OPINION: Episode 6 which was the series finale for Tracy Oliver’s acclaimed show, tied a bow on our journey with a group of women for whom Harlem was their home and friendship their experience.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
This episode recap also (of course) contains spoilers.
Aight, so boom — I straight up didn’t realize that this season of “Harlem” was only going to be six episodes. Six episodes is not NEARLY enough episodes to bring a multi-season show with four women living four separate lives together, especially when the seasons OPENS up with a pregnancy to a proper close, but “Harlem” did as good of a job as you can. According to the show’s creator, Tracy Oliver, I am not alone in feeling that way.
It turns out the writers room was almost done with the third season script when they learned it was to be their last and well, they scrapped what they’d written and decided to give viewers a gift not often received in television: an actual conclusion.
“I was given a heads up midway through the writers room that this was 90 percent likely going to be the last season. When I learned that, I literally gutted the entire season that we had planned out and started from scratch,” Oliver shared with “The Hollywood Reporter.”
That makes SO much sense to me. Not that I didn’t enjoy the season but it felt rushed — there was a whole five-month time jump between episodes three and four — and one of the relationships that had the most meat on the bone was excluded entirely: it wasn’t until the fifth episode that we got any glimpse of what the dynamic between Ian and his live-in girlfriend, Portia, was in relation to Camille and the soon-to-be-born little girl who would later be fittingly named Harlem.
We never saw the conversation Ian had with Portia about Camille’s pregnancy, and the range of emotions that most certainly permeated he and Portia’s household as Ian showed up, in full, for Camille. That would have been very telling, ESPECIALLY because when Ian found out that Camille was going to keep the baby, he was literally at an OB/GYN’s office, family planning…WITH PORTIA. Like I said, there was so much meat on that bone and so much left on the table.
That’s not a criticism of the writers or of the show, it’s just an acknowledgment that I understand choices had to be made in order to tell a whole season in six episodes AND give viewers an actual ending. There’s nothing worse than a show being cancelled on a cliff hanger where neither fans nor the characters get any closure, something that even Tracy Oliver herself has been annoyed by. “I don’t want to be one of those shows where — because I’ve been that viewer — you’re like, ‘you’re just going to end like that?’” Nothing better than a creative who gets the fans’ side of an experience.
With that said, (and as usual, getting back to Camille and Ian), Quinn (who as it turns out was the friend who was supposed to be pregnant in this season) had one of the funniest meetings I’ve ever seen with Seth’s other boo, Sabrina. Sabrina is straight, no chaser and fully on-board with the mutual-boo situation. Since she’s all in, she’s upfront with all of the pertinent health information that would be required to maintain the relationship. Quinn, though, realized right then and there, in that bar somewhere in Manhattan, that the shared-man life ain’t what she wanted. She does, though run into a woman at Camille’s baby shower who had a kid via sperm donor and decided to look into that, where she ALSO runs back into an ex-boo. I assume it will all work out in the end because at the end of the day, the day is going to end.
Angie kills it at the premier of “Girls Trip: The Musical,” so much so that Malcolm Lee, who was in attendance, essentially offers her a role in a movie. This, of course, ruffles the feathers of her fiancé Michael (whose feathers have stayed ruffled this season) because the film shoot dates would cause them to delay their wedding. The inevitable became clear right there; Michael offers an ultimatum and Angie calls off their wedding in favor of her creative future and a journey she’s longed for as long as we’ve known her. Good for Angie. I’m not saying they didn’t belong together, but I also want to see where Angie’s creative pursuits finally take her and I’m sure Mike does too…from a distance.
Tye, who STUPIDLY bailed on Eva and her mother at dinner by SHOWING UP to the restaurant they were to meet at and then leaving, has been left on read so hard by Eva that she pops up on her work just to see what the in-person cold shoulder feels like. One word? Chilly. She then pulls up on Eva’s mother (played by Robin Givens) and convinces her she made a mistake but that she and Eva are perfect together. Eva’s mother then convinces her to hear Tye’s pleas, which go well as Tye kinda sorta proposes to Eva, which is the most natural thing to ever do the day after you flaked out HARD on a woman you claim you love.
Tye really is a huge red flag; she said as much, but like she really is. It was cute for their little ring exchange (with Tye’s grandmother’s ring) but um…like YESTERDAY she pulled the ultimate wack move. Tye is every person who doesn’t know how to apologize so they go TOO far. Shouts out for Tye for following the F-boy playbook to a tee. I love Tye; she’s wild.
Now, to the relationship that served as our guiding light through this season, Ian and Camille. It’s the day after their baby shower in Harlem and they find out that the baby is basically about to pop out on them. Camille and Portia run into each other and we realize they have RARELY if ever spoken. We get more confirmation of that when we finally see some of the inner workings of Ian and Portia’s relationship.
They have a talk where Portia points out that if it isn’t one thing, it’s about to be another. She’s right; as a parent, the parenting NEVER stops. It’s impossible for him to be this present for the baby and Camille AND be a good partner to Portia. She accuses him of still being in love with Camille and he can’t deny it.
Whole time, I was just wondering if this was the FIRST time they had this convo? Like, he bought a freaking MINI VAN. For ONE KID. Portia didn’t have anything to say about that? Has she just been going with the motions the WHOLE TIME?
That’s my only real gripe with this season, we didn’t see any of their relationship, the arguments, the promises he couldn’t keep, her trying her best to be the good girlfriend who tries to make an unworkable situation work. We needed one episode of just Ian and Portia and the evolution of their relationship through all of this.
Anywho, Portia, rightly and smartly, moves out and after Camille’s water humorously breaks in television fashion after Angie’s performance (I want to know for whom water breaking dramatically in that fashion has ever happened), Camille and Ian welcome Harlem into the world and when they get home, Ian asks Camille to move in with him because he loves her and has never stopped loving her. Samesies for her, bro.
Oh, her book? BOOMING SUCCESS. Turns out that Camille is a monster of a writer who is taking her talents to the world that needs to see them. We get to the end with the four women, walking down a Harlem street, still homies, still friends, still there for one another as they all move into the next phases of their lives, but still together. And most importantly…
…still in Harlem.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||[],g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“has-featured-video”,”true”)})}();
More must-reads:
