Ranking All 33 Episodes of R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet"

I used to play the latest episodes of Trapped in the Closet on a laptop, on a school bus, with three or four friends leering over my shoulder and shoving their knuckleheads to my speakers. This was before YouTube, mind you, with the episodes debuting on BET and ripping, eventually, to Limewire. At 17 years old, I was hooked on the interminable drama of R. Kelly's "hip hopera," his magnum opus, 12-Play withstanding. All the groundbreaking narrative techniques that critics attribute to David Simon's The Wire, in fact, predate to Trapped in the Closet, right down to Michael Kenneth Williams' recurring role as a police officer who's introduced in Episode 6 of R. Kelly's barrio opera. The series chronicles the sprawling infidelity of a dozen spouses, lovers, brothers, friends, and neighbors who weave a rather tangled web.

Trapped in the Closet launched in 2005; the first five episodes are included on R. Kelly's TP.3 Reloaded, for which Chapter 1 was the lead single. In the series' seven-year run, from 2005 through 2012, Trapped in the Closet weaved three distinct narrative arcs, with shifts in tone throughout the series. Chapters 1 through 7 are rock opera realism. Chapters 8 through 22 are soap opera surrealism a la Passions. Chapters 23 through 33 are a chitlin' circuit sort of blaxploitation. In the course of the narrative, our sole protagonist is Sylvester who negotiates various treachery with his wife, Gwendolyn, his one-night-stand, Cathy, pastor Rufus, and his secret lover, Chuck. By the 10th episode, we've also met James the Police Officer, his wife, Bridget, her lover, Big Man the Midget, Rosie the Nosy Neighbor, the Reverend Mosley James Evans, and Pimp Lucius.

Spoiler: Everyone has AIDS.

Fans of the series have all got their own preferences for Trapped's absurdity levels, with most folks agreeing that the series fell off beyond episode 12, at episode 22 at the latest. I love this entire series enough, however, to rank all the episodes, from first to 33rd. Like Nas on "Rewind," we'll be starting from the story's end, for the most part, and working our way backward to an ominous beginning, in which our protagonist, Sylvester, wakes to smells of sex, gunpowder, and dread.

Justin Charity is a staff writer at Complex and was last wrong when he ranked all of Jay Z's album intros. He'll answer questions and disputes in the comments below. He tweets as @BrotherNumpsa.

The Reverend Mosley James Evans hypes his self-help book for $29.95. The episode is half deadpan advertisement for this book that doesn't actually exist, and then half tedious argument between Tina and Roxanne, which leads to the couple's breakup. This is stupid.

The post-"Package" revival of Trapped in the Closet, this first new installment opens with R. Kelly leafing through a storybook about people answering various phone calls. "I don't like people playing on my phone!" is my general reaction to this chapter.

Sylvester and Twan meet in a parking garage a la Deep Throat. Sylvester chastises Twan, an ex-con who's already shot several characters throughout the series, for having purchased yet another handgun."Ah man, I can't never have no fun," Twan bitches to Sylvester. Twan is stupid.

R. Kelly rhymes "silence" with "silence" and then "silence." I love R. Kelly.

Rufus and Cathy's marriage counselor, Dr. William T. Perry, is one of the stronger introductions of the latter-day characters, but given the confessional feats of this series, couples' therapy is an easy, corny context to stick these characters in, especially considering that most of Rufus and Cathy's argument here is a retreat of episodes five through infinity. Next!

A recap episode with no vocal flourish and rushed pacing. "A fish with titties," Sylvester says.

Sylvester and Twan's restaurant confrontation of Tina and Roxanne is an interesting development of the plot, but Kelly stretches it out over two too many episodes. Here we devolve to convoluted non-singing and a toy helicopter, among other ludicrous cop props.

Pimp Lucius is a caricature per se, but after the critical revelation of Ch. 22, caricature becomes crutch. His stutter and variously gap-tooth affect frustrates the quality of conversation, not to mention the lack of singing. Fuck Pimp Lucius and his hoes!

Rosie and Randolph, the Steeply and Maranthe of Trapped in the Closet, have yet another argument that's rather tangential to the plot, it's not even about the characters, it's a red herring in which Randolph threatens to flash his ancient penis to his wife and the audience. Fine, it's funny, but irrelevant.

Rosie and Randolph spy Pimp Lucius arguing with his hoes outside their house. Also, Pimp Lucius and his hoes sit for a confessional segment on the Out of the Closet television show. "I'm blingin'! I'm the meanest!" Pimp Lucius​ confesses.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Randolph storms into the house. "He's got the package!" he tells Rosie, referring to Rufus, who has contracted AIDS. This episode is, in fact, a second-hand retread of the previous chapter, but this time as setup for Rosie gossiping to everyone that Rufus the Pastor has AIDS. Way to go, Rosie. SMH.

Here's the aftermath of Rosie's spatula intervention upon the ruckus at Sylvester's house. Meanwhile, this tumbleweed Bridget is hiding a sideboo from James the Police Officer, who's none too pleased with Bridget's furtive stutter. R. Kelly rhymes "pears" with "stairs." This chapter is too divided between Sylvester's house and Bridget's situation to matter much. Next!

We open with R. Kelly appearing as a ghost on the hood of a black Escalade in which Sylvester and Twan are bickering about suit sizes. Kelly appears as a ghost throughout the episode, in fact. Twan and Sylvester meet with Joey the Mobster, who is literally eating a plate of cafeteria spaghetti in a tenement storage basement; "LL Fool J," he calls Twan. Racism aside, the conversations in this chapter are as cheeky as the series gets, and Sylvester and Twan's kinship is strongest and at its most charming here. Also, Chapter 21 gives two concurrent handgun standoffs for the price of one. A must-see.

Pimp Lucius feat. God.

Finally, the payoff of Rosie and Randolph's inclusion throughout the series, which now reveals them to be Pimp Lucius​' parents. "I need to borrow a few racks," he tells them. "Lucius​!" his mother screams. "That's Pimp Lucius​," he answers.

A hood dispute over paternity and child support arrangements. "Who this fever blister-lookin' bitch think she talking to?" Twan snaps. For the record, Roxanne is talking to Sylvester, whom she's cuckolded, as she's now fucking Tina. There's no Tina-Roxanne fucking explicitly shown in the episode, however. Otherwise, this chapter might coulda made the top five.

The brief, aghast aftermath of the Roxanne Is Fucking Tina Now revelation in the previous episode. Chapter 17 is useless, plot-wise, but it features some great, hammy double-takes and stammering from Sylvester and Twan, who, at this point, are simultaneously infuriated yet turned on by Roxanne and Tina.

The midget, a.k.a. Big Man, has shit himself. Bridget cries. Big Man screams, "I'm just a stripper." Sylvester says, "A stripper?" Twan says, "A midget?" Sylvester is once again incapable of answering his mobile with the dramatic flourish that makes it look like he's reaching into his jacket for a gun. Michael Kenneth Williams wonders how the hell he wound up playing a major character in this series.

The most impressive cinematography of the series. Very Spike Lee noir. Sylvester and Cathy rendezvous at a diner, where Sylvester finally discovers Tina, who is Tae Bo proficient. Twan arrives and threatens to kill Tina, Roxanne, and anyone else who isn't Sylvester. That's essentially Twan's role throughout the series.

The chapter opens with a midget fighting his way out of a kitchen cabinet. The chapter concludes with said midget shitting himself on a kitchen table, at gunpoint. R. Kelly is Quentin Tarantino of the streets.

Bridget is the worst! Kelly's gal twang ascribed to her character is insufferable, even if Corny White Housewife is an essential characterization for any R&B opera. Bridget's husband, James, arrives home and greets his wife and sees a freshly baked cherry pie on the kitchen table and "comes to realize that Bridget is allergic to cherries," which doesn't really explain why Bridget would bake a pie in which she herself could not partake, even if she did make it to share with her midget lover. Also, the episode snuffs the cliffhanger setup for the next episode by revealing to the audience that a midget is hiding in James and Bridget's cabinet.

This is one of those corn-bred Tyler Perry moments where your capacity to appreciate this scene will depend on how true to your childhood experience and present-day blackness it is, what, with various sweating Jheri curls in orange XXXXL suits harmonizing exorcism of a pimp's sins and disposition. The camera pan to the chanting congregation is real-life footage of me and my peoples in the year 2002. "You can do it, Pimp Lucius​!"

The weakest episode of the generally strong first-gen arc, if only because the standoff between Sylvester and Rufus is too contrived and inexplicable, with Sylvester sacrificing the high ground and ignorant countless provocations to flee (or else shoot) just so Rufus can build suspense. It makes no sense that Sylvester sticks around here, but then, we're sure glad that he did.

Cathy storms out of Dr. Perry's office, mashing the elevator button to exit despite the fact that she's on the first floor. Dr. Perry assuages Cathy. He's a holy sort of Tyler Perry protagonist at this point. Rufus is meanwhile praying in Dr. Perry's office alone. Later, Rufus appears on the Out of the Closet program to dodge questions about his infidelity and "the package," i.e., AIDS. Rufus is stupid. Also, Rufus is clearly a stand-in for the media-persecuted R. Kelly, who filmed himself peeing on and otherwise violating a teenage girl in 2002.

As far as I care, Ep. 22 is the true conclusion of Trapped in the Closet. A composite of phone conversations that converge to a single concern, AIDS, the episodes petering out to an a cappella refrain ("Get off the line") is a neat termination of the paranoia convoluted interrelation that drives this series. The rest is just bonus tracks to me.

Chapter 12 is the resolution of the series' earliest narrative arc, with Cathy confessing to Gwendolyn that she fucked Sylvester way back in Chapter 1. Preceding that confessional climax, Cathy and Chuck scrap it out in a cappella, for the love of Rufus. The characters continue to play telephone amongst one another, which leads to R. Kelly doing the greatest vocal improvisation of a telephone's ring ever put to mp3.

The strongest latter-day episode, No. 18 recovers some of the more earnest tension that series loses with the introduction of the midget, Pimp Lucius, and Randolph in earlier, post-Rosie installments. The Reverend Mosley James Evans and the Peace Within Choir is a gorgeous dramatic flourish that pays off as a Martin Lawrence-quality characterization of the black church. The Rufus-Cathy-Chuck standoff (with Chuck patched in via speakerphone) is brilliantly tense, and for once this series remembers how a cliffhanger works.

The melodramatic nonsense that started it all, thank God. "Seven 'o clock in the morning, and the rays from the sun wake me," Sylvester sings. "I'm stretching and yawning in a bed that don't belong to me." That's Kafka, my G. Fine, I won't pretend that Trapped in the Closet is high art, whatever that could even mean, but I will at very least suggest that R. Kelly writes better Tyler Perry scripts than Tyler Perry, likely because R. Kelly has zero scruples as a human.

Amazing R. Kelly highway driving footage, very Steve McQueen, just wow. Sylvester sings like a police siren. James the Police Officer, a.k.a. Omar Little from The Wire, makes his first appearance, pulling Sylvester over for speeding home to fuck the same person James the Police Officer fucked just moments earlier. This episode concludes mid-orgasm. I'm hot and bothered just recalling it.

"Oh my God, a rubber!" is the greatest final line of a Trapped in the Closet chapter, or of any literary chapter of any language of any genre, if we're being honest with ourselves.

Later in the series, Rosie and Randolph are insufferable as a married couple. But Rosie's initial, solo introduction as Rosie the Nosy Neighbor in Chapter 7 is a high-point of the series, with James the Police Officer having just shot Twan the Ex-Con in the shoulder, followed by a knock on the door that gets all the male characters itching to pull guns on the next unsuspecting moron. Alas, it's just Rosie, curlers in her hair, waving her spatula.

Compare Chapter 6 to Chapters 23 and 26, both of which are dedicated to recapping several past episodes' worth of developments. What those latter-day episodes take full runtimes to retread, Chapter 6 does in just a few exasperated lines from Sylvester to Gwendolyn: "I got a hangover, been trapped in a closet, slept with who-knows, threatened to kill a pastor, baby, this is no lie, he had a lover, turns out to be a gay guy. Plus I got a ticket!" Meanwhile, as Sylvester and Gwendolyn laugh their way to reconciliation, James the Police Officer busts up in the house. James and Sylvester square off with guns. Of course. This time, however, there's blood.

R. Kelly's grand discourse on infidelity and homophobia, and this is just one gem among 33 parts. From the series' start, we may not have guessed that Trapped in the Closet would endure so many turns and revivals over so many years. But Chapter 3, in which Cathy and Rufus debate whether unexpected same-sex cheating is somehow more egregious than heterosexual cheating, was the earliest hint that R. Kelly's passion project would be smarter than just booty calls and coital exclamations.

A maniac created this series. All the unwieldy social tangents, the orgasmic exposition, the rude caricatures of pimps, parishioners, police, and simple, sinful civilians. True to the series' promise, Chapter 5 opens with Sylvester interrogating Gwendolyn about the strange, used condom in their bed, which Sylvester discovered (in the previous episode) while he was fucking Gwendolyn senseless. Gwendolyn explains: The guy left just before you got home, and anyway, I know you were at the club last night, cheating on me because my girl Tina and, uh, this girl Roxanne, see, she's friends with this guy Chuck, who's cool with—oh yeah, do you know Rufus?

"Whut," Sylvester says.

"I fucked the policeman," Gwendolyn confesses.

And everyone descends to hell.