Summary
One year on, business is booming in “Straight and Narrow”, but Joseph wants out.
This recap of Family Business season 2, episode 1, “Straight and Narrow”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous season by clicking these words.
Check out our spoiler-free season review.
“Straight and Narrow” picks up one year after the end of the previous season, and business is booming for the Hazan family. There’s weed all over the house, and there’s enough product to pack a van to capacity with it. Joseph and Olivier are casual about being stopped by the police — they just pay them off with sausages. It’s a much more sophisticated and obviously more successful operation.
Joseph’s personal life isn’t going quite as smoothly though. He’s only seeing the triplets once a week and Aida isn’t exactly thrilled about the whole Mafia arrangement. The babies aren’t keen on Clem, either. When Jo gets a call informing him a package is missing from the most recent shipment, he, Olivier — in his camouflage car — and Clem have to take the babies with them to a drug deal with Jaurès. She samples the weed and apparently it no longer contains the right amount of THC, so she makes a pretty obvious baby-related threat about what might happen if the quality doesn’t get back to normal. Bleaker than bleak comedy here in the second season.
Aure, meanwhile, has a new girlfriend (she pretends she’s a district attorney at first), and Gerard is in rehab — he’s 90 days sober from cannabis and spins a touching story about how it helped him deal with the loss of his wife, and how his family supported him in his recovery. After his speech, a woman approaches him asking for advice on how he has coped, suggestively mentioning sex as a possibility.
When Aida gets home she can smell weed on the babies and finds a package in one of the prams. She naturally forbids Jo from seeing the kids unless he stops selling drugs, which he tries to explain isn’t something he can do overnight given he’s involved with dangerous people — not exactly what Aida wanted to hear. Jo has to schlep home to the prepared party and explain to the family that Aida won’t budge on the issue. Jo has to tell them that he took the triplets on the deal with Jaures, and that she grabbed one of the babies as a threat. The THC issue comes up, and Ludmila says they need more space than the barn.
In the meantime, Olivier and Clem attend a swanky, exclusive hunting trip, where her father is also present. Aure tries to persuade her girlfriend, who turns out to still be Elodie, to start a business with her — presumably so that she won’t be a cop anymore. She spins a tale about her family being homophobic as justification for this. Jo goes to see Youssef about Aida stopping him seeing the kids, and he advises he gets his act together like he did — he now sells cakes styled after military hardware. He advises Jo to let his family run the business while he slips away; that’s the only way he’s going to be able to see his kids.
On the way back, Jo rehearses his speech. When he meets the family, he’s ready to tell them he’s quitting, but they have some news for him first — they’re going to grow in a new spot, which currently contains a lot of livestock that’s supposedly being picked up the next week. But they can start moving in, increase quality and production. Aure and the rest convince Jo that Aida will come around eventually. Jo is worried about Jaures not wanting more product, and also about Gerard breaking their exclusivity deal by selling surplus weed to an antique dealer. Gerard insists that Jo contacts Jaures and tells her they’re ready to increase production, and everyone’s in agreement.
Jo’s in a predicament, as he explains to his mother’s grave. He can’t abandon his family, but he wants to see his kids. The next day, he meets with Jaures and tells her that the family has decided to quit.
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