For Life brings Black death, systematic inequality, the unyielding power of family into focus
In season two For Life asks — What is the price of forgetting our history of systematic racism? ‘What is the price of pain?’
Season two of For Life concluded (spoilers in an EW interview with Nicholas Pinnock) a few weeks past, and here’s hoping for season three soon. I’m a fan, but I’m also interested in the show for its social and political agenda. For Life is one of the few shows on television today which is highlighting important issues in prisons and jails as well as chronicling current news and civil rights movements as they happen. The show forces viewers to look, watch, and relive moments of terror told through the eyes of the communities who have faced these challenges for centuries.
The first three episodes focus on Aaron Wallace’s fight for a re-trial and his subsequent victory and release from prison. After an emotional season finale, they pick up right where we left off. There is no lack of obstacles for Aaron as he fights to win his release, but with Jamal Bishop (Dorian Missick) at Aaron’s back his plans to expose corruption within Belmore to secure his own release successfully. Wallace is out on bail, and working in the private sector with a former rival and old friends (Timothy Busfield as Henry Roswell and Indira Varma as Safiya Masry from season one) to focus on critical issues in the Black and IPOC communities.
Episode four, their first target, Collars for Dollars. Aaron and Roswell seek to help a woman facing deportation for a crime that could have been, and would have been, minor if she was white. Her case is used by the team to expose Collars for Dollars, a broad pattern of police corruption based on racial profiling for pay in the policing community, a practice which IS REAL, whether or not it happens or could happen to you.
Mid-season episode seven “Say his name,” of For Life, reflects not only the coronavirus but also the civil rights movement happening in this country right now. Much like the life and death stories of Ahmaud Aubry and Breonna Taylor, both murdered by police; we meet Andy Josiah (Royce Johnson) a defendant, whose family Aaron and the team end up helping.
Pulled over, and ‘resisted,’ arrest — the elder of the police officers is aggressive, fearful, irresponsible, and ignorant — Andy is shot. But it isn’t just the deaths of the numerous innocent Black men and women in our country which this episode focuses on, it is the toll. The constant fear of being murdered for the color of your skin. Jasmine (Tyla Harris), Aaron’s daughter gets caught up in the story of Andy, asking for his mother as he died. This catalyst sets a fire in his daughter. She and her boyfriend, Ronnie Baxter (Toney Goins), get involved in the protests which mirror both the Black, and Blue Lives Matter movements.
Aaron refocuses Jaz’s energy by enlisting her to help with the Andy Josiah case. Meanwhile, Ronnie gets arrested at a protest. Aaron doesn’t take his case, Safiya, former warden and current lawyer working with Aaron and Henry, does; all the cases in this episode have one thing in common, being arrested or harassed for the color of one’s skin.
Safiya has her own journey in this season. She takes unexpected risks to help a witness, knowing if found out it could jeopardize the Josiah case. This season is full of concessions and questions that pull at every corner of the cases Aaron, Safiya, and Henry work on.
While Aaron is focusing on the work in the court, he’s also under surveillance and suspicion via his parole office. The officer assigned to him is Scotty Williams in a powerful recurring role. Officer Williams is skeptical of Aaron at first, but as he struggles with his own identity as Black and blue he gains respect for him.
In episodes eight For the People and nine The Blue Wall Aaron and his family begin to get threats from the Blue lives matter groups, and the case for Andy builds as he chases a lead for criminal charges on a ‘respected’ officer who clearly tampered with the scene to cover up the murder of Andy Josiah.
Aaron also meets a formidable and brilliant defense lawyer Veronica Marshall (Cassandra Freeman) who goes through her own struggles being Black and defending the police. This season focuses on that divide we all experience between identity and profession, but also the extreme struggle which has always existed between the institutions that supposedly “protect and serve” but in reality don’t for IPOC.
The finale for season two is appropriately titled, Andy Josiah, as Aaron, Safiya, and Henry battle through their toughest trial yet as they bring charges against the officers who shot and killed Andy. The finale opens with former inmates of Belmore, who the team successfully negotiated their release during Covid-19, mirroring the actual tragedy which was and is currently happening in our prison system during the pandemic. Easy enough to ignore a population judged ‘guilty,’ whether or not true guilt is the real story. And while some states are slowly re-evaluating sentences involving non-violent drug offenders, mostly tied to marijuana (which is now becoming increasingly legal at the state-level) these prisoners remain locked up, without bail, in a society where it is literally life or death.
I cried throughout the finale. It’s perfect from open to the end. Filmed during the pandemic and blizzard (screenshot I took while watching, of Hassan Nawaz Felonious Munk, in the cold opener) that hit the east coast, and New York particularly hard. The cast and crew powered through hotel stays which perpetuated loneliness (being away from family or friends, isolated) and jeopardizing their own safety to film this opus.
There haven’t been reports of season three yet, but ABC would be amiss to pass on this show. After following Aaron Wallace, his family, friends, and detractors through season one via the loosely based true story of Isaac Wright Jr., season two picks up relevant issues, writers spun magic and manage an excellent transition into continuing to tell the story of the Wallace family, as well as the on-going inequality of prison life and the failings of our policing and legal institutions for Black and IPOC.
