Well, "Translucent Freak" was a steaming hot something of... something. I wouldn't call it a mess, exactly. It's more tedious than anything. But it's tedious in a CW/TV trope kind of way. Jeff has lots of problems. The bad guy gets away with murder: literally. It's basically the other CW superhero shows. And to some degree, that's not unexpected, it is executive produced by Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter. But a lot of what BL had going for it in season 1 was that it managed to set its own unique path by focusing on real-life racist issues. That, the background music, and the Pearce family which gave us an actual family for the superhero. Not "the team is my family" family. No dead or estranged parents. Not a johnny-come-lately kid and an on-again off-again marriage (I'm looking at you, Oliver and Felicity). But a relatively normal family. Well, as normal as you can have when three of them have superpowers.
We still have the family part of BL, but it's a bit clichéd at this point. Jeff pulls the "not while you're under my roof" cliché. And why is Anissa still living there, anyway? With Jennifer we also get the "We'll lock up a child to keep them from getting in trouble" cliché.
But what happened to lead to this stuff? Glad you asked! We get an obvious dream-type sequence where Anissa comes down for prom. For some reason Issa from last week is her prom date. I'm not sure why she would fantasize about him. Khalil comes in, darts the others unconscious, and he and Jennifer fight. Jennifer eventually blasts him out a window, and... we find out it's one of Perenna's mental discipline/mindscape things. Perenna has Jennifer lock her powers away and then wonders why Jennifer keeps thinking about Khalil.
Bill interrogates Tobias and gets nowhere. I still like Marvin Jones III, he brings a nice Kingpin-like touch to the proceedings. He's clearly in control here. Bill goes out and talks to his... chief? They never do identify her position or give her a first name: her last name is Mendez. And hey, it's Sally Richardson-Whitfield, who I guess needs work after Stitchers folded in the summer of '17. I miss Stitchers. She gives Bill forty-eight hours to find evidence Tobias murdered Alvin. And I'm not following this plot. Why does Tobias needs to come out of the shadows, such that he turned himself in so the police would be forced to drop the charges of his murdering Alvin? Tobias was never accused of killing Alvin in the first place that I recall. And the police have no evidence of him doing so anyway.
I get the impression from the dialogue if the police release Tobias because of insufficient evidence, that will clear him in the public eye. Is that really likely to happen? Heck, people have been tried and found not guilty and the public still don't believe in their innocence. Ask O.J. Simpson. I would think the public, like Bill, would wonder why Tobias hasn't aged in several decades.
Peter tells Jeff after-the-fact Anissa stole the money from the mob. That leads to the "not under my roof" dialogue mentioned earlier. Anissa says she's moving out, and has another heartfelt conversation with Jennifer. And as I've noted before and will say again, the sister/sister scenes on the show are arguably the best part. Tonight's is no exception.
Jeff talks to Bill, who is still PO'd Jeff didn't tell him that he was Black Lightning. Also, Jeff tells Bill he witnessed his father, Alvin's, murder. Which would be more impressive if we had known Bill didn't know this. Since he didn't, this just adds fuel to the "you lied to me" fire that is burning between the two men.
Peter has Kara from last week's episode, and is keeping her in his basement lair. Or as one reviewer dubbed it, the "tail-lair". Kara is dying of the harpoon Tobias shot through her stomach. Peter wants the location of the briefcase but Kara ain't talking.
At Garfield, Lowry shows his stripes by being all mean and master-y. Two students fight and Jeff gets them to break it up, shake hands, and learn from their failings. Lowry busts in, expels one students, and suspends the rest. Jeff is not thrilled with this, and Lowry basically tells him he doesn't care what Jeff thinks and he can take a long walk off of a short pier.
At the ASA facility, Dr. Jace essentially kills one Green Light Baby (GLB). Lynn isn't happy about that, but Jace seems to either be in control or think she's in control. She says she expects all of the GLBs to die and her work is designed accordingly. Also, Jace finds some stable meta genetic samples in the ASA database and figures out they're genetically related. She dreams of getting her hands on them to experiment.
Mendez points out Jeff has been lying about his seeing Tobias kill Alvin for decades and the defense attorney would make hash out of his story. So she's not prosecuting.
It's time for an action sequence, so we get an action sequence. Tobias apparently hires someone (or lets the other bad guys hire someone) to blow up the clinic. He also has facial and body recognition scanners set up to pick up Black Lightning if he shows up. Jeff asks Anissa for help (why?), and Black Lightning and Thunder are soon on the case. There's no further mention of the scanners made, so hopefully they'll show up down the road.
A supposedly pregnant woman delivers two bombs and walks out much thinner. Team Lightning pick up on that, and BL & T go into defuse the bomb. Thunder absorbs the bomb's blast with her body. Black Lightning... does something electric-ropey and I guess shuts down his bomb. Peter goes after the woman, and after some hot 30ish versus 64-year-old action (yes, James Remar is that old: he aged at least 10 years because of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation :) ), she escapes.
Kara dies after giving Peter a cell phone.
Jeff and Lynn tell Jennifer it's too dangerous for her to go back to Garfield, so she's going to be home-schooled. She sneaks out to be with Khalil.
Jeff sits at home and gets drunk as he watches Tobias get released from police custody. Tobias goes back to his club and his customers or gang members or both cheer him.
Like I said, I like Tobias. I like the sisters. I like Bill now that they're doing something with him. I used to like Gambi, but he hasn't had much to do this season. Cress Williams still strike me as stiff. Overall it's just "Translucent Freak" was your standard "darkest before the dawn" episode you get on all the CW superhero shows. Jeff is stymied at every turn and things really look bad for him. Tobias is on the loose, Jennifer is sneaking out of the house, Anissa is out of the house, the ASA is going to learn from Jace the Pearces are metas. Most of these "uh-oh" moments are left hanging, so they're certainly going to go on for a couple of weeks.
Don’t get me wrong: I'm fine with heroes having personal troubles and failing and eventually making a comeback. But they're being awfully heavy-handed with it on BL, and they're forgetting at least some of what made the show unique.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Oct 31, 2018
No comments yet. Be the first!