Kendrick Lamar’s genius acting debut on ‘Power’ saved an otherwise messy, confusing season

Spoiler alert!

Season 5 of Power has been all over the place, but writer Dustin Seibert thinks the acting debut of Kendrick Lamar just saved the day.

Jul 30, 2018

 

Watching Power is one of my only guilty pleasures…up there with heating up buffalo wing leftovers at 11 p.m. But season 5 is really pushing it with full-blown melodrama and a bunch of whacked-out storyline threads that are difficult to keep up with, let alone give a shit about.

The show is stretching credulity mad thin: No one should trust Tony Teresi for just rolling out of a life sentence. The leaders of the Jimenez cartel – one of the world’s largest drug organizations – would never simply be set free in the interest of any “greater good.” Angela and Ghost starting back with each other indicates that neither has learned anything or gives a shit about their own self-preservation. Oh, and Ghost and Tommy’s uneasy truce with Kanan disregards damn near everything that happened on the show to date.

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Plus, while some of the acting has always been questionable (I’m talking to you, LaLa), it’s becoming increasingly obvious why none of these fools will be winning Emmys anytime soon. Naturi Naughton’s Tasha is acting more like she’s grieving the loss of her car keys than her teenaged daughter to gun violence. I’m also not feeling Larenz Tate (who must be regularly sucking the blood from virgin thighs) as the shady Councilman Tate; the role doesn’t fit him well. I did enjoy the  “You know you done f—-d up, right?” line though—a nod to a memorable scene from Menace II Society, one of Tate’s first films.

The Power of King Kendrick

However, Kendrick Lamar’s acting debut in episode 5, “Happy Birthday” might be the brightest spot in a season that’s almost half over. He apparently landed the role of Laces after flat-out asking his boy 50 if he could be on the show.  My expectations were low when I heard about Lamar joining the show, considering I don’t expect much from most rappers turned actors (see, well, 50 Cent as Kanan).

But I was transfixed by his arrival as Laces the pontificating vagrant, in no small part because it was scored to Mobb Deep’s “Survival of the Fittest” and Joey Bada$$’s “Christ Conscious.” Laces apparently enjoys waxing about the systemic ills of black and brown people, only to benefit from their murder at the hands of Kanan.

Sure, the murders are unrealistic (who spends that much time entertaining a potential crackhead? Bubbles he ain’t), but Lamar makes Laces work because he’s humorously twitchy and evokes the nutty street people that anyone who lives in a major U.S. city has encountered. Laces also brings emotional heft to Kanan by asking, “Who the f—- are you?” as Kanan trains the gun on him to kill a loose end. He correctly analyzes Kanan and his inability to maintain real human connections before dropping back into silliness by suggesting a bullshit remedy.

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And the Emmy Goes To…

Lamar’s impact as Laces makes sense when you consider his musical versatility – his voice and concept albums set him apart from his peers; Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City is essentially a movie on wax. If this is just the beginning for Lamar on his road to becoming a Tupac Shakur-caliber rapper-actor and beyond, the history books will thank 50 Cent for giving him his “big break.” Which is kind of nauseating.

Season 5 of Power is like that Sons of Anarchy season where they went to Ireland. Or The Wire’s final season. Or anything that’s happened on The Walking Dead in the past two seasons. I’m invested, but the show could really use more fun and unexpected moments like this.

________________________________________________________________________Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. Miraculously, people have paid him to be aggressively light-skinned via a computer keyboard for nearly two decades. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at his own site, wafflecolored.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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