Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots

[Jason73]

If you wait until this second half has concluded, you'd have a pretty good marathon with 26 episodes.

I've decided my goal is to be all caught by the time the show comes out for a new season, which I'm thinking will be next January.

I estimate 18 hours of their lives have passed in the four episodes I've watched in the past month.

Haha, so the pacing hasn't changed a bit.

I guess it's a blessing of sorts that HAHN isn't a mainstream sensation like...say, Game of Thrones, because there isn't a lot of talk about the show in mainstream press, allowing you to avoid spoilers.

It's interesting how all the Oprah shows seem to go under the radar. It seems like Soap Opera Digest would be a good fit for the show. But it's been nice as you say as I've not stumbled across any spoilers except for when I accidentally play the wrong episode and the "previously on" spoils things for me.

I love English history, so it would be impossible for me to avoid the spoilers in The Tudors.

I love English history too so The Tudors was "spoiled" for me long ago. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the series and was sad to finish it up last night.

 

[supermanfan]

Is john Schneider aka bo duke still on the show have not watched since the pilot lol

 

[Daniel Avery]

Yes, Jim Cryer (his character) is considered the 'patriarch' of the show, though his original role as the chief villain has been toned down a lot. Jim's still a first-class a-hole, though.

 

[Daniel Avery]

The fourth season concluded Tuesday night, with the message flashing across the screen that they would return in January. I'm still going to spoiler-ize my comments, since I know some out there are waiting to watch it. We can 'catch up' later on.

Spoiler

The cliffhanger at the half-season mark was actually more of a spectacle than this season-ending cliffhanger, at least in terms of "outrageousness" (which is what TP seems to love). I'd been considering a "Who tried to kill Veronica?" scenario as a valid progression of plot, given how she keeps racking up enemies with no real effort from her enemies to stop her. I just thought it would be more entertaining for a multi-character mystery in the vein of "Who shot JR?", since everyone in the Savannah phone book has a beef with her. Since we know who went after her, it's not as suspenseful, since we're 99.9% sure she isn't going anywhere.

I was increasingly amazed at how Tika Sumpter was "still" pregnant right up to the cliffhanger. I had no idea they filmed this series so far ahead. My previous comments about how well the show was hiding her pregnancy were sort of moot once I realized they were not really hiding it---because she had yet to really show. Toward the end of this half-season, she was in ridiculous trench coats and carrying purses large enough to haul her mother around in. BTW: the father of TS's baby is Nick James, who plays Officer Justin Lewis on the show (Jeffery's obsessive lover). I had no idea those two were even an item. Girl's got good taste.

I found it really odd how Katheryn suddenly decided at the end of last season that she didn't want to live at the mansion any more. My guess is that the show didn't want (or could not afford) to use the mansion as a location so they came up with an excuse to have everyone leave, then burned the joint down on a flimsy excuse. Pity, because that was a gorgeous series of sets they had for the mansion scenes. Then again, Wyatt mentioned in passing that his mother is worth $250 million!!!!! so she can afford to burn down a mansion or three.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Reviving this thread to announce that OWN has decided to re-run the entire series, a few episodes at a time during the hiatus between seasons. Tonight (11/27) they will air the first four episodes. I'm looking forward to it mostly because I recall how much more cheap it looked in the early seasons (with such a limited budget) and I want to see how they slowly but surely turned up the production values without it being too noticeable from one episode to the next. It might also be fun to see everyone before they went bat-s#!t crazy.

 

[Jason73]

Why does Oprah make her shows so difficult to watch? The seasons aren't on iTunes, Netflix or Hulu. You can't buy the seasons anywhere. I really want to go back to watching but it's too much effort trying to dig up episodes on Daily Motion.

 

[Daniel Avery]

It might be a problem with all the spoons in the proverbial pot. Discovery owns a chunk of OWN, as does Oprah, and Tyler P owns a chunk of the show and its licensing. There was a lot of questions about just what was going to happen with HAHN since TP ended his development deal with Oprah/Discovery in favor of Viacom; many of his properties are said to be shifting to Viacom-owned channels. Some thought that HAHN would end up on BET, or simply end its run on OWN and not shift anywhere. Until they literally wrote on the screen that the new season would begin in January, I didn't know what their plan was.

I watched the first two episodes (can't stay up to midnight for the other two) but a few things I caught:
---Hanna was hired by Kathryn in the first episode. Later on, I believe they ret-conned this to make it seem like she'd been working for the Cryers for a long time, referring to seeing Wyatt and Amanda grow up.
---Speaking of Amanda, I still can't quite 'get' what the actress is trying to do.
---Kathryn mentioned having to divide her inheritance between four--so she has brothers and at least one sister (whom she said Jim slept with). I always assumed she was an only child.
---They depicted Celine and Hanna as friends, even saying that Celine got Hanna the job at the Cryers'. That sure changed!
---Still hate Hanna's wig. But at least there is an explanation I did not know about--her 'real' hair must have fallen out when she had chemotherapy, and was slowly growing back. I wasn't watching these early episodes so I never knew this.
---The house they're using for Cryer mansion establishing shots is not the same one we see later on. This early one is older, gray stone in denser woods, and the one we see later is more brown stone with more open space and lightly-wooded yard.
---The lighting is not as drab as I remember.

I wish I were able to watch it more intently, if not just to add up just how many 'days' pass in the entirety of the series. I'm betting it's 30-35 days, total.

 

[ChrisSumner]

I find it interesting that the pacing seems like a daytime soap in terms of not many days having past. I watched the first few episodes when they first aired but I never kept up. It reminded me of a daytime soap in the vein of The Young and the Restless mixed with Passions. After reading this thread I’m curious to watch it and see how it develops, especially the production values.

The biggest thing keeping me from watching is that it wasn’t available on a streaming platform. Now that it’s on Hulu I’ve added it to my list. Once I finish I’ll start discussing it with you all!

 

[Daniel Avery]

I wish they had chosen a different way to "start over". If they continue to show four episodes every Tuesday, I'll miss at least one of those episodes (I'm not staying up until midnight when I have to be up at 5am the next morning). It would be more accessible if they would show it in a strip-syndication format--Monday through Friday, one ep per day at (ideally) 7pm each night.

I realized one of the reasons these episodes seem so pleasant to watch is because the writing isn't so "self-aware". Once the show became a (modest) hit, their behavior became more like a "performance," sort of like "Look at me acting". In these episodes, everyone seems much more normal. Well, except Amanda.

 

[Jason73]

The biggest thing keeping me from watching is that it wasn’t available on a streaming platform. Now that it’s on Hulu I’ve added it to my list.

I didn't realize it was finally on Hulu! That's great news. I'll start back up with it this week. I just have to figure out where I left off.

 

[Daniel Avery]

I recall you stopped at a very....scary moment. When DA Jennifer Sallison refused to give back Wyatt's inheritance, Kathryn coolly whipped out a gun and shot Jennifer with such force that it threw her backwards in her chair. Veronica, who had a front-row seat, basically s--- her pants. While Jennifer lay dead on Kathryn's $200,000 rug, Kathryn calmly drops the gun and tells Veronica "Now it's up to you to get me out of this," or words to that effect. That was the season four finale, I believe. It crushed me when I had to keep my mouth shut in order not to spoil you, because when they picked up right where they left off in the following season, the follow-up events were equally amazing.

So please...let me re-live it vicariously through you.

 

[Jason73]

Ah, all of that Jennifer Sallison stuff rings a bell now. Thank you @Daniel Avery . I watched an episode last night but it was one I had already seen. What's funny is that I watched a season 3 episode last night and it didn't feel too far off from where I thought I left off, but that's down to the pacing I guess. I'll start with the season 5 premiere now that I know where to start up again.

 

[Jason73]

Kathryn chasing Veronica through the mansion with a knife and then wrestling around on the floor with her mere feet from Jennifer's bloody dead body--oh how I've missed the antics on this show. Suddenly it's turned into a slasher film.

 

[Jason73]

Does Kathryn still think Wyatt is dead at this point? I can't remember.

 

[Daniel Avery]

I like Kathryn, warts and all. Renee Lawless really throws everything behind her performances. Even though logic tells me that no one (especially someone like Veronica, who pulls out her 'girl from the streets' persona when it suits her) would be genuinely scared of a short little heiress in a too-tight dress and French manicure chasing me around a living room, Lawless really sold it. I'll bet even with the stunt doubles, those two actresses were all banged up afterwards. It was also nice to see Veronica genuinely scared for a while, since it revealed that she CAN be frightened.

 

[Jason73]

I agree re Lawless. I think she is fabulous. There's so much steel and so much conviction in her performance.

It would appear that Wyatt has managed to run afoul of LaQuita . . .

 

[Willie Oleson]

Kathryn coolly whipped out a gun and shot Jennifer with such force that it threw her backwards in her chair. Veronica, who had a front-row seat, basically s--- her pants. While Jennifer lay dead on Kathryn's $200,000 rug, Kathryn calmly drops the gun and tells Veronica "Now it's up to you to get me out of this," or words to that effect.

I've watched that clip on YT and thought it was brilliantly nuts, like American Horror Story.
A few weeks ago I watched another clip (actually it was an entire episode but I didn't finish it) and some woman catches her son kissing another guy.
Well as you know it ended with a staircase moment but before that happened the scene was stretched to the max and it totally killed the dialogue and suspense.
So I'm still none the wiser how good or bad this show really is.

 

[Jason73]

the scene was stretched to the max

That is definitely an extremely common part of most HAHN episodes. The scenes go on and on, usually with uber-dramatic music playing in the background. It's how they manage to make an entire season take place over only a couple of days. You get used to it after a while, but I've only watched the show as a binge where I can watch several episodes in one sitting. I don't know how it would work for me week to week.

brilliantly nuts

That's a very apt description of the show, in general.

 

[Willie Oleson]

It's how they manage to make an entire season take place over only a couple of days.

What an unusual concept. I know daytime soaps can be slow but you can usually sense time passing. I wonder why they decided to write THAHN like that, is it somehow relevant to the premise of the story? Is it the "24" of soap?

 

[Daniel Avery]

With Tyler Perry taking it on himself to do everything but the catering, I can't help but think this type of compressed storytelling is a choice he made to "put his own stamp" on it. If there was a typical writing staff, they would likely feel compelled to pace things more like a nighttime soap, where things happen off-screen to help stories progress, and where time passes between episodes rather than always picking up right where the last episode ended. Writing by committee presents its own problems, but at least there is attention paid to proper pacing and they try not to burn through this much story so quickly. In most cases this highly compressed storytelling can work okay, but certain plot points can't be done "correctly"--such as Melissa's storyline where she ended up pregnant for three seasons and not even showing yet. Similarly, the plotline where Jim and David were running for Governor/Lt. Governor had to be ditched because they could not synchronize "their" election with the real-life election period. In the most recent season, they watched coverage on TV of a new President having been elected, though the presidential election for the rest of the country was two years ago. Note that they don't observe any sorts of holidays in their version of Savannah--no "Christmas episodes," no July 4th or Thanksgiving--they rarely even mention the day of the week. There's no time for characters to stop and enjoy a family event or go on a vacation. It's kind of like that Vegas act where the guy spins plates on sticks, and has to run back and forth to keep all the plates spinning at the same time or they all come crashing down at once.

I don't think Perry would ever relinquish writing or producing duties to anyone else. He'd more likely end the show than let other people take the reins, even if they might clean up a lot of messes and put the show on track for a longer run.

I've only watched the show as a binge where I can watch several episodes in one sitting. I don't know how it would work for me week to week.

...and I've mostly watched it one episode per week. This "from the beginning" thing they're doing (showing three or four episodes every Tuesday night) will be my first experience with multi-episode viewing. I think TP probably writes and structures the show toward the "weekly watchers". Repetition of scenes (or at least the dialogue in those scenes) is typically done for weekly viewers on soaps, in an effort to remind the viewer where they left the storyline. Having two characters play virtually the same scene for weeks or months with no plot progression is unfortunately often seen here (at least in mid-season), but if he thought more people were binge-watching, he would not need to repeat the points so much.

A few weeks ago I watched another clip (actually it was an entire episode but I didn't finish it) and some woman catches her son kissing another guy. Well as you know it ended with a staircase moment but before that happened the scene was stretched to the max and it totally killed the dialogue and suspense.

Sounds like you just saw the most recent season finale (or at least one of the final scenes of it). These two often talk in circles (same threats, same burns, same flared nostrils) but neither ever gets the upper hand for long. The guy getting kissed should run for the hills to get away from these craaaaa-zeeee people.