The Most Unhinged Show That's Actually Fantastic - The Polygamist Review (Spoiler Free/Spoiler Full)

We just watched the most unhinged show I've ever seen and we need to talk about it. Okay, well, we're talking about The Polygamist. It's on Netflix. It's a wild ride. And I honestly have some questions at the end of it as well that I'd like to hear some other people's opinions about. It's very difficult to talk about without spoiling. So we will do our best in the first few minutes to give you a brief synopsis of what it's about and then talk about some of our feelings. But in order to really dig in, we're going to have to talk about spoilers. So if you want to opt out at that point, we'll give you a warning, but we hope that you've seen the show and that you stay. So as you mentioned, we watched The Polygamist on Netflix. It's a South African telenovela. I don't typically watch telenovelas, so this was a departure, I think, for both of us. I also didn't grow up watching one of those soap operas. My mom, did she watch Young and Restless and stuff? My mom watched all my children. Okay, yeah. And so I've probably seen it in the background a few times, but I think it's been a long time since she's watched shows like that, too. I would be surprised if she hasn't seen this, and if she hasn't, she should watch it. Mom, you should watch the show. It's crazy. Watch it and then watch the rest of the review. The show is primarily filmed in Zulu, and we did watch it in the original Zulu. We didn't watch it dubbed. We started watching it dubbed. It just defaulted to dubbed because we're in the US, and I think it just assumes accurately. And there's quite a bit of English thrown in throughout, so it took us a minute to realize that the dubbing was happening. I don't think the dubbing is nearly as good as the original acting in Zulu, so I would highly suggest if you're able to and you don't mind watching subtitles that you watch it in the original language. This show kind of took off. When we started watching it, it was number four on Netflix, but apparently it got number two globally at some point, and it was number one in 16 different countries. There's no show like it that I've ever seen. The twists and turns are unbelievable. You think you know where the show is going, and then you watch another episode, and you're like, actually, nope, had no idea. Sorry, I even thought I knew what was happening here because I did not. A ton of people on Reddit are like, I need somebody to talk about this with because it's so extreme. You need to process every episode. It is legitimately hard to process if you're not talking to someone else who's watched it. We had the benefit of being able to chat together and both be surprised by certain things, but if you don't have someone you're watching it with, I do think it's important to process. The show is based on a novel by Sue Nyethi, and she's a Zimbabwean author based in South Africa. I think we've seen this trend quite a bit with things like heated rivalry where you have a book or a book series, and then that ends up resulting in a TV show. Same thing here. The episodes are really short, so they're all under 30 minutes, but there are 22 of them, and they're dense. So I found watching this, I was binging it because I needed to know what happened next. A lot of the cliffhangers were really intense, but it was tough to binge because some of the themes were very heavy, and then to process through all of that, it was tough to just keep watching, keep watching through some of the parts of the show. Yeah, we were watching like four to six episodes in a sitting, but then there were a few times where we had to sort of shift gears to something else because of the intensity of the way... The cliffhangers on these episodes are kind of crazy. Wild. Yeah. There was one point where there was a massive cliffhanger, and I was like, we need to watch it. And you're like, it is 11 p.m., we have to go to sleep, you have to work tomorrow, and we are not just going to keep watching this show all night long. Yeah. We're going to go over a quick high level of the plot itself. Again, we can't talk about a lot of it because a lot of the twists and turns are the plot that cannot be described without spoiling it, and you don't want those spoiled if you haven't seen it yet. The very first episode, first couple of scenes, this isn't a spoiler, starts out with the death of Jonasi Gamora. It's actually his funeral, and his wife Joyce Gamora is not his biggest fan. She actually insults him while he's in the casket. And it kind of goes to a couple of faces that end up becoming important throughout the story. But obviously, Joyce, his wife, hates his guts. And then after the funeral, which is a really short clip in the beginning of the first episode, the bulk of the show then flashes back to years before, and we get to see the lead-up to Jonasi's death. So we end up flashing back, and where we go to is the happy family. Jonasi and Joyce are married. For quite a few years. Decades, I think. It's almost two decades of marriage, happily ever after. Business is booming. They actually own a company together called J&J. And Joyce is an influencer, so she's really public. She lives her life online. And they have two older kids who are, I don't know if they ever say exactly how old they are, but I get the impression late high school to early college age, named Menzi and Mpume. And Joyce is pregnant with their third child, so she's having a later-in-life child at this point. It initially appears like they're this typical, wealthy, nuclear family. So happy. Everything's going great. Business is booming. Joyce is a successful influencer. The kids are happy. They have friends. They live in this massive, beautiful house. Right. Everything's going perfect. And it really starts devolving into chaos very, very quickly after that. And the twists and turns are unanticipatable, in my opinion. Yeah. Even though they call it The Polygamous, too, I'm like, what the hell is going on? Right. We kept looking at each other and being like, why is this show named this? Yeah. Like, what's going to happen? And in a way, too, at the beginning of the show, it's a bit of a slow burn. Because it doesn't feel like what it's describing. I'm like, where does the polygamy come in? Everything's fine. It's quite a few episodes before some of this stuff gets really cracked open. Which is nice. It builds a little bit of the character development in the first couple of episodes. One of the things that I appreciate about the story, too, is that it sort of takes you along the ride of the family members themselves. Because your lack of knowledge of the background is the same as the family member's lack of knowledge. So that beginning, that honeymoon period where everybody's happy, and you as a viewer, you don't know what's going on. You're in their shoes. So that's what makes, I think, the shocks bigger throughout the series is that information asymmetry. The information asymmetry is actually huge, and I think a really good storytelling device. And then on top of that, the acting is really good. It obviously varies. There are a lot of different people in the show. Huge cast. So you have different levels of acting depending on who's doing it. But for the most part, the main characters on the show, I think, acted really well. I agree. When they're feeling pain, it's hard not to feel pain along with them. When they're doing something frustrating, it's hard not to get frustrated watching it, because they really do a great job of being the character that they're playing. I mean, Jonassi, to me, is sort of like a Joffrey from Game of Thrones character. He does such a good job of being a villain. I think he's the biggest, truest villain in this series, and he does such a good job of it. I would struggle to see him as a different character. And this is the first time I've ever seen him, but I would struggle to see him as a different character than Jonassi. He's such a ******* bastard. He does such a good job as Jonassi that when I was looking on Reddit, you've got, and I'm not condoning this in any way, but you have a whole bunch of people on Reddit basically criticizing the character by criticizing the way that the actor looks. Oh, I saw that. They're like, why is this mid-bald man getting all these women and stuff? And then the poor actor that played Jonassi is catching all these straights, because probably he's nothing like the character in real life, but people hate the character so much that every small little physical imperfection, people are like, oh man, those teeth that I knew he was going to be a bad character. That's pretty awful. Yeah. I mean, it's all stuff that he did such a good job. That's a testament to how good he did in that role that people are looking at him, and then they can't see anything but this creepy villainous character at the end. There are certain characters that if the actor embodies them well enough, it makes the public dislike the actual person because they can't separate it from the character, and I feel like that happens here. It's also kind of amazing how the show ends up being a lens into things like class differences, wealth differences. Yeah, and I think in a way it humanizes people, including the villains, which I was thinking about this recently. Humanizing a villain isn't necessarily giving them a pass. It's understanding that the evil people in the world and the people that do bad things and aren't always evil are regular people. It's like the banality of evil. It is regular people that are absolutely destroying the lives of other humans, and there are times where I empathize with people, and it's intentional in the show. You empathize with some of the people that are doing a lot of harm, and that's on purpose because they are humans. And when they're down and they're asking for that help, it's easy to think, well, I'm compassionate. I can feel that for that person, even though they're actually kind of awful or doing awful things. I thought that was really smart. It's like the writing, but also the acting and just the way the whole show is made. It really treats the humans as complicated, full humans, not just archetypes. Even in the way they interact with each other, you see certain characters feeling bad for other characters or not feeling bad for them in certain scenarios. And you even see it where then people maybe get taken advantage of because they have too much empathy for someone and are thinking too much of the way that they got to that place instead of the fact that they are in that place now. I think of a telenovela and I think of something that doesn't necessarily have a lot of moral underpinning behind it or a lot of life lessons and it's just one dramatic thing after another. And the show is kind of like that. It is that. But it also isn't that. It felt like it had more depth and character than you would expect from when I hear telenovela. Totally. Or soap opera, whichever way. That said, I don't think it was 100% perfect. I never really think anything is. There were a few plot devices that I felt were thrown in. It was perfect timing with some stuff that I can't disclose because it would be a spoiler. But there were a few scenes where I'm like, really, that happens to happen right there, right then. What are the chances even of that occurring? But of course, it drives the story in a certain direction that gives it more shock value. It's also really campy, which can be good or bad, just depending on your preference for how much camp you like in a show. I like campy a lot. So for me, something being so dramatic that it's almost funny or leaning into the plot devices that feel a little bit forced, I'm not necessarily as affected by that. But if you know that you're not into that kind of thing, I think this show maybe wouldn't be something that you would like. And then on top of all that, I think it's not a light show. It's very intense. And I think if you're predisposed to being re-traumatized or traumatized by certain things like infidelity, abuse of children, partners, all sorts of people. Financial abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, basically anything in that category, it happens on the show. Sexual assault. There's a lot in there, and it could be traumatic. So it's definitely not for everybody. There were pieces where I haven't even had personal experiences that would mean that I knew that I would be triggered by something and I had to take a minute after an episode because it was so intense watching it that I needed a break from the show. If you are triggered by that kind of thing, this may be something that you want to take approach with caution. Yeah. Watch it one episode at a time. Sometimes 15 minutes at a time. Right. And decide if it's for you or not because it doesn't have to be. Okay. So I think we're going to move into spoilers now. So this is your time if you want to hop off the video because you haven't seen the show yet. And you need to watch it. Right. And you need to go watch it right now. This is when we're going to take a break and talk through more details about the plot and then also our feelings about some very specific situations in the show. Thanks for watching up till now if you need to head out because we're moving into spoilers. Spoilers. Spoilers. Spoilers. If you've already seen the show, this is going to be pretty familiar to you. If you haven't, you definitely need to pay attention to this part because the family tree is a little weird, and Ashley spent a lot of time formatting this family tree. Any accounts out there? I used Vizio to make this family tree. So to start out, we have Jonassi, who is our main character, bad boy, villain, constantly doing messed up stuff to literally every single other person on the show. And he is married to Joyce, who he married quite young, and she is wife number one. As far as Joyce is concerned, and as far as we're concerned at the married, no issues, love each other, faithful, monogamous partnership. And they have two children who we already mentioned, Mpume and Menzi, and then they also have a baby on the way who gets born very early in the show, Nkazi Mulo. And then Jonassi's brother is Magesh, who they're also business partners. It's like a family company, and so a lot of their family are brought up in it. Jonassi specifically is trying to get Menzi and Mpume, I think maybe more Menzi, to work in the company. Magesh is married to Essie, and they have a daughter, Sarah. Essie has a son, Freedom, who is from a separate relationship. Later on, you find out, I think she's dating some guy. She lives in a poor neighborhood, kind of a rougher guy, versus Jonassi being the college-educated, wealthy dude. So Freedom is from a different relationship, and he starts out as kind of just a drunken hassle, basically. Literally, the first few episodes, I was like, wow, I hate Freedom. What is he doing hanging out with high school kids? Why is he giving everyone the worst advice that I've ever heard in my life? And my opinion of him changes, but we'll talk about that as it happens. Very early on, you find out that Jonassi is, in fact, cheating on Joyce with Matipa. Matipa is, I think, the compliance officer or some kind of HR person at the company. She's a higher-level employee, but she's working there. I think she's quite a bit younger than Jonassi. And she pursues the relationship pretty heavily, as does Jonassi. Joyce is in the dark. Joyce ends up in the hospital giving birth to her and Jonassi's baby, and at this point, she has no idea that the relationship with Matipa is going on. And Jonassi leaves work to come to the hospital to see his newborn baby, and Joyce tells him, basically, he can go back to work. Jonassi goes back to work and cheats on her literally the day that she gave birth. He cheats on her with Matipa. Joyce finds out that Jonassi is cheating, kicks him out of the house. It's clear they're in a monogamous relationship. I think that's my biggest takeaway from some of the early episodes, is that Joyce believes this relationship is monogamous and does not want to be cheated on and does not want to be in a situation where her husband has a boyfriend. She's a girlfriend. Husband has a girlfriend. Oh, sorry. Or a boyfriend, probably. Probably. That doesn't happen. It doesn't turn into heated rivalry, too. Matipa very much is trying to... She's like, leave your ******* wife, leave your ******* wife. So Matipa's constantly trying to get Jonassi to break up with Joyce. Jonassi doesn't seem super receptive to it, but Jonassi is also frustrated with the relationship and the fact that he's not living at home, his awesome mansion that him and his kids and his wife are living at. Jonassi and Joyce end up having this ceremony where they're going to get remarried in front of all of these people. They have investors in their company that are very interested in them being a typical monogamous nuclear family, and they don't realize that Jonassi is living with his girlfriend Matipa outside of the relationship with Joyce for some reason. And this was maybe one of the more incredulous things to me about the show. Jonassi decides the day of the recommitment ceremony that he actually wants to be with Joyce. He gives Matipa the cold shoulder, which is bizarre because he's been living with her for at least a year at this point and has been telling her he's going to divorce his wife. Joyce had literally gotten to the point where she signed the divorce papers and Jonassi decides no, he's actually in love with Joyce, he wants to make it work with her, he's done with Matipa. And it becomes kind of clear that Jonassi has a sort of complex where he wants whatever he can't have because he wanted Matipa because it was infidelity, and then he wants Joyce because now she's going to divorce him or something. And then it feels like, too, he just doesn't want any pushback. He starts being frustrated with Matipa because Matipa is pushing him to leave his wife, and he doesn't want to be pushed. He doesn't want anybody to make any decisions for him except him. And it's where you start to see, maybe not a good start, but he's incredibly controlling. And like the narcissism, like he's not really caring how he's affecting other people, and if anything, when other people are upset on the basis of something he's done, he's angry about that. Instead of feeling compassion or empathy for those people, whether it's Matipa or Joyce or other people in the future, it's like he feels anger towards them because they're inconvenienced by whatever's happening. If they express pain or whatever, he basically tells them to shut the **** up and get over it. The thing is, I actually think Jonassi's a very realistic character. I think a lot of people have encountered a person like Jonassi. Yeah, I do too. Maybe not in every element, but for a lot of the behaviors. So then Joyce thinks everything's okay, and she is living in this world where she's still scared because she's been cheated on. But she believes him, like she believes that their relationship is better. So then Joyce ends up going to the hospital because she wants to get her tubes tied. The idea of having another child with Jonassi is causing her a lot of emotional distress. She's an older parent at this point. She just had a baby, and she doesn't want to have another kid with him. So he goes on a business trip. She goes to the hospital to get her tubes tied. At some point during that realizes, oh, maybe I actually should talk to him about this because he is my husband. She goes to leave, and someone makes an offhand comment to her about all of the Gomorrah women being there. And she's like, what are you talking about, Gomorrah women? And the doctor's like, oh yeah, he's here right now, right down there. And Joyce walks into a delivery room where she sees Matipa and Jonassi and their two twin children that she had no idea. She didn't even know the affair was continuing. And instead now there are twins that Matipa has had that are Jonassi's kids. So it goes back and forth for a while between Matipa, Jonassi, and Joyce. It's just everyone treats everyone like crap. I feel bad for Joyce at this point. Yeah, she probably shouldn't have believed him and gone back to him, but. She's trying to repair a relationship with the father of her children. Yes. It didn't seem as complicated at this point. She didn't realize what a dick he was too. I think she's thinking, oh, this was a one-off. She's blaming Matipa quite a bit as the other woman. It's all her fault. She's a seductress kind of type thing. And Matipa's making it easy to be frustrated with her, honestly, because she's coming in pretty hot and pretty aggressive towards Joyce and her relationship with Jonassi. It's tough because it's like Jonassi's at the center of all of this. When I took a step back and looked at the whole show, I kept thinking to myself, he is clearly the ring leader of all of this pain, right? It's like radiating, right? And he's telling everyone what they want to hear because he's telling Joyce that Matipa is the one coming on to him and she's the one being the aggressor in the relationship. And then we see clips of them together and that's clearly not true. Not the case at all. No. Yeah. I mean, Matipa's into it for sure, but she's not forcing him to do anything. Nevermind, too, the clear hierarchical problems with the fact that he's sleeping with somebody that works for him at his company. So how much consent is Matipa able to give in that relationship is questionable. And that's the kind of thing that actually happens to Jonassi quite a few times in this show, is he doesn't give a ---- about consent really. No. And actually a scene that happens that was the first scene, I think that really bothered me from an abusive standpoint. Matipa comes back from the hospital and she has her two twins. You can tell she's overwhelmed. She's just had two babies. She had a C-section, right? So she had a major surgery. Tons of recovery. Totally. And Jonassi comes over and he just wants to have sex. And then when she's like, I am not ripping my stitches for you. I am not going to have sex with you when I've been told that I need to wait six weeks. And he literally is like, well, you could do something else for me instead. And she does because he is manipulative and controlling. And I think she's thinking that that is her responsibility in some way now that she's had like two of his kids. It was such a gross moment where I went from being like, wow, this guy's like kind of like a jerk and like a nasty person to being like, oh no, he's moving into evil territory. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I think, I think you're spot on. Like the character, like his moral character becomes clear more and more clearly dead. It's just nothing. There's no morality there. No, no compassion, no empathy, no understanding. It's wild to me that so many women end up engaging with him because of the way he treats people, because it is truly horrific. And honestly, like it was hard. It was hard to watch. Like this was the first moment I think that was like, yeah, tough for me to see. Eventually Joyce just gets sick of it. And she says, well, why don't we just make this a polygamous situation? And she, so she's the one that initially suggests that they are openly polygamist. And they basically tell everybody And they have an actual wedding ceremony where Matipa becomes Jonas's second wife. And Joyce goes on this like PR campaign, basically, because she's in the middle of being like a, an influencer. And her relationship was a central part of her sort of like side business. And as well as her main business, the relationship with Jonas is a central part. So then she just kind of says like, there's, there's been polygamy in the past. So let's just, let's just like, we're not Westerners. We're not Europeans. We'll be polygamist and that's fine. And a bunch of people are shocked because it's not normal in South Africa to be polygamist at this point for I think most people, and certainly not in her circle. And there's a huge reaction to that when she's working with people in her ad campaign or something. It's actually that part is sad too, because publicly, I think she feels like she has to be supportive of the situation and pretend at that point that she likes Matipa and she does not. She hates her guts. They hate each other. There's so much like, like passing like, like looks at each other like ************. Like you can tell they really don't like each other. You can tell that it's embarrassing to her, everything that he's putting her through and everything that's happening. There was a scene that felt really sad to me where Joyce is on a park bench and someone approaches her. She's a well-known influencer. And they say, essentially, my husband has been pushing me to be in a polygamist relationship. And I didn't want to, but seeing you and seeing how you've handled this and how you talk about polygamy and how much you want this has made me reconsider. And that's where the cogs in her head starts turning where she's like, I'm actually, I have a cultural influence on people and I'm driving them towards something that is not good for me and is very likely not good for them. This all happened after the first time she tries, she attempts to kill. Oh yeah. She tries to kill him before this. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the first, the first time before, before she's like throws in the towel and says, okay, let's just do polygamy. She gets a gun and she's like. That's not even the first attempt. I thought that was the first attempt. The first attempt is when she tried to burn the house down. Oh, you're right. Yeah. She tried to burn the house down with Matipa and Jonassi in it. Did she burn it on purpose or she just lit something on fire? I can't remember what it was like a piece of mail or something. And then it caught fire. It just didn't seem like she was too upset at the idea that they might be in danger, you know? Well, the second time she gets a gun and she's, she's gonna try and take out Jonassi. That's the cliffhanger. The next episode she can't pull the trigger and Jonassi thinks that she's going to hurt herself and she doesn't dispel the myth. So Joyce has flirted with taking this man out several times at this point. You kind of can't blame her too. She's treating her so badly. I mean, I know it's wrong to say this, but. It's also a drama. I don't think you should go around killing people because they're cheating on you. Like this show is wild. It is. And I wasn't bothered by it. Yeah. I felt bad for her. She's being traumatized by this, this man. We have the whole Matipa scenario, but then on the other side of this, we have the Esti, Magesh, Sarah and Freedom storyline. And you think through most of the show that Esti and Magesh are married. They don't focus on it a ton. You see like Freedom connecting with Menzi a lot and trying to mentor him because Menzi's like, he doesn't got any game and he can't get the woman that he wants. Lindani and Sarah and Mpume are like, are like cousins and friends and they hang out together. It all seems sort of great for a little bit. It does. And then we get a flashback episode. And I don't remember what episode this is because the show feels like a fever dream. Yeah. But we get an episode that shows Esti and Jonassi and their relationship and how they knew each other when they were kids. They grew up together. They grew up in the township. That's the condition that Jonassi grew up in. He grew up poor wanting to escape it more than anything. And Esti was like helping take care of him and feeding him. And then you find out that Magesh, there is no Magesh. Magesh has been lying this entire time, is not married to Esti and that Sarah is Esti and Jonassi's daughter. And Sarah knows that. Yeah. They make house separately at Esti's place this whole time for like the entirety of his marriage with Joyce. So Esti is hiding the situation from Joyce. Joyce has no idea that Jonassi and Esti still have a relationship. And they still do, by the way, they're still sleeping together. So not only did they sleep together very early in their life when they were young people and had Sarah together, but they are still sleeping together and Joyce has no idea. And then Sarah has been lying to Menzi and Pume and not telling them that she is in fact their sister, not their cousin. Yeah. And Freedom knows all this too. And I think his character starts to, this is around the time where Freedom is becoming less of the, for me, like total **** up. And instead you can see where a lot of his pain comes from. And a lot of it is just like how messed up his family is. And he sees it and it's all a lie. And he's just like drinking away the pain and the bullshit. It's sad. I started to feel really bad for Freedom. I hated his character in the beginning because I thought he was such a like **** boy, like hanging out with kids and like, why is he doing that? And then as it goes on, you start to realize how much pain he has from the fact that he knows all of these secrets. He's not allowed to tell anyone. He hates them too. Because whereas Sarah and Esti are kind of like happy to keep the secret or then when the secret gets blown up to embrace that, Freedom is like, this is fucked. He hates it. Y'all are fucked. Yeah. And then, and then we find out probably one of the biggest bombshells, which is that not only do Jonasi and Esti have a sexual relationship and have for decades, but Jonasi married Esti. Like, I think the timeframe, the way they showed it was like within a year, like really close to when he first married Joyce. He has always been a polygamist. Always, the whole time. And in the flashbacks too, you see how he talks about like, he'll, he'll date as many women as he wants. When he was very young, it started way back when he was not even an adult. He didn't care how many girlfriends he had. And Esti was like covering for him in those early moments as well, when they were children, she was still covering for him. And Jonasi has actually been rewarding her with a house, I guess, like supporting, supporting her. Kind of. Kind of like, not obviously as well as he's supporting Joyce and the, the, the family he's projecting to the world, but she's getting something out of it and she's happy with what she's getting out of it. And then it turns out that Esti is bitterly hateful towards Joyce and like, maybe jealous, but like, she just really doesn't like Joyce, even though Joyce and Esti have been pretending to be friends this entire time. Joyce is horrified by this. Yeah. So Joyce finds out, Matipa finds out, at this point, Joyce and Matipa then have formed a bond because they're both dealing with the bullshit of finding out that the family tree is huge, is massive, much bigger than they thought. Matipa is not wife number two, Matipa is wife number three. Which is a huge shock to her. She's like, oh, this is all a lie. At this point, you and I are both kind of rooting for Joyce and Matipa to become friends, which the cracks were clearly there. And as the story goes on, I actually really liked that they connected and they had a lot of compassion for each other, whereas Joyce and Esti could never get along. I think it's a lot of Esti's feelings towards her because I can see how Joyce, and the betrayal. Joyce feels that betrayal from Esti for years. Matipa is some person she didn't even know who was kind of getting manipulated by Jonasi. Esti was like, she's like, I had you in my house. I had you at celebrations all these years. It's weird. You see the influence that Jonasi has over people because you can tell Magesh feels bad about it and that he's put his whole life on hold. So in order to lie for Jonasi, in order to have the position that Magesh holds at J&J, he hasn't been able to have another family because he's supposed to be married to Esti. No kids, no partner, no real love. You can tell he cares about Esti and Sera, especially he's Sera's uncle. He has love for his fake family, but he spent again two decades of his life just floating around, getting paid by his shitbag brother. It's very intense. And then you see the impact it has on Sera too. She's so mixed up. Sera ends up cheating with Mpume's boyfriend. You're not really sure why she's doing it at that point. And then you, when you realize that they're actually sisters and Sera is so angry about it because the way Mpume has been being treated as an actual legitimate child publicly by Jonasi is something that Sera yearns for so heavily and the emotional toll that it's taken. It's hard because for me, Sera is such a complicated character. I hated watching her because the decisions she made were so cruel to other people. The way that she cheated with Mpume's boyfriend felt cruel. And she never apologized. She didn't give a ---- that she hurt Mpume. And in fact, she was like, you never thought about how I felt. She's the person that lives in denial a lot when she's trying to connect with Jonasi. She keeps on getting ditched and ignored. And she just spins it as something that she can get past. And she very much has the wool pulled over her eyes in the relationship with Jonasi. It's weird because I was just thinking about the fact that I think you see in the different characters all of the different responses that people have to abuse. And Sera is definitely a fond response where then she's going to Jonasi and building him up. She wants to be closer to him. She wants to spend more time with him. And then freedom is the fight. And Menzi gets to the point where he's fight too. He, you know, both of them are just angry and frustrated about the way they've been treated by Jonasi. Mpume ends up being flea because she wants nothing to do with him. She's like, get the **** away from me. I don't want to know you. She wants to go about her business and not deal with Jonasi on a consistent basis. They did that really well. I think they built it into the characters really well. And in certain ways, each of them are frustrating responses. And yet you feel compassion for each of them too. Yeah. Yeah. And I felt that way. I think a lot of people online, I think, view a lot of people in this as villains that I don't necessarily because I do. I see Jonasi as the main villain. I kind of see Essie as a secondary villain because of her betrayal of Joyce and her lack of compassion for her daughter, Sarah, and what it's done to her and her lack of compassion for freedom. But I think it is primarily on Jonasi. And I think everybody else is like, it's like, it reminds me of the hurt people, hurt people thing where everybody's messed up by this one person that they then go on and they harm other people. Like Sarah does awful things to Mpume, who's supposed to be one of her best friends. But she's doing it as an unhealthy response to being abandoned or ignored or not valued by her father. It brings up a lot of questions about how you react to abuse. It's interesting too, because you've got certain people where Jonasi is certainly a villain, even in times where you can see maybe why he made a decision that he made. It's really hard to empathize with him. Mpume, in my opinion, doesn't do very much to put her in the villain category at all. She's almost purely in the good category. She has a silver spoon in her mouth, but it's not her fault. It's the world she was brought up in. I think Sarah in particular blames her for it, but I don't know if Mpume really ever did a lot to look down on other people. She doesn't seem to wield it very much against people. And then you've got people like Freedom, who is pretty messed up, and Benzie, who's pretty messed up, and Essie, who's pretty messed up, and Joyce, and Matipa, and all of them are villains in someone else's story. But if you're looking at Jonasi as the hub, certainly he is the main villain for these people. But I think it's probably worth mentioning some of the stuff didn't end up on the family tree because it's stuff that happens outside of the family tree things, and one of those things is that Jonasi becomes extremely physically abusive to both Joyce and Matipa, and they're afraid that he's going to kill them. So Matipa is so afraid that she's not going to make it out alive from her relationship with Jonasi that she abandons the twins with Joyce. It's heartbreaking. It is terrible, and I think you could argue, too, that she then is engaging in... I mean, that's a behavior then that when the twins grow up, they're going to have to deal with the emotional repercussions of the fact that their mom just left. And you can see why she does it, and then also you're like, man, that is... You just left your kids. It's heartbreaking. And it was smart the way they did in the show, because I've heard... I mean, I'm not a psychologist, but narcissistic personalities that are obsessed with control, and clearly Jonasi is modeled after this, they lash out and become more unpredictable and potentially violent as they lose that control. And I saw that from Jonasi in the way that he became a lot more violent as it went on, as long as he could, effectively. Well, and then when his wives are empowered and Joyce and Matipa do team up, and they do seem to understand each of their situations and kind of enjoy being around each other and find support in each other, and the more that that's happening, the angrier Jonasi gets at both of them. And then that results then in the scenes of abuse, which honestly were very hard to watch. It was hard to watch. It was more than I was expecting. I didn't expect it to take that turn, even while you're explaining why it did, and it makes sense to me why it did, but I still wasn't really expecting it, and it was really tough. One thing we didn't put on the family tree is, because I never got married or had kids, was the final relationship that broke the camel's back, as you might say, when Menzi was into this girl, Lindani. Who was also friends with Mpume and Sarah, and was around all the time, pretty much their best friend. And I think the scenes are pretty clear that Jonasi then predates her and gets with her in a pretty shocking scene for Menzi, because he finds them in a club. And so then everybody finds out eventually, right, that Lindani, who is, I think she's like 18 in the show, but especially culturally, she's a child. Very young. She's very young. Her age really doesn't matter at this point, because this is like a 45, 50-year-old man. And he starts getting with Lindani, and Joyce finds out, and I think everybody just sort of starts distancing themselves from Jonasi at this point, because it's such a ******* mess. Menzi hates his guts, for obvious reasons, because he was attracted to her for a really long time, and to the point that he was even talking to her about it. And Jonasi knew it. He knows that his son is interested in this girl, and then instead, Jonasi grooms her and then starts sleeping with her, all the while still making sly comments to his son about going after Lindani, while knowing that's never going to happen, because he is the one sleeping with her. Disgusting. It's a horrific end, but again, in character. Very. For Jonasi and that type of person, because if it's about control, this is our problem with age gap relationships. It's not always bad. It oftentimes is. And when you always have to inspect power, this guy has every red flag in the world, and he starts getting- there's no world where this age gap relationship is okay. And I love that they present it that way, too. Joyce gets pissed. She's hitting them both with a belt. I think she's horrified at Jonasi. And then, what, did they come home from a vacation or something? No, they came home because Lindani was pregnant. Lindani has a miscarriage in the hospital, and Joyce and their whole family are in the hospital supporting Lindani going through this traumatic medical event, an emotional event, because she's lost a child. And then they come home to find Lindani in the master bathroom in a bath with Jonasi. And that's how they realize then that all the support they've been providing her the whole time, she's been sleeping with Jonasi. Watching all this go on around her, too. She sees all the drama with Matipa and the other kids and Sarah. She's seen it all happen at this point. And then she still gets involved with him. But also, Lindani is still very young. So it's tough because you're watching her, and Joyce and other characters take out their anger on Lindani. Which, at a certain point, makes sense to me because Jonasi doesn't care. And you know that at this point, that Joyce can get as mad as she wants at him. Jonasi is unaffected. So she turns her anger towards Lindani. But Lindani just had... She was just in the hospital. And she's young. So yeah, she's making some of these decisions. But she's definitely being baited by Jonasi into making the decisions she's making. He never should have treated her the way he did. He never should have groomed her like that. And yet, Lindani is the one that grown people are upset with for the results of that. And that's a little tough for me. I think we were like, hey, stop hitting her when it was happening. But actually, it's very important to the plot that she did hit her with the belt. Because that gets her landed in jail. Yeah. Which gets her in contact with somebody while she's in jail. I mean, we just gonna finish it up here? Yeah, finish it. So while Joyce is in jail, she encounters somebody who got HIV from their partner who was cheating on her. You don't find out until the very final episode. This is a freaking shock that she pays her to sleep with Jonasi, giving him HIV. So in a way, she leads to finally assassinating Jonasi. But also, I was just thinking about this, she caused that. But also, he still caused it because he refused medication. Exactly. And he didn't take care of himself. And he didn't give a ----. And it actually started earlier when he had gonorrhea or something. And he didn't want to take his meds. And he didn't care. So then, of course, when he gets HIV, he makes the same exact decision. One of the things with HIV is you have to take your meds. I don't think there's anybody that would argue with that, or very few people that want to live very long. And so she doesn't kill him. And she does. Obviously, what she does is a huge crime. But I'm also like, eh. Jonasi is so horrible. He attempted to kill Joyce and Matipa. In my mind, that's attempted femicide. The shock at the end. Because you see his health deteriorate. And he is living with Lindani. She's basically abusing him at this point. Doesn't give a crap. Disgusting old man. And then eventually, Joyce, thank goodness of her heart, takes him in on his last days. You see them all kind of reconnecting a little bit. And then on his deathbed, she whispers in his ear that she got him infected with HIV because of the person she hired. And then she lets him die alone in bed. And the shock I felt watching that was ******* nuts. I didn't see it coming. And then I also felt kind of stupid. Because I was like, of course. She tried to kill him the whole show. And then, of course, she got smarter with every time she tried to kill him. And when we saw that woman come to... It's when he was living with Lindani. And we saw that woman come there. And this is odd. In a way, the show treats her just like Jonassi does another rotating woman. It's just another person. Oh, why wouldn't I sleep with this random person? And I didn't think anything of it. But it was the person that Joyce had met in prison. The show is wild because it makes me feel like a bad person. Because at the end... I'm rooting for Joyce. Yeah. I almost rooted for her. And then I'm like, no, that is so illegal. You really can't do that to people. That's not how they should have treated him. But it was so hard to feel compassion for the character of Jonassi after what he put everyone through. Even when he was so sick, he still didn't want to open up emotionally to people. He still didn't want to be there for someone or allow anyone to be there for him. It's like... He didn't even say sorry to his kids. No. Somebody was like, I hope he'll say sorry eventually. He doesn't. No, he doesn't. He takes it to his grave. And the kids multiple times try to reach out to him to get that closure. And he still can't do it. In ways, it made him a very one-dimensional character. But it also made sense because he's so self-absorbed and self-centered that he can't possibly think for a minute about taking down his ego to apologize to anyone, including his own children, for his own actions. Who he harmed. And they never did anything wrong to him. Never. It was just awful. Yeah. It was terrible. The show was even intense to talk about. It is. I'm feeling it all again. So much happens. And then I'll be like, oh, and I mean, maybe we'll leave it and maybe we won't. But we had a couple of moments where we're like, oh, but didn't this happen first? And it's like, no, no, this other big event happened. It's like so hard because there was twist after twist after twist after twist. And every time you think... We literally got to the point where at the end, we're watching, we're like, well, there's six episodes left. So something else crazy has got to happen. Like something else is about to go down. I don't know. I never saw it going the way it did, honestly. I didn't because you know, he's going to die too. It's like, how does he die? Does she kill him? And it's like, well, okay. So I guess she didn't kill him. And you're like, I'm frustrated because it's like, he takes himself out. He doesn't. He doesn't. He doesn't. He doesn't. It's his own ego not taking his meds that take him out. But it's also Joyce's hand in a way because she knew who he was and set the stage in a way that she knew that he would do that. She knew exactly how he would react. Well, I think so. Then obviously the show, The Polygamous is aptly named because of the way, all the reveals. He was polygamous the entire time. And it's obviously a scathing review of polygamy, but it's also, I think a really interesting, even outside of the polygamy thing, a really interesting inspection of like narcissistic people and the way they can be in relationships when they don't have boundaries. It's a really interesting character study, I think. It is. I thought it was fascinating. Seeing those ripple effects and what that does to the people in his life and how they handle it. And seemingly in certain cases, they don't even realize what they're doing. Like at the end, Menzi is like sleeping around and kind of being very similar to his dad. He's sleeping with people at work. He's prioritizing these like short-term sexual relationships over everything else in his life. And it's sad because you're watching, he was so angry at his dad and yet you're watching him kind of turn into him. And then Mpume is just like off away from the family because she needs that massive break from everyone. She connects with Lindani's ex, I think. Yeah. Who's ex. Right. His name's ex. But it's hard for her to connect with her family because of everything that she's gone through. And just seeing all those ripples was really interesting to me. And I really, I don't know if I enjoyed it. I was going to say I enjoyed it, but did I enjoy it? I'm not sure. No, entertaining. It was entertaining as hell. Some movies or shows are kind of challenging to watch and I think it made me think a lot and I like things that make me think. And it is one of the reasons I want to do this video because I'm kind of curious what people's opinions are about the villainy of certain people and the complexity of those characters. Again, I saw some people online saying that they pretty much hated all the characters and thought they were all villains, but I really don't feel that way. But I also see where almost every character harmed other people. Are you pissed at Joyce for killing him? I'm not, but in real life, I think what she did was wrong. But in the frame of the show, I'm not really bothered by it. But also I am bothered by the fact that she consistently chose Joe Nassi over her own kids. She did a lot to the point that the kids were being harmed by that over and over and over again. You could see them getting broken down, especially early on. They're like, please stop it. Please stop it. She kept going back. And she chose her ego because in the moments where she thought her influencer career was going to be damaged, she chose that career over the impact that it had on her kids. And actually that ego point too is the very last scene I think intentionally attends to that because she says to Joe Nassi, your child will never be like you. Menzi will never be like you. And the final scene as they cut to black is him getting with Windani. I forgot that. Oh, I forgot it. I blocked it out. I mean, so they're like how Menzi is changing to become his father, how Joyce is actually blinded by her own ego. I know that she's not anything like Joe Nassi, but she thinks she has more control in the situation than she does. And also the ripple effects of the damage from not protecting her children earlier and going back to him when they were begging her not to. There's so many layers to this. So what did we miss? Tell us. There's so much that happened. I'm already thinking about all the things we didn't talk about because frankly, it's impossible to touch on everything. The show was long and dense and lots of stuff happened. How do you feel about all of the different moving characters in the show? Because I can't, this is a show where you can't just, I can't process. I feel like I'd love to chat about it. I could easily be swayed on certain opinions given people's perspectives. Thanks for being here. And we'll catch you for whatever's next. Thank you. We're going to go on a cruise this summer. You should come with us.