Pose · Season 2 · Episode 5 · 16 July 2019
S2E5 What Would Candy Do?
THE MOMENT The final ballroom walk in Candy's honour - the scene that made the episode a critical consensus standout and a fan touchstone.
A memorial episode structured around the question of what a specific character would have done - how she would have moved through the world - that became one of the most-cited single hours in the show's run. The episode functions as both eulogy and character study.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
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Pose Season 2 Episode 5 'What Would Candy Do?' aired July 16, 2019 on FX as part of a season that earned 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. IMDb audiences scored the series 8.6. Billy Porter won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Season 2, the first openly gay Black man to do so. This episode is a memorial structured around the question of what a specific character would have done - how she would have moved through the world - that became the most cited single hour in the show's three-season run. It functions simultaneously as eulogy and character study, and the writing navigates the dual registers without allowing either to dominate the other. The final ballroom walk in Candy's honour was identified by critics and audiences as the episode's formal peak and the moment that secured the show's critical consensus. Year-end lists and retrospectives consistently cite this as one of the strongest single episodes of prestige television from its broadcast year.