"The Book of Blood: Chapter Two: The Perdi" – Black Lightning S02E06 Review

"I'm not quite dead. Really, I'm feeling much better now."

And don't I feel like an idiot. After talking so movingly of Peter (James Remar) dying last week and the creative team doing a great job of having Jeff and Anissa react to his death... they brought Peter back with not so much as a by-your-leave. They didn't even bother to make it look that convincing. He opens a secret trap door in the bottom of his SUV, jumps clear when it flips over, and then triggers a self-destruct. Because of course Peter has a self-destruct built into his SUV.

This is all revealed after a convenient "Why am I having this flashback?" flashback, which is only there for the benefit of the audience. I suppose it's better than Peter explaining it to someone who already knows. But only barely, and mostly because nobody knows he's alive.

So, presumably, this will pay off in the same way it has on so many shows. The person playing dead keeps a low profile, occasionally assists the hero (like he does later tonight), is eventually revealed through no one's fault but some happenstance, and everyone is pissed at him for letting them think he was dead. Not only will the creative team probably fall back on this, but there's not very many other places they can go. You kind of wonder what the point was of killing off Peter just to so-casually bring him back at the beginning of the next episode.

But what about "Chapter Two: The Perdi" itself? Peter's continuing existence was only one relatively small piece of the puzzle. Most of the episode focused on the Perdi and the Sange. Two factions, black and white, farmers and... something. It would help if we had a little more knowledge of what South Freeland is. A one-stoplight community? A major suburb? A minor suburb? A 2018 version of Mayberry? We don't know, and since it's all taken place at night and in either the woods or inside of a couple of houses, we have no idea.

We do get the unnamed leader of the Perdi farming community (Warren Snipe), and his wife Batina (Charmin Lee). They're the parents of Anaya, the pregnant girl from last week. This week she gives birth to two babies, black and white. And when they're placed near each other, their eyes glow silver.

The Sange are whites who are under the control of a woman known as Looker (Sofia Vassilieva). As we'll later sort of find out through Jeff's speculating, Looker is apparently another of the original vaccine subjects who gained her powers the same way Jeff did. Except Looker's power involves extruding a silver-liquid "Element". It lets her take control of the white people, turn them into Sange, and gives them superior strength and speed. It also lets Looker look through their eyes, which I guess is the source of her name. Ms. Vassilieva is certainly attractive in a Hollywood make-up/hairstylist sort of way, but I wouldn't call her a "looker", which was the basis for the character's name in the comics. Nor does this Looker bear any resemblance power-wise to that Looker.

I don't get the creative team's near-obsession with the Outsiders, the team of which Black Lightning and Looker were both members. And Grace Choi, and Thunder, and Lightning. Black Lightning was a member of the Justice League, too, but we don't get JL references every other week. Oh, and there's a reference to King Victor of Markovia on the radio, which is another Outsiders reference. Yes, the Outsiders were kinda cool. But they're only one small part of Black Lightning's decades-long career.

Anissa helps Anaya deliver her babies. Anaya's parents aren't thrilled with having a Sange baby. The Sange, or at least Looker controlling the Sange, isn't too thrilled about it, either. She sends her super-speeding Sange to get the babies, and they succeed in getting one of them and bringing it to her. She can't use her Element on the baby, but can sense there's a second one and sends her people to bring it.

All of this after the Sange launch an attack on the Perdi as they attempt to get the babies out. The fight is particularly impressive, particularly when Black Lightning zooms in. The problem is the same one as establishing South Freeland as a community: it's too damned dark to see much of anything or figure out what's really going on. The Sange superspeed zip around like they're related to Barry and Nora Allen. Black Lightning blasts some of them, and at the end the remainder run off and the silver goo crawls out of the corpse and across the forest floor back to Looker.

There are two other subplots. The first is Lynn mourning the death of the fourteen pod kids last week, and blaming herself for their deaths. She goes home and drinks a lot, and Jennifer quietly reads her the riot act, telling Lynn it's not her fault the kids died. However, it is her responsibility. Which I'd tend to agree with: it was dumb for Lynn to trust Jace was telling her the truth.

The other subplot revolves around Khalil and Tobias. Tobias is still trying to get Reverend Holt (Clifton Powell) to sell the clinic. He sends his blackmailed lackey Councilman Parker (Eric Lynch) to make Holt an offer, but Holt knows who is behind it and refuses. Tobias tells Khalil to kill Holt, and lets slip he was responsible for Khalil being paralyzed. Which seems like a tactical mistake, even if Khalil is now tied to Tobias because of the implants that restored Khalil's legs.

Khalil tries to kill Holt, but can't bring himself to do it. it's a combination of Khalil not being a killer, and Holt asking him what his mother would think and telling him Jesus can forgive him. I find the reference to Jesus and God and religion interesting, as it tends to reflect the unique culture Black Lightning has. It's not like you see reverends on The Flash or Supergirl invoking God. I always find it interesting when older shows do this. Take the original Twilight Zone's "The Obsolete Man" for an example. Romney Woodsworth reads the Bible and prays to God, and his religion goes hand-in-hand with his one-man rebellion against tyranny. But there's plenty of others. The times, they are a-changin'.

Anyhoo, Khalil goes back to Tobias and tells him there were too many witnesses. Either Tobias knows through his network Khalil is lying, or he's just a rat bastard., He apologizes for going too easy on Khalil and then beats him. A lot. I'm not sure what is more impressive: Vincent D'Onofrio's restrained performance as Wilson Fisk on Daredevil and his occasional outbursts of violence. Or Marvin Jones III and his smirking ready-to-beat-whoever-gets-him-pissed cock-of-the-walk attitude.

I also find Tobias' comments about "lazy" and "thick-lipped" Negroes amusing in an ironic kind of way. File it under "Things only albino black men can say about black men". Although I'm not sure what the point is of such comments: you don't see Wilson Fisk making insulting comments about white men.

This leads to Khalil preparing to leave town, and going to Jennifer's porch to say goodbye. I'm not sure I totally buy the Khalil of late last season who was a vicious little punk, to the "I'm ready to be redeemed" guy of this season. I suppose making him a series regular meant that they had to make him more sympathetic.

Overall, I'm on the fence with the whole current Perdi/Sange storyline. On the one hand, it's nice to see something outside of Freeland. On the other hand, we're not really seeing much of it, literally or figuratively. We're suddenly supposed to care about the Perdi, and even the Sange to some degree because Looker has some kind of grip on them. When one of them rebels against her in the opener, she drains the Element (and his life force) out of him in a matter of seconds.

But the whole thing seems like... a distraction. Like they're trying to fill an extended season. Tobias seems to be treading water, Peter is dead and alive and presumed dead. Stuff like the new principal at Garfield has been backburnered, and we don’t even get much of the government's shady schemes other than bringing in the fourteen deaths from last week.

So next week is more of the Sange/Perdi/South Freeland thing. Let's hope they do a bit more with it: so far it's kind of 'eh.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?