First Wives Club Premiere: Grade It

Kimberly Roots

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Ari, Bree and Hazel are three college besties who’ve lost touch over the years. But as BET+’s First Wives Club gets underway, all it takes is a little marital infidelity for the ladies to re-learn a time-worn lesson: Sisters before misters.

The streaming service’s take on the popular 1996 film premiered Thursday, and we want to know what you thought of it. But first, a quick recap:

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Ari (played by Ryan Michelle Bathe, This Is Us) is a lawyer whose “attorney days are behind me,” she tells a potential donor at an event for her husband’s campaign. Ari’s husband, David, is running for senate, and Ari is managing his campaign. But we get the sense that although Ari is very good at it, her new gig is less than fulfilling… a condition that also applies to her sex life.

Bree (Michelle Buteau, Enlisted) is an orthopedic surgeon and mother of two who is separated from husband Gary (RonReaco Lee, Survivor’s Remorse) because he cheated on her. She’s also hilarious.

Hazel (Jill Scott, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) is a successful recording artist about to drop her next album. But her controlling husband Derek (Malik Yoba, New York Undercover), who also happens to be an executive at her record label, bumps Hazel’s upcoming release in favor of a hot new female artist named Stella. And when a furious Hazel tracks Derek to the recording studio late one night, she finds him there with Stella… recording Hazel’s upcoming single.

Hazel starts throwing things. Derek admits he’s cheating on her with Stella. She’s devastated, but he seems relieved. “It’s time for us both to move on,” he says, adding that the label wants to shelve her new album indefinitely. “Hazel, you ain’t been hot in a long time,” he adds nastily.

Derek then leaks security footage from the studio to the press, and soon the world — including Ari and Bree — are watching Hazel hurl things at Derek and Stella. Even though the three girlfriends haven’t talked to each other in a while, Ari and Bree make a beeline to Hazel’s posh Manhattan apartment building. But Hazel isn’t answering her phone, and a crowd of paparazzi outside the entrance make it impossible to get inside. So the women do what any sane person would: They hijack a window washer’s rigging and hoist themselves up to the top floor so they can bang on their friend’s windows and demand to be let in.

Once they gain entrance, the friends all compare notes on their lives — though Ari maintains that hers is great — and decide, as Bree puts it, “We’ve gotta start living our lives for ourselves.” So they rally, get glammed up and go dancing. The night is a success in a few ways. First, a hot bartender named Jesus hits on Bree, and once she gets over her incredibly awkward response to him, she winds up going home with him and he rocks her world. Second, Ari devises a plan for Hazel’s producer to leak her recording of the single so it’ll be out ahead of Stella’s — and when it starts getting radio play the next morning, it’s a hit.

Except, of course, with Derek: When he realizes what his wife has done, he calls her and vows to turn her life upside down “just because I can.” She tells him to “lawyer all the way up,” but the bravado is short-lived: When Hazel returns home, Derek has barred her from the penthouse and the building. She’s essentially homeless.

Now it’s your turn. Grade the premiere via the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!

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