Pearsons, Meet the Bordelons

Family dramas illicit many emotions, ranging from joy to rage. They have the unique ability to pull at our heart strings like no other genre of television can. I’ve found myself laughing uproariously at a joke made by Beth Pearson as if she was my aunt on Christmas morning. These families become our families for better and, because these shows are so painstakingly accurate in how they portray the human condition, they become our families for worse. Still, we allow ourselves to open up to their experiences through the vehicle of qualified actors, writers, directors, camera crews, editors and show-runners. This particular recommendation is for those of us who have fallen head over heels for the unconventional, often out-of-time storytelling that makes This Is Us work so damn well. Have I got a treat for you, another show that began the same year as This Is Us and rises to the occasion every time. It’s name is Queen Sugar.

Seeing that we’re already in the world of geometry given the conditional statement if p then q, let us breakdown exactly why Queen Sugar is next on the list for This is Us fanatics by refashioning the abc's of one of geometry’s infamous equations, Pythagorean’s theorem: ancestry + beauty = crying.

A is for Ancestry

The Pearsons unearth a family member who was heretofore presumed dead (Jack’s brother Nicky) or invoke the memory of a deceased ancestor (Jack Pearson himself) or they throw a complete wrench into the normalcy and introduce adopted baby of the Big 3, Randall, to his birth father when Randall is 36 and then mystically to his birth mother when he’s 40. This Is Us wields otherworldly skills whenever they speak on any character. There is always a rich backstory i.e. William, Randall’s birth father, being a writer in love with this girl only for us see the expanse of his sexuality with a male lover he’s come to love by the time the series begins.

You root for the struggle to be overcome in everyone. You want Kate to be happy and cheer silently anytime Toby, in all of his imperfections, is just the person Kate needs to help her heal her demons rooted in past relationships, classes with her mother, the guilt over her father’s death and her weight. You want Randall to truly understand the patience that Beth has offered him over their 20 year relationship. You want Kevin to stop trying to be his picture perfect father and you most definitely thank the writers for showing the ugly parts of Jack so we never see the myth but rather the man. This Is Us is an epic tale of legacy and the things we instill in the people we love through our character and our choices.

Queen Sugar, a birth child of master filmmaker Ava Duvernay, is a one-stop shop for all things ancestral and familial. The Bordelons are a Black family living in St. Josephine’s Parish in Louisiana. Though not always specific, we know that it is close enough to New Orleans. I love that it isn’t New Orleans though. This Is Us does the same in that we know the family has roots in the suburbs of Pittsburgh but the present-day Pearson extremities reach to LA, NYC and Philadelphia. What Queen Sugar does wonderfully is root the viewer in the land itself. After researching, I discovered that the filming takes place at the St. Joseph Plantation in Vacherie and sometimes Felicity, Louisiana both of which are not far from New Orleans.

The land is crucial to the characters. Nova, the eldest daughter of Ernest and Trudy Bordelon, is gorgeous with beautiful flowing locs and is gifted as a writer and root worker. She works with herbs and her words to heal her community from the outside in. She is most connected to the spiritual properties of the land even if she doesn’t till it. Her sister, Charlotte or Charley, is the middle child and in the first episode you see that her marriage to a pro basketball player is perfectly imperfect. So much happens with this daughter who is the product of Ernest’s affair with a white woman, that you can’t help but be drawn in. She doesn’t look like her siblings and there is tension there but somehow tenderness resides beneath. The baby, the boy, Ralph Angel, has lived through some hardships but wants to do right by his father Ernest and his delicate son, Blue. You will LOVE Blue. He is gentle and plays with dolls and is inquisitive in all the best ways.

You root for these characters on a molecular level. Their choices have weight. One season can go by in the course of a few weeks or a few months. Everything is connected to the choices of the people who came before our protagonists and to the protagonists themselves. You may not see much of Ernest or Trudy Bordelon but that is the beauty of ancestry. It suggests that someone will live on whether in spirit or in action.

B is for Beauty

Speaking of beauty, Ava Duvernay and every single director and camera person needs flowers thrown at their feet for how they manage to capture the beauty of the land and of the shades of the varying characters with such honesty and warmth. Every texture feels alive. You can almost smell the wind in one frame or feel the dew of the morning grass in another. It’s truly stunning. Some scenes takes place in the crop fields with Ralph Angel if only to magnify the gorgeous humanity of the actor/character through his features alone. Colors pop everywhere, in the way Aunt Vi, the sister of Ernest and a survivor in so many heartbreaking ways, wears her array of wigs or dresses for someone younger than her in years but never in spirit. The actress, Tina Lifford, has a smile that will light up the room. It’s as if the camera crew talks with the cameras themselves and prepares them for each individual character’s uniqueness, their complexion, their way of smiling or moving.

This Is Us is not dissimilar in this regard folks. Have you ever noticed just how warm some of those scenes feel. Yes, the camera crew works literal magic when the storyline jumps backward in time 40 or 50 years. Or forward in time 20-30 years. We all know how extraordinary the makeup crew is on that show. Give them their flowers too. I forget how old the beast that is Mandy Moore actually is in real life whenever I watch that show. She is the sole character/actor who exists in almost every time frame presented. It’s a harrowing tasks and she does it with grace and yes, beauty. But think about it though, that warmth I was telling you about. Sure, everyone is wearing different colors that we wear today or wore 40 years ago. Yet, they manage to seize this fuzzy feeling inside you and it literally will not let you go. Even in the ugly emotional moments, re: Randall and Kevin’s verbal lashing that cut me through the TV screen, there was still a bright sun and so much beauty. It makes the ugly scenes even harder to bear at times.

Imagine having a conversation with your mother who has seen you at your worst. The mistakes of your past, those demons are coming to bite you in all the places you though you could mask with broken smiles and tight hugs. Imagine a life that you really want for yourself and the things you had to give up to get to where you are now. Though it isn’t perfect, it is yours. This is just one way in which Queen Sugar reels you. It hooks you from the inside out. Beauty, after all, exists in our cells not just in the things we can see or touch. There is a character on Queen Sugar named Darla. She is a lover of Ralph Angel and she has made some life-altering mistakes. Life-altering in that she spent too much time not telling the ones who needed to hear the truth just what she had done. The results are gut-ripping.

But still, there is beauty. She has a conversation with Ralph Angel one night at a pool. Seeing her in the water is freeing to the mind. You want that water to wash the sins of her past but those things she did holds on to her. What’s worst is that they are publicly disclosed later by the most unimaginable of characters. Lies and secrets are not Darla’s alone in this series. Every character has a closet brimming with ghosts they wished could stay dead. The ghosts will not die until the living addresses them head on. That in itself is beautiful. Like This Is Us, my beloved favorite Queen Sugar does not shy from the emotions and choices that produce the ugly in its characters, in its voyeuristic viewership either. That has to be the case.

For we have to go through the ugly, the tears, to get to the light and warmth of genuine beauty.

C is for Crying

Admit it: you wanted to press imaginary charges against the whole of the This Is Us franchise for emotional abuse. I have laughed not so jokingly with a few friends who are honorary Pearsons that that show has an uncanny ability to MAKE. YOU. CRY. I counted one season, I believe it was season 1 or 2, how many times I cried by the end of the episode. For me, it is always in the last few minutes when one character is at their most broken or frustrated or healed and that music starts playing. We all know that music. Jennifer Pyken, music supervisor magician, I’m looking at you. That music that is wildly simple, a few guitar strings, a violin. I can’t quite place it. It is always cued in the perfect moment. I wanted to sue flat-out during the Memphis episode at the end of season 1. Who didn’t?! Not even just that episode takes the cake for how often that show rips at your heart strings and doesn’t let go until you do just that—let go. Once you succumb to the thick emotional atmosphere and sob or finally let out that breath, the moment is even more poignant.

However, have you found yourself crying without any tears falling? There is this phenomenon that happens called the silent cry, the inward cry. Your soul is flooded with all of the emotions but not one tear has escaped from their ducts. THAT IS QUEEN SUGAR. You still may weep during many episodes, especially in the first few episodes of the first season. But as you follow the journey of people who want to honor the land they were raised on, of people fighting against disease, against corporation, against the worst parts of themselves, you may be out of breath or in shock or fuming or agitated beyond belief. This Is Us does this very well too but Queen Sugar will take you to that next level many times over.

The crying, thankfully, is not our burden to bear alone. I have never seen two shows that capture the art of crying so well. Of course, Sterling K. Brown’s Randall Pearson of Titan of Tears and we thank him for it. For a while, I thought he carried a miniature bucket of those tears or used Visine drops between takes. The director proved me wrong several times when we were allowed to be a witness to the tear master in real time during several scenes. What works well with tears, when handled well, is that it never feels one-note or campy or overkill. I don’t always want to be the one who cries but I find myself joining in that that communion of tears if the storyteller is right in the sweet spot of where the moment should be or deserves to be.

Queen Sugar actors handle the emotionally wrought moments with finesse and compassion. I have wept hardest when not one actor on screen had a wet eye in sight. Journeying through the deeply rooted pains of Aunt Vi with her or fighting for a better place at the table with Charley or wishing I could hold the ever-sensitive Blue in those dark moments will have me SPENT. In the best way of course. There is something cathartic about crying no matter which side of the line you stand on while it is happening. It reminds you that you are a complicated, layered, textured being with a wellspring of emotional responses that you have a right to release and share with an actor through the screen should that be what your viewing experience requires.

I hope this theorem has further interested my fellow honorary Pearsons to join the fray of us who have been adopted into the Bordelon family way down by the bayou. Queen Sugar is as communal as it is chaotic, as brilliant as it is brave and as aching as it is awe-inspiring. Do yourself a favor and let the lands take you in. Plus, we know that Randall Pearson has ties to New Orleans now. Sounds like the perfect equation to me. Seasons 1-4 are on Hulu. Season 5 is happening as you read this.