Hello World,
I thought a major bomb was dropped in last week, but this week’s bomb, which I will reveal later in this Greenleaf Recap Season 3 Episode 3, tops last week’s bomb Greenleafers! Yes, I know Lady Mae announced that she was divorcing Bishop last week, but we saw that coming. I did not guess that what was revealed tonight would be revealed tonight and so cavalierly too. But we will get to that later!
Tonight’s episode was entitled “Chain of Command,” and in keeping with that theme, I will proceed…
Ball & Chain…
So many of OWN’s “Greenleaf” episodes start with Lady Mae sitting at a table somewhere in her fabulous home and tonight was no exception. With her this time, however, are her daughter Grace and her granddaughter Sofia. They casually discuss weather. Sofia comments on the rain the night before and Grace says, “Everything was washed clean.” Lady Mae invites her granddaughter, not Grace, to have supper with her. Nothing too out of the ordinary happens until Marisol brings a manila envelope to her. Beware of being brought manila envelopes. I would endeavor to say that very few of them contain happy things. What’s in Lady’s manila envelope are papers asking for the dissolution of marriage between Lady Mae and the Bishop. Yes, Lady Mae threatened divorce last week and Bishop acted on that intention this week! Seeing the shock on Lady Mae’s face, Grace asks her what is in the envelope. Very rarely does Lady Mae having anything nice at all to say to her daughter. And she is true to form tonight! “After the way you spoke to me last night, if you weren’t family, you wouldn’t even be living in this house.” And then she storms off. I can’t say I blame her. She got grimy with her mother last night and then wants to get all in her grill the next day?! Chile please. With her grudge against Grace intact, she leaves the premises, racing off in her car.
Back at Calvary, instead of Bishop looking like he’s scored a victory in serving his ball & chain before she can serve him, he seems nervous. To make matters worse, his baby daughter Charity is waiting for him in his office. He’s got no patience this morning and refuses to coddle her per usual. Now that Charity has quit the tour, she announces to her father that she wants to preach! “If I’m goong to stay here, I want to move forward with my career.” She tells her father that she even has a sermon idea and everything…something about souls are songs and God being our heavenly choir director. Say what Charity?! She needs to stick making melodies because her sermons won’t be saving souls! After Bishop jokes about wanting to be a baker before he became a bishop, he tells her, “The call to preach is not anyone’s plan B.” That will preach Bishop! The chain of command will not be changing anytime soon.
Speaking of the chain of command, the daughter who Bishop believes is called to minister, Grace, meets with a donor to her legal fund for victims of domestic violence. At Rochelle’s urging, the donor gives a sizable amount to Grace in her office. Shortly afterward, Bishop asks Gigi has she seen her mother. After she tells him no, he tells what he has done!
Also on the chain of command, but at another location, is Jacob. Tasha slithers into Jacob’s office to tell him that she has noticed many torn envelopes in the offering. She thinks one of the ushers from the first service is stealing from the offering. Jacob tells her that he will be meeting with the ushers to see if he can sniff out the thief.
Chain of Fools…
Lady Mae is a lot of things, but a fool aine one of them. With the quickness, she consults with a lawyer regarding Bishop’s request for the dissolution of their marriage. This is one of my favorite scenes in tonight’s episode! Lady Mae tells the female lawyer that Bishop, a “shepherd of 4,000 souls,” has cheated on her with her sister and now he is taking up with a woman half of his age in addition to other scandalous secrets! The lawyer says, “Hypocrisy! Abuse of power! Sounds juicy!” The lawyer seems so delighted by the prospect of attacking this soon-to-be-sullied shepherd that Lady Mae is a bit hesitant to proceed. “Are you a Christian?” she asks. She replies, “No, and you’ ll be thanking me later that I’m not.” LOL. With a $10,000 retainer, she can start right now. However, Lady Mae is not the first soon-to-be former First Lady that she has represented in a divorce. She tells her that her expectations must be realistic. Lady Mae says, “I just want what I deserve.” The lawyer lets her know that what she deserves has nothing to do with what she will get. “Once your bishop is done with you, it’s Cinderella time. At midnight, the party is over.”
Well those words were enough to send Lady Mae to the club. At first, I thought it was Mavis’ club, but Mavis wasn’t anywhere in sight. When will Mavis return by the way? At the club, Lady Mae orders a Brandy Alexander. I’m not into alcohol like that but it sounds like a classy drink, so classy and rare that Lady Mae has to instruct the bartender how to mix it. As she sips, her face is aglow in the blue lights of the establishment.
Lady Mae aine no fool but her baby girl Charity can really be foolish. After Jabari hangs up on her last week, that woman calls him up and tells him she misses him. Within a minute or two, Jabari hangs up on her again and continues his conversation with the woman sitting next to him.
Back at Calvary, Grace has to speak with a reporter who was originally scheduled to speak with the missing Lady Mae. Lisa Noland from The Memphis Monarch is working on an article about the rise of women’s leadership in church. Since Grace used to be a journalist (Has she said that before? I don’t remember.) she takes pity on the journalist and decides to be her source. You know that once Lady Mae finds out, she will be hot!
Bishop still hasn’t heard anything from Lady Mae and now he is downright worried. He heads over to Triumph to see if Jacob has seen his mother. When Jacob tells him that he hasn’t seen Lady Mae either, he tells his son that he has filed for divorce from his mother. Bishop tells Jacob this sweet story about when he asked Lady Mae to marry him the first time. She said, “No” because she had “other plans.” To put a fire under her, he told her that he packed up his storefront church to follow her. I guess he wanted to show her that he was serious. Well, that was enough for Lady Mae to accept his proposal after all. “She’s the same woman as she was back then.” Apparently, Bishop thought that filing for divorce would shock Lady Mae into seeing how wrong she was to threaten divorce and back away from that proposition. It looks like his gamble backfired and he will be the one looking foolish in the end.
Unchained Melody…
Charity continues to be a lost soul as this episode unfolds. When she goes to pick up Nate from Kevin’s new apartment, instead of finding Kevin there, Aaron is there. Aaron is playing with Nate and has even bought him a new toy. She asks,”Are you moving in now?” As a matter of fact, since Aaron did receive a job offer, he will be moving into Kevin’s home. In last week’s episode, the prospect of Kevin and Aaron living together was upsetting to her, but in this week’s episode, she was more upset that Aaron has a new job on the horizon. “I’ve got my own things going on too,” she tells Aaron before taking her son and driving to Nashville!
As she enjoys the music, Lady Mae is still drinking at the club. In fact, Vernon the bartender thinks the drinks must be so good, he is considering adding the Brandy Alexander to the menu! Lady Mae even invites two other women to come to her table, telling them she will pay for their drinks! She asks them if they have heard about a famous preaching woman on TV named Maxine Patterson. When they tell her they have heard of her, Lady Mae tells them that Maxine was her college buddy and they once were going to Howard Divinity School together. At that very same bar, Lady Mae told her friend Maxine that she wouldn’t be going to divinity school with her after all. She was in love and had to stay in town. But now she has regrets. “You give your whole life to a man and in one fell swoop, he takes it all away.” Lady Mae sings the blues. And she is drunk. She is so drunk that she decides to stay at a motel next to the bar. “It may not be what you’re used to, but it’s clean,” Vernon tells her when she asks about the conditions. She stumbles to her motel room where she watches her old friend on TV.
Finally at home, Bishop still hasn’t heard from Lady Mae! And then she calls Sofia and tells her that she is sorry she won’t be making it for supper with her. She also asks Sofia to tell everyone that she is fine and will be back in the morning. Bishop hears and takes the phone from her but Lady Mae hangs up without saying a word shortly after hearing Bishop’s voice. Bishop pretends that he has a quick conversation with her although the dial tone is on the other end.
At Darius’ home, Grace reveals her reservations about Rochelle. “I can’t help but think this whole thing is about Rochelle Cross.” Darius offers to have a friend at the police department check out Ms. Cross.
After arriving in Nashville following a seven-hour drive, Charity busts into a rehearsal and tells Jabari she wants to come back on the tour. Jabari aine trying to her at this point. “I thought you loved me,” she says. He says, “I did.” Ouch. “I gave you what you said you wanted,” he says. Charity agrees and reaffirms that she is back. But Jabari says it’s too late and that the woman on stage (the woman he was talking to when Charity called before) has taken Charity’s spot. “Go home. I don’t want you here.” I say, “Good riddance.” If you don’t want me, I aine beggin’ you to say.
Chain Gang…
Conspiring like some criminals, Rochelle and Tasha meet at a bar. Tasha says, “How did you get the IRS to reopen the case?” I should have known that Rochelle was behind this IRS shakedown. She’s a crafty one, ain’t she? Tasha expresses a bit of remorse about conspiring against Jacob. Tasha asks, “Don’t you ever worry about God?” Rochelle spits out “James Greenleaf killed my father. It wasn’t just Basie’s father. There are two generations making a mockery of religion…We have to stay the course. I have no time for backsliders.” And this is the revelation that we Greenleafers have been waiting for! The caretaker who died in the church fire that Bishop started to get insurance money was the father of Basie and Rochelle!!! I thought she would have revealed that information in some heated argument with an adversary, but it just came out of her mouth like it was nothing.
Remember Rochelle was once a member of Gethsemane Baptist Church and Gethsemane was the garden where Jesus prayed before he died on the cross. If Rochelle Cross has anything to say about it, she will be offering up Bishop for him to atone for his killing her father. And Bishop did remember that the caretaker had a daughter…Is Basie younger or older than Rochelle? Hard to tell…
Although we know that Rochelle is up to no good, Darius tells Grace his contact didn’t find anything on Rochelle, but his contact did discover a list that the IRS is using to come after churches in which the shepherds of the church didn’t pay taxes on their personal income. And Calvary is at the top of the list!
Speaking of criminal behavior, Jacob meets with the ushers to determine who has stolen from the offering, but all along he thinks his daughter is the culprit. She is the only new usher after all. After the meeting, Jacob busts into Zora’s room as Zora insists she did not steal. After turning her room upside down, he discovers bills in a box! “You lied to me,” he screams to his daughter. Kerissa, who didn’t think her troubled daughter was also a thief, is aghast!
On the other hand, Lady Mae, after having sobered up, returns to Calvary as calm as she wants to be. She asks Karine to schedule a flight to Atlanta. “I’m going to visit an old friend.” We know that is Maxine Patterson aka ThePatti.TheLaBelle baby! At Karine’s desk, she notices that Grace is on the front cover of the newspaper. “The reporter had a deadline and Grace handled it,” Karine states. I’m sure that Lady Mae will go off on Grace about this at another time.
And at the very end of the episode, Bishop, dressed in blue, finally sees Lady Mae at Calvary. He tells her his filing for divorce was a “stupid mistake.” “Let’s just start over,” he says. “We can’t, James,” says Lady Mae, who is dressed in black and resolute. AND she thanks him for filing the papers!!! She says it was her mistake to marry him and make their lives together her calling when she was called by God on her own. She’s ready to move on to “anything other than being at the mercy of a man who plucks at the web of my absurdly constructed life!” What a line!!! Regarding the divorce papers, she says her lawyer has begun to work on the case. “It’s time to go,” she says finally.
And sadly, a lone tear slides down Bishop’s downcast face. The chain of command is being broken…Lady Mae wants to head her own church!!! Y’all know when it’s all said and done, they will get back together…eventually…and what a wild ride it will be till then!
Thank you sooo much for reading my Greenleaf Recap Season 3 Episode 3: Chain of Command and my other recaps so far. If you would like to keep up with OWN’s “Greenleaf,” and my recaps, please click on this link to subscribe to my blog 🙂!
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