What comes to your mind when you hear the word Power? Well if you are in Nigeria some months ago you would hiss and say that those stupid people have come i.e. the politicians and the ever epileptic power holding company of Nigeria. I wouldn’t blame you, that’s what would have come to my mind. In this case Power is the title of an extra ordinarily cool and epic original series by Starz Cable Network.
Yup, Power is that cool….the series casts include Curtis Jackson a.k.a 50 cent, James Saint Patrick a.k.a Ghost, Tommy, Tasha and Angela. If you’ve ever wondered what it actually looks like to be on the business side of drugs money, then you need to watch this series. It is fully packed with everything you’d expect from a black american gangster series about dealing in dope and survival on the tough streets of New York.
Season 1 started off pretty cool, it showed two drug dealers (ghost and tommy) going about their normal day to day business of dealing dope. Ghost is the brains of the operations who also runs a club called Truth, in his bid to go legit and quit the dope business. An idea that Tommy and the mother kids, Tasha – who has been there since the beginning of dope business, thinks is crazy. Both Tommy and Tasha thinks that Ghost is not been realistic, since the money for the club was made from dealing dope.
Angela Valdes is a federal prosecutor, who happens to be the childhood friend and babe of Jammie a.k.a Ghost. When she ran into Jamie at Truth, she didn’t know that Jamie was still dealing dope and that he is the same person called Ghost on the streets. Meanwhile, she and her team at the FBI have been chasing Ghost who they believe gets his drug supplies from Filipe Lobos – a most wanted international drug dealer. So after running into him at his club, old feelings was reignited…..hmmm hmmm you’ve gotta watch the series to see the rest lol.
Tasha finds out that Angela is back in Ghosts life through Shawn, whom she had been manipulating to get information about Ghost’s movement since he is the one that drives Ghost around town. Meanwhile, Ghost was approached by Simon Stern – a night-life billionaire, who wants to Partner with him in his club Truth. Out of his desire to expand his club business, he agrees to partner Simon, he soon realizes that it was bad idea to go into business with Simon. So, he starts working on how to get his club back.
Tommy is the logistic guy for their drug business, he is a white kid that grew up in the midst of black kids. The only thing he knows how to do is deal in drug. When Lobos kept mounting pressure on them to move more products, he is the one Ghost sends to go have meetings with their distributors since he is always busy running the club. Tommy is a paranoid motherfucker who doesn’t trust anyone, ghost and his family are the only family he has left after his drug addict mother. He met molly – a blonde petty thief that came to work as a waiter at Truth. Molly who was initially not sure about Tommy’s intention with her, but she later fell in love with him and Tommy had to tell her the truth about the kind of business he does when she found stash of cash in his apartment.
Curtis Jackson a.k.a Kanan was in prison, for dealing dope and refusing to rat out both Ghost and Tasha whom he believes were the ones that set him up in the first place. So in his head, he believes that both of them owes their success to him. While on the inside he was busy planning his comeback, using his son Shawn – who works for Ghost as his driver, to gather information about Ghost and his business.
Kanan also hired a female assassin to take out Ghost and his business associates when he learnt that he was getting out early, so as create a vacuum for him when he gets out. The female assassin made her move to kill Ghost at Truth, she misses but Holly got hit by the bullet. She didn’t die instantly but was hospitalized. Tommy who was out that night on a mission to kill Nomar – one of Ruiz’s boys that had been sexting his daughter, in a bid to get Ruiz to come back to work with him and ghost. He found out after stabbing Nomar, that he had been talking to the Angela that he is the one called Ghost on the streets. Tommy then fled the city, Truth was locked because of the shooting and that was how Season 1 ended.
Season 2 kept the adrenaline going, Jamie learns that Angela was working for the Feds but pretended he didn’t know anything just to keep her close to find out what she knows. He discovers that she doesn’t know he is Ghost. Angela was led to believe that Tommy is the same person as Ghost, by Nomar a confidential informer who doesn’t recognize the real Ghost. She then told Jamie the truth that she has been haunting Ghost for a while and she believes that Tommy is Ghost. Tommy was furious when Ghost told him. He wanted to kill Angela but he was stopped by Ghost who is clearly in love with Angela.
Club Truth was still under lock and key, Tommy is nowhere to be found, Filipe Lobos had delivered twice the amount of the normal dope that ghost and tommy use to move for him – following the request of Ghost, since he wants to expand fast and increase his territory in his bid to raise enough money to buy his club back from Simon Stern – who went behind his back to buy the building where his Club Truth was located while it was under lock and key.
Ghost couldn’t clean his drug money fast enough because of the closure of his club Truth, tommy is not in town to help him move the product fast. He is under pressure from Lobos to deliver on his promise of payment. He finds Tommy at his mother’s place and convinced him to come back which he did and together they found a way to move the product fast enough by creating new demand for their products.
Tasha confronts Ghost about Angela and asked him to stop seeing her, he told her he would but he didn’t so she locks Ghosts out of their apartment and attempted to get a divorce but she couldn’t because she had signed a prenuptial agreement that says she gets nothing if she leaves him. She had been siphoning money into a separate account from their joint account in preparation for whatever happens.
Ghost took Angela on a weekend vacation to Miami, after Tasha had locked him out of his apartment. His real reason for going to Miami was to track down the female assassin that made attempt on his life. He found her but she was mugged before he could question her – by one of Kanan’s boys that was sent to kill the assassin for failing to complete the job. Meanwhile Kanan has been busy trying to work his way back into Ghost and Tommy’s drug dealing organisation, he mugged one of their distributors – RSK, just to create a vacuum for him and his boys to fill.
Ghost later found out that it was Kanan that had been putting hits on him and Tommy. He told Tasha and Tommy, then asked them to pretend as if they didn’t know while he works on taking care of Kanan. Ghost offered Holly a hefty amount of money for her to go away and leave Tommy for good, when he found out through Angela that the Feds are planning to use her to get to Tommy. She didn’t want to accept the offer initially but she later took it and left. On her way out of town, she was picked up by the Feds and then pressured to give up Tommy.
Angela and her Fed colleagues kept questioning Holly but she refused to give up what she knows about Tommy. Angela almost had a panic attack in the ladies room, when she confronted Holly who was in there to pee after long hours of questioning, she told Angela that Jamie is actually Ghosts and threatened to tell her colleagues that she is the one who had been sleeping with the real Ghost all this while if she didn’t drop all the charges against her and Tommy. Angela then made a deal with her that she’ll make the charges go away if she helps her get proof that Jamie is Ghost, so Holly went over to Tommy’s apartment to search for a gun that saw Jamie give to Tommy. She wanted to take it to Angela as proof, she couldn’t find it. She decide to try to convince Tommy to flip on Ghost by cuffing one of his hands to the bed head-board – wrong move, lol. Tommy was so pissed that he tried to strangle her with one hand.
Filipe Lobos shows up to collect his money from Ghost, an attempt was made on his life by rival cartel that wants him dead. His paranoia got increased like a 100 fold…he sets a meeting with Ghost and proposes that Ghost should take on more responsibility in his organisation so that he can remain invisible. The only condition is that Ghost will have to drop Tommy as his business partner. Kanan came back and got to know the location of the place where Lobos would be meeting with Ghost to collect his money, he then convinced the Ruiz and the other members of Ghost network to turn against Ghost, go directly to Lobos.
Angela got wind of the location of the meeting from Jamie and she passed the information on to the Feds, the hotel was raided – Lobos and Tommy got arrested, one of Lobos men got shot. Ghost was not at the meeting, he was at a building opposite the hotel watching as the whole drama unfolds. He got to know that Angela already knew he is Ghost all this while but she has refused to confront him about it. Ghost got a lawyer for Tommy and the lawyer got him out using the evidence that Ghost stole from Angela’s apartment, she was furious that she lost the case so she went to confront Jamie and called him Ghost to his face.
Kanan was late to the meeting, Lobos and Tommy were already arrested so he had to make another plan to kill Ghost using his son Shawn. He gave him gun with a silencer and explained what he needs to do. Unfortunately for poor Shawn, the road to the ally where he was supposed to shoot Ghost was blocked so he had to take another route, hence he couldn’t do it on the road. He later made his attempt at the storage bunker of Club Truth. Ghost snatched the gun from him but allowed him to go, telling him to leave New York and go start a new life somewhere else. Kanan killed him after finding out that he was not able to kill Ghost.
Ghost disguised himself like an unknown assassin sent by one of Lobos rival cartel, he took out Drifty and Vladimir, he then told Ruiz to leave town and paid some dude to stab Lobos in his prison cell. It all went down well as he had planned, he also got Tommy to convince Kanan to come to a spot where he would kill him. Both Ghost and Kanan had a fight and Ghost ended up stabbing Kanan with a bottle and he sets the building on fire as he left Kanan to die. Lobos got a cell phone at the hospital from Angela’s boss who works for him, he calls Tommy and told him to kill Ghost if he wants to be his sole distributor in New York, otherwise he would kill both Tommy and Ghost and also kill Holly and their dog.
Season 2 ended in such a dramatic way, so much suspense and anticipation as to what will happen in season 3. Tommy will have to make a choice, Kanan seems to have made it out alive – he would come for Ghost, Jamie will have to watch is back from all directions because now he’s made more than one enemy at a time.
I honestly tried to find something wrong that I could pick on about this TV Series but I couldn’t find anything. Everything is just so on point, from the picture quality to the dialogue lines to the performance of each character. This series is an epic original series and I dove my hat to the writers, directors, producers and the entire crew that worked on it. They did a fantastic job and I would gladly give them a 9/10 score….yeah they deserved it.
