Black Lightning S02E01 Review: Black Lightning's Back

Black Lightning, Season 2, Episode 1: The Book of Consequences: Chapter One: Rise of the Green Light Babies

So superhero TV shows are back! Again, I don't have any promises as to how regularly I can get these things up, being that, y'know, I still have to find the time to watch them and the write up a review. But hey, it'd be nice to have the blog not be about older anime and cartoons for a while.

So season two of Black Lightning starts off with an episode with a ridiculously long title, and all it basically does is sort of establish the status quo after the events of last episode's climax, and it's... it's basically a huge "oh shit, things are kind of worse" bit, isn't it? Jefferson Pierce loses his position as principal, because he would rather sacrifice himself instead of letting Garfield High get shut down. Jennifer is trying and failing to control her power, and very nearly has a meltdown in front of her casually-racist-towards-metahumans friend, Keisha. Hendersen confronts Black Lightning, having figured out his secret identity, and storms off in anger. Gambi discovers about Kara's role, and reveals it to Jefferson. The government seizes control of the pods, and one agent in particular is coming down hard on Lynn (although she at least manages to pull on Gambi's connections to be put in charge of the pods at the end of the episode). The people of Freeland are forced to try and raise funds to sue the government over their handling of the 'pod people'. And the racism towards metahumans ends up rocketing up high as police beat them up in the street and normal people end up disliking them. 

It's an interesting opening episode, and it's not bad... it's just pretty obvious table-setting, you know? We do have the episode's theme about, oh, making choices and asking yourself what is worth sacrificing for. Jefferson being confronted by his friend on the board, asking him if he's saving his job or the school, is a neat little example of that. So is Thunder, deciding to choose to rob a... a drug house or something, steal their money, and donate it to Reverend Holt to raise funds to free the pod people. Ultimately not a lot happens in this episode, we're just re-establishing where all the familiar characters are at, and dealing with the fallout of the huge events of last season's climax. 

As far as setup goes, we get to see one of the "Green Light Babies" apparently get killed at the beginning of the episode, only to jump out of a body bag at the final set of scenes, apparently alive and... and causing his mother to suddenly spout some really, really mean words about how she's glad he died. I'm not sure if that's part of his power or if his mother is just an ass.

We also get Syonide fighting against Kara, who kills her with a bladed high-heel (haha!) and a hideously bad one-liner... but Kara herself gets harpooned by Tobias Whale at the end of the episode and thrown off the side of the building -- really felt that these two scenes felt kind of out of place compared to the rest of the episode, and I wonder if this Kara subplot wouldn't have been better served if it was allowed a bit of a room to breathe. 

Overall, we get a pretty strong -- if low-key -- season premiere. Don't really have a whole ton to say here, but it's definitely a fair bit of interesting setup. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The term "Green Light Babies", referring to teenagers who obtain superpowers due to some huge event, is definitely meant to evocate the Bang Babies from Static Shock.