WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Pose Season 3, Episode 2, "Intervention," which aired Sunday on FX.
The ongoing AIDS epidemic has hit ballroom emcee Pray Tell particularly hard throughout Pose. He's lost friends, lovers and even his belief that life is worth living. And when the premiere for Pose Season 3 jumped forward to 1994, the episode made clear that Pray Tell's alcoholism was hurting both himself and those around him. The second episode of Pose Season 3, the appropriately named "Intervention," deals with that problem head on. Here's a spoiler-filled recap of what happened.
"Intervention" kicks off with Blanca talking to Judy about Pray Tell's addiction problem. While Blanca has noticed Pray Tell's condition worsening, Judy hasn't talked to him for several weeks due to the two of them getting into a fight at a memorial service to which he showed up drunk and high. Blanca and Judy then agree to have an intervention for Pray Tell.
Hoping to make that plan a reality, Blanca, Elektra, Lulu, Angel, Papi and Ricky meet with Lisa, a harm reduction counsellor. While there are concerns about whether Pray Tell will actually listen, Lisa walks them through the process of holding an intervention for him. Essentially, Lisa wants them to write letters to Pray Tell about his behavior. To prepare for the situation, Blanca reads out a sample letter that she wrote. Lisa, for her part, pretends to be Pray Tell. However, a fight ensues and it's revealed why Damon is conspicuously absent from the intervention: He relapsed and moved to his cousin's home in Charleston. Blanca laments that she couldn't save her son, but Elektra comforts her.
However, a new problem soon arises: Who is going to pay for Pray Tell's rehab? Elektra quickly comes up with a plan and aims to have them win the prize money from an upcoming ball. Elektra then starts training her family back up into ballroom-ready shape in her tough-love way. Such is how what Elektra dubs "Operation Get Pray Off That Brown Liquor" goes.
Pray Tell isn't the only person falling apart due to addiction, though. Lulu and Angel's drug spiral continues, as the two become paranoid about whether their friends know that they've been using. When Papi gets home, they hide their drugs, but he's still clearly unhappy that Lulu is around. Papi tells Lulu to leave and holds his own personal intervention for Angel, saying that he won't marry her if she's still using drugs. While Angel accuses Papi of cheating on her, he tells her that's just the paranoia from the drugs talking. "I love you," he says. "I'm just trying to help. [...] We've got a chance at a good life, but you've got to choose us instead of that pipe."
At some point after, Lulu has a different sort of intervention with her own mother. In order to enact her vision for the ball, Elektra tells Lulu that she's going to replace her with Pray Tell for the lip sync category, which angers the younger woman. From there, Elektra confronts Lulu about her drug use and tells her that she needs to get clean. Even when Lulu agrees to get clean, though, Elektra stands by what she said and tells her that she'll be working as a seamstress behind the scenes.
Blanca and Christopher then finally meet his parents for dinner. Christopher's parents prove incredibly friendly at first, and the new couple reveals that they met at work. As the night goes on, though, Christopher's mother, Angie, asks Blanca if she wants to have kids. Blanca says that she already has four kids, in reference to the House of Evangelista, which confuses the parents. Christopher attempts to change the subject, but the entire situation proves incredibly awkward, as his parents seem to look down on her for who she is and where she comes from.
At the ball itself, the House of Evangelista proves dominant over Lemar's upstart House of Khan when Elektra destroys Nefertiti on the floor. They're followed up by Pray Tell and Lemar in the Candy's Sweet Refrain lip sync category. While Lemar's lip sync to Janet Jackson's "If" is great, one judge opts to give him a nine rather than 10, which invokes his ire. Pray Tell then takes the floor and outdoes Lemar and gets tens across the board for his performance of En Vogue's "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)."
Lemar, as one might expect, explodes over the result, demanding a recount. When Pray Tell tries to slap him down, Lemar pulls a knife, which causes Ricky to come running to and disarm the House of Khan's leader. However, the whole thing is interrupted when Pray Tell's friend Castle has a seizure and an ambulance shows up to take him away. Castle, who is HIV positive, mixed drinks with methadone that he'd taken earlier. While Pray Tell initially wants to leave the ball and go after Castle to the hospital, Blanca convinces him to stay and defeat the House of Khan.
When everyone returns to the ball, Lemar walks up and starts to apologize for pulling a knife on Pray Tell. Soon though, he turns to insults, saying of Castle, "It's got to be hard to watch somebody you love slowly wilt away. And to see your own future." Pray, who is also HIV positive, responds by punching Lemar out.
Afterwards, the House of Evangelista convenes for a dinner that quickly turns into the intervention for Pray Tell. They tell him that they've arranged for him to go to rehab, and Pray Tell, for his part, seems shockingly amicable to their plan, though he soon tells them not to waste their money. Papi then inadvertently reveals that Lisa asked them to write letters for Pray Tell, and chaos ensues.
Pray doesn't react well to what his loved ones tell him. After Ricky gives his boyfriend an ultimatum about their relationship, Pray explodes and starts insulting him. Pray then starts laying into Elektra and Blanca over their own behavior and problems. Things get especially nasty when Pray tells Blanca that Christopher is only keeping her around because she's an "HIV charity case." Papi jumps to defend Blanca, but Pray calls Angel a crackhead. Just before he leaves, Pray tells them not to judge him when they have so many problems of their own.
Back at Pray and Ricky's apartment, the latter makes good on his threat and packs his bags. Ricky says that he won't stay in a relationship like the one his mother had, while Pray claims that his messed up childhood in which he was called worthless is precisely why he drinks. Pray says that he likes the way drinking makes him feel, and that he doesn't want to deal with withdrawal or talking about his problem with a group of strangers. "Who am I hurting," Pray asks, just hours after pretty much everyone -- including Ricky -- told him that he was hurting them.
As Ricky tries to leave, Pray berates and insults him about everything ranging from his HIV diagnosis to his education level. Things then escalate when Pray grabs Ricky's bags and starts to hit him. However, soon Pray breaks down crying and begs Ricky not to leave. Things turn again, though, when Ricky says that he can't stay, which causes Pray to yell at him to go.
From there, Pose turns to Angel and Papi back at their apartment. Papi, for his part, has made a big meal for Angel, who is suspicious of his intentions. And Papi does have good news: Calvin Klein wants Angel for their new fragrance. Angel, though, has something more important going on. She reveals to Papi that she talked to Lisa and told her about her drug use and lying. Angel decides to instead focus on getting sober, and Papi expresses his support for her choice.
And in an episode heavy with romantic relationship issues, Pose moves to Blanca and Christopher. While the latter attempts to commiserate with Blanca over Pray's failed intervention, she soon follows a piece of advice from Elektra earlier in "Intervention" and confronts him about not having been more supportive during dinner with his family. Christopher insists that his family's opinion of Blanca doesn't matter, and he promises to make that clear at an impromptu dinner later that night.
This time, when Christopher's mom starts to get condescending, Blanca claps back at her about her classism and discloses that she's trans. Angie then claims that she's not a bigot, and she immediately follows that up by being a bigot. As Christopher and Blanca leave, he lays down the law with his mother and says that he loves Blanca and she will lose him if she can't accept that.
After his confrontation with Ricky, Pray goes to his fellow Emcee Council members and asks to rejoin the group. At first they roast him over his terrible outfit, but soon they embrace and accept him back in. However, Pray soon learns that Castle has been discharged from the hospital and took his pills to a hotel room, echoing a suicide plan he shared with Pray earlier in "Intervention."
When he gets to the hotel, Pray finds Castle alive. While he'd planned to overdose, Castle decided not to take his own life. The two cry together, and agree to both get sober. And as "Intervention" ends, Blanca indeed helps check Pray into rehab, opening up the possibility for a better future -- one free from self-hate and addiction.
Created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals, Pose stars Mj Rodriguez as Blanca Rodriguez-Evangelista, Dominique Jackson as Elektra Wintour, Billy Porter as Pray Tell, Indya Moore as Angel Evangelista, Ryan Jamaal Swain as Damon Richards-Evangelista, Hailie Sahar as Lulu Ferocity, Angel Bismark Curiel as Esteban "Lil Papi" Martinez-Evangelista and Dyllón Burnside as Ricky Wintour. New episodes air Sundays on FX.