Well, so much for that Wallace kind of love, am I right?
If we can't be grateful for anything else, we should be thankful that For Life Season 2 Episode 4 gave us some payoff to the unspoken issues between Aaron, Marie, and Darius.
The conclusion hurt in the best and worst ways.
The promotion for the installment built up the reunion of Aaron and his mother, but it's the confrontation with Marie which brought the most emotion.
The hour was about various things. We had an ongoing theme about family, loyalty, and forgiveness. It was about moving on or going forward.
It also was about Aaron releasing some of the things he kept bottled inside of himself for so long. It makes you wonder if Aaron's suppression of his feelings is something he has always dealt with or is it a learned behavior from his years inside?
In prison, he spent a decade trying not to make waves, and it didn't matter if someone hurt or slighted him. It must've been customary for Aaron to wave it off and keep it moving.
He had all of this anger and hurt simmering inside because of his mother. She didn't go see him in the nine years that he was in prison, not once.
She waited this long to see me. A few more hours won't hurt.
Aaron
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At their initial reunion, she was happy to see him, and she behaved as if nothing happened.
On top of that, she and Marie exchanged a few words where both women threw shade at each other for how they treated Aaron while he was away as if they weren't living in glass houses.
Aaron's palpable anger at his mother came out in many ways, from his conversations and snarky comments to Marie to his eagerness to delve into the latest case, even if it meant his mother had to wait for him to return.
In his mind, she waited nine years already, so what was a couple of more hours. Harsh, but fair and accurate, yes?
But when he was there with her, and she enveloped him in her arms, he was tongue-tied and silent. All the things he could've expressed about how angry he was and hurt, he swallowed them down and carried on with dinner like it was nothing.
It's something Jasmine noticed, and it upset her since she knew her grandmother owed her father an apology. It seemed as though it would be a whole thing, and his mother wouldn't have anything to say.
However, on Thanksgiving, she cut to the chase, and while it's hard to forgive a mother for not seeing or speaking to her son for a decade while he was locked away, she laid it all out there.
It hurt her as a mother seeing her son in shackles, and she couldn't bear it. She knew it was selfish and wrong of her, and she said as much. But what made the apology as beautiful as it was heavy was how Aaron tried to stop her from doing it.
Samantha: I can take it Aaron. I can hold all of your anger, and your grief, and your pain. You understand?
Aaron: I don't understand. I don't understand.
Samantha: I just, I couldn't see my baby in shackles, and I know how much that hurt you, I just hope that you can forgive me because we got a new start now, don't we? We all got a brand new start.
He was in that same mode he's often stuck in, and despite his feelings and how necessary it was, he felt it best to wave it off and move on.
Except, the only way to move on is to get all of that out in the open. It's also interesting and typical that Aaron's father was more than ready to sweep it all back under the rug, lock away all those feelings, and move on.
Aaron's mother wouldn't let him, though. It was a powerful, pivotal scene as it's customary and even embedded in culture to lock everything away tight and never air out all of those types of feelings.
No one bears their souls. People don't talk, and not doing so is unhealthy in more ways than one.
It was one of the best scenes of the hour.
The forgiveness train didn't end there, though. Darius wanted to talk to Aaron since the day he got of prison, but Aaron avoided him at every chance.
And you can't blame him either. What more did Darius need to say? Is there anything he could say to change what happened and how Aaron feels? It's doubtful.
For many, it doesn't make sense that Aaron and the fans were harder on Darius than they were Marie. After all, they were both in this relationship together, and they both betrayed Aaron.
I got a friend inside, known him nine years, he'd kill for me. He'd die for me. I thought that's what we had since we were five years old. We always had each others backs. Remember when you said to me when we were in prison. You came and looked me in the eye and said I think it's time we all moved forward. Me stuck in there, and you said move forward.
Aaron
But Aaron articulated how deeply Darius cut him, and it explained why Darius's betrayal hurts more and different than Marie's.
Darius and Aaron were best friends since they were practically toddlers. He considered him his brother, and yet, Darius had zero faith in Aaron.
He didn't believe in his innocence, and he then got together with Marie and came up to the prison to have a "man-to-man" talk with Aaron about how it was best for everyone if they all moved on.
He spoke about Marie and Jasmine as if Aaron had no place in his family anymore -- as if Aaron's family belonged to him. It was the ultimate betrayal.
In some ways, spouses can come and go, but someone you thought was family -- a person you've known your entire life hurting you that way? It's unforgivable.
Aaron read Marie's text messages, and he saw how domestic they were. It wasn't a simplistic as sex; they wanted to get married.
Aaron thought about all of that while confronting Darius and saying all the things he wouldn't discuss before. But when he asked if Darius was the one who initiated it or Marie, it wasn't a surprise that Darius lied to cover for her.
Is that how you let yourself off the hook for getting with her? By telling yourself that I deserved to be inside?
Aaron
It makes you wonder if Darius was always in love with Marie, and he happily took his chance the moment he could. But then, there's Marie.
Yes, the Wallaces were great, and they make you root for them. You hoped that they could work things out, but as time went on, they weren't discussing the elephant in the room.
The longer they went without having this talk, the worst things got for them, so Aaron and Marie discussing what happened while he was away --- it was long overdue.
Is anyone else infuriated about how Marie deflected and didn't take responsibility for how she hurt Aaron? She spent some time talking about how Aaron wasn't opening up to her. She knew that Darius hung between them no matter what they did.
They still resided in the house she shared with Darius, and his belongings were there. She didn't delete their text messages. She boxed all of Aaron's belongings up before he even went for his appeal.
All of these little things kept adding up, and Aaron would've burst without addressing them. But the second he did, Marie got upset and defensive as if she didn't know this was a long time coming.
You wrote me off Marie, and we finally decided to get with someone, it had to be with him. You could've had any man you wanted, but it had to be with him, my best friend. You took him from me. Even when you knew Michael had stabbed me in the back.
Aaron
She made it seem as though Aaron should just be happy that he's out and with his family -- that she, Jasmine, and AJ should be enough for Aaron, and the past is in the past.
She damn near told Aaron to get over it, and that's not something he can do. As he expressed, why Darius?
He would've accepted if Marie found companionship with any other random guy, but after the betrayal of one of his best friends, Aaron couldn't fathom how Marie could start a full-blown relationship with the only best friend he had left.
She did take Darius from him, every bit as much as Darius took Marie from him.
Trust can be lost, but it can also be earned back if there's love.
Henry
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And instead of Marie giving him space to have his feelings, she gaslit him, and she deflected with her issues with his relationship with Michael. It didn't have to do with her actions.
And then she made it out to seem as though Aaron was bailing on his family and running away, but it was for the best.
Even without the issues with Marie specifically, Aaron is still having a hard time trying to adjust to life after prison. He can't do that if she or anyone else expects that he pretends as if the past nine years didn't happen, and he can pick up where he left off.
Sometimes, moving on doesn't look the way you'd think. He moved out of the house, and now he's staying in his office. You hate to see him in a small office with brick walls that don't look that different from his old cell.
Another thing Marie had an issue with was Aaron's loyalty to Jamal. The thing is, as Aaron told Darius, Jamal is someone who would kill and die for him. He thought he had that with Darius and the people outside of prison, but he doesn't feel as if that's true.
No one else can understand the love, respect, and loyalty he and Jamal share, but it still shouldn't be a shock that he'll never give up or turn his back on his friend -- brother.
Jamal called him needing help with Benjamin's case, and Aaron was right there, no questions asked.
I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, but I kinda thought we would be doing big social justice cases.
Charlotte
Despite Charlotte's general frustrations with all of their cases at the moment, Aaron had to take this one for Jamal.
Jamal's new prison position gave him a leg up, but he didn't have as much juice as he thought. He had to ask for Aaron's help on behalf of the Albanian gang, and while he wasn't forcing Aaron's hand, Aaron was smart enough to pick up that Jamal needed this to work out.
Poor Ben was guilty of looking out for someone who was willing to throw him under a bus, and it fit nicely with what was happening with Aaron and his relationships.
Ben didn't want help or bail money from his cousins and siblings because of their connections to the crime life. He was a single dad and a law-abiding citizen.
He didn't want to go to prison for something he didn't realize was wrong and trying to be a decent person -- sticking his neck out for someone he thought was a friend.
He didn't want to lose his kids into the system. Giovanni screwed the hell out of Ben, and it was sickening.
Thankfully, Aaron worked his magic, and he managed to get the charges dropped. The irony was he got Ben home to his family for the holiday just when he concluded he had to leave his own family.
Henry and Charlotte also made a break in Jamal's case.
But despite all of the good Aaron is doing outside of the household, Scotty is still there waiting for him to screw up, and it's aggravating. Do you think he'll catch hell for relocating?
Over to you, For Life Fanatics. What are your thoughts on the Marie, Aaron, and Darius fiasco? Hit the comments below.
You can watch For Life online here via TV Fanatic.
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