I would like to start by saying to you all that although Shonda Rhimes is producing this, she did not write it. Just like 50 cent didn’t write or create “Power.” Paul William Davies wrote and created this series, and so I will be speaking directly to him and not Shonda. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about what was great.
Uzo Aduba is a gem, and we’ve known that for years. This is how great she is in this series. Her character, the world renowned detective Cordelia Cupp, made me care about her bird watching. There is a scene where she is in a jungle somewhere looking for her nemesis bird, and she is so compelled to solve the Wynter case that she leaves the jungle before she can find her bird. I was in my bed watching this and aloud said, “Damn, he was right there!” That’s how good she is in this series. Her partner in crime, Larry Dokes, played by Isiah Whitlock Jr., was great. I’m also going to watch anything that Whitlock has been in since I met him watching “The Wire.” IYKYK.
A.B. Wynter was originally supposed to be played by Andre Braugher, but since his passing, was recast as the illustrious Giancarlo Esposito. I was mad in episode 1 when he died but soon realized they’d go back to when he was alive, and I’d get to see him. Once I realized that, I was no longer angry.
This series is stupid funny, and that’s a good thing! I laughed constantly at a lot in this series. It’s a good “talk-to-the-screen” movie, but that could also be because I’m black. Anywho, the entire cast was great. No complaints there. I loved learning everyone’s personality and seeing their antics. Highlight of the series– the cast.
Here’s where you lost me, Davies– the last two episodes. I was flying high, making my case (because I’m a detective too now that I’m watching the series), and gathering clues for motive and whatnot. Episode 7 just took me out of what the gays would say is the fantasy. The series seemed to go in a different direction just to show me this love story that came out of nowhere. It was so sweet, the love story, but I didn’t care to learn about it for an entire hour. That love story could have been explained to me in half that episode. You introduced me to a daughter I never saw again. Mentioned an ex-husband we no longer cared about. She didn’t even get poison for her ex-husband, which would have been something that could have been in episode 8.
THEN, you gave me the end of the story. Finally, we would be going down the last of this rollercoaster, and it just didn’t go well for me, and here is why. Everything Tripp did was unnecessary. Adding him to this murder, that also didn’t make a lick of sense and we will get to that, felt like Davies started writing at the beginning of this story and forgot some details and cleaned them all up by Tripp monologuing about all he did after Wynter’s murder.
Speaking of the murder and the murderer, why would so many people see a dead body and decide that it would be a good idea to move murder weapons, move the dead body, or take unnecessary items from the scene? It’s not normal in this universe to call the police or alert anyone of a dead body in the game room? Also, going back to Tripp, if you’re in a room where no one really goes and no one knows you’re in there, why not just leave the room? Why move the body, slit the man’s wrists, and paint over the blood in a room that NO ONE GOES IN?
Because of these shenanigans, I feel like Davies spent a lot of time fleshing out a lot of other random things and forgot to give us more clues to the murderer. Also, script wise, Cupp should have started with the motive and not the speech about her not loving the White House. In this series no one loves the White House more than Wynter and his staff, so that wasn’t a revelation we needed. Like I said before, I wanted more clues to lead my to the murderer, so when I got to the end of the series, the conclusion was shocking but it was valid. This conclusion was kind of out of the way and wasn’t valid, in my opinion.
I could be wrong (I don’t think I am), so tell me what you all think! Did you watch? Did you guess “whodunit?”
