And so we have an average episode of Black Lightning. Not much happened. It was competently scripted, competently directed. There's not much bad to say about it. I'm not big on the Markovia angle, primarily because it takes away from the urban street environment of the show. We have a bunch of faceless Eurotrash guys running around the city like last week. Or the threat of them doing so like this week.
Not to mention they'd better up their game. Perenna managed to brain-freeze two of them last week with minimal effort. Maybe they should invest in a tranq gun or two?
Tonight on the CW seemed to be a night of heroic concessions. On Arrow, Oliver decided to give up his son because he had so much going on in his life and William wasn't safe. On Black Lightning, Jeff decided to give up becoming Garfield's principal because he had so much going on in his life. Jeff's still at Garfield as a teacher, so his presence doesn't seem to make it safer or not. Judging from his conversation in the hallway with Jeff, Lowry is still a dick. Jeff comes out looking like the even-headed one. Even if he's kind of dickish to his buddy Napier (Robert Townsend, who also directed). Although Napier kind of set Jeff up to become principal again on his own.
How does this all come together? First Jeff and Peter test Jennifer's powers in some kind of containment chamber in the sanctum. The suit she's wearing is protective, as they'll say later. Jennifer overloads the sanctum power system, which Peter says is proofed against a nuclear bomb. Ruh-roh.
Inspector Bill makes his once-weekly appearance later when he asks Peter to check out some strange silhouettes in the dust, that may or may not have been pods. According to Peter they're not. And again, Bill (Damon Gupton) gets the Dialogue of the Night award, asking Peter if he has poison darts in his pen and a phone in his shoe (Get Smart callout!) to go with the Geiger counter in his watch.
Lynn butts head with Odell (Bill Duke) when he tries to pay her off in return for helping the ASA move the pods and the kids in them. She refuses to be bribed, and after Odell says he can't tell her what's going on because it's a secret, he tells her the secret: the Markovians (i.e., faceless Eurotrash) are looking for metas for their own program, and want Lynn because of her research in stabilizing the pod kids. Lynn agrees to help out.
Anissa tries to track down Grace and finds a photo. It turns out Grace is schizophrenic, and bounced in and out of foster homes until she ended up in a prostitution ring. Also, Anissa and Jennifer have their weekly chats, and besides their chemistry, I like the fact Jennifer sensibly points out Grace may have fled because she's just not that in to Anissa. We know Grace has some kind of meta-ish condition, so that's not likely, but it's nice to think.
After the video of the sit-in and Jennifer confronting Lowry goes viral, the school board wants to dump Lowry and bring Jeff back in as principal. Jeff's buddy Napier is all for this, but Jeff realizes there's so much going on in his life it's not a good idea, and does a last-minute face-turn. Napier isn't too happy about this, and it seems kind of odd. The board is going to keep Lowry on, but they still have the bad PR from the sit-in. Wouldn't they find another principal? Heck, what exactly is it Napier does? Why can't he be principal?
Jennifer is still on her kill-Tobias vengeance kick since he killed Khalil. She tracks down someone who knows Tobias' location to the now-abandoned Seahorse Motel (callout to the premiere!). The 100 gang members seem to think she's Anissa when Anissa is running around in a hoodie and mask. Jennifer's powers go out of control, Thunder rescues her, and Perenna shows up to put Jennifer into the mental hair salon *sigh* and tell her that her powers are going to cause her to explode if she can't control them.
We finally get to meet one of the Masters of Disaster (MODs), Shakedown, aka Marcus Bishop (Hosea Chanchez). He's a lot better than the dufus Shakedown in the comics. Cutter (Kearran Giovanni) is also back after a one-episode hiatus, and her and Tobias have a thing. Cutter was also close with Tobias's now-dead sister. Jace provides Tobias with enough serum to activate one MOD, and a control device to shut down Marcus via the brain implant the ASA gave him. Tobias offers to make Marcus his partner, which doesn't make a lot of sense. The case full of money makes more of an impression, and Marcus and Cutter (and a whole bunch of unseen minions) break into the ASA warehouse to steal the remaining pods. They end up rescuing Jace, who is glad to be rescued since Odell and Lynn are giving her a hard time.
So Tobias has the pods, and the remaining MODs (who are in pods), and Jace. He's going to become a metahuman arms dealer, which means Shakedown would be one of the metas he's selling, not a partner. Which is why as I noted earlier, the partnership offer doesn't make a lot of sense. It'd be like a gun dealer making one of his guns a partner. Even if the gun was sentient and believed him, it wouldn't end well.
Also, Lynn is reviving a meta we've seen before, wind-wielding Wendy Hernandez (Madison Bailey). In the comics, Wendy Jones is Windfall, another member of the MODs. So maybe she'll join up with them later since there were five MODs in the comics, but Tobias only has four under his control.
And once Tobias has the pods he no longer needs Todd. So Cutter gives Todd a new car that blows up, killing him. Which I suppose means we'll never see RJ Cyler as Todd again. Although maybe he'll come back as Technocrat or the Duke of Oil from the Outsiders comics.
And yes, there's actually a comic book villain called the Duke of Oil. He did fight Green Arrow in the comics, but we haven't seen him yet on Arrow. I'm still holding out for his own series on DC Universe Channel. Not.
There's a little bit of humor: Peter cracks wise about how Jeff is no longer in his prime. Inspector Bill has the aforementioned remarks about Peter's gadgets. And there's a running gag of how Napier always brings Jeff bad news.
While the main characters are in character, the organizations not so much. The board, which has never thought much of Jeff, takes his suggestion that they give Lowry a chance. Tobias makes a partnership deal with one of the metas he's going to sell as a weapon. The 100 gets a mention or two, but these days I have no idea how Tobias is connected to them. They show up when the creative team needs some local baddies, and that's it. Tobias is still a scheming cackling bad guy. Apparently, his past/present relationship with Cutter humanizes him a little bit. But it primarily softens Cutter more than Tobias. I like Marvin "Krondon" Jones III as a villain. As a romantic figure, not so much.
Black Lightning (and most of the CW shows) go on hiatus until early March. So we'll see you back here for reviews of the rest of the season. I suspect we'll see more of Markovia, which I could live without. And we'll see more of the MODs, which I really do want to see. Shakedown on the show already has more personality and presence than Shakedown in the comics. New Wave (she could turn into water and acid rain) was the only one of the comic MODs who was at all threatening: Heatwave and Cold snap were a personality-free couple, and Wendy was defined more by her relationship to Halo and to her sister New Wave than by anything she did.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Feb 12, 2019
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