For fans of a specific period of film noir, Peacock's "The Best Man: The Final Chapters" is an epic conclusion to the end of an era on a par with "Avengers: Endgame." The specific period runs from about 1990 to 2000, when the black romantic comedy grew in its power. The confluence of two successful movements, black romantic fiction and black independent cinema, gave birth to such classics as "Love Jones," "Brown Sugar" and "Love and Basketball," among others.
Malcolm D. Lee's "The Best Man" series has been influential among black romantic-comedy fans because it has served as a living history of the subgenre. Its core ensemble—Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Nia Long, Harold Perrineau, Monica Calhoun, and Melissa DeSousa—is a true period killer row. They've spent their careers acting together in a slew of movies, and fans of dark rom-coms who don't count the original "Groomsmen" as their favorite will recognize that it probably stars someone their favorite.
Creators: Malcolm D. Lee, Dayna Lynne North
Stars: Morris Chestnut, Melissa De Sousa, Regina Hall
When the gang comes together, as in 2013's "The Best Man Holiday," there's a palpable team spirit, the result of the ensemble spending decades playing more combinations of friends, lovers, enemies and brothers than a comedy troupe. It's no surprise that the final eight-part series, created by Lee and Dayna Lynne North, feels light-hearted and celebratory even in its darkest moments. It's both a bittersweet "The Big Chill"-style ensemble reunion and an "Up Series"-style longitudinal observation of the Black Hollywood rom-com cohort.
The pilot begins with an exhaustive montage of the first two films. The first one goes something like this: novelist Harper Stewart is the best man at the wedding of Lance and Mia, sweethearts who met in college and became the core of his broader group of friends. That cabal includes Quentin, Jordan, Murch, and Shelby, all of whom have shown up to celebrate. The Dark Cloud Hanging Over Nuptials is the imminent release of Harper's debut novel, a thinly veiled code novel that retells his college adventures, including a previously unknown flirtation between Harper and his girlfriend.
That synopsis, which barely explores the messy tapestry these characters share, speaks to the inherent soapiness of the franchise. “The Best Man” works best as a one-camera soap opera, with most of the action fueled by the revealing of long-held secrets and the spillover of long-simmering resentments. That's why, once you get your bearings, "Final Chapters" makes a seamless transition from film to series. More than that, it shows that "The Best Man" could have been a great series from the start.
But first, the show has to fix old issues. Namely, the pending wedding of Quentin, an indomitable ladies' man who heralded his engagement as the cliffhanger of the “Vacation”. Quentin's tropical destination wedding provides the perfect excuse to get together, if only to show how fantastic they look after all this time. The wedding story ends pretty quickly, which is a shame, because it features Nicole Ari Parker at her bravest. The first two episodes play out as a stand-alone film and likely resemble the script for the third film in the series, which Lee wrote but never made.
In the third episode, “Final Chapters” turns into a TV show, beginning with a fast-paced montage that spans the better part of a decade and sidesteps the Trump presidency and the pandemic almost entirely. The massive time jump allows the characters to adjust to their normal lives, something fans have never seen in holiday-based movies. Jumping forward also anchors the program's tonal change. The wedding episodes are largely comedic, due to their focus on Quentin, whose cheeky humor demonstrates Howard's knack for pulling pranks. Even with a character in a dark place, Lance, who is mourning the death of his wife Mia his on "Holiday," the show is never dumber than it begins.
Lee and North deftly navigate that shift in tone, retaining the essence of the characters and their relationships even as age and perspective change them. The women of "The Best Man" stand out here, with Lee and North adding dimension to characters originally designed to complicate the lives of their respective boyfriends. Lathan has always been strong as Robyn, who has gone from being Harper's impatient girlfriend to his wife and mother to his son.