Greenleaf Recap: All 'Fired' Up
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Tuesday’s eventful Greenleaf — so many, in fact, that if you keep reading and haven’t watched yet, the episode won’t have any surprises left in store for you!
How sweet it is! In Tuesday’s episode of Greenleaf, Charity finally got so sick of Judee’s condescending nonsense that she responded to being fired by quitting. Not only that, but she also helped Grace set in motion a chain of events that could help the Greenleafs save Calvary from being bulldozed. Now if the family could just do something about the potential loss of their enviable estate… Oh, didn’t I mention? Yeah, that seems to be a very real possibility, too. Read on, and I’ll explain why.
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‘I DO NOT PET THE HEAD OF A DOG WHO EATS THE FOOD RIGHT OFF OF MY PLATE’
| As “The Fourth Day” began, Dr. Sawh — who I’ve realized speaks in the same absolutely emotionless tones as a bad TV-commercial doctor — recommended to Grace and Noah that AJ deal with his issues at a residential facility rather than return home. But, of course, it was up to AJ, who said that he wanted to live with his father. (Cue Grace’s cut-to-the-quick look in 3, 2… ) Back at the Greenleafs’ mansion, Bishop and Lady Mae took turns fussing at Jacob for going to St. Tara and putting the “vague little idea in her head that something is amiss.” Lady Mae then sought out Kerissa and ordered her out of the house for striking the match that started this particular fire. In response, Kerissa confessed that she didn’t want a divorce from Jacob. However, she’d had an affair, “and he won’t forgive me, after all the times I forgave him” — even when he’d shtupped Lady Mae’s beloved former cook Melisse in the laundy room!
Once Lady Mae recovered from the shock — not about her daughter-in-law’s fling but about Jacob having sex with her Melisse — Kerissa reiterated that she’d only used Mrs. Davis’ original will in hopes of getting her husband to call off the divorce. “If you can get him to forgive me, I’ll let it go,” she added. “If he wants to play rough, game on.” At Calvary HQ, Phil and Judee — OK, mostly Judee, let’s be real — shot down Charity’s suggestion that they include in their final Mass at the old church a PowerPoint presentation that highlighted some of its history. Having overheard Charity plead her case, Grace couldn’t be bothered to tell her how much sense she made. Gigi was laser-focused on the reason that she’d come to the office: Darius might have found a way to exorcise Harmony & Hope from Calvary before the bulldozers rolled. Get comfy now; what follows… I mean, it makes my head spin, and I watched the scene twice!
‘YOU BOUGHT US ALL TICKETS TO THE POORHOUSE’
| Per Gigi, Phil’s mother Gladys’ name — got all that? — was on every Eden Vale Lending document that Darius had found. She had to know whatever it was that Bob was/is working so hard to keep a secret. Since Mom was dead, Grace needed her sister’s help tracking down Phil’s father, Marcus. As luck would have it, Charity knew all about him. Long estranged from his son, Marcus, a former Black Panther, had changed his name to Yusef Shabazz and moved to New Orleans. “And the only reason I know that,” Charity added, “is he disapproves of jazz. Phil,” not his dad. So, despite Charity’s lingering excitement over being associate pastor, even under Phil and Judee, she was into Grace’s plan to save the church. Not that the plan was foolproof, mind you. When Gigi got Yusef on the phone, she racked up one strike (she used to be a pastor) after another (she asked about his ex) after another (she mentioned Phil), and wound up getting hung up on!
Back at the Greenleafs’ mansion, Aaron informed Bishop and Jacob that the house was theirs but, if things got litigious, “the case would be about perception and the public’s idea of justice,” not who was actually in the right. The lawyer’s suggestion: make peace. So, with that, Bishop set off to see Tara. “I talked Basie out of killing me with a bullet in the chamber,” he noted. “This can’t be much harder than that.” Oh, Lord! Pulling Jacob aside, Lady Mae threw Bible passages at him like they were stones. He couldn’t believe his ears — was she was siding with Kerissa? “As much as it pains me to do so,” she said, “yes.” So, for the love of God — or at least for the love of living in the lap of luxury — he was to march his ass upstairs that very second and forgive his wife… or else!
‘HOW I WISH YOU WERE THE MAN I THOUGHT YOU WERE’
| At New Revelations, Tara feigned astonishment over getting a visit from a second Greenleaf in as many days. “It’s enough to make a girl feel special.” Once she and Bishop sat down, he insisted that he hadn’t called Darryl the night of the fire, it had been Mac, who’d also committed “the ultimate sacrilege” by arranging to have it set. What’s more, Bishop went on, Mrs. Davis had originally meant to leave the house to Tara’s father. So what did Bishop want? “I want you to know that we’re in this together… looking back sadly to a place we can’t go back to,” he replied. “Is there any way that we can get past this, once and for all?” (Considering that she had a hush-hush phone call to make as soon as Jacob left, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say… hell, no!) At Calvary, Judee, having heard that Charity had tried to enlist Connie’s support for her nostalgic PowerPoint, canned her rival. When Charity laughed that Judee couldn’t do that, she reminded her nemesis that she was Bob’s daughter and soon to be First Lady. “The only person with more power than me here,” she concluded, “is God.”
Afterwards, Charity ran to Phil, asking — rhetorically, I presume — “Is there any crime against common decency that you won’t perpetrate” for Judee and Bob? When he tried to calm her by saying that Judee wouldn’t press the issue of her firing, Charity spat back that it wasn’t an issue, anyway, because she quit. What’s more, she went on, indicating her breasts and tush, and quoting Arrested Development’s Kitty with a flourish, “you’ll never see these again — or this.” So good luck with “this crazy Oreo church”! (Deborah Joy Winans was on fire in this scene!) Back at the mansion, Bishop found Gigi walking around and tried to soothe her about AJ’s imminent departure by reminding her, “You came back… Twenty years, and you came home. No one saw that coming.” Upstairs, Kerissa marveled at Jacob’s inability to apologize. “You really can’t do it. Just say this, and we can keep this family together,” she pleaded. “‘Kerissa, I’m so, so sorry that I left you so alone in this marriage that you felt the need to defile yourself with another man just to feel something. I forgive you.’” And nope, he just couldn’t do it. Sigh. “I’ll lay off the will because Mae knows that I’m right and will make sure you do the right thing because you don’t know how,” Kerissa concluded. “But we’re done.” Yeah, we… uh… we kinda got that, Kerissa.
‘FREE AT LAST… FREE AT LAST!’ | After Grace managed to say goodbye to AJ without giving in to her meddling-mother tendencies, he returned to his bedroom to give her a kiss on the head that felt like a promise. He’d be back… someday. At Phil and Judee’s, he remained shaken by the way that Charity had spoken on her way out of Calvary about the church not making it past Tuesday. “It was like something was in the works.” In any case, he had no interest whatsoever in being, ahem, tended to by Judee, who’d apparently never heard the words He’s Just Not That Into You, much less read the book. As the Greenleafs gathered for a barbecue feast, Bishop tried to reassure Lady Mae that Tara wasn’t going to be a problem — they’d prayed about their predicament, after all. Then, as if to doom his whole family, he declared, “This is the day I take back my joy!” After Jacob told his mother that he hadn’t been able to apologize to his wife, she warned him to look at Grace and AJ — and never let that happen to him and Winkie (who, frankly, oughta freeze out his father for that nickname alone!).
When Charity arrived with news of her unemployment, her mother was so delighted that she said, “That gets my unqualified amen!” (To be clear, she meant it in a nice way. For a change. She wasn’t happy that Charity had lost her job, just that she’d gotten out from under Phil and Judee’s thumbs.) After Bishop announced that, rather than go to the last service at Calvary, they’d hold church at the house in the morning — and every Sunday thereafter — with Lady Mae at the pulpit, the phone rang. Was it his joy calling? Yeah, no, it was Tara. “She wants to talk again — as soon as possible,” he told his family. “About the house.” Ha — so was anyone besides Bishop surprised by that turn of events? Do you think that Grace will be able to save Calvary? Hit the comments with your reactions to “The Fourth Day.”
Launch Gallery: <i>Greenleaf</i> Season 5 Photos
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