Tyler Perry continues to torment streaming audiences worldwide with execrable garbage like Divorce in the Black and A Fall from Grace, but Beauty in Black is unique among his output for making audiences wait months for an ending. Part 1 was dreadful nonsense if you recall, but it left a litany of plot points that were begging to be addressed in Part 2. Finally, readers, the time has arrived to find out what happens to Kimmie, Sylvie, Horace, and co., and how it’ll all probably – for our sins – result in Season 2.
For posterity, Part 1 ended with Sylvie being kidnapped, Horace violently staving off a home invasion, and Rain finding herself in the hospital. It also implied that Charles was dead, blown to bits in his swanky Lambo. All this and more is of importance through Episodes 9-16, but we’re most interested in the overall conclusion. So, onward!
Horace Wants to Marry Kimmie
Horace is dying. And Horace is rich. So, Horace wants to marry Kimmie to protect his fortune from his layabout sons, who have never worked a day in their lives and don’t deserve an inheritance of several hundred million dollars. Who says romance is dead?
This isn’t exactly a tough decision for Kimmie, who is in debt up to her eyeballs to the kind of people you don’t want to owe money to, so why not? Horace is going to be dead soon anyway, so their being strangers, essentially, doesn’t matter a great deal. The end justifies the means. And besides, what won’t die with his Horace is his name. The Bellarie name is more valuable even than the money.
Needless to say, Kimmie says yes. Almost immediately she’s throwing the engagement around like a battering ram, her Bellarie-adjacency giving her the power to make things happen. Nobody’s ever happily married, as we know, but wedding a dying dude with a fortune and a surname that works like a skeleton key for every door in high society will get you pretty close.
What’s in a Name?
The reason the Bellarie name is so powerful in Beauty in Black is because the entire show is about class, and how there is a degree of wealth and power that essentially makes one completely immune to the law and repercussions. Nowhere is this more evident than in Lena attempting to serve Olivia a subpoena and getting slapped half to death for her troubles. But this is also why Kimmie and Horace’s marriage is such a powerful move.
The Bellaries hate each other, for the most part, but they hate Kimmie more. The idea of their “rightful” fortune being controlled by her instead of falling to them is terrifying, but because the play is coming from within the family itself, they’re rendered powerless to stop it, which is something they’re not used to. Olivia summons reinforcements to the hospital in an effort to confront Kimmie, but Horace locks the place down. The delay gives him time to marry Kimmie.
Even Kimmie is wise enough to see when she’s being tricked, so she doesn’t fall for the too-obvious ploy of Horace’s lawyer trying to get her down to the lobby. Thematically, it’s a nice reversal of the show’s essential themes, showing the powerful, untouchable characters being rendered powerless. Obviously, in execution, it’s pretty silly, since this is a Tyler Perry show.
Beauty in Black Still | Image via Netflix
Season 2 Seems Unfortunately Inevitable
It’s tough to argue that Kimmie being the new queen of the family won’t provide a solid basis for Season 2. Horace’s impending demise adds some drama, since Kimmie will likely soon be left alone to fend off his surviving relatives by herself, and there’s some other stuff going on too, including Angel’s arrest and the death of Daniel Lakeland’s father-in-law.
The Lakeland subplot, introduced pretty late on, exists almost, exclusively to be explored in another season. But it isn’t like Kimmie doesn’t have enough problems in the meantime, from Mallory’s overt hatred to her promise to take revenge on her mother for selling off her younger sister. Now Kimmie’s a Bellarie, she’ll at least stand a better chance of dealing with these problems, but as we’ve seen during the ending of Beauty in Black Part 2, sometimes even the name isn’t enough.
If things were just, we’d never see any of these characters again. But Tyler Perry’s name has too much cache, and Part 1 was far too popular, for so much money to be left on the table. If the worse comes to the worst, I’ll see you there.
