MTV Shuga Naija loves the night clubs. Almost every episode features a night club scene, a careful observation on a youth-cultural activity and the generational zeitgeist that has shaped it. As the show’s most enduring motif, the place of night clubs is intrinsic to the entertainment industry that rising celebrity Tobi is in, and even singer and video vixen Faa. But yesterday’s episode introduced an uncomfortable yet familiar note on date rape and women’s safety.

Influential high-school ring leader Diana has brought her friends Frances and Cynthia to the much-anticipated club party, a request that her boyfriend Chike asked her for. His friends are in town and want to have some fun, and Diana is to supply the girls. She’s without Hadiza, who photobombed the group selfie Diana took of her friends which she sent to Chike. At the club, the girls are in the bathroom retouching their make up and discussing sex. They know what to expect and they know what’s required of them, but Diana eases them into the knowledge that they can decline sex if they want.

All of them look transformed by make up and skin-tight clothes. Later, Leila shows up to be with Tobi at the club but doesn’t go near him because she spots him with a silver-haired Faa (I thought it was a lovely wig). Faa, who is now a new musical revelation after Tobi’s personal assistant Khalil recorded her singing, gets more involved with Bada by having transactional sex with him. Diana’s friends, by now, are with Chike’s friends in different spots in the club. But I became more suspicious of the way they appeared to be lazily sipping on their drinks, as if they were inebriated.

The last few scenes of the episode happens in a blur, as Leila, from nowhere, notices what has happened. The girls are rescued into a car before they can get further wasted, but an unconscious Frances is left behind and Chike’s friends alert each other with quiet glee. On Twitter, I read the brief account of a man who rescued a woman at a club after witnessing the man she was with spike her drink. She was barely conscious when he took her to his apartment. Night clubs constitute a mixed bag of people, especially rapists. And for young naïve women like Cynthia and Frances, they become easy prey. How will Diana’s relationship with her friends change after this? Will Frances ever be the same? I guess we will know by next episode.