The season 2 premiere of Being Mary Jane wasn’t playing with none of y’all last night. BET’s opener picked up right where season 1 left off. As soon as Mary Jane got home from returning David’s baby-batter, she was in one of those snatching off your bra, rolling out them jeans kind of moods. And just when you think she’s okay, she goes and tosses her fish bowl (fish included) through the plate glass window of her own house!
Kudos to Mara Brock and Salim Akil for their ability to write and create authentic dialogue between friends, so real you feel like you’re sitting with Mary Jane and her friends sippin’ on something warm and ready to pop off with them. As a dinner party/book discussions drones on and Mary Jane keeps sippin’ that truth serum, it’s got her dropping bombs left and right on her friends and family.
First she tears into her younger brother Paul, giving him the business about slangin’ that sticky icky and still living with his parents. But Paul is having none of it—he bangs on her right away with the obligatory “Now I see why he’s with that White chick” comment, speaking about David. Yes, he goes there.
But instead of a retreat, our girl MJ goes on the attack. After her friend Valerie (who she met through David, no less) tries to lighten the mood, she and her husband Chris get in Mary Jane’s crosshairs, revealing that Chris has Val on lock down! Val then called Mary Jane “so sad.” Unfortunately, she wasn’t lying. Mary Jane spends the rest of the night prayin’ to that porcelain God before falling off into a drunken stooper, then waking up and tossing what’s left of her cookies again. But that’s not all… she also discovers a little yellow puddle of her own pee! (Eww.)
Meanwhile, cousin Niecy is having her own troubles. She’s catching all kinds of hell from her Grandma Helen back at chez Patterson. Helen isn’t about that “grown mofos living all up in her house with babies” life, and she’s letting it be known loud and clear. The pressure of her grandma is too much for Niecy. She phones Mary Jane to crash with her for a while.
Back at Mary Jane’s SNC gig, she’s predictably unfocused. All she can think about is why David chose this “White chick” over her. And she’s got it bad. Her trolling game is strong. She’s all up David’s profiles, his woman’s profiles, pictures, looking for any hint of who his new bae could possibly be. She decides to make nice with Val in hopes of digging for a little more dirt.
Mary Jane admits her jealousy of Val and Chris’s Instagram-picturesque life. Val tries to tell Mary Jane it ain’t all peachy and creamy all the time, but she waves off her honesty. MJ wants to get back to David. That’s when Val realizes that Mary Jane will say anything to try and get the goods on David and shuts her down completely. When Val suggests Mary Jane take a vacation because she’s stressed, Mary Jane, visibly pissed (no pun intended), hurls another insult at po’ little Val and chucks up the deuces.
Later that night at home, Mary Jane gets a call from her producer and friend Kara with one of her zany ideas to grab some show ratings: freezing her eggs on air. Without hesitation, Mary Jane is all in. Baby fever continues when she spends some quality time with her new baby niece, bouncing her so much that her booty bounces out a butt dial to David! They still don’t talk until she finally can’t take it anymore and goes back to Val and her husband Chris’ house—unannounced and looking all kinds of crazy—to try again to get some tea on David and his new woman. Chris is done. He dials up David right then and there and hands Mary Jane the phone. David reveals his new boo is carrying his baby. An embarrassed Mary Jane retreats.
Finally, we find Mary Jane not wanting to go home and deal with her new houseguests and their drama (because clearly she has enough of her own). She checks into a beautiful hotel room, takes a hot steamy shower, has a tasty meal and falls asleep… only to be awakened by David starring down at her with a “hey.” We learn that she called him and he came. (That’s all she had to do!?)
The root of MJ’s pain lies in the fact that she terminated a pregnancy by him in the past—and now he’s having a baby with someone else. We learn that David is probably with the woman simply because she’s knocked up. That’s further confirmed when David and Mary Jane get to kissing; but Mary Jane can’t go through with it, and shuts David down just when things were getting good. The weight of him having “their baby” with someone else is too heavy for her. She wakes the next morning. David’s gone once again, with a note that simply says, “I’m sorry.”
Crystal Shaw King is a seasoned TV, radio and online entertainment writer. She’s also a contributing editor for a social justice foundation in L.A. Follow her on Twitter @crystalamberbam.
