Miss Governor (also titled She The People) is a sitcom series on Netflix by popular actor-director Tyler Perry, which tries to make a commentary on race and politics through the genre of comedy. The plot is centered around Antoinette Dunkerson, a politician who hopes to do her community and people a service by working in the administration. However, when Antoinette ultimately reaches the position she has been eyeing so dearly, she is made to realize how her identity is repeatedly going to hamper her political and personal aspirations at every step of her journey. Although Miss Governor is probably better than the other Tyler Perry productions on Netflix, the sitcom series is still quite underwhelming and makes for a forgettable watch.
Spoiler Alert
What is Tyler Perry’s Show about?
Miss Governor begins with the protagonist, Antoinette Dunkerson, appearing on a news TV interview as part of her electoral campaign for the position of the lieutenant governor of Mississippi. Having once promoted herself in a similar manner on the same channel during her city council elections, Antoinette is proud of how quickly she has been able to climb up the political ladder, and she is ready to add another feather to her cap. When asked about the reason behind her targeting the lieutenant position, she suggests that the current governor, Irwin Harper, is too entrenched a candidate to face, and since her only goal is to help the people of her state, and particularly the Black community, she has willingly set her sights on a more achievable target. Although the interview is a bit challenging at times, Antoinette answers all the questions with confidence until her mother, intoxicated, walks across the screen, disrupting the program.
As Antoinette and her group walk out of the studio after the failed interview, her mother makes it very clear that she has been too soft on the world because of her political image. Unlike her mother, who prefers to be brutally honest in every situation, Antoinette prefers being as diplomatic as she can, and so the next problem that comes her way is particularly concerning. Her children, Titus and Lola, are supposed to spend the day with their father, Cyrus, who is divorced from Antoinette, but in his attempt to behave like friends with the teenagers, Cyrus messes up. He drives Lola over to a supposed friend’s house, from where her wastrel boyfriend picks her up and takes her to a college party. Lola lets loose at the party, and a video of her suggestively dancing immediately goes viral and somehow reaches her mother.
Knowing that she has to balance her roles as a politician and a mother at all times, Antoinette shows up at the party and tries to take her daughter away, when the latter’s boyfriend tries to create a scene. Without any hesitation, the protagonist punches the young boy in the face and breaks his nose, all so that she can keep Lola safe, and some of the kids at the place take a video of this as well. As soon as the press gets their hands on the video, Antoinette’s actions are questioned, which is why she abandons all hope about her political career. The woman is confident that she can no longer win the election, but in an unexpected twist, the voting public absolutely love Antoinette’s actions and her ability to be stern to her children when needed. Thus, Antoinette Dunkerson wins the election and becomes the first Black woman lieutenant governor of Mississippi, still without any idea that her coworkers will go to severe lengths in order to curb her powers.
How does Governor Harper use Antoinette to cover for himself?
It does not take Antoinette long to figure out that she is being sidelined at her office, as there is a serious effort to make her feel unwelcome and uncomfortable there. She is not allowed to bring in her own team, though she is entitled to as per the customs and even the laws, as revealed later, and the governor plays an active role in assigning her staff on her behalf. It is Governor Harper who comes up with this plan of sidelining the woman, because he does not want her to last long in office. Harper is clearly a conservative man who has to abide by the laws and standards of the modern world but secretly harbors racist sentiments. It is also suggested that he does not consider women to be worthy of being in politics, as he often looks down upon Antoinette as a mere pawn.
Antoinette’s woes start very early, as she learns that instead of being given any significant work that would require her to use her considerable knowledge and experience, she has been assigned to attend a pig-calling event that is being held in the countryside. She is told that while the governor is invited to these events, he cannot always make time for such frivolities, and this is why Antoinette must visit and appease the crowds on his behalf. Despite being terribly out of her comfort zone, she participates in the event and even has to make a horrible attempt at hollering a pig call. This causes her embarrassment not just at the scene but throughout the rest of the series, for a video of her mid-holler is shot and played over and over again by various characters.
While this first job had been assigned to her clearly because the governor wanted nothing to do with the embarrassing situation himself, the slight shift in the kind of jobs quickly reveals what Harper’s plan is with regard to Antoinette. She is told to visit another public event next, in which she has to conduct the groundbreaking ceremony of a construction project, basically inaugurate it, and the real reason behind him sending her becomes clear soon. After all, Harper is a man who loves taking credit for things, even when he does not deserve any, and the majority of people at both these events are white folks, who happen to be his biggest vote bank. While he avoids the first event, fearing embarrassment, he cowers from attending the second because he fears backlash.
The construction project is actually for an apple orchard, while the people whose land had been bought up by the government for the project had been led to believe that the tech giant, Apple, was purchasing their land to build a factory and a store. It is evident that the governor and his men had intentionally misled the people so that they would easily agree to sell their land in the hopes of tremendous profits or benefits, but he didn’t want to be around when they realized they’d been duped. Thus, Antoinette has to face the anger of the people, as she represents the governor and his council, which puts more pressure on her.
The third assignment for Antoinette makes it all the more clear how Harper intends to use the protagonist only to cover for himself and his corruption. As the governor of the state, he is duty bound to look after the needs and the well-being of every citizen, irrespective of their race or class, but he boldly supports the white population, or at least does not want to mess with them in order to keep them appeased for votes. Therefore, when there is talk of laying a pipeline across the state, and a majority of the Black population object to it because they would be left homeless because of the project, Harper uses Antoinette as a political tool to get his work done. His intention is twofold here, for making it look like Antoinette was the one who oversaw a deal that hurt her own community would make her lose the support that had brought her into office. Thus, Governor Harper does not just sabotage Antoinette’s political career but also hijacks her to further his own goals.
What causes the misunderstanding between Antoinette and her daughter?
Miss Governor ensures that Antoinette Dunkerson never shies away from the responsibilities of a mother while she is busy being a politician, probably because that is always the case for Black women in the workforce. More often than not, they do not have the luxuries, or even the mindset, to have the responsibilities of motherhood be taken over by others while they focus entirely on their professional careers. Therefore, Antoinette always wants to keep her children close to her, even when they absolutely hate moving into the official lieutenant governor’s mansion that clearly still has overtly racist décor and relics from the time when white masters still kept slaves.
While her being so close with her children is definitely a commendable sign of her priorities, it also creates some strife with the very children because they misunderstand the situation. Lola develops a strong feeling that her mother is too intrusive and controlling in her life, and the teenager does not realize that her mother had protected her from a good-for-nothing boy who would have caused her trouble in the long run. When her grandmother shows Lola a video of Antoinette from when the latter was a teenager, she learns that her mother, too, had partied and danced just like herself. Lola obviously uses this realization to confront Antoinette, claiming that she is being a hypocrite by lecturing her on what clothes to wear and how to behave while she too had gone through a similar phase.
Ultimately, a misunderstanding of great proportions is what creates problems for Antoinette in her personal life, which are solved every time by honest and genuine conversations. Earlier in the series, she keeps believing that Lola loves gymnastics, and she supports her daughter’s passion even though she is terrible at the sport. But upon talking to the girl, Antoinette learns that Lola never really liked gymnastics, and she knew how bad she was at it but still stuck to it because she wanted to keep her mother happy. Similarly, at present, Antoinette makes Lola understand that she wants to keep her daughter away from the kind of trouble that she had faced because of her lifestyle choices, and this is why she is sometimes a bit too hard on her. In turn, Lola admits that she actually has a lot of respect and admiration for her mother, and all misunderstandings between the two are finally ironed out.
How does the pipeline project change Antoinette’s fortunes?
It is finally the pipeline project that turns Antoinette’s fortunes around in Miss Governor part 1, as the massive level of corruption involved makes her stand up for herself and for her community. Although she had been in talks with the governor to tweak the project plan in order to ensure that nobody would be displaced because of it, Harper had made it seem like Antoinette had convinced all the pastors and negotiated a deal with them to ensure that the project would be sanctioned. Antoinette is left with no choice but to publicly deny this claim, which surely makes a rift between the governor and his lieutenant very evident to the outside world, but at least she can convey her opinion to him in this way.
Her newfound dedication and support from her close friends from university also help Antoinette come up with a plan to halt the project for some time, as she realizes that one of the churches that would be demolished according to the plans is a historical site. Thus, she is already a step ahead by the time the explosive press briefing takes place, and so it further weighs the scale in her favor, much to the frustration of Governor Harper. When the man confronts her, it is only his insensitive and racist mindset that is fully on display, and Harper finally realizes that he cannot keep Antoinette contained any longer. This realization is so difficult for him to digest that Harper actually suffers a massive heart attack and possibly dies. Thus, at the end of Miss Governor part 1, Antoinette is set to become the new governor of the state, all because of the pipeline project, which she will still surely have to deal with when season 1 continues later this year.
