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| Photo courtesy of Starz |
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| Photo courtesy of Starz |
It left us all very sad and ready to put hands on Tariq. All she wanted to do was protect her twin brother from his foolishness and instead got caught in the crossfire. Tasha has lost her child and Naturi Naughton is doing some incredible acting as a grieving mother. Grief is something that cannot be explained, it can only be felt. We see Tasha crying in Raina’s room, having trouble getting out of bed, trouble sleeping and taking pills, and even attending a support group for grieving parents. Naturi spoke to Forbes about Season 5 and dealing with Raina’s death and said,
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| Photo courtesy of Starz |
“Now Tasha has to focus on being a mother in a way that it scares her. She’s not only losing her husband but her children. Instead of running away from that pain, I had to run toward it to bring emotion to the character.”
“It was beyond emotional for me. What’s good is that you pull from what’s real and what’s vulnerable inside of you and you try to inject that life into the character. I don’t compartmentalize. I use those emotions and anger and sadness and pain.
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| Courtesy of Starz |
Ghost on the other hand dives into work and becomes the face of a campaign to get funds for a building to be named in Raina’s honor. While Tasha allows herself to grieve the loss of her daughter, Ghost acts like it didn’t happen and moves forward. By not dealing with his daughter’s death head on, it starts to deal with him. He thinks he sees Raina while he is giving a speech and he starts hitting the bottle more than usual. He and Tasha were already on thin ice before Raina’s death and their relationship has fallen to pieces even more post death. Ghost doesn’t want to give Tasha room to grieve and wants her to make appearances for Raina’s building. He snaps at everyone and resorts to toddler tantrums when things don’t go his way. Things eventually come to a head and Ghost ends up at the altar in Church. Hopefully this is where he will deal with his grief and the life choices that have brought him here.
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| Photo courtesy of Starz |
And then there’s Tariq. Help us all. I don’t know if it’s possible to watch the screen when Tariq is on it and not want to yell or throw something at him. Tariq is the cause of his twin sister’s death and barely acts sorry about it. He’s not losing sleep over it and is playing video games while his family is falling apart. We don’t see this boy shed one tear for his sister. Tasha and Ghost decide to celebrate Tariq’s birthday to bring back some normal to the St.Patrick household. Tasha has been ordering the same two cakes from the same bakery for years and they know her order by heart. She orders the wrong cake with Raina’s name on it. The scene is necessary because it shows how grief can have you absent-minded and should not be the elephant in the room, but discussed head on. There are 5 stages of grief; denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We are watching Ghost and Tasha tackle these stages, hopefully Tariq tackles a stage or two as well before the season ends.
