It’s no wonder that Ladonna is drawn to Albert’s grace and control, though, considering how her own life is moving even so longer after her rape. Still mired in the purgatory of hearings that precede an actual trial for her accused attacker, Ladonna is now also coming under threats and harassment from other tough looking locals. She’s paying what equates to protection money to keep her bar open, all the while fielding menacing looks, ominously struck matches, and soon threatening phone calls.
“You got to let them know that you ain’t afraid,” Albert tells her, in a piece of advice that could apply to every character in this show. It’s the same tenor he takes with his cancer, never showing an erosion of spirit, even as he rues that this night will be his “last hangover for who knows how long.” It’s telling of the character and indicative of the fantastic writing on this show that Albert isn’t focusing on the pleasant drunk, but the crashing low to follow.
Ladonna, already having affirmed to her husband that she won’t let the harassers “tell me how to live,” finds this tested following the phone call to her house, though she asserts that the family will have dinner before she calls the cops. It’s an assertion of control, though one that doesn’t keep an ominous car from parking outside, the driver striking a match before driving away. The justice system of New Orleans may move slow, but it might be all she has.
What doesn’t bode well for her and her reliance on the police is the ever-entwining storylines of Toni, Terry, and LP. Terry has to deal with a very public embarrassment when an officer perjures himself on the stand by claiming a cop who was on detail work helped him with an arrest. On top of this, word is getting around that someone is feeding information to the FBI, and suspicion is falling on Terry, and rightly so. Meanwhile, the cops are also now on to LP and his work, as well as continuing their harassment of Sofia, which makes her mother choose to ship her off to Florida to ride out the rest of the trouble. This is especially heartbreaking for Sofia, who has done unreasonably well at keeping herself clean.
It’s a sad step, and Melissa Leo brilliantly plays the conflicting emotions of a mother who has to send away her daughter to do the right thing. Things are only going to get worse, now, considering that she won her evidentiary documents and now has even more ammo to go over NOPD. Unfortunately, a bit of miscommunication may drive her away from Terry even more than has already happened. Terry took a pair of bullet casings from her last season to prove to himself his suspicions over inner-departmental malpractice. He succeeded, and brought this information to the feds, but Toni sees that his name is on the evidence slip for a casing that went missing and assumes that he is part of the cover-up. This is a tense thread, especially given the innate goodness and chemistry of these characters. I can’t wait to see how it plays out.
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