SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Power”

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POWER:  Sunday 9PM on Starz

American Gods and Outlander may lean more to the Prestige end of Peak TV, but Starz’s only true original hit is the gangster soap POWER, which brought the network to new ratings heights when it moved to Sundays last season.  Tonight’s Season 4 premiere, written by series creator Courtney A. Kemp, followed smoothly from the Season 3 finale, and only series fatigue would be likely to keep the ratings from remaining high.

Season 3 ended with a pair of Big Cliffhangers, led by antihero nightclub owner/drug trafficker James “Ghost” St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick) being arrested–by his former lover, federal prosecutor Angela Valdez (Lela Loren), no less–for the murder of an FBI agent who was Angela’s other former lover, which happens to be a killing that Ghost didn’t commit.  (The real killer is Angela’s boss.)  The premiere followed Ghost into jail and through a bail hearing that went badly, and this storyline will presumably be a main thread of the season.  Kemp disposed of the other cliffhanger quickly, but unfortunately not with the surrounding plotline, as the unkillable Kanan (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, also a Power Executive Producer) decided it was the wrong time to hold Ghost’s son Tariq (Michael Rainey Jr) for ransom–Tariq didn’t even know he’d been kidnapped–but continued to tighten his manipulative pincers around the boy in his quest for revenge against Ghost.  This story is unfortunate, because in order for it to work it requires many other characters to be idiots, chief among them Tariq and Ghost’s aide Dre (Rotini Akinosho), who insist on trusting the incredibly untrustworthy Kanan.  But clearly 50 Cent and his character aren’t going anywhere.

To keep things interesting, Power has added some regulars to Season 4, notably an obnoxious federal prosecutor named John Mok (Sung Kang, from the Fast & Furious franchise) to handle Ghost’s case (and who knows, possibly provide a romantic rebound for Angela, since the characters hate each other on sight), and William Sadler as a fellow convict whose importance is as yet unclear.  Ghost’s legal problems presumably mean an enhanced role for his lawyer Proctor (Jerry Ferrara) as well.  The meat of the series, however, will probably continue to rely on the four leads, Hardwick, Loren, Naturi Naughton as Ghost’s on-again, off-again wife Tasha (currently on), and Joseph Sikora as his oldest friend and business partner Tommy.  The quartet’s performances don’t feature into Emmy considerations, but they bring weight to their soapy roles, particularly Naughton and Sikora, and it will be interesting to see them play out at least part of the season without much interaction with Hardwick.

Even as Empire, with its similarly overlapping worlds of crime and seemingly legitimate nightlife, has rapidly shrunk in the ratings, Power has so far held strong, perhaps in part because of its refusal to consciously give in to camp; as silly as its stories may be, the scripts and performers take them seriously.  With a pick-up for next season already in hand, the series seems likely to remain the most popular face of Starz for some time to come.