells the family that Grace was “lucky” to have survived to which Bishop responds with, “We don’t believe in luck.” Grace explains the accident by saying she swerved to avoid hitting a deer. Once Darius leaves, Bishop says, “If you ask me, I don’t  think that was any deer.” He tells his daughter that she has to stop pursuing Mac and Sophia tells her the same thing. Grace says, “We all have our crosses to bear.” Sophia says, “Then you are mine.” Can you imagine telling your mama that she is your cross to bear? I can’t…

When Charity and Jabari get together, it won’t be by accident! As Charity is caring for her son, Jabari calls to invite her to Nashville to record with a group that is coming in from L.A. Y’all know recording won’t be the only happening, right? She agrees to his invitation, but now she has to figure out who will take care of Nathan while she is away.

Before the Triumph train crashes, Jacob finally divulges Basie’s poker scam to his wife Kerissa. Kerissa calls Basie and his wife Tasha Bonnie and Clyde and says she should have known something was up when she found that one-hundred dollar bill on the floor. She tells him he’s got to get out of this situation, but whatever he does, he better not go “crawling back to that mansion and that sneering a** mom of yours.”

Macarena…

The “relationship” that Mac has with his girlfriend Lorraine is like a badly choreographed dance. It’s not free flowing or joyous. Everything he does or says is to squelch her women’s intuition which is trying to tell her that this man is no man at all. She’s living with a monster but she gon learn. The lies that some women tell themselves to keep a man is simply sad.  According to Mac, his niece Sophia is the one who is blowing up his phone all day and or all night although we know it is Michaela from his old building. Lorraine says, “What kind of niece calls her uncle so often?” He says, “I like to be there for her if she needs me.” She then admits that she knows what people are saying about Mac, but she doesn’t believe them. She tells him she loves him. Dumbo.

Outside of whatever church the couple are attending, he calls Michaela to tell her she needs to stop calling him. Michaela says her mother has gone schizo, and she needs a place to crash. “I don’t have anyone else,” she says. But Mac still shuts her down for now.

Charity looks like she is ready to get her dance on at the club although she is singing at Sunday morning worship service. Her dress is fitted and short. Kevin notices,  but that doesn’t stop him from glancing at Aaron during the church service.

Across town at Triumph, Basie Skanks listens to his headphones, dancing around and what not in his office before his Sunday morning service starts. He is trying to get pumped as he wants to make a “withdrawal from the banks of Heaven” he tells Jacob, who catches him while he is dancing. Yes, he expects his flock to make up for the funds he lost in poker. He is a delusional shepherd. In service, he tells them to admit they’re “in sin” and they need to “dig deep” and “sow a seed of faith.” Then he says, they got “skanktafied.” See what I mean?

Back at Calvary, Bishop tells his flock that while he could preach about the wages of sin, he wants to talk about the gift on the other side of the equation. “To sin means to turn away, but to repent means to turn back.” I know that Bishop is no angel, but unlike Basie, I really believe that Bishop believes in the power of God even if his humanity fails him from to time. Grace looks at her father as if she wants to repent of trying to avenge the death of her sister on her own instead of leaving the vengeance to God as He commands. But she doesn’t know how it seems.

Kevin agrees to care for his son while Charity goes to Nashville and she says he can stay at the estate while she is gone. Little does she know that while she has to travel across the state to see her soon-t0-be new bae, her husband’s soon-to-be new bae will be just down the hall from her. She may as well be “dancing the dark.”

The dance between Mac and his age-appropriate beard abruptly, and I mean abruptly stops when he gets a call from Deputy Mayor Leonard who says he will not be getting a job for him after all with his “sick self” because of pushback he has already received. He delivers the final blow when he says, “Lose my number.” Mac believes Grace got to the deputy mayor when Jacob was the one who threatened him. When Lorraine asks him who was on the phone, instead of lying as he had in the past, he says, “None of your business.” He then proceeds to call her everything (including “bottom-shelf” and “off-brand” ) but a child of God before telling her to get out! And the woman didn’t want to go although she did leave. Smh. He then calls Michaela and asks, “You still need a place to stay?” I guess since he has no job prospects, he has nothing to lose by revealing his true character.

If Zora and her boyfriend Isaiah were dancing to “Cha Cha,” the music has stopped . He invites her to listen to him record a song at a studio, but when she truthfully tells him that a couple of his notes were flat in front his friends, he asks to speak with her privately. He clutches her arms and tells her, “Don’t do that in front of them.” It’s obvious this guy may be an abuser so Zora calls her cousin to pick her up. The only problem is that Sophia is supposed to be on the way to meet her mother and Darius at a restaurant.

Karma…

Basie feels betrayed when Jacob comes to him and offers to pay Triumph 2’s debt if Basie would allow him to have the church and disassociate it from the original Triumph. When Basie asks how he is going to get the money, he says he has the money as it was a wedding present from his parents. Yes, Jacob had the trump (not Drumpf) card all along. He says Basie is playing a dangerous game with Triumph’s church members. “If you mess with black people’s money, they will rise up and take it back.” Got that right! I despise a money-grubbing, dishonest pastor. I’m so thankful that I was raised by an honest and upright, God-fearing pastor.

At Mac’s apartment, Michaela gets comfortable on his sofa as Mac pours two glasses of liquor before they watch “Imitation of Life.” Darius and Grace wait for her daughter to show up to meet them for dinner at Farm & Table. Michaela and Sophia do have similar looks, and it’s clear that Sophia could have been one of Mac’s victims if Grace had allowed him to get anywhere close to her daughter. I’m so creeped out as I watch Mac touch Michaela’s hair as she sleeps. Then he touches her knee and continues to move his hands upward. He attempts to kiss the child when she wakes up and kicks at him until she is able to escape his grip. Thankfully, she runs out the apartment.

After tucking in Nathan, Kevin takes the baby monitor to Aaron’s quarters where he and Aaron kick back and have a beer. Aaron gives him advice on finding a place since Nathan can’t seem to find anywhere to rent. Kevin tells Aaron, “Thanks for being so nice to me through all this.” Their arms are already touching and then they kiss! After this, Kevin may find a way to keep living at the estate.

Mac the monster calls Grace and tells her, “You should have left it alone, Gigi.” Grace leaves the restaurant and rushes over to Mac’s house. She believes her uncle has done something to Sophia to retaliate against her although she doesn’t quite know what her uncle is talking about. He calls his niece a female dog and their limbs entangle as they fight. They fall to the floor and Mac lands on top of his niece. With his sweaty, contorted face close to hers, he grabs her throat and squeezes. For the second time, I wonder if the heroine is about to die. But just before the life is squeezed from her, she finds a piece of the broken liquor bottle and sinks the shard into his neck! As the blood gushes from his wound, she screams, “Tell me where she is!” Mac got what was coming to him, but if he is dead, what will happen to Grace?! See why God says, vengeance is mine…

And then it’s over! Wasn’t that good? Are you satisfied or do you want more?!  I guess we will have to see what happens when OWN’s “Greenleaf” returns this summer!

Thank you sooo much for reading my Greenleaf Mid-Season Finale Recap, Season 2 Episode 8 and my other recaps so far.

Check out a snippet from “And the Sparks Fly Upward” below…

Any thoughts?

If you would like to keep up with OWN’s “Greenleaf,” and my recaps, please click on this link to subscribe to my blog 🙂!

 

 

 

 

 

Greenleaf Recap Season 2 Episode 1: A House Divided…

Hello World,

Wow, the season opener for OWN’s Greenleaf was more explosive than the season finale ( click on this link to read the recap) with all of the family secrets revealed in this episode!

Well, let’s get into this Greenleaf recap cuz babay, it’s a lot to break down…

Burn Baby, Burn…

Like a good novel, the show starts off with an explosive beginning. The police show up at the Greenleaf estate and announce that the Bishop is under investigation for allegedly burning his first church building down years ago and manslaughter since someone died in the fire! Mac shows up at the same time as the police to gloat in front of the Greenleaf family who are stunned silent except for Gigi aka Grace. Grace follows her uncle as he is about to leave following the police’s announcement that Bishop needs a lawyer and cannot leave town. When she confronts him about his revelation as he is the one who revealed the Bishop’s sin to the police, he replies that he was “forced to pull less holy strings” since Bishop wouldn’t spring him from jail. He then tells her he has more hot secrets where that came from, secrets so hot that he can “walk away with nothing on his back but hot wind.” Yes, hunty…if he’s going down as a sexual offender, he’s burning down the Greenleafs with him!

I Been Drankin’…

Meanwhile, Oprah, I mean Mavis McCready, sister -in-law of Bishop Greenleaf, been drankin’ chile…(So, it’s hard to watch to Oprah in this state because I know I’m looking at the Queen of Talk aka the boss at OWN)…Well, now that she is no longer a club owner (thanks to her brother Mac….Wayment, I just realized that the names of the McCready family all start with M…Mac McCready, Mae (aka Lady Mae) McCready Greenleaf and Mavis McCready…M is for molestation, perhaps? More on that later…) she’s taken to the bottle. She wakes up with a big ole bottle of likka on her night stand…She’s also taken up with a young lover who comes in to the bedroom wearing some black briefs and a guitar hanging from his neck! It’s on a Sunday as she tells her boy toy, “Lonzo, get your behind (that’s not the word she uses though but I’m not cussing here) to church.” Bwwaaa, she sending her man to church like she’s his mama…and maybe she is…even though she will not be in anybody’s sanctuary for Sunday morning services…

Give Until It Hurts…

Pastor Grace is in the pulpit trying to get folk in the congregation to pledge money to support the church as a Fall Revival is coming up. But even Grace cannot get the flock to part with their funds so pledges are down by 40 percent! Lady Mae confronts her arch enemy, I mean her daughter, about her lackadaisical sermons as Grace must be the problem. But Grace tells her the truth and says it’s been three months since the police brought a case against Bishop and he hasn’t said a word about it yet to the congregation. That is the reason that the pledges are down. As usual, instead of receiving the truth, Lady Mae says to her daughter, “Your terrible pride is going to destroy us all.” What is she talking about? Would you continue to give to a church in which the pastor or bishop was brought up on charges but didn’t address the charges in front of the congregation?

Lady Mae does speak to her husband privately about the charges while she is getting ready for breakfast in the bathroom. She tells the Bishop, who walks in as she is applying her lipstick, that she cannot stop thinking about Darryl, the caretaker of the church who died in the fire. Bishop replies, “He wasn’t supposed to be there.” The two are a united front though because in front of the family at breakfast when Lady Mae sees Jacob reading a newspaper, she asks him if there is any “fresh libel” in it and says people love to see the “high brought low.” Also at breakfast, Bishop declares that he will preach again from the book of Ezra, a book about  Jerusalem’s restoration and the building of the second temple following Babylonian exile. Chile…

Living Single…

Charity Greenleaf Satterlee meets with Carlton, the gay choir director at Calvary Fellowship World Ministries and his partner Kyle (Just Kidding! That’s the actor T.C. Carson’s name when he was on “Living Single,” one of my fave shows from the ’90s). Sadly, she tells them that her labor will be induced after she lost one of the twins she is carrying. She lost the baby due to the stress of discovering that her husband is gay or bisexual. Although she is still married to Kevin Satterlee, it’s clear she could end up living single this season as their marriage is still strained.  After her meeting with Nigel and his partner, she meets with Jabari Johnson, a handsome record producer who is interested in producing Charity’s album. He tells her, “it sounds like you went through something. ” So could Jabari be Charity’s new man in the future?

Interrupting their meeting, Kevin says he wants to speak with his wife alone. He pleads with her to come to one of his meetings. She tells him she is skeptical about him attempting to “pray the gay away.” Obviously, he is attending meetings for a gay conversion therapy program.

Backstabbers…

Sleazy ole Pastor Basie Skanks is back and hosting a groundbreaking for the Christian community center he plans to build across the street from Calvary. And as we know from Season 1 of Greenleaf, Jacob is supposed to be running the center after it opens. Although the Greenleafs weren’t too happy with Joseph leaving Calvary for Triumph initially, they apparently got over it as Bishop, Grace, and Sofia show up for the groundbreaking. A concert is held on the site to celebrate the new center. Some slim, light-skinned gospel singer named Isaiah Hambrick has got Sofia in her feelings as she watches him perform. I guess I would have felt that way too at her age. He was spinning around on stage like he was Ricky Martin from Menudo. (Yes, I remember when…) After young Isaiah performs, Pastor Basie announces that a new community center will not be on the site after all. In fact, Triumph’s second location will be there, across the street from Calvary. Most importantly, Jacob will be the new pastor. Bishop and Grace stare at one another in disbelief! And then to demonstrate his Pastor Skanks’ increasing star power, The Kirk Franklin gets up and performs “123 Victory.” Victory, indeed…

Meanwhile, Mac, who is now on the sex offender registry as leaflets bearing his face and criminal status have been placed on car windshields in the church parking lot, approaches his sister Lady Mae. He tells her that in light of Bishop being investigated for arson and manslaughter, he is here for her. She says, “After what you did, we’ll never be family again.” Without hesitation, he replies “Until you need me.”

Across town, Mavis shows up at her old bar with her boy toy Alonzo, whose career she is ‘managing,’ in tow and demands a drink. But the bartender refuses to serve her as its clear she’s getting sloshed on the regular. In fact, Bishop shows up at the bar sometime later and helps her get home safely. She tells him she is trying to find her way after she lost her club. What happened to Alonzo? Bishop is obviously close to Mavis, but I don’t understand why. There is more there than being in-laws. Not a romantic connection mind you, but something…

Grace also finds out another reason the congregation aine coming off the coins anymore. Apparently, church members don’t like the fact that their choir director is married to another man and flaunting it around the church, according to Betty Wilcox, who is on the board. Grace also confronts her father about the allegations. “Did you do it Daddy?” Although he has been silent for three months about the accusations with everyone except for Lady Mae, he finally tells his daughter the truth. He tells her that when he was a young pastor, he bought an old church building that turned into a money pit. So when Mac asked him if he wanted Mac to handle it, he agreed. Obviously, Bishop wanted to get the insurance money after the building burned down. The caretaker Darryl James wasn’t supposed to be in the basement of the church and he died in the fire. And Bishop also tells Grace that he will return to church to preach on Sunday. “I don’t preach perfection. I preach grace.” I guess the Bishop must not know Romans 6:1-2.What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Kiss of Death…

Leave it to Lady Mae to save the day when God isn’t working fast enough for the Greenleafs! She goes to see her father who is in hospice care when she wouldn’t even allow the McCready patriarch onto Calvary grounds on Season 1 of Greenleaf! She puts on the charm like it’s her Sunday best and speaks sweetly to him. He tells her, “You always so sweet” and calls her his “yellow, Daisy Mae” before he plants his lips on hers. Yes, he kissed his daughter which makes me think that the McCready family may be keeping yet another secret. Did he molest Mae as a child? I’m thinking that may be the case when Mavis shows at the Greenleaf estate and busts into a party celebrating the birth of Charity and Kevin’s son. Apparently, she’s fighting mad since Alonzo has moved on after the Bishop had a talk with him. During her rant, she reveals that she and Mae have different mothers. Mae’s mother beat Mavis, and she was forced to sleep in a shed…kinda explains her current outside status…Also, Mavis says that Mae was their father’s favorite and accompanied him on trips to Nashville.

Despite the commotion in the Greenleaf estate, the Bishop is feeling pretty good after he learns that the DA is dropping the charges against him. Apparently, Lady Mae’s father is now refusing to testify against the Bishop.  But Lady Mae has another fire to put out as Jacob reveals that he is moving out.

Revelation…

After Bishop preaches on Sunday, Pastor Basie Skanks shows up in his office. “It must be nice going from straight from the prison to the pulpit without skipping a beat,” he tells him. Although Bishop doesn’t like Pastor per se, he doesn’t understand the pastor’s utter contempt for him until he reveals that he is the son of Darryl James, the caretaker who was killed in the fire!!! He tell him, “By the time I’m done with you, the only thing that’s going to rise to heaven from this church is smoke!”

Ooh whee! This is going to be good!

Below is a video about what we can expect in Season 2 of OWN’s “Greenleaf,” which airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EST on OWN.

Let me know how you liked this Greenleaf recap in the comments, please and thank you 🙂

Any thoughts?