Not too many consequences this week with "Black Jesus Blues". There's an establishment of the new threat in town: Green Light Babies (GLB) on the rampage. And a threat of pride going before a fall. Anissa is getting awfully cocky, and since Black Lightning is a CW show, that means that she's probably going to take a hard fall before the season is halfway over.
Let's begin at the beginning. One GLB gets free of his pod, kills a scientist, and then dies. Before he does so, he frees another GLB, Wendy Hernandez (Madison Bailey). When Lynn and a dozen other scientists arrive (how many does ASA keep on the late shift?), Lynn tries to talk Wendy down. But Wendy is psychotic and hallucinating, busts out a wall with her wind powers, and flies or jumps or something.
Peter (James Remar), who isn't doing much on the show these days, recognizes Wendy as a GLB he "spotted for the ASA 30 years ago". So Wendy is not only psychotic and a metahuman, but 30 years out of time.
There is a cute bit where Jennifer and Anissa discuss their powers. It turns out being metahuman means no cramps, and Anissa still thinks their powers are a blessing from God. Jennifer isn't so sure, but the no-cramps thing seems to sell it.
Another plot involves Issa from last week. Mean ole Agent Odell is holding Issa prisoner, and Lynn has to go in and find out more about Issa. Not only can he come back from the dead, but he has the power to make eye contact someone. His jugular vein "twitches" (it looks like it's glowing to me), and whoever he's looking at blurts out the truth. In the case of Issa, it's that she's frightened of him. Lynn brings Issa home and his power goes to work on the family, making them blurt out their truths: Jeff is concerned Anissa is too cocky, Anissa hates that Jeff is being too fatherly, Jennifer is unhappy her parents are keeping her in her room, Lynn is sick of everyone whining. Amen, sister!
Also, Jeff saying Anissa is jumping off cars would seem to be a pretty big tip-off to Issa that Anissa is a superhero. I guess secret identities aren't too big of a concern, though.
Jennifer takes Issa out on her porch spot and in a pretty touching moment, they bond over their shared and unwanted powers.
We open with Tobias playing chess against Kayhil, aka Painkiller (Jordan Calloway). And may I say, it's good to have Marvin "Krondon" Jones III back at full strength. He complains that Khalil abandoned Syonide and helped get her killed, tells him to keep making chess moves, and beats him every time Khalil puts himself in check. We also get more of Tobias' bigotry toward blacks.
Throughout the episode, Tobias also eliminates the people who were with him when he killed Jeff's father Alvin. The people are his old buddy Marselius, now in a retirement center, and a crooked cop named Summers. Tobias blowing Summers away with a shotgun is nothing special. But again, Jones nails it when he goes to see Marselius. Tobias talks about his hopes and dreams of turning the city into his own nation with an army of metahumans, and Marselius is proud of him. Then Marselius realizes Tobias is there to kill him and seems to accept his fate. Tobias says he loves him and then breaks his neck.
Khalil pays a visit to Jennifer on the Porch Roof of Solitude (trademark 2001 by Clark Kent on Smallville) and says he has to do Tobias' dirty work because Tobias got him his legs back. Whether this is the real reason or not, we'll find out. Jennifer isn’t impressed with Khalil's excuse and pushes him off of the porch.
The other two subplots? Jeff and Napier (Robert Townsend) are still going on with the whole "Jeff resigns as principal" thing. I'm still not quite clear what Robert's position is with the board, and I'm already sick of the word "board" on the show. They took Jeff up on his offer last week and are firing him and bringing in a new white principal. Napier tells Jeff the board wants Jeff's 100% support (or what? isn't very clear). Jeff goes along with it and tells first the parents and then the students that he's cool with it and Lowry can't be that bad, and Jeff is staying on as a teacher. Given that next week's title is "Master Lowry", and the CW press release says Lowry is making "sweeping changes" and undoing Jeff's programs, that doesn't seem likely.
And in a subplot carried over from last year, Anissa meets back up with Chenoa (Shein Mompremier) and they have sex. I guess Chenoa is a rich singer and club owner with her own penthouse apartment, which I'm pretty sure we didn't know last year. Grace (Chantal Thuy) is working as a waitress at Chenoa's private bash, and is none too thrilled to see Anissa with Chenoa. Anissa doesn't seem to be bothered by her ex-lover's reaction to her being with another woman, and neither am I. We haven't seen Grace in 11 episodes: now we're supposed to care about her? It looks like Anissa is getting some personal happiness, so probably it'll all be snatched away from her.
In the end, Black Lightning shocks Wendy out of her psychotic break. It turns out GLBs are dying from cellular collapse and going back into the pods is the only way to save them. Wendy decides to go back, but Issa would rather be with his family. Or at least his father and sister: his mother from last week is suspiciously absent from their reunion at the hospital.
There's no sign of Inspector Bill. Which is a little surprising given his reaction to Jeff revealing his secret identity last week. Damon Gupton seems to always get short shrift on the show and tonight is no exception. Agent Odell (Bill Duke) comes in to look ominous and hint the ASA wants to weaponized the GLBs. And like I asked last week, why is Freeland letting the ASA have apparently free reign? As Lynn notes, they treat Issa like an Al Qaeda member after snatching him off the street. And that's after last week's botched capture attempt at a funeral home in public view. So I can't see the Lynn/ASA relationship going too far without something breaking.
There's a brief bit of Black Lightning and Thunder rescuing a street full of people with their electrical powers and super strength. Thunder takes some bows and Black Lightning berates her for it. Black Lightning is becoming a tertiary character on a show named after him. I don't expect pow sock action sequences every five minutes, but sheesh, you begin to wonder how BL got the reputation that he has among the city residents.
Overall, "Black Jesus Blues" was basically the second part of the premier. We got things looking up a bit from last week: Jennifer is a little happier about her power, Anissa has found true luv and is enjoying the public attention to her heroic ID. Which means they'll both probably have their dreams crushed. Hopefully they find a little more for Bill and Peter to do in future episodes. The Jeff/Lowry thing looks... predictable. Lowry comes in, dismantles Jeff's programs (out of general evilness and desire to save a book, or misplaced intentions, we'll see but my money is on the latter) and somehow gets overthrown. Lynn eventually breaks with the ASA when she does something they can't stand.
If last week showed what had happened, this week set the seeds for what will happen down the road.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Oct 17, 2018
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