So, I might have to accept that this is a different show that just happens to have the same title as the one from the first season. This shyt is all over the place. I get that Uncle Clifford has been tight with the showrunner/creator for a long time, but this effort to almost split the protagonist role between Clifford and Autumn really isn't helping anybody. Especially because even as someone who isn't homophobic, shyt like Clifford just hopping on the pole out of nowhere in between women doing their sets comes off as incredibly unrealistic, and was really just them letting him get his shyt off.
The focus on pandemic storylines, at least to me, shows that these episodes were mostly written in 2020 or early 2021, and they came to the conclusion that rewriting large chunks of the season to bring the storyline up to date wasn't worth it. I appreciate that they aren't doing like most shows, and ignoring a solid two year chunk as if it didn't happen, but at the same time, they're throwing out storylines dealing with stuff from the beginning of the pandemic, like regulations on church gatherings. That's some shyt that most of the audience for this show has likely put behind them, and has no real interest in seeing dramatized.
Also doesn't help that storylines are progressing at really random rates. Andre's storyline of figuring out what the old mayor actually did, and potentially deciding to run feels like it barely progresses each episode, but Lil Murda went from having to figure out how to put a tour together to being damn near halfway through it in just a couple of episodes, just for them to stall out in Memphis. At this point, instead of feeling like multiple loosely connected storylines, it's almost like multiple shows that are sharing a time slot.