Title: ‘A Furnace for Your Foe’
We open at an Angelo DuBois rally in Queens, where he’s immediately heckled by the crowd for schlepping his bougie self all the way out to the Rockaways and pretending he’s a man of the people — only to host a ritzy fundraiser later. Cookie senses he’s lost the crowd, so she takes the mic herself. “I’m just an around-the-way girl from the hood,” she says (Taraji, was that a book plug?). The crowd knows her and seems to trust her, so she uses her cred to vouch for Angelo: “So he went to Columbia — but he still lives in the same fifth-floor walk-up in Harlem!”
She doesn’t stop there. On the spot, she decides to tell the crowd they’re turning Angelo’s Captain’s Ball fundraiser into a concert called The People’s Ball instead, to be held right there in Queens. Jamal will headline and everyone’s invited. Angelo readily accepts the change and they get to planning, but Mrs. DuBois is skeptical. “You’re getting a little too local, darling,” she warns him. Well, I think maybe a grown man has his mother around just a little too much — even if she does seem to have the keys to the city.
Lucious drops by as Cookie plans the event in a fever. He tells her he also wants it to be a “smashing success” and thinks it’s time for New York to have a black mayor again (but hmm…that might not mean Angelo). He also takes the opportunity to warn her Jamal might not be ready to perform and she really shouldn’t be playing with her son’s health just to help a new man. Harsh.
Meanwhile,………………………………………… download below
