The Haves and the Have Nots: The Heart of a Man (4x16)

Warning: This contains spoilers for the newest episode of of The Haves and the Have Nots. If you haven't seen it, go watch it and eat that last piece of chicken. If you have...why are you still reading this? Review after the jump!

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50 minutes into the show I had an entire review mapped out in my head. I was going to talk about the dragging dialogue, once again and the strange pacing, once again. But then those last 10 minutes not only turned my review upside down, it turned this entire show upside down. But let's get into that a little bit later. The first 50 minutes were strangely anticlimactic. The major storyline of the season, Candace giving War the money she "owed" him was finally wrapped up (then jump started again) but something just felt missing. So far this season there have been many, many dramatic moments that were just kind of ruined by the way the episodes are structured and the way the dialogue is written for them that you just kind of get lost in what's happening because all you're thinking is "bitch, will you just shut the hell up already?" Let's just try and break this episode down a little, shall we?

Hanna tells Jim that Wyatt is dead and Jim breaks down and begs her to talk to D.A. Jennifer (Sallison?) for him but she does the smart thing and just gets the hell out of there. Jim has been criminally underused this season (mostly for one liners and random fights here and there) but Jon Schneider just steals every scene he's in. He's one of the top actors on the series and it really showed tonight. He was in about five episodes and his performance was a definite standout (in a night where the rest of the actors were also on fire).

War is still all but waving the gun directly in Benny's face when he tells him that he's going to go talk to David. War tells him to relax so they can just hang out but then Mitch comes in (after planting the drugs in a tire in the trunk of War's car like he said he would) and has some balls throwing shade at War for being the slimy bitch that everybody but Benny knows he is. Right before they try and move him to get out of the tow yard to talk to David, War gets a picture of the money from Candace and his tune changes almost immediately and he dips. He goes to meet Candace somewhere and she gives him the money and this man is like a kid on Christmas. He's so excited to have the money and get back to the way things were before this whole situation and Candace, being scared shitless of him, agrees that things can go back to normal. Let me repeat. He raped her multiple times, threatened to kill her, threatened to kill her brother, and nearly killed her multiple times. Mind you, in the span of the shows timeline he's done all of these things in 72 hours at the most. I can't even begin to describe how disgusting he is. When he drove off, I was begging he was driving off to another show because he's an absolute garbage character. After he leaves, Candace gets in her car and begins tearing up because it was, once again, another wake up call that reminds her she isn't invincible. No matter how much I dislike this plot, you have to agree with me that Tika Sumpter has been playing the hell out of Candace's unstable, "fearless", emotional self. War gets pulled over by the cops after being tipped off as a drug dealer, they check the trunk, find drugs in the tire and haul him off to jail. Yay, he's finally off the show! Right? Wrong. He thinks Candace planted the drugs there so the second he gets the opportunity, Candy's candy isn't going to be all that dandy.

The rest of this episode is just... Alright, where to begin? Jeffrey brings Melissa into the room Veronica claims they'll be sharing until the wedding, then Jeffrey calls her a "two bit whore"...which is ridiculous. Obviously she's doing this for money, but she's already made it very clear to Jeffrey he isn't hot shit and she's doing this solely for the purpose of getting her father's medical bills paid. Jeffrey has to know that Melissa wouldn't be sleeping with a man who has to think of old Backstreet Boy posters to get hard if she didn't have to. Like, literally HAVE to or her father dies. Downstairs, David comes in to get Jeffrey because he believes that she doesn't have anything on him anymore so there's no reason for him to continue doing her bidding. Once Jeffrey and Melissa come downstairs, it's clear by the look on Jeffrey's face that he's doing this because he HAS to, not because he wants to (just like Melissa...maybe he's shouldn't be throwing shade when he's not sitting out in the sun himself). Veronica gets a call from Katheryn that Wyatt died, which she coldly repeats to the group. Jeffrey looks like he's about to have a nervous breakdown, David leaves to console Jim and Veronica is pushing Jeffrey like she never has before. At one point she tells him how thankful she is that Melissa's pregnant with a boy so she can have a do-over and finally raise a "real man." Mind you, she's doing all of this with a drink in her hand, refusing to get in the car so they can drive over to the Cryers, while she sees her son grieving over the love of his life*.

*He was the love of his life, even though Wyatt treated him like absolute garbage, reminded him on various occasions that he was never going to love him back and used the fact that he knew Jeffrey was in love with him to help him out of multiple situations he got himself into because he was/is an idiot.

Jeffrey and Veronica finally get to the Cryer's house and Katheryn confirms that Wyatt is dead, much to the dismay of Jeffrey. He begins frantically crying, much to the chagrin of Veronica. She sits in between him and Katheryn, consoling her for a grand total of ten seconds before telling Jeffrey to stop crying and telling him how stupid and feminine he looked. Katheryn kept trying to tell her it was fine but Veronica wouldn't stop tearing him down. The beast was unleashed when she saw Hannah comforting Veronica. I don't know if it made her mad to see another woman showing genuine motherly love to her son or she was just mad that Hanna was treating the behavior as if it was normal (which it is when you're grieving...) but Veronica absolutely went off on everybody in the room, going as far as grabbing Jeffrey by the jaw and showing him that he was being weaker than the women he was surrounded by. I'm not going to go off on why Veronica needs to shut her ass up about what makes a man a man and get that wig checked for lice. But the simple fact that she is treating her son like absolute garbage in front of the woman (her "best friend") who just lost her son shows that she has no emotions in her body whatsoever except anger and hate. But fuck Ronnie with the bad wig. Jeffrey. Jerome. Harrington. I don't know if that's his middle name, I just know he needed a boss middle name because after 77 episodes of sitting down and taking his mother's bullshit, listening to her snake ass voice and her cartoonish threats, he FINALLY takes a stand against her. He's staring at some bottle and admits he wants to whack her upside the head with it, she whispers in his ear that he needs to have the "heart of a man" to have it and that he didn't have the "heart". Well, Jeffrey had fencing lessons or something because in the matter of seconds, he grabs the knife next to the bottle and jams it right in that bitch's evil ass shoulder blade. HE STABBED VERONICA, BITCH. HE REALLY DID THAT SHIT. RIGHT THERE.

EPISODE GRADE: A

I struggled between whether I should give this an A or an A- but I think things really picked up this week. There was a lot of tension last week, but it felt very anticlimactic. This week there was a bit of oozed over tension but it all came to an intense head that I think is going to send the show into a deliciously messy rest of the season and I can't wait. Course correction at it's best.

-Hanna gave me absolute life from top to the bottom. I absolutely love Hanna when she's not around her family, they should keep her around the rich people to shade and talk shit to them much more often. 

-"First your dad's bitch dies, now yours does."

-"Pick it up your damn self."

-"Benny almost got got."

-"Man, what these fools want?"
-I'm calling it now, Wyatt isn't dead. Those bitches barely touched his ass on the bed and he's still lying there looking asleep in the preview for next week.