It is hard pressed to think of a bigger letdown than the latest installments in R. Kelly’s master opus that is Trapped in the Closet: maybe Lost season 2, U2’s Pop, Austin Powers in Goldmember, learning there is no Santa Clause. How possibly could something so great go so wrong. The first five chapters were soap operas for the hip-hop crowd following a man caught by his one night stand’s husband who in turn was creeping around with, wait for it, wait for it: a dude! And when Sylvester finally got out of the quagmire, he arrives home only to realize that his own wife was having a bout of infidelity.
After the instant phenomenons that were the first five chapters, Kells quickly churned out seven more chapters in no time that were arguably better than before thanks to a midget named big man. My favorite part of the whole epic has to be in chapter 9 when the policeman was about to open the cabinet, the narrator busted out of the closet to say, “Now pause the movie ‘cos what I’m about to say to ya’ll is so damn twisted. Not only is there a man in his cabinet, but the man... is a midget, midget, midget!” Really, the only thing that could top the first twelve chapters of Trapped in the Closet in terms of entertainment value was watching Trapped in the Closet with the R. Kelly commentary on.
Then almost two years go by and all we get from the Pied Piper of R&B is another boring, and Closet-less album, Double Up. But in the liner notes, we did get a promise of more chapters by summer, which did arrive. The hype started well enough with the great recap of the previous channels (as if anyone needed to be reminded of what has gone down so far) and as Monique correctly pointed out, had the “best chorus of ‘Oh (expletive deleted)’ evah.”
Then finally the latest chapter hit the internet last Monday like Christmas, Easter and my birthday all rolled into one. Well that is how it felt until I watched chapter 13. All we get is Sylvester and Twan riding in a car, albeit with a couple good lines, and an inexplicable cameo from Rosie the Nosie Neighbor and her limp husband. Nothing big happened, no midget, nothing but me sitting at my computer screen wondering, “This is what I waited two years for?” And things didn’t get much better from there including a blink and you miss it chapter that was barely a minute long.
I brought up Lost in the intro for a reason because the missteps Trapped in the Closet took eerily parallel the television show. They spent too much time on character that are no longer that interesting (Sylvester/Jack), introduced characters we didn’t care about (lesbian chicks/the tailie), while ignoring characters we came to love (the midget/Hurley), didn’t answer long standing questions (how did Locke get in the wheelchair, who is the midget working for), and there was a frustrating dream sequence, while the viewers were left wonder if the writers knew what they were doing. But at least in Trapped in the Closet didn’t kill off the token hot chick (granted mostly because there never was one).
But unlike Lost, which ended season two with a What the Frac moment as we got our first glimpse of someplace off the island, Kells leaves us with a cliffhanger which doubtfully has anyone actually hanging. Sure, there are some people out there wondering what this package everyone is talking about in the last chapter. But those people are morons. The package that Chuck has is obviously some sort of VD, most likely AIDS, which was passed around to all the characters because they were all sleeping together (although we do know that Gwendolyn and the policeman at the very least had a condom present). But after all of this, color me less excited for chapter 23.
You can watch the entire Trapped in the Closet over at ifc.com/trapped.
Trapped in the Closet chapters 13-22 gets a
on my Terror Alert Scale.
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