Black Lightning, Season 2, Episode 10: Angelitos Negros
"How long has Cutter been looking for Khalil?" "Too damn long." Too damn long indeed. Part of it is probably thanks to the huge mid-season break between the episodes, but I am definitely extremely done with the "Book of Rebellion". The storyline went on for too long, Jennifer and Khalil go around the same sort of monologues that they had been through before, and worst of all? It accomplished jack shit -- hell, the two didn't even make it out of Freeland, I think. They ended up just going back home to the Pierce family, defeated after a long talk of "omg what are we going to do there's no finish line", and it's... I guess it's realistic of one too many teenage rebellions, but at this point I just roll my eyes and wonder why the hell did they think this would be interesting to have take place over the course of more than three episodes. The journey isn't 100% pointless, but it has been pretty doze-inducing.
It's also pretty ridiculous that Lynn happened to give an impassioned speech just outside the train car that Khalil and Jennifer were hiding in. What, did she go around every single train car saying that speech, with the same about-to-cry impact? What if Khalil and Jen were hiding where, say, Anissa or Gambi were looking? It's silly.
Meanwhile, after a bit of a conversation with Khalil, Jeff decides to forgive him (which is in-character for him) but also to basically tell Khalil to surrender himself to the police. Which... yeah, Khalil might be ultimately a sympathetic character, and one that was severely abused and forced to do more things against his will later on, but he did, as Hendersen notes, "a lot of people have bad stuff happen to them and they don't go work for a psychopath and shoot people in the ass with poison darts". Thank you, show, for being both sympathetic to the criminals, and also noting that they still have to serve their time. That, and the additional caveat of the FBI being able to provide Khalil with protection, seemed the obvious choice.
After a tearful goodbye with his mother, Khalil is handed over to an FBI convoy, and it's... it's honestly kind of inexcusable that Black Lightning and Thunder doesn't at least follow the convoy a bit before Giselle Cutter apparently massacred the entire FBI convoy single-handedly offscreen. Also, apparently the FBI convoy is dumb enough not to realize that it's a pretty obvious trap. Really now? That feels like less incompetence by the superhero team and the authorities, and more the writers just wanting to handwave something away. A pretty silly moment.
Anyway, Tobias continues to be the most entertaining part of the show, with a fun speech about jazz (and a lot of great jazz soundtrack) as he basically replaces Khalil with the far more perceptive Todd Green. Todd's... Todd's an okay character, I suppose, someone who is so, so happy to have a powerful friend, enough that he actually tried to mock Cutter in a scene in this episode. Todd also ends up being kind of relevant at the end of the episode for unlocking the ASA briefcase and covering Project: MOD, which is foreshadowing for later.
The big moment of this episode, of course, is Cutter bringing Khalil in front of Tobias... who proceeds to fucking rip out Khalil's spine out, Mortal Kombat style. Well, the spine implant, but it's still insanely brutal and happens almost out of nowhere. "I told you I would always have your back" indeed. That's a pretty fun line.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The Masters of Disaster is a reference to a comic-book supervillain team of the same name that faced off against the Outsiders. Won't really say too much about them, but Windfall, that wind-controlling metahuman seen earlier this season, is one of its members.
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