Power aired on Starz from June 7, 2014 to February 9, 2020, six seasons, and it became one of the network’s highest-rated shows and one of the most watched on cable. Courtney A. Kemp created and produced it with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and its success spawned a whole family of spin-offs, three of them aired. The audience was real. So are the show’s limits.
Trailer, via STARZ.
Ghost
Omari Hardwick plays James “Ghost” St. Patrick, a successful New York entrepreneur who lives a double life as the head of a drug empire serving only the rich and influential, and who wants out. That last part is the engine. Ghost wants to be legitimate, and every season is the story of why he cannot be. Hardwick is magnetic in the role, and he carries scenes the writing does not deserve.
Tommy
Joseph Sikora plays Tommy Egan, Ghost’s partner and oldest friend, who has no interest in leaving the life and every interest in keeping Ghost in it. Sikora is the show’s live wire, and the friendship between the two men, which curdles across six seasons, is its best material. Naturi Naughton plays Tasha, Ghost’s wife, whose ambition is as sharp as her husband’s, and Michael Rainey Jr. plays their son Tariq, whose arc into his father’s world became the basis for a spin-off.
The Style
Power looks expensive. The clubs gleam, the suits fit, and the show’s New York is a place of surfaces that the camera loves. Larenz Tate, Shane Johnson, Rotimi, Jerry Ferrara and La La Anthony fill out a cast of lawyers, politicians, lieutenants and rivals, and the show is never short of people for Ghost to betray or be betrayed by.
Why It Worked
It delivered. Every episode has a reversal, a threat and a consequence, and the show’s appetite for melodrama is matched by its willingness to kill characters the audience liked. Positive reviews at its release praised exactly that momentum.
Where It Falls Short
The momentum is the whole show. Power’s characters do not deepen; they escalate. Ghost’s desire to go straight is stated every season and undermined every season by the same choices, and by the middle of the run the pattern is visible from across the room. The plotting relies on characters being stupid at convenient moments. The dialogue is functional. And the show’s moral position, that Ghost is a tragic hero rather than a drug dealer with a good tailor, is asserted rather than earned.
The Verdict
Power is a stylish, well-cast crime soap that gave its network a franchise and its audience exactly what it wanted. The final season premiered on August 25, 2019 and wrapped the story with the volume all the way up. It is watchable. It is not much more than that.
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