'P-Valley' Episode 4 'The Trap' Preview: Mercedes gets ready for her last dance as Andre and Autumn face off
The upcoming episode 4 promises to be a riveting episode with Mercedes getting ready to get on that pole for the very last time. It is the moment she has been waiting for a very long time, knowing that the 'sell-by' date in the stripper business is 29 years. Long plagued by the respectability politics around striping and berated constantly by her own mother, Sister Patrice, Mercedes has always been uncomfortable in the world outside The Pynk club about her career choice.
Agonizingly, she is also being denied access to her daughter, Terrika, because Terrika's guardian thinks she is becoming too "body-obsessed" by being around Mercedes. Becoming a dance instructor with her own gym solves a lot of these conflicts in her life because, in her mind, a shift in career will bring the respectability she has craved.
But that said, The Pynk has been her home for many years and she has ruled its stage as the "OG". Saying goodbye to Uncle Clifford will be especially hard since she is the mother she never had growing up as will giving up friends like Keyshawn and Gidget. But the question is that even though this is her last dance, will Mercedes be able to leave her stripper life and associations behind in a small town with long memories.
The trailer for the episode shows that her triumphant swan song might be marred by something tragic. In it, we see Uncle Clifford striding into the green room to ask where Mercedes has disappeared as the jam-packed crowd at The Pynk gets restless waiting for her to take the stage. Gidget starts hyperventilating, worried that "something" has happened to her. She might not be wrong as we see a shot of a cop car, which indicates that she might have been in an accident.
Inside The Pynk, trouble is brewing in the form of Lil' Murda who nearly kills his friend, bashing his face in. His offense is that he insinuates that Lil' Murda is attracted to Uncle Clifford, saying: "You everybody's punk from what I heard".
Lil' Murda has been all moony-eyed around Uncle Clifford but hasn't quite figured out how to square away that attraction with his 'thug' trapper rapper persona. His friend bringing it up shows that he will have to deal with it, sooner than later.
We also see what happens after Andre and Autumn face off after her betrayal. He screams at her saying that he wanted to do something good for his hometown and he "jeopardized all that for a stripper". We see Autumn's face set in a hard expression and you hear her voice say, "you don't know who I am".
Autumn has consistently been shown as someone mysterious. She is depicted as someone with a middle-class background -- a well-off woman who has been brought low enough by circumstances to take up stripping and so grief-stricken that she lives like a slob. Andre is attracted to her partly because she is not like the other girls. This is why he knows that calling her a stripper is insulting to her. But the question is whether this episode finally reveals more about Autumn and her past.
'P-Valley' airs on August 2 at 8 PM ET on Starz.