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The sweetest spots of ‘Queen Sugar’

OWN is letting you into the black family dynamic and keeping end-of-summer drama going with new show

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    (L-R) Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Kofi Siriboe and Rutina Wesley appear to promote ‘Queen Sugar’ during the AOL BUILD Series at AOL HQ on September 1, 2016 in New York City. Donna Ward/Getty Images
    Kelley D. Evans By @kelleysthrngrl

    The charming southern city of New Orleans as the backdrop. A hardworking, family-oriented father as the family patriarch. A cute little kid who sees no wrong and loves everybody and everything about his family, and the family loves him.

    Sweet enough for you? There’s more.

    OWN’s new drama Queen Sugar is bringing all the sweetness and emotional twists and turns to the network’s new television lineup. Queen Sugar’s plot is not new when it comes to black dramas, but the show embodies a fresh take on the complexity of the black family dynamic, which makes it sweet enough to add to your end-of-summer viewing list.

    The black family experience is never spot-on or always easily portrayed. Queen Sugar brings several different elements that will make you smile, cry and sit on the edge of your seats in anticipation of what will happen next. Oprah Winfrey and crew hit some of the black family dynamics by teaming up with Selma director Ava DuVernay, who is making her debut into television with this show. It takes you on a full emotional roller coaster. It reels you in with positivity and feel-goodness, gives you just a glimpse of the climax of the breakdown, brings you in with the characters on their downward spiral, leaving you to wait until the next episode to pick up the pieces.

    Like Greenleaf, another drama on OWN that debuted this summer, Queen Sugar is centered around the patriarch of the family and a prodigal daughter who returns home to deal with the death of a beloved loved one. The Bordelon family of Queen Sugar descends from a dwindled-down sugar plantation owner.

    CNN broke down the dynamic of the show and its plot best.

    “Adapted from Natalie Baszile’s novel, the series features Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner), who is living an idyllic life in Los Angeles, managing the career of her NBA star husband (Timon Kyle Durrett). A scandal, however, shakes their seemingly perfect marriage, at the very moment that family upheaval brings her home to New Orleans, where her father’s sugar plantation is in dire straits.

    “Things aren’t so smooth either for Charley’s sister Nova (True Blood‘s Rutina Wesley), who is having an affair with a married man; or her brother Ralph (Kofi Siriboe), who is lacking in direction while trying to raise his young son apart from the boy’s drug-addicted mother (Bianca Lawson).”

    The show takes viewers on a physical and emotional ride while they get to know the characters and their individual struggles early.

    Check out the weigh-ins on Twitter.

    https://twitter.com/AmeriKraut/status/773354962784878592

     

    Kelley Evans is a digital producer at Andscape. She is a food passionista, helicopter mom and an unapologetic Southerner who spends every night with the cast of The Young and the Restless by way of her couch.

    This Story Tagged: Daily Uplift Television Oprah Winfrey Queen Sugar Ava Duvernay OWN