Black Lightning S02E13 Review: Meta Hunt

Black Lightning, Season 2, Episode 13: Pillar of Fire

Maybe it's my own personal genre preferences, but I really couldn't care all that much for a lot of the B-plot drama in this episode. Part of it is my disdain at the storylines basically being stretched out so much throughout the season, but another part is just that I genuinely feel like a lot of them are just distractions from the genuinely interesting things going on in this episode.

Still, I do actually mostly have a positive opinion about this episode, because the B-plots distracting Anissa, Jennifer and Jefferson from the actual supervillain attacks happening in the final act of this episode is a genuine plot point, and I do feel that at least Jennifer and Jefferson's B-plots are probably the best material that either of those plotlines have produced.

Anyway, two of the biggest overarching storylines happening here is the fight over the pod kids. Lynn confronts Agent Odell about what the shit is going on, and under threat of leaving the project, Odell finally tells Lynn about how the Markovians have a strict "if you're not with us" policy, subtly hinting that even Black Lightning and Freeland's other superheroes might very well be the next targets of the Markovian agents. I'm not sure if Odell genuinely knows of the Pierce family's secret or if he's just taking the local superhero as an example, but it does throw in an additional wrinkle into the status quo. I like it.

Meanwhile, dr. Jace has provided Tobias with just enough serum to wake the Masters of Disaster up, and a Suicide Squad style control watch that disable the brain instead of blowing it up. Tobias randomly picks one of the four (Jace smartly provides just one serum to keep herself continually useful), and we get Marcus "Shakedown" Bishop, a metahuman with the ability to generate vibrational shockwaves. We get a pretty cool brief battle between Cutter and Shakedown, the demonstration of Shakedown's powers, the subsequent demonstration of Tobias's control switch, and then Tobias basically recruits Shakedown into his organization with one of your typical Tobias Whale speeches. It's neat. Tobias also learns that the ASA is planning to move the pod kids, and since that might potentially break the briefcase's connection from the pods, decides to sic Shakedown and Cutter onto the ASA facility. That doesn't happen until the final part of the episode, though.

Meanwhile, Lynn continues with her struggles at the ASA. It hasn't really been the most interesting part of the show, but we do get some decent material between Lynn's arguments with Odell, and her clear conflict at being so close to a breakthrough to permanently cure the kids (using Looker's... silver goop-thing? That can't be safe), and really wants to do so instead of just kowtowing to the ASA's attempts to move the kids out. I'm genuinely not sure why Lynn doesn't just wait until the kids are safely at their new facility and why she is so intent on giving the cure right now asap, but it does put her and Wendy "Windfall" Hernandez out of the way of the actual attack. I dunno. I like Lynn's story and I like bringing Windfall back, but the way we reach this plot point is a bit bizarre.

Also, during Cutter and Shakedown's attack on the ASA facility, Jace... initiates lockdown on the medical bay that Lynn and Windfall are in. I'm not sure if Jace is trying to lock the two of them in so they don't escape, or if she's trying to protect Lynn from Team Tobias out of some sort of twisted respect for her, but it does give a fair bit of depth to Helga Jace that the show hasn't afforded her in previous appearances. I do also like the wrinkle that while Shakedown seems fine to hang out with Tobias at the moment, he knows Jace is the one who fucked him and his fellow MOD's over. He's on a leash for now, but it's interesting to see how this internal friction within Team Tobias is going to last.

Speaking of internal friction, apparently Tobias and Cutter are now lovers again or something? Also, the final scene implies that they're cutting off loose ends and blowing up Todd, all 'outlived your usefulness' villain way, but the way the scene was shot conspicuously doesn't show us Todd's face which leads me to think that he's probably not actually in that car and probably still in the game in some way.

Black Lightning and Thunder would show up after being briefly distracted by their respective B-plots (which we'll cover later) to rescue Lynn and Windfall, and we learn that Team Tobias has basically absconded with every single pod kid, dr. Jace, and killed the facility's guards. Gambi and Hendersen, at least, throughout the episode, manages to find out about Tobias stealing the Masters of Disaster pods, so there's that one information victory for the good guys.

So! Let's talk about the B-plots of this episode. Anissa's the one I'm going to go over the fastest, because it's the one I genuinely don't really care about. Anissa goes in pretty deep in trying to figure out where Grace has gone, partly due to some paranoia thanks to her superheroing life. It honestly drags on for a bit too long, leading to her and Gambi to eventually figure out that 'Grace Choi' is a pseudonym, that she was abducted from her family and sold to a child prostitution ring, and something about a schizophrenia pill.

Meanwhile, Jeff gets what seems to be the last time we see this drama in Garfield High for now. The protest that Jennifer did in the previous episode to Principal Lowry's dickishness ended up going viral and since the whole point of firing Jeff is for PR reasons, the finicky board of directors end up wanting to fire Lowry and bring Jeff in. But a brief talk with a random student (everyone is basically pro-Jeff) ends up with the question "where's your second chance, Mr. Pierce?" I do like that it seems to be building up to Jeff getting redeemed because the hero is always right, but Jeff ends up actually introspecting himself and realizing that Lowry's angry words -- that he wasn't there for the school when they needed him -- ends up ringing true for Jefferson.

And frankly, and I'm impressed at the show for now actually rubbing it in our faces, is the question about where Mr. Lowry's second chance is. Jeff talks this whole talk about Lowry kicking people out to the curb if they cross the line, while Jeff cares about how people are after they get kicked out. It's something that's genuinely interesting that we, as an audience, is probably pretty ready to cheer for the racist to exit, stage left, but what about Lowry's future? Doesn't he deserve to change and get a second chance to become better? It's actually a decision that Jeff takes that honestly shows that he is the bigger man, that he acknowledges his own mistakes and also willing to give others a second chance. Plus, the whole 'you don't give Garfield High 100%' rings true when Jeff walks out of the school and gets Lynn's call about the ASA attack.

Mind you, a smarter solution is probably to put Napier or one of the other teachers in the principal position and keep Lowry around as, oh, discipline head or something, instead of "hey, keep the asshole around", but eh, whatever. I think it kinda works. Hopefully this is the last of the principal plot we see for now, though, because while it's neat in small doses, I don't want it to keep popping up every episode.

Meanwhile, Jennifer's storyline... it's in two parts, really. Her scenes this episode is capped off by various people realizing that Jennifer's power is insanely powerful, with Jeff and Gambi comparing her to an unstable nuclear bomb, with her power eclipsing that of Black Lightning's, and convenient exposition machine Pereena telling Jen that she can literally explode due to her emotions.

The other side of the story is her really wanting vengeance for Khalil, and she ends up, of course, going in half-cocked and masquerading as Anissa's Blackbird persona and beating up punks and demanding them tell her where Tobias is. Being completely inexperienced in vigilantism, this ends up with Jennifer getting overwhelmed in the next stop, although thankfully Anissa knows enough about her sister's little vendetta quest to quickly catch up. That scene with Jennifer fighting the punks is actually a pretty fun little action sequence, and I absolutely love that after Anissa saves Jennifer, she immediately assumes that the call from Jefferson is for their dad to yell at them... only to panic even more when Jeff's actually calling for backup.

It's a neat bit that really portrays the sense of escalation, that they really can't afford to dick around with running off fueled by teenage impulses or being distracted by a day job when the villains are really ratcheting things up. And that's without the Markovians going around abducting them, either! Tobias ends up the unquestioned victor of this episode, ending up with Shakedown, dr. Jace and a whole ton of pod kids and declaring himself the new metahuman arms dealer. Pretty neat episode, honestly -- if handled a bit differently I'd probably complain about the B-plots being a huge distraction, but I do think that it's a pretty well-done episode personally.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• We talked a bit about the Masters of Disaster in a previous episode, but this episode marks the debut of one of the members, Shakedown, who like his comic-book counterpart is able to generate vibrations to imitate earthquakes (all five members of the comics' Masters of Disaster have powers based on natural disasters). 
• The details are slightly different, and the Shay Lee Wylde name is not from the comics, but the gist of Grace's backstory is pretty similar to how it is in the comics.