In its two short seasons on BET, “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is” has stood atop the celebreality genre. The triumphs and travails of Ms. Cole; her sister, Neffe; and their mother, Frankie, have felt less scripted, and consequently more interesting, than anything offered up by Gene Simmons or Scott Baio or Flavor Flav. The show’s second season, which ended in December, averaged 1.8 million viewers, a record for a BET series.
Normally that would argue for a Season 3, but there’s been no announcement. Ms. Cole, the best-selling R&B singer who was abandoned by Frankie at 4 and grew up with foster parents, isn’t running a game show like Flavor Flav’s - though it would be amusing to watch a crew of Lotharios competing to impress her - and she hasn’t turned her life into a renewable sitcom. It’s possible that she has decided there’s no material left now that Frankie has completed a prison sentence and her sister appears to have her life together. It’s also possible that she’s waiting until she has another album to promote.
In the meantime there’s “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is … A Family Affair,” a two-hour reunion special Thursday night on BET. It’s a staged interview before a studio audience - somewhere between an afternoon talk show and an infomercial - but in its own way it’s no less real than the reality show.
After some back and forth between Ms. Cole and Ananda Lewis, the Oprah Winfrey of this chatfest, Neffe and Frankie take their places on the couch, and with a backdrop of clips from “The Way It Is” - Ms. Cole visiting Frankie in prison; Neffe deciding to have an abortion - the three women relive the dramas of the show and bring us up to date on their lives. Advice is dispensed (therapy is good, three-ways are bad), and despite the flow of “I love you,” old wounds are poked at.
The fun - or if not the fun, the fascination - of “The Way It Is” was watching the emotional but exceedingly focused Ms. Cole take on the role of mother to her wayward sister and mom, and in the interview setting this dynamic comes through even more strongly, as if under a microscope. While the family’s two drama queens joke and cry and play to the audience, Ms. Cole sits rigidly, one stilettoed foot constantly twirling, her precisely angled elbow seeking the right spot on the leather chair. When Frankie threatens to get a little too raw, her daughter cuts her off. The well-behaved foster child’s seriousness, self-consciousness and need for control are almost painfully on display.
The special will also identify the new man in Ms. Cole’s life. The review copy sent to critics left out this crucial final scene, but Ms. Lewis hinted that “his name starts with a J.” Or maybe she meant Jay. Whoever he is, he’d better be prepared for his new girlfriend to run the show.