‘Trapped in the Closet’ Chapter Sixteen: Oh Snap!

Has any artist made us smile more times this week than Robert Sylvester Kelly? No. Trapped in the Closet: Chapter Sixteen is now viewable at IFC.com, and we’ve asked performance artist Neal Medlyn, co-creator of the musical Kenny Mellman + Neal Medlyn = Robert Kelly, to walk us through it.

Recap: Twan denies fathering Tina’s baby. While Roxane and Twan trade snaps, Sylvester tries to convince Twan that this could be a chance to turn his life around. Twan agrees, but as he approaches Tina to make it right, Roxane announces, “I’m fucking her now.�

Medlyn: If you should ever find yourself in need of snaps, chapter sixteen has you covered: “Shrek-looking ass!� “Fever-blister-looking bitch!� This episode is surprisingly brief, but it seems the most like The Twilight Zone of any so far, which I mention mostly because R. Kelly has said that he thinks the music sounds like the “theme from The Twilight Zone.� So, if we’re just getting to that part of the music, Trapped in the Closet is definitely going to end up having a Ring Des Nibelungen scope when all is said and done.

All that happens in sixteen is that Twan says he may not be Tina’s baby daddy, and Tina’s eye starts twitching. It twitches so crazily, however, that I really, truly got goose bumps — with R. Kelly, you can’t really relax, because Tina could turn out to be a robot or a Martian, and her head could explode, and out come a million R. Kellys, arguing over which one in the real one! Not too far-fetched since he had an interstitial skit on TP2.COM based pretty much around the same idea. She turns out to be a lesbian instead, which was almost as surprising to me, since I didn’t think Kelly would want to explore the other meaning of “in the closet� too much. Boy, was I wrong.

Trapped in the Closet: Chapter Sixteen [IFC.com]