Out of the flotsam and jetsam of flooding in Houston, a mysterious woman in search of a new identity washes up on the shore. When her bus full of evacuees pulls up for a brief pit stop, she grabs her small piece of check-in luggage and wanders off into the night. At a motel someplace where the sound of quarrelling couples permeates the walls, she leans on tiptoes over the bathroom sink to cut and dye her hair.
She winds up at a strip club in search of work. According to the proprietor Uncle Clifford (Nico Annan), The Pynk is ‘the finest shake joint in all of Pussy Valley, right off exit 2-9 in the Dirty Delta, as fertile as the Nile’. The club is located in the fictional town of Chucalissa somewhere in the depths of the Mississippi Delta. The surrounding land and its waterways might stretch out with all of the shine and lustre of a National guitar, but America is in the middle of a recession, and growing anything here is going to take plenty of elbow grease.
The first episode of P-Valley plugs novel elements into the steady groove laid out by the familiar narrative beats. We are enticed by the story of the enigmatic Hailey Colton (Elarica Johnson), and it is through the prism of floodwaters and her troubled past that we first encounter The Pynk. But the show is more of an ensemble drama, and in ‘Perpetratin” we also spend some valuable alone time with the non-binary and dashingly glamorous Uncle Clifford, as he swaps the painted nails and flowing tresses for business attire in the midst of his financial struggles; and with Mercedes Woodbine (Brandee Evans), who faces a devilish life outside of the club while reigning supreme as The Pynk’s top dancer.
When Hailey arrives at The Pynk, the cover charge is ten dollars higher for women, and runs her too steep. Instead she steps into line with a group of women who are going to be afforded free entry to the club: it is ‘Booty Battle Amateur Night’, offering the grand prize of $50 plus a hot plate. Hailey makes a bad first impression. She has no costume and seems like a bit of a snob when she chides one of the dancers for mispronouncing Yves Saint Laurent. When she is asked for her name, she lands on ‘Autumn Night’. Uncle Clifford is the first to note that it sounds ‘all poetic and shit’.
Whatever poetry resides in her first pole dance is quickly subsumed by trauma and grief, as the heady atmosphere of the club conjures for Hailey images of domestic violence, culminating in the vivid memory of her mouth being smothered and a gun pointed a few inches from her forehead. When Hailey spends the night at her makeshift and run-down apartment, we learn that she used to be a mother, but she spills vodka over her beat-up phone and loses the only picture of her kid.
Meanwhile Uncle Clifford has fallen behind on an equity loan taken against the club, and finds himself on the bad cheque list. He responds by advertising a new lending facility, hoping to make the most of the club’s coffers even if the clientele seems almost exclusively Mexican. He also imposes new rules on the dancers. From now on The Pynk will be taking a larger share of the loot.
Salvation might run through Mercedes, but the star of The Pynk announces that she will be retiring come the end of the month. Away from the club she runs a dance troupe for local high schoolers. She’s a hard taskmaster, but her efforts seem borne of a nurturing instinct. Mercedes Sundayz hold out the prospect of profitability. But a successful night is cut short when her mother arrives and lays a guilt trip, forcing Mercedes to pay tithes to the church.
P-Valley luxuriates in the neon lights and close confines of the club while keeping a watchful eye for potential misdeeds and fledgling relationships. From overgrown houses and black cowboys on horseback to bullet-strewn signposts and abandoned barbershops and laundromats, pillow shots of the surrounding countryside afford a little breathing space.
Inside The Pynk the camera occupies a middle ground, somewhere between the perspective of the dancers on stage and the voyeurs in the audience. When it cuts in close it is to capture some of the interiority of the art of performance – the heavy breathing, the shifting angles and blinding lights – rather than to linger on specific body parts. P-Valley then juxtaposes the intoxicating atmosphere of the club and some of the private turmoil of the dancers with a sense of the sheer professionalism of their work, which requires not only a game face and a firm hand but outstanding feats of athleticism.
From Showgirls to Hustlers, the shapely newcomer butting heads with the seasoned queen bee comes as standard for the setting. In P-Valley the relationship between Hailey and Mercedes isn’t entirely hostile, which only adds to the edge. Mercedes helps Hailey to distinguish between well-heeled customers and those rocking borrowed suits and Midori sours, even if she couches her advice in the language of vexation. In ‘Perpetratin” it all adds up to an air of precariousness.
The financial situation at The Pynk is exacerbated by the local authorities, eager for their cut. The Pynk does not have a liquor license and lies on the brink of falling foul of all sorts of other regulations. The land itself seems up for dispute. In the parking lot Hailey meets Andre Watkins (Parker Sawyers), who is busy snapping photos at the behest of some real estate project. He explains that the area is a ghost town by day, and photographs better at night. She tells him her real name, but for the time being he passes up on the invitation. Perhaps he is involved with Promised Land Equities, who seem to be getting their hooks into the area.
P-Valley raises issues of urban blight, domestic violence, and economic disempowerment in a way that manages to be brooding but never self-serious. When Uncle Clifford recalls his own past suffering at the hands of domestic abuse, he notes that he had to ‘Al Green his ass’: once he ‘poured a pot of hot grits all over his dingaling’, the perpetrator wisely stopped bothering him.
Lil Murda (J. Alphonse Nicholson), the self-proclaimed hottest rapper on these streets, seems like the sort of patron The Pynk might like to cultivate. But after ponying up for a couple of private dances, he is more interested in having Mercedes hear his music. He calls his style ‘trap reggae soul’, but she calls it ‘slaw’ and suggests he is rapping in cursive. When one of his boys gets too handsy with Hailey, a meeting between Lil Murda and Uncle Clifford ratchets up the intimacy.
P-Valley is written and created by Katori Hall, an acclaimed playwright who has successfully turned from the stage to the broad canvas afforded by television drama. The show airs on Starz, and the first series was steered exclusively by female directors. P-Valley has been described as ‘trap music meets film noir’ or ‘traditional noir with a lil’ twerk’, while the setting inevitably summons some of the moods and tones of Southern Gothic.
A Memphis native, Hall has collaborated with the music supervisors Stephanie Diaz-Matos and Sarah Bromberg to imbue her show with an even split of contemporary southern sounds. The P-Valley theme is an original song by the Memphis artist Jucee Froot, while ‘Perpetratin” features tracks from Memphis mainstays Duke Deuce, HitKidd, and Jus Bentley. From further afield, there are songs by the Nigerian artists VanJess and FEYI, while J. Alphonse Nicholson as Lil Murda performs his own music. ‘Perpetratin” closes with ‘MUMBO JUMBO’ by Tierra Whack, a mumbled vocal which like the characters in the show pushes at the threshold of self-realisation.
