Black Lightning S01E03 Review: Athlete's Junk

Black Lightning, Season 1, Episode 3: Lawanda - the Book of Burial

There are some parts of this episode that didn't really work. The whole sequence with Jennifer coming out to her parents about "mom, dad, I'm having sex with my boyfriend this weekend" is absolutely hilarious in a cringe-y awkward family dinner sort of way, but it ended up running for a bit too long, and the joke between Principal Pierce and Khalil talking about spreading athlete's foot through his "et cetera" thanks to bad cleaning habits is just so surreal and weird that it doesn't feel like it belongs in this show. Of course, it's all just to end up to kind of really throw a curveball when Khalil gets shot in the spine at the end of this episode, rendering him a cripple for the rest of his life, and the wacky athlete's foot scenes make me care a bit more about him... but still, everything involving this subplot felt like a huge mess, as much as the actual dinner scene and the discussion between the two parents about how "at least our daughter's telling us these things, right?" being somewhat neat.

Also not really working is Anissa's subplot in this episode. Her discovering her powers is neat, but suddenly deciding to go out on a costume party and grind it out with Grace, causing a fight between her and her girlfriend in a very-unsubtle way for the show makers to hook Anissa and Grace together is very clumsily handled. Why even have the prior girlfriend in the first place if they're not going to do anything with her? Grace's neat, though, and from what little we see of her, I like her.

The episode's main plot shows another man being inspired by Black Lightning, which is Reverend Holt, who is hell-bent on inspiring the people of Freeland to make a stand against the One Hundred, despite Jefferson Pierce and Inspector Billy's attempts to stop him from essentially undergoing a suicidal walk. It's inspirational, yes, but it could very easily cost the revered his life. It's a bit weird because it feels somewhat of a rehash without the drama that episode 2 has, but mostly, I think, the screentime is divided between Jeffreson, Jennifer and Anissa, and neither of the Pierce daughters end up having a particularly compelling character arc in this episode. Jefferson has a bit where he has to struggle about properly bringing his superhero alter-ego back, realizing that it's not just going to end with the Seahorse Motel, and his responsibilities are far larger now. 

We get to see Tobias intimidate the clearly-scared hitman that goes off to machinegun the rally, and the poor kid is clearly scared, and Tobias stabs him in the hand but he can't back out. It makes the poor gunman's story a bit of a tragedy and makes it clear that Tobias Whale is the head of the snake Pierce needs to cut off in the long run, while Tobias himself has contemporaries egging him to take action, like the big Lady Eve who instigates Tobias's terror/assassination project in this episode. 

Black Lightning ends up stopping the gunman with a cool electrical shield and the learned-in-this-episode "thin stream" of lightning, before Tobias Whale shows up in a limousine as everyone's singing Amazing Grace, shoots the reverend in the shoulder and Khalil in the spine. No one dies, but Khalil's loss of walk is surprisingly great drama and a huge loss for at least Anissa. Also interestingly, Gambi deletes footage of Tobias Whale's face, so... conspiracy!

Despite some really great one-liners from Tobias ("they all want to go to heaven, but none of them want to die!") and an otherwise solid theme between the multiple Pierce-s about transitioning from one identity to the next, the execution isn't particularly stellar, leading to a relatively messy episode. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Grace Choi, otherwise just codenamed "Grace", is a member of the second iteration of the Outsiders formed by Nightwing, a team which also includes Anissa Pierce in her time as the superheroine Thunder. 
• More Outsiders love is given when Grace shows up holding an issue of Batman and the Outsiders, the original Outsiders team which prominently features Black Lightning as one of its members. 
• While name-dropping possible superheroines to dress up as, Grace notes Supergirl and Looker, who is one of the members of the original Outsiders team that Black Lightning belonged to. Grace also notes that she's a vampire, something that Looker ended up being transformed into after her tenure on the Outsiders is over. 
• Lady Eve shares her name with a DC supervillain that is one of the high members of the international terrorist cult Kobra, but the writers of the show have confirmed that the show's version of Lady Eve only borrows the name. And while the mysterious organization that Eve and Tobias works for might be based on Kobra (Black Lightning certainly faced off against Kobra during his time in the Outsiders) it's clear that it's more of a criminal syndicate as opposed to a cult trying to bring upon the arrival of a snake god.