Review: Legends of Chamberlain Heights “The Legend of Tupaquia”

Am I still down? No, I am not.

SPOILERS!

A few supporting characters converge on LoLo’s Side Boo Café, which, going by the name, is a place guys, gals, or other can take their man, woman, or other on the side to. Medina, the main show for tonight, leaves a message for Jamal that she put together this show just for him, so he better be there. As she begins, she sees a familiar afro-ed silhouette…and then takes off in a melodic rant about her and Jamal’s…complicated relationship, in what is basically a break up song with a public debut. This has been hinted at in previous episodes, but Jamal has been a bit less than committed to Medina, despite their apparent chemistry. On the other hand, Medina’s is basically obsessed with him, so I can understand why he might be hesitant to settle down with that. Unfortunately, while the crowd loves her, Jamal never actually showed. Man, how humiliating for the guy you invited just to humiliate to never actually show up to the humiliation! What kind of a jerk does that?! She confronts him at school the next day, breaking the news of their break up in less dulcet tones.

Despite shaking the news off pretty casually in person, Jamal is torn up later that day. He had Medina as a “side boo”, but he had no main for her to be to the side of. And now that she’s gone, he has no one. Grover and Milk decide to cheer him up the best way: a strip club. Soon after getting inside, they meet the titular Tupaquia, who…shares a bit of a resemblance to a certain prolific rap artist from the 80’s and 90’s. This instantly sparks Milk’s theories of Tupac faking his death AND sparks Jamal’s vulnerable heart strings…wait, no, I mean his dick. So, while Milk and Grover debate the likelihood of Tupaquia being the actual Tupac, Jamal takes this chance to pursue. Turns out, after just a bit of romancing(?) they actually hook up, with signs (Read: FLASHING RED LIGHTS) that Tupaquia is just about as challenged in the boundaries department as Medina.

Meanwhile, Medina herself is about to lose her shit waiting for Jamal to take the bait and just call her back already. Apparently this was all set up by Cindy to help get Jamal to appreciate Medina more…which seems to have backfired. Typically, when you break up with someone publically, people in their right mind don’t tend to take that as a sign to continue dating. Things hit the fan when she sees him with Tupaquia, leading to the biggest rap battle since…Einstein and Stephen Hawking? I don’t listen to a lot of rap. I’ve heard there’s really good stuff out there, though.

Medina probes Grover and Milk for intel while they continue to their journey to determine Tupac’s non-deadness. After finding out she’s a stripper, Medina determines the only way to settle things is with a Strip-Off! Although, really it’s more of a pole-dance-off, but whatever. But she and the other boys don’t get there a minute too soon because Jamal is now tied to a chair with a black eye. With his life on the line, Medina puts herself to the test on the pole…which naturally causes the whole building to collapse. At the hospital, Jamal revives the comatose Medina the way only he knows…with a mouthful of Frito Lays poured directly into her mouth. Not the most romantic, but this display of affection and personal knowledge shows that she may have lost the battle, but she won his heart back. In their own ways, the two of them decide to effectively return things to the status quo, with them on a conditional side-ish relationship.

But it’s not over yet! A bridal-gowned Tupaquia rolls up to kidnap Jamal and shotgun wed him. With a pistol. Jamal admits that he only really liked her for her booty, which almost gets him killed. Thank god Diddy rolls up to kill her for…reasons. Jamal leaves her body reluctantly for the cops to find so that he can go back to LoLo’s and properly romance Medina.

Jamal and Medina’s relationship has been building up in the background in the first couple of episodes, so I was expecting us to get to a whole episode dedication sooner or later, but this seems a bit premature. Maybe it’s something I missed, but we don’t really have a background on how these two got together in the first place, or what keeps them coming back to each other besides possibly the sex. It just didn’t seem like there was much on the line when they might actually be better off being single. That said, it was definitely some welcome character development for them, which I wouldn’t mind getting some follow-up on down the line.

The Tupac stuff is where things just got weird, though. First off, the joke about Tupaquia is that she looks like Tupac, but with a hot stripper body, but aside from some song references, it kinda becomes incidental as we go along with the A-story. It serves Grover and Milk’s quest for truth well enough but her and that plot never really intersect. She may or may not actually be Tupac, but how this effects much outside of the concept of it is unclear. Also, I can understand hero fetishization to a degree, but just putting the dude’s head on a hot body begs some…questions.

All in all, better than last week, but still getting the sense that it’s trying to make fire with damp twigs. Then again, they’ve already got a second season lined up, so we’ve got time.