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This week’s episode of Pose was titled ‘Pink Slip’, which is a term that usually means you’ve been fired from a job. No one was actually fired from a job because … we’ll never really seen anyone, except Stan and Angel, go to work. We assume Blanca has a job to pay for the apartment and get her children Christmas presents, but we’ve not seen anyone else work. But if you can get a pink slip from your House, well there was quite a bit of that happening for a failure to follow the rules.
In the House of Evangelista, the number one rule is no drugs in the house and no drug dealing. But Blanca discovered Lil Papi had a beeper. What’s he need a beeper for? She knew, and he tried to play it off, but the discovery led her to question the others in the House. Angel and Damon denied that Papi was on drugs, but it was clear they were covering. After being warned not to reveal the truth, Ricky cracked pretty quickly, spilling all of Papi’s business, causing Blanca to fly off the handle, and confront Papi in the park. And then she kicked him out of Evangelista. She thought she was giving him some tough love, but she may have just made a new enemy.
It caused all kinds of strife back at the House too. Damon was mad at Ricky for ratting out his friend. Well, he said he was sad that Papi was now out on the streets with nowhere to go, but he still seemed pretty mad at Ricky. Angel was not pulling any punches, very tersely telling Ricky she blames him and Blanca for tearing the House apart and for any harm that comes to Papi. The up and coming House of Evangelista is now a house divided.
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Meanwhile, things are so rosy at the House of Abundance either. Eager to show off her new, complete womanhood, Elektra is cast out by her sugar daddy Mr. Ford. He made it very clear that his one rule with her was that she not have her surgery. He didn’t care how she felt because the relationship was all about what he felt. He gave her everything she could dream of, but when she got the one thing she always dreamed of, she was rejected, cast out like yesterday’s trash.
Confronted by her children when she returned home, it was clear that Elektra thought of no one but herself. In her anger at being rejected, she began barking out new rules for the house but … Elektra is two months behind on the rent and is facing eviction. She doesn’t have a penny to her name now because she spent everything on her operation. And her children turned on her, viciously, with Lulu threatening to start her own house before she, Candy and the two boys walked out. Elektra, believing Mr. Ford will cool off after a few days, finds that she’s already been replaced and an attempt to find a new sugar daddy falls flat for the same reason Ford dumped her. Elektra is no longer that girl with ‘something extra.’
Angel and Stan are back together — and it would be nice to have some kind of timeline with this show because last week she told Patty that she broke it off with him — and Stan still has his job because it was seen as a display of masculinity to fight in the office with Matt while leaving his wife for his mistress. And no one knows anything about Angel except that she might be black or Puerto Rican. But apparently after talking to Patty about Angel, Stan is now curious to get a peek into Angel’s world at the ball.
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She probably didn’t take him on the best of nights as one of the categories was Bizarre, and they were pulling out all the stops with the most bizarre looks they could come up with (many of them seemingly based on the drag of Leigh Bowery). Angle could sense that Stan was overwhelmed so she went to get drinks to help calm him down, but leaving him alone also left him open to encounters with some others including Summer, who said that when he got bored with Angel to look her up. Angel got back in the nick of time, but Stan wanted to leave. Angel asked him to stay until she walked, and he did but the whole scene totally freaked him out. Going to her former / his current apartment a few days later, Angel was stunned to walk in and find nothing. No Stan, no clothes, no furniture. Nothing but her stuff in a garbage bag.
Angel, at least, has Evangelista to go back to and Blanca is determined to make their family whole again. Finding Papi outside of the ballroom, she says she wants him to come back. He says he’s not dealing anymore, but she didn’t know he had been arrested right after she threw him out, and all he could think about was her telling him to not make her his one phone call. To make matters worse, Papi is now part of a new House, Ferocity with co-mothers Lulu and Candy.
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Dealing with her loss and needing to pay the bills, Elektra goes to work — finally, someone else with a job! — at the same adult bookstore where Angel dances in a booth. Elektra has a fabulous body and some great moves, but with the scene set to Tina Turner’s ‘Private Dancer’, the look on her face as she performed for an endless string of anonymous faces was devastating. This once proud, strong woman has been reduced to an object now for men to watch and get their rocks off. The sadness on Elektra’s face was heartbreaking and it was a wonderfully moving performance by Dominique Jackson.
And should we be concerned about Angel? While Elektra has turned to selling her body for quarters behind glass, Angel is back to turning tricks, getting into a car of someone who can only be described as a shady character. As Pose seems to be following the trajectory of the documentary Paris Is Burning, many fear that Angel’s fate may be the same as one of the real life participants in that film, here with Angel falling victim to Stan. Could he come back in a jealous rage and end her life? Let’s hope not! We need more Angel in season two.
Next week is the season finale — thankfully the show has been renewed for a second season — and there is sure to be a big time jump and a major clash between Evangelista. Ferocity and whatever there is left of Abundance. Which of them will become legendary?
Pose airs Sundays at 9:00 PM on FX.
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