The start of Black Lightning season 2’s second arc saw a death in the family, Whale making his move on Freeland’s free clinic, and Anissa getting a job there, all while strange things got underway…
1. Gambi’s Demise
Gambi’s car crashes and explodes after an attack on the road, with witnesses reporting no one got out. It was a surprisingly expensive-looking opening, somewhat Winter Soldier-esque in execution (particularly with the reminder about the car’s integrity being compromised), but impressive nevertheless. Weirdly, despite the shots of the car going up in smoke and all the time spent afterwards on the Pierces grieving, I still feel like Gambi is around, and I don’t mean that spiritually: like Jefferson said, the guy must’ve had a contingency.
2. Underwhelming Reveals
Tobias Whale bribes Councilman Kwame Parker (Eric C. Lynch) into relocating the free clinic – it turns out the ASA briefcase had documents indicating Martin Proctor was bribing city officials so he could do his dirty work. Faced with losing his clean reputation, Parker does as Whale commands. I was taken aback that the mysterious briefcase, which Kara died to recover, only apparently contains political dirt, which granted is a potent weapon, but I was expecting something scarier. I found the reveal of what Jennifer and Khalil spoke about at the school two weeks ago similarly underwhelming, it was too brief and ended all too abruptly to make an impact.
3. Jefferson Procrastinates
Jefferson was all over the place this week, first telling Anissa not to recover their suits from Gambi’s basements, as he’s confident Gambi must’ve survived and they just need to be patient. He also gets cross at Lynn for recovering a pocket watch of them when they were younger from Gambi’s apartment, and vows to return it. But along the way he winds up drunk in a bar, and gets into a fight with a creep there. He’s only stopped from giving the jerk permanent brain damage by Henderson and 2-Bits, at which point you realize he really ought to get the suit and do something productive instead.
So in the next scene, Jefferson shows up in costume to get the word on the street from 2-Bits about what happened to Gambi. Apparently his report is enough to sway Jefferson into the depression stage of grief, and our hero returns to Gambi’s shop, now in day clothing, to mourn his surrogate father. It was all rather erratic, and with the constant jumping to all the other storylines, it was hard to keep track of Jefferson’s emotional state. Still, I do want to applaud the show’s writers for wanting to show Jefferson struggling to find space to grieve, instead of what could’ve been a more cliched approach, where he grieves and then grabs the suit in a moment of renewed purpose.
4. The Thanos Dilemma
Kill half your patients or allow all of them to succumb from inaction? That was Thanos’s past dilemma in Avengers: Infinity War, and it was Lynn and Dr. Jace’s in their subplot this week, with Lynn devising a formula that could save the ASA vaccine victims, but which also had a 50 percent rejection rate. Jace concocts a solution, which turns out to be a lie when Lynn administers it, as it kills several of the patients. Despite Jace’s protest that further inaction would’ve killed all of them, Lynn delivers a well-deserved punch and orders her to be taken away. Despite that, I doubt we’ve seen the last of her.
5. Something Strange in the Neighborhood
In our first indication something is not right in Freeland, Anissa goes to Grace for comfort after Gambi’s accident. The morning after, we see that Grace’s skin seems to be melting, a condition she treats with some pills, and it’s out first indication that she’s a metahuman like her comics counterpart.
Then, at the clinic, Anissa treats Anaya (Birgundi Baker), a young expecting woman, whose boyfriend Deacon (Rob Morean) seems strangely paranoid, as if he’s a wanted man. Later, Deacon crashes back into the clinic, bearing bloody wounds on his face, and dies. After Henderson arrives, liquid metal seems to emerge from his face, and Anissa drives off to find Anaya. When she’s pulled over, so far, so sadly predictable, but then she notices something under the officer’s skin, and drives away. It’s an abrupt and unsettlingly strange cliffhanger for next week.
Continued belowBonus thoughts:
– It’s funny and sad Jefferson forgot to tell Anissa that Henderson had figured out their secret.
– “Black Rapunzel,” heh.
– Whale’s negging of Khalil continued. Has Whale not considered, that in the parable he recalls from his father, that he may be the weaker brother?
