Summary
Lil Murda’s tour gets underway in “The Dirty Dozen” while circumstances conspire to force people out of their comfort zones.
This recap of P-Valley season 2, episode 3, “The Dirty Dozen”, contains spoilers.
“The Dirty Dozen” of this episode’s title refers to Lil Murda’s tour, which includes Keyshawn and several other associates, several of whom seem not to be entirely on the same page. But this is a diverse coterie of folks who’re all invested in Murda for different reasons; some for fame and fortune, and some out of sheer loyalty, and those two things aren’t always entirely compatible.
P-Valley season 2, episode 3 recap
Just try to keep track of everything going on here. Lil Murda is debuting new songs – Champagne, campaign! – while also pining for Uncle Clifford and trying to keep his team together, while Keyshawn is trying to promote herself while also not getting snapped in a position that Derrick will find too upsetting. One of Murda’s old associates starts some beef that results in his best friend and head of security, Big Teak, being shot.
Big Teak is worth a mention. His relationship with Murda extends back to their days in prison, where he killed someone who shanked him, but their conversation implies that Teak knows about Murda’s sexuality (he makes a leading comment about how Murda got the prison CO to pass his lyrics along while Teak was in the hole). He also seems emotional and unstable – the exact nature of this relationship is left mysterious for now, but you can tell it’s going to come up again.
Meanwhile, the Pynk is still struggling, and Mercedes especially given her injury, so she turns to alternate means of income by agreeing to be Coach’s live-in side chick, though admittedly on the condition that his photographer wife, Farrah, is present for any and all contract negotiations. This, naturally, is an exceedingly bizarre arrangement, but we were talking about potentially unusual relationships, weren’t we? There are all kinds of questions about power and consent bundled up in this, but it takes a base form when Farrah watches Mercedes dance – at Coach’s insistence – and immediately strips off to initiate a threesome. Again, this will crop up again.
But in the meantime Mercedes has her night thoroughly ruined when she receives a call from the police informing her that Terricka was caught driving a car while a drunken Shelle was passed out in the back. Shelle, it turns out, is a recovering alcoholic whom the pandemic drove back to the bottle, but we also learn that her now-dead husband, Cortez, implored Shelle with his dying breath to raise Terricka after he sired her with a 15-year-old Mercedes, who lied to him about her age. Unfortunately, Terricka overhears all this, which only further frays the relationship between her and her biological mother.
As if to make things worse for Mercedes, her mother, Patrice, begins to develop the status of a community martyr when her standing up to Wayne Kyle results in her church being shut down under the guise of a Covid-19 social distancing violation. With plans for a casino on the near horizon, and the Pynk’s stellar(ish) reputation at risk given Hailey’s not too low-key desire to sell up and the new talent breaking Uncle Clifford’s rules left and right, the future of Chucalissa seems in some turmoil.
You can stream P-Valley season 2, episode 3, “The Dirty Dozen”, exclusively on Starz.
