POWER: Saturday 9PM on Starz
POWER, like Empire, revolves around an African-American drug dealer who seeks respectability in the music business., but who will still commit murder when necessary to protect his interests. Although the shows are quite different in tone–Power is presented more as a crime drama than a family soap, with drugs in its protagonist’s present rather than his past; and despite the participation of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as Executive Producer and co-star, music isn’t one of its featured components–it’s hard not to look at the moderately successful Power now without the prism of its phenom cousin.
Power, of the two, takes itself far more seriously, and it has a much slower pace, taking episodes longer to parse out plot points than the rocket-speed Empire would. Tonight’s Season 2 premiere, written by series creator Courtney Kemp Agboh and directed by Simon Cellan Jones, finally detonated half of Season 1’s biggest (and most idiotic) story device: that James “Ghost” St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick), locked in adulterous romance with old flame Angela Valdes (Lela Loren), didn’t realize that she was an Assistant US Attorney on the task force to track the mysterious “Ghost” down–and that she had no idea her love was Ghost himself. At the end of the Season 1 finale, Ghost’s closest friend and partner Tommy Egan (Joseph Sikora) finally learned Angela’s identity, and it still took almost the entirety of the season premiere before he told Ghost. (Angela, at the episode’s end, was still in the dark.)
That was the main event of the premiere, which otherwise proceeded in its measured, deliberate and somewhat dull way. Last season’s finale also revealed that the person who’d been methodically killing off Ghost’s associates was the incarcerated Kanan (played by 50 Cent himself), and saw him released from jail; the premiere had him making the rounds with his son (and Ghost’s driver) Shawn (Sinqua Walls), but not actually doing very much. The attempt by Kanan’s hired assassin to kill Ghost at his club Truth that resulted in the shooting of Tommy’s girlfriend Holly (Lucy Walters) closed down the club temporarily, and when it opened up again, Ghost discovered that the lease was now owned by club-owner competitor Simon Stern (Victor Garber). In typical Power fashion, Tommy also didn’t learn about Holly being shot until nearly the end of the hour. Similarly, although it was meant to be a dramatic turn of events that Angela was taken off the task force and reassigned after her informant was murdered (by Tommy), all it meant was that she spent the episode verrrry slooooowly coming up with a new lead on the case.
Power is addicted to the slow burn, and that’s a bad mix with its melodramatic plotting, because it gives viewers plenty of time to wonder why they’re one (or two or three) steps ahead of the characters. Ghost himself, although played with much smoldering intensity by Hardwick, is a far less engaging character than Terrence Howard’s Lucious Lyon on Empire (at least Lucious truly seems to love music), and the parallel character to that show’s Cookie, Ghost’s wife Tasha (Naturi Naughton), is rarely allowed to be more than a room-temperature Lady Macbeth.
The enjoyable characters on Power tend to be at its periphery: Garber’s merrily sneaky club mogul, Angela’s now-deceased informant with his weakness for teen girls, or Tommy’s coke-sniffing mom, whom we met tonight. The leads lack idiosyncracy, and they’re treated like they’re imparting a text far more important than any Power can provide Despite these flaws, the show has done well for Starz, building an audience throughout its run and peaking at the Season 1 finale, so there’s every reason to think it will be around for some time. Perhaps along the way, it will manage to add some of the energy or imagination it so far tends to lack.
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