Ali Siddiq’s second Domino Effect hits the right notes in black and white
Whenever a sequel to a movie is mentioned you pray they don’t ruin the sweet taste of the first one, much like biting into the brown rot on an apple when you sink your teeth into it for the second time.
Ali Siddiq didn’t drop the ball in The Domino Effect Part 2 Loss as he continues to narrate tales from his adolescent years. In the first special, he pinpoints the wrong decisions in his life which led to a life of drug dealing and large sums of money, lessons from his family, and the loss of his freedom.
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In the opening soliloquy, the comedian highlights the downside of selling dope and the street life before giving a short but detailed definition of the title of his stand-up duology Domino Effect, before delivering this brilliant parting shot “Most of the time in my community (among black people) we don’t talk about the loss. In the street people talk about their wins, they never talk about their losses, and there’s going to be some losses.”
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Siddiq skilfully uses iconic songs or lyrics from these songs as timestamps to remind his audience of an era in popular culture as part of his set and to deliver unforgettable punchlines. In the first special of Domino Effect, Siddiq makes reference to Caribbean Queen by British R&B singer-songwriter Billy Ocean when he told a story about his father making him wear bikini draws meant for grown men to school because he forgot to wash the comedian’s laundry which left him with no clean underwear to sport to school.
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Bikini draws were made popular by Billy Ocean in 1984 after he appeared in a music video wearing them while singing the chart-topping single, Caribbean Queen. Saddiq thought no one would notice he was wearing his father’s underwear but the bikini draws were exposed during the Physical Education period at school where he was forced to change into his gym outfit. When his close friend Dennard yelled out “Boy you got on panties” the quick-thinking comic shifted to performance mode and sang Caribbean Queen on the spot, waving aside the suggestion from his friend that he was wearing panties.
In The Domino Effect: Part 2 Loss, he said the lyrics to LL Cool J’s I Need Love released in 1987 hit differently when you just lost a girlfriend who had to move out of town because her parents are going through a separation. In the second segment of this stand-up special-themed ‘LOSS,’ Saddiq notes the losses that had an impact on his life, kicking it up a gear from the first one where he spoke of early mistakes made by his parents that led him down the wrong path.
Although he continues to frame mistakes from his youth, Siddiq describes the four main losses with the final loss being his freedom. The continuity from the first to the second Domino Effect is better than that of most movies. Siddiq mentioned he hated oatmeal when he was younger, but he has since grown to like the cereal after spending time in prison in the first part. In part two he pans the spotlight to the tragic loss of his baby sister whom he was trying to feed oatmeal before she was rushed to the hospital where she later dies following months of battling with an undisclosed illness. His dislike for oatmeal might steam from that moment in his life. All the questions formulated from the stories told in Domino Effect One were answered in Domino Effect Two.
The Domino Effect franchise can go pound for pound with most movie series because it has all the ingredients you would find in a great storyline, with Siddiq as the protagonist. The legal system, Quincy, the man who robbed him and took all his money as well as the two Pachos who duct taped and threw him into the trunk of his car after making a drug deal. And lastly Johnny Woods, the store manager who fired him from a job that assisted in laundering his drug money and kept his mother in the dark about the true source of his cash as the protagonists, Tee and Adrian as his love interests, his drug dealing partner Charles as the deuteragonist and Anthony Colbert Senior as his mentor, the man who helped him get back on his feet after he was released from prison. He later became best friends with Colbert’s son Anthony Colbert Junior who he says helped him buy his house.
“I tell true stories this is why I tell people’s names, so if you want, you can verify the story,” said Siddiq in the first chapter of The Domino Effect. In The Domino Effect part 2 LOSS, his sister Erika R. Devine and his friends Colbert Jr and Khalif Aikens made a documentary-style appearance in the special to verify stories from Saddiq’s life which he has turned into stand-up material.
Tying the last joke of the special to its title, Siddiq counts his losses without stating the order of importance, his job at the grocery store which forced him back onto a destructive drug dealing path, which later led to his incarceration. The death of his baby sister Ashely who he calls his ‘baby’. His girlfriend moved out of town with her mother, she kept him in school and out of trouble. He changed his ways so he could fit in with her upper-class family. And after taking a couple of punches while he was hog-tied by federal agents, his freedom was the fourth loss he mentioned.
The remarkable storyteller who aims all of his jokes at his life and actions draws laughter out of his audience by luring them in with a commanding and serious tone before switching to a gleeful one to deliver the unexpected punchline in the story. This technique puts his special on the top shelf of comedy specials and cements his place as one of the masters in the comedy game.