Tyler Perry’s unconvincingly far-fetched drama series, Beauty in Black, is back on Netflix with its 2nd season, once again divided into two releases, with eight episodes at a time. Kimmie, the helpless adult entertainer and sex worker we had been following in the 1st season of the series, suddenly saw her fortunes turn when she was chosen by the patriarch of the Beauty in Black business empire to be his new wife. The implications of this decision are now felt by the characters, with season 2 remaining as outlandish and, honestly, difficult to watch as earlier.
Spoiler Alert
What is season 2 part 1 about?
Beauty in Black season 2 part 1 begins right where season 1 had ended, at the hospital, with Horace Bellarie in extremely poor condition because of his worsening cancer. Despite his illness, Horace had decided to make Kimmie his new wife, just to mess with his existing family members and inadvertently cut them out from the family wealth in the distant future. Kimmie, a young woman who had resorted to performing at an adult club and also working as an escort for rich clients, had eventually grown closer to the Bellarie family members, developing a terrible grudge against them. Although she had found the help of Horace along the way on various occasions, the man’s own brother, Norman, was illegally running the sextortion racket at the club, because of which she and her friends were subjected to terrible humiliation and torture.
Although Kimmie had initially tiptoed around trying to help her best friend, Rain, and going against the Bellarie family, she gave up all restraint when her younger sister, Sylvie, was kidnapped by the two women facilitating the racket and threatened into prostitution. Doing just about anything to stop this injustice, Kimmie had managed to rescue Sylvie and Rain, even killing Delinda and Body, the two leaders of the prostitution ring. Because of all this bravado, and also upon realizing that Kimmie has no greed for his wealth, Horace had decided to choose her as the facilitator of his feud against his own family, and the announcement of the marriage naturally comes as a shock to them.
Horace’s ex-wife, Olivia, and his brother, Norman, are absolutely livid at the fact that a randomly selected woman from the streets now holds more power in the business and the family than them. His elder son, Roy, remains as boastful and arrogant as ever, despite being absolutely useless to the family and the world at large. Roy’s wife, Mallory, is irked at the fact that she had genuinely tried a lot of dirty tricks to get to the head of the business and run it as her own. She is even more frustrated at the fact that the sex worker whom her husband used to cheat with, is now going to be her boss. Horace’s younger son, Charles, does not seem too perplexed about any of this, and he remains more invested in hiding his homosexuality from the world and continuing his bizarrely confusing relationship with the family lawyer, Varney.
Things are obviously much better for Kimmie, Rain, and Sylvie, though, as they are taken to Horace’s mansion, where they are given separate rooms each and shiny new credit cards with seemingly unlimited balances. Kimmie also realizes that she has more than 2 million dollars in her name suddenly, transferred by her new husband, of course, but she still feels nervous about the whole situation. But newer problems do arise, and Kimmie and her friends constantly fear that their new lives full of wealth and luxury are soon about to get upended.
What happens to Angel?
At the end of Beauty in Black season 1, Kimmie’s ever-faithful friend, Angel, had accompanied her to the hospital, but the car they had stolen to get there landed them in immense trouble. They had accidentally kidnapped an elderly man, who had fallen down to the floor of the car and had remained unnoticed because of his paralysis and inability to speak or even make any sounds, apparently. The man, who was also diabetic, had eventually died because he did not receive his daily dose of insulin, and so Kimmie and Angel had technically caused his death. While Kimmie was busy receiving the grand news of Horace wanting to marry her, Angel had gone down to the parking lot to check on the body and had been arrested by the police. Most significantly, the body had belonged to the father-in-law of a criminal named Daniel Lakeland.
Although season 1 had ended with the suggestion that this is going to be a massive plotline in the follow-up, it does not develop into a satisfying crisis in season 2. Angel does have to face a lot of trouble because of it, though, as it is revealed that the police officers who had arrested him were actually corrupt lawmen on the payroll of the Bellarie family. One of these crooked cops, Officer Trackson, soon calls up Jules and informs him of Angel’s arrest, since the security head had been looking for Angel for quite some time now. But because of the complicated situation, Horace also had to be contacted while he established communications with the dangerous businessman, Daniel Lakeland.
Horace tells Lakeland about the genuine mistake that Kimmie had committed during her panic-stricken drive to the hospital, and although the criminal agrees to let the real perpetrator go, he clarifies that he needs to hurt someone and essentially show to his family that he has sought revenge for the murder. When Horace is informed about a young man who had been arrested by the police for suspiciously loitering around the car with the dead body, he hurriedly agrees to pin the blame on this man without verifying his identity. This means that it is Horace who actually greenlights Lakeland hiring goons to kill Angel.
Angel is confronted by Jules inside the jail, as the latter is terribly angry for everything that he and his friends had done to his business. The two men even threaten to hurt each other’s children, but ultimately none of that comes about, as Angel is released by the police, only so that he can be killed by Lakeland’s goons. As per the plan, two gunmen roll up in front of the bus stop where Angel had been waiting and open fire on everyone there. Out of sheer luck, an innocent bystander happens to fall in front of him, and Angel survives the attack without a scratch. He cleverly pretends to be dead at the spot, and the attackers even take a photo of his supposedly lifeless body, which ends the matter with the Lakelands then and there.
Upon realizing that he had signed off on the hit on Angel, Horace is filled with grief and remorse, as he had seemingly fallen in love with the young man and had been looking for him from the very beginning of the season. Although this creates a temporary misunderstanding between the central characters, it is quickly sorted out, and Angel too is brought to the Bellarie mansion and given a room and a credit card of his own. He visits his ex-girlfriend and tries to see his infant son as well, but she refuses to let him be a part of their lives anymore, and so Angel now becomes a part of Kimmie’s inside group.
Does Kimmie take over the family business?
Kimmie’s introduction in the family business immediately makes the Bellaries infuriated and vengeful, as they want to remove her from the position at the earliest chance. But when a board meeting of all the shareholders of Bellarie Beauty in Black takes place towards the end, Kimmie’s true ability and skill at managing such a difficult bunch of people are on display. In fact, she even goes against the orders of her new husband, Horace, who had seemingly placed her in the position of COO only as a sort of pawn he could control from afar. Therefore, he had asked her to secretly make him a part of the meeting, despite him being in Italy for his cancer treatment at the time. Horace’s plan was to monitor the meeting through cameras and also tell Kimmie what suggestions and statements to make in every aspect through an earphone that she would be secretly wearing.
However, Kimmie does not follow through with this plan, as she feels confident about her own abilities, and she does immediately bring about a number of changes to the business, with the most important one being to decide to talk to the activist who had filed a lawsuit against them and also to all the plaintiffs in the case. She also asks Varney to look into two LLP companies owned by Norman and Olivia, putting pressure on them in just one move. She personally vows to ruin Roy’s life, although this will definitely be more difficult than it sounds. Ultimately, how Horace will feel about Kimmie’s decision to essentially take over the family business by herself might define her path ahead. Horace does not sound too pleased during the phone call after the meeting, and although Kimmie is able to keep him calm for now, this might not always be the case in the future.
Will Norman be punished for his crimes?
Norman is clearly involved in a lot of unlawful practices, like the offshore LLP company he set up to siphon funds from the family business, but he goes a step further this season and establishes himself as a cold-blooded killer. Some time into the 2nd season, Norman realizes that Horace has found out about his and Jules’ secret prostitution racket, which they run from the adult club, and fears that the world, and most importantly, the law, will find out about it as well. Therefore, he starts to panic and decides to remove Judge Harold, who had been helping them in the business, from the scene.
Jules and Norman would basically work with the police and get unassuming young men and women in desperate positions arrested and charged with some crime, and Judge Harold helped them in this process. Jules would then pay off their legal fees and then force them to work at the club and for his illegal racket, keeping them forever trapped in the cycle and ensuring that they would not be able to escape in a legal manner. However, Norman now fears that Harold might end up exposing their secrets to protect himself, and so he simply goes and blows up the judge’s house, killing him and his wife.
While Norman had earlier committed murders as well, in the first season, they could have still been passed off as impulsive acts, as he was enraged by the death of his beloved wife. But this time around, he commits the murders in cold blood, killing his long-term business associate and his innocent wife as well. However, the crimes of the wealthy hardly ever get punished in the cruel and lopsided world of Beauty in Black, and so Norman can be expected to get away with the murder this time as well.
Why does Alex help Rain?
Rain gets into two extremely sticky situations this season, and on both occasions, she finds the help of Officer Alex, one of the corrupt cops under the payroll of the Bellarie family. Alex is actually a Chicago PD police officer, but he spends way more time providing protection to the Bellarie family members and is even appointed as the new driver for Kimmie and her friends. Although Jules wants Alex to keep an eye on the women and report all their movements to him, the police officer actually starts looking for any opportunity to better his own position. Just like the performers at the club, Alex too had been framed in a false case by Jules to ensure that he worked for the family, or rather for him specifically, and there was no way for him to leave the job and escape the life of extreme crime and violence.
Alex reveals that he has his own mother and brother to look after, and that he is terribly concerned about their well-being, because of which he has been looking for a way out of this dangerous life. He wants to gain some leverage over Jules by hook or by crook, and facilitate his exit from the gang so that he can move away from the city with his family and start a fresh life somewhere else. Although Alex is initially wary of Kimmie and Rain, he soon switches sides and starts to help the women, especially Rain, just to gain their trust and ensure that they would help him.
When Rain goes seeking revenge against Daga, the fake medical practitioner who had almost killed her through a reckless and dangerous cosmetic surgery, Alex walks into the motel room with her, and it is he who shoots and kills Daga and her associate, Shake Shake. Similarly, when Rain accidentally injures Jules’ son, Glen, by throwing him off the balcony, Alex runs in to help her and drags the body away to temporarily avoid detection. While Alex does all this to gain the trust of the group, his actions would come to his advantage even if the women do not ultimately help him. Being a part of these incidents makes him a crucial witness as well, and if for nothing else, Rain would surely have to pay heed to his demands out of fear that her own secrets would be exposed otherwise.
Do Charles and Varney finally get together?
The relationship between Charles and Varney remains as complicated as ever, with the former refusing to acknowledge the attorney as his lover, even though it is finally revealed to the world. Roy ends up walking into the house when Charles and Varney are in a compromising position, and he eventually tells his mother, Olivia, about it as well. Nonetheless, Charles still does not want to enter a relationship, and they have an ugly fight, which makes Varney ignore his calls when he tries to contact him for help after some time. As it so happens, Charles gets targeted by a performer from the club again, who wants to loot him after feigning interest in him, and in the heat of the moment, Charles ends up killing the man and his two friends when they break into his house.
In Beauty in Black season 2 part 1’s ending, when Varney visits Charles’ house to check on him, he ends up seeing him trying to chop up three dead bodies in his bathroom. Just when they discuss the matter in the kitchen of the house, three more men break in, pretending to be the police, and hold them captive. They are surely friends of the performer, who have now come to check on their missing buddies, and they might even abduct Charles and Varney. Although the two men do not get together by the end of season 2 part 1, something might actually pan out between them in part 2, especially if they manage to get out of the hostage situation with each other’s help.
