‘Power’ season 3, episode 3 review: Kanan’s fate, Tariq’s move, and a Tommy – Ghost showdown
You knew that we were in for a great episode of “Power” Sunday night on Starz courtesy of a stellar opening, one where we transferred over to Washington DC and got a chance to meet Anika Noni Rose’s character, a cop nicknamed Jukebox with a history of not exactly following the straight and narrow. Her walking into the drugstore and openly killing both the clerk and his clueless robber, one she was previously in league with, was an immediate testament to the sort of character she is.
Adding to this a connection to Kanan? Well, that was mostly icing on the cake.
It could not be much of a surprise to anyone to learn that Kanan is still alive somewhere out there, given that he is the sort of snakey character who is extremely hard to kill. He does have plenty of marks that indicate what happened to him, though, and he’s certainly struggling with being clean in the healing process.
The Jukebox character proved to be all the more fantastic through her further interactions with Kanan, and by the end of the hour he certainly was recuperated somewhat. He was also coming clean regarding the death of Shawn, and how he felt it was something that he had to do because Ghost had him more than he did. We imagine that there’ll be hell to pay when he and Ghost meet again, but we’ve got another showdown to get to first.
Specifically, we’re talking here about Ghost and Tommy, and we’ll get to that after further setting the stage. After bringing the gun he found in Angela’s bag to school, Tariq found himself in a spot where he could be expelled from school. As a result of this Tasha and Jamie took all of his stuff away, including his phone. Jamie was then able to use said phone to coax out a meeting with Tommy, knowing he was the sort of guy who wouldn’t turn Tariq away. There, the showdown happened, and while there were few words spoken, we get the sense that Ghost got a good sense as to precisely what Lobos wants, and that his longtime brother-in-crime may not be on his side anymore.
Yet, Tommy still didn’t pull the trigger, and we gotta think that Holly (who spent most of the episode devising a new hair venture with Tasha, which certainly caused tension elsewhere) is going to be too pleased about that. There’s another problem here in that she’s pregnant, but she hasn’t chosen to tell him about it yet.
Jamie and Tasha also had it out this episode over Tariq getting the gun, as it showed that maybe they weren’t quite ready to be a full family just yet. For one, Jamie wasn’t being honest about his attempts to see Tommy, which were brought to her attention by Greg of all people. Meanwhile, she didn’t have the gun in the safe when the kids showed up. Granted, she probably didn’t imagine in a million years Tariq would go through her bag looking for stuff, and Jamie had made a deal with Tasha to not leave the kids alone with Angela in the first place. The vast majority of the blame has to go on Jamie for this.
In between the showdown at the end, the fantastic beginning, and everything in between, it’s only fair that this episode was called “I Got This on Lock.” While it did not necessarily have a huge emotional pinnacle, it proved to be great entertainment and the strongest overall story of the season to date. Grade: A-.
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