Black Lightning S02E12 Review: Chameleon Tattoos

Black Lightning, Season 2, Episode 12: Just and Unjust

Not the most eventful episode. A good chunk of it is mostly surrounding the pretty emotional theme of Khalil's funeral, as well as Jennifer's own brooding thoughts of wanting to get vengeance against Khalil. It's... it's done well, I guess, but at this point I do honestly think that between the dragged-out episode of Khalil's death on the hospital in episode 11, as well as the dragged-out road to his funeral, I'm just... I'm just done with the subplot, y'know? The general acting involved is fantastic, and I really love a lot of the scenes here -- particularly the one that caps of the episode -- but between Khalil and Jennifer running and Khalil's death, it's like they stretched material for three, maybe four, episodes over twelve, and at this point I am just very much ready to move on to basically anything else. There's that nice bit of Jennifer arguing against the principal for basically dumping Khalil's memorial in the trash, and her refusing to back down to a racist. It's done a bit better than last episode's 'racism is bad' moment, especially since the principal's "I had a shit life, you don't get to play the racist card" is a pretty... well, it's not a one-dimensional point of view, at least, as flawed as his argument is. It's done well, and I am genuinely surprised that at no point in the episode did she break out her Lightning powers. 

And the episode's main bulk is also pretty well done in seeding new plot developments. We get hints of some sort of bigger story when Anissa and Lynn get attacked outside a grocery store, and was saved before Anissa shows off her Thunder powers when Odell shows up with a gun. We get the revelation that Odell has Lynn under creepy, creepy surveillance and it's interesting. We're not sure if Odell is in about the whole superhero family thing and is ignoring it, or is just ignorant. 

Odell basically tells Lynn (and later dr. Jace) that the men that were after Lynn are members of the Markovian secret police and they want Lynn to basically make metahumans for them or something. And Odell's... he's an interesting character because we're not 100% sure where his allegiances are at the moment. He's making deals with Jace and Lynn, and is kinda-sorta on the side of good while at the same time wanting to use the pod kids as weapons and very much willing to make deals with dr. Jace. We also see Odell later creepily looking at Jennifer swearing vengeance over Khalil's grave, so I'm somewhat interested to see where this is going. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the episode is just... it's just sort of divided into its own little sub-plots. Tobias and Todd basically want to reactivate the Masters of Disaster pods, and to do that they need dr. Jace back on their side because the technology is ancient. We also get the revelation that they're apparently actual covert agents in addition to being metahumans. We get Anissa dealing with a victim of spousal abuse that her hospital is forced to look the other way because her boyfriend is a capo in the 100 gang, so we get her in her hoodied outfit (apparently this identity has been christened 'Blackbird' by the gangsters) beating up a villain-of-the-week. We get Jeff and Gambi basically hunting down Yuri Barkonov, the Markovian agent that attacked Lynn, and it is pretty refreshing to see Black Lightning absolutely owning the entire Markovian secret service team after a couple of episodes of him basically not doing much. Anissa also gets a bit of romantic moment with Grace, where we learn that Grace apparently has chameleon-esque metahuman powers, and she is freaking the hell out. 

We also get a bunch of fun Black Lightning moments of the Pierce family getting some nice heart-to-hearts. Jeff and Lynn talking about choices; Lynn and Anissa discussing about the right steps to talk to Jennifer; Jeff's speech to Jennifer about vengeance, justice and responsibility... none of them particularly stand out, but they're all nice little moments, and I always appreciate Black Lightning for trying its damnadest to make these characters feel like people I care about. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Grace was reading Black Lightning and Thunder comics, but among the pile of comic books she has on her desk include a comic with Supergirl on it. 
• Anissa's hooded Robin Hood alter ego is given the cryptonym "Blackbird"... and it's probably a coincidence that this is the same name as DC's World War II era pilot team. It certainly isn't an alter-ego she has ever had in the comics as far as I know.