Clean Slate, on Amazon Prime, stars Laverne Cox of Orange is the New Black as Desiree, a trans woman who returns to her small town in...ulp...Alabama.... after transitioning. Alabama? I was afraid to even drive through the state. I'm going jump right into the deep end with Episode 1.5, where Desiree wants to go back to church. Whoa, someone's going to quote the Book of Leviticus
Back Story: Desiree was dumped by her boyfriend and lost her job as a gallery coordinator in NYC, so she moves back to Mobile, Alabama to stay with her best friend, the closeted Louis (DK Uzoukwou, who played a straight guy on Insecure, but may be gay in real life).
She hasn't seen her Dad Harry (George Wallace) for 17 years, and she hasn't told him that she is trans. When she drops by, expecting angry reprisals, he is surprised for about 30 seconds, and then becomes a super-ally. So their estrangement was all on her?
Rather elitist, Desiree looks down on heavily-tattooed ex-con Mack (Jay Wilkinson), who works at Dad's car wash, and rejects him when he asks for a date.
Next door neighor Miguel (Philip Garcia, left) doesn't appear in this episode.
Scene 1: Dad comes down to breakfast to see Desiree ready for church. "You're sure you want to go? You hated it before?" "I liked the music and the picnics. It was the threat of eternal damnation I disliked." She wants to go to support new choir director Louis. A gay choir director in a fundamentalist Alabama church?
Scene 2: The Slate Family Car Wash (clean slate, get it?), which also has a snack bar. How long do these car washes take?
Mack and his totally nonchalant preteen daughter ("What's your pronoun sitch?") run the place on Sunday morning, but they wonder why, since almost everyone in small-town Alabama is in church at that time.
At church, Desiree gets nervous, so she sits in the back row, and when the Preacher (Keith Arnold Bolden) asks for visitors to stand, she keeps still. I always hate that part, too. Ella (Telma Hopkins, whom I know from Gimme a Break) isn't having it, and drags her to the front row to sit with the Girlfriends of Grace.
They have a standard Black Church service, with everyone singing along to the hymn without checking the hymnal.
Scene 3: At the car wash, Mack's daughter wants to know why he never goes to church. He explains that it's a con: when he was in prison, he had the choice of joining white supremacy gangs or hiding in the chapel, so he hid, and became so good at the con that they called him Reverend Mack.
Daughter suggests a nefarious scheme to get some cars into the car wash on Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, the church service ends. Choirmaster Louis tells Desiree that he had to turn his phone off after she recommeded going on Grindr, because it kept pinging: "Those dudes are thirsty!" Boyfriend is up for a fun Sunday afternoon.
On the way out of the church, the Pastor hugs the women and shakes hands with the men -- and Desiree! She and Girlfriend of Grace Ella are both mortified by the snub.
Scene 4: Desiree lying in bed, being depressed: 27 minutes of bliss followed by a transphobic snub. Girl, if that's the worst you get at a fundamentalist church in Alabama.... wait, 27 minutes? Or services took an hour and a half: 30 minutes for announcements and songs, 45 minutes for a hellfire sermon, and 15 minutes for the altar call. Dad tries to convince her that it wasn't a snub, the Pastor doesn't hug women unless he knows that they'll be ok with it, but she insists: the Pastor thinks that she is a man.
Meanwhile, Ella and the other Girlfriends of Grace are squacking mad. They discuss how to get back at the transphobic Pastor: maybe withhold the after-church food that they always provide. No pot roast, no lamb chops, no deviled eggs. We never got food after the service.
And Choirmaster Louis can start a choir boycott. Back story: Louis is Girlfriend of Grace Ella's son.
Louis doesn't want to do it, but Ella forces him, or she'll revoke her Amazon Prime password (product placement, just like in the old days when they stopped the story to drink Maxwell House Coffee).
Dad offers to go speak to the Pastor "man to man."
More after the break