"Sorry, Mary Jane Paul, but my arm ain't the only thing that's broke."
On recent episodes of “Being Mary Jane,” starring Blackbiter.com’s own Brown Sugar Award winner, Gabrielle Union, a certain someone has made a divine appearance.
On the BET hit show, Loretta Devine portrays CeCe, an accident victim injured while Mary Jane (Gabrielle Union’s character) is driving under the influence of alcohol and betrayal. These special guest appearances are truly special to fans of the scene-stealing and too often under-celebrated talent.
Loretta Devine, as CeCe on BET's Being Mary Jane, thinking of a master plan.
Loretta Devine’s voice is still honey, honey.
But the wisdom spoken in this role is somewhere between back alley and prophetic. CeCe’s androgynous look (masculine Mack Daddy hats, over-sized shirts, pants, and cane) complements her confusing persona to perfection. Whether she’s good ’n evil or wicked good, fans can’t divine that, either. And she likes throwing “God” into her speech, which further convolutes her true motives. In one of her most divinely devilish soliloquies, sweetly of course, CeCe ‘splains to Mary Jane why black women—even heifers as fine and successful as she is—don’t have husbands.
Try not to laugh.
Very loosely paraphrasing, it goes a little something like this:
Presumably, as far back as slavery, CeCe proclaims, the black man has never taken care of his own family. The black man has never taken care of himself. White men have always taken care of the black man, she says. And his family.
As if this history of dependency has become part of the black man’s DNA and is passed down in the blood like sick cells and racism, Loretta Devine’s character seems to ask: “So why expect anything different now? Honey chile, that’s why you and yo’ friends ain’t got no husbands. All that ‘sponsibility jess too much for the black man!” Hilarious!!!
If you love all things Loretta Devine (despite despising most things BET, as I do), keep watching BET’s “Being Mary Jane.” Like most things true and truly good, if you exercise patience and wait for it, she’s bound to grace us with another divine appearance.
“Being Mary Jane” airs Tuesday nights on BET at 10:00 p.m.
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Now that Mary Jane has no best friend, for the fun of it, do you secretly wish that Mary Jane and CeCe’s verbal sparring would continue to go from blackmail to black males?
