The Best Man: The Final Chapters review
Here’s the thing with The Best Man: The Final Chapters. It’s a full-blown TV series bonus extension of a film fans doubted would even get a sequel until 2013. Yet somehow it still doesn’t feel like enough.
To put into greater context, The Final Chapters’ eight nearly hour-long episodes are essentially the equivalent of four movies.
Few romantic dramadies get sequels let alone a TV series that’s basically a set of mini movies. I still came away wanting more exploits of Harp, Jordan, Lance, Quentin, Shelby, Candace, Robyn and Murch.
That’s a testament to the infectious chemistry of the eight leads — Taye Diggs, Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Harold Perrineau and Melissa De Sousa — and the smart, clever and (mostly) authentic stories told with this group of college friends.
Franchise director/screenwriter Malcolm D. Lee remains heavily involved as the co-show runner — along with Dayna Lynn North — in addition to directing four episodes.
Lee’s involvement was key to ensure that Best Man feel remains as consistent as it did when The Best Man arrived in theaters in 1999.
With The Final Chapters, Lee and North do what few romantic comedy/dramas would attempt — showing in great and sometimes painful detail what happens after the storybook happily ever after.
Life isn’t about perfect plans coming together and every hope and dream realized exactly as envisioned. It’s messy, beautiful, funny and sometimes sad, but it’s all part of the experience.
The Final Chapters’ biggest success is how it navigates these unavoidable life challenges in a realistic manner while finding those genuine moments of happiness that make life worth living.
Lee foreshadowed that The Best Man universe would reflect the real world back with The Best Man Holiday when the virtuous and saintly Mia (Monica Calhoun) died after a lengthy battle with cancer.
That heavy a subplot was not the norm for the genre especially in a Christmas holiday backdrop.
Final Chapters picks up not long after the end of Holiday with the suave and laid-back Quentin (Terrence Howard) announcing he’s engaged. Naturally, Quentin’s wedding is anything but low-key.
His fiancé, Xiomara Amani (Nicole Ari Parker in a wonderfully overblown performance), serves as a reminder that it takes a special countenance to fit in this college crew dynamic. The destination wedding certainly feels like a movie with familiar themes resurfacing and new challenges arising.
Harper (Diggs) has the opportunity to get the semi-autobiographical book chronicling his college years made into a movie, but he wants his pals’ blessing before moving forward. His wife, Robyn (Lathan), is inspired by the island life and considers a career change for her culinary interests.
Jordan (Long) is still struggling in finding a work life balance as she’s nearly cracked through the glass ceiling. Lance (Chestnut) is dealing with losing Mia through meaningless flings when a charming concierge (Yvonna Pearson) starts to convince him he might be ready to actually love again.
Murph (Perrineau) and Candace (Hall) remain the most stable of the couples while Shelby (De Sousa) isn’t quite ready to give up on whatever she and Quentin have even if it means crashing the wedding.
The wedding episodes skew heavy on the comedy with Howard, De Sousa and Parker getting ample screen time with a twist payoff that delivers and makes sense.
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Post-wedding, the series starts breezing through the years zooming by the Trump presidency, COVID and to a lesser extent Black Lives Matter protests. Along the way, the gang has their triumphant moments and challenges.
For the fortysomething viewers who were in a similar place in life to the characters in 1999 with The Best Man, The Final Chapters will ring just as true.
Lee and the writers put the characters through real life situations from health concerns, career uncertainty, lack of purpose, caring for elderly parents, confronting their own mortality, marriage strife and the challenge of raising children in the modern era.
The last two carry through the series. A parent struggles to deal and accept their child’s gender identification. This subplot could have been botched on several occasions, but it was handled with humor, thought and concern for both parties to offer a realistic glimpse at how this interplay would be handled.
Likewise, the marriage drama is treated in a similar fashion with the writers refusing to take sides.
Instead, they lay the issues out presenting the warts, logic flaws and selfishness of both and let the viewer decide who they find more relatable. As in real life, as more information comes out those sides might change.
It’s unfair to single out any of the cast. They’ve had the rare opportunity to evolve their characters from The Best Man to stronger, better fleshed out personalities that seem like real people. It feels like reconnecting with old friends whenever they reunite.
Still, it felt like Chestnut, Diggs, Lathan, Howard and De Sousa had the stronger storylines and more impactful arcs. As the characters are older, most of their children are stepping out to teenage and young adult pursuits and interests.
Eric Scott Ways and Mia Rose Morgan stood out as Lance’s son, LJ, and Shelby’s daughter, Kennedy, respectively. Blake Aria Hendricks is adorable as Mia, the sweet daughter of Robyn and Harper.
The series’ production values are high retaining the same quality of the films without skimping on the budget because it’s “just a TV series.”
Not every storyline resolves in the way I wanted — that’s life — but they wrapped in a way that felt consistent to the films and episodes preceding the finale.
That said, does Final Chapters really have to mark the end of this ride with these characters? The Best Man: Epilogue has a nice ring to it if only to spend a little more time with this crew I’m not ready to write off just yet.
Rating: 10 out of 10
Photo Credit: Peacock