Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 2: The Book of Occupation: Chapter Two: Maryam’s Tasbih
Y'know, I kinda get that it's practically a trope in superhero stories. Death lasts just as long as some other writer or a new season needs something to shake things up, and to toss a character back at us. Sometimes it's done in response to a pretty poorly-done death scene in the first place, or due to fan demands, or as a resurrected enemy to re-threaten our heroes. I get that. But the way that we get both Lala and Khalil back feels pretty... I dunno. I don't want to say poorly done, because we know Lala has come back from the dead and is buddies with someone that has the resources to do so, and Khalil being returned to basically become essentially a human weapon is kinda neat, but at the same time... I honestly don't feel myself really being excited about this all that much. Perhaps the ending of season 2 still leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
The Jennifer, Lynn and Odell dynamic is pretty neat, and I actually do like the conflict and the setup between them. It's not a whole ton, but while they both are savvy enough to know that Odell is bad news (despite the small gestures of niceties that he makes to them to totally try to be "I'm not as bad as you think, believe me"), I do find it interesting that Lynn is trying to work within the system, making use of the resources the ASA provides her to help find a cure for the current Green Light metahumans, while Jefferson is just one or two more steps away from starting a full breakout and revolution, having been going around and using his new super-sense powers to spy on Odell, disrupting the monitoring devices and talking to other metahumans like the titular Maryam, a metahuman who has chameleon-like powers, but is dying due to her usage of her meta-gene. The argument between Jefferson and Lynn about what the best thing for them to do while they are the guests of the ASA is interesting and well-done.
In Freeland and around it, though, things are a bit more messy. Gambi gets a bit of a scene with Hendersen to fill the exciting-action quota of the episode. Hendersen's frustration with the ASA forces enforcing martial law is pretty neat, but otherwise this sequence is kinda dry and formulaic. Gambi eventually manages to establish contact with Anissa, who, with the rest of the refugee metahumans have ended up in the graces of the Perdi farm, and I am so unenthused to return to the Perdi/Sange conflict, but for now it's just limited to Anissa basically strong-arming the Perdi into helping the refugees (their concern that 'this is too many people, this is too risky' is a very valid one), an act that felt a bit too much of bullying to be heroic. Eventually a compromise ends up being reached after a display of power from a plant-manipulating metahuman, but it's still kind of off.
Anissa ends up fighting against a group of Markovians speaking mangled Russian who are making border patrols in search of metahumans, proving that, hey, the Markovian threat does exist. It's a bit of a damned if you will, damned if you don't situation, and Anissa elects to fight the Markovian squad, alerting Markovian commander Yuri Mosin to the meta-humans in the area. It's all kinda exciting build-up, I guess, but everything around the Markovians is surrounded in so much ambiguity that I kind of feel myself pretty un-invested either.
We get a brief bit of Jennifer and Odell, I suppose, and Jennifer's absolute sass is great in that scene. Odell's play-acting of being somewhat sorry about their condition and delivering a telephone that she can use to contact the ASA for help any time is neat, and nicely toes the line between being maybe somewhat sympathetic or being a master manipulator. Jennifer himself gets a bit of a scene in school where she stops two boys fighting, and then puts them down on their asses when they try to attack her. Okay, then.
Going back to the two Lazaruses of the episode, though, Lala is going around the locked-down Freeland, somehow having obtained Tobias Whale's case from the second season and also having revived. We also get to see him actually doing Tattooed Man stuff, summoning cars and henchmen from his tattoos, and later on intimidating the members of the 100 gang pressing people for money just to get food and water, and scaring the hell out of the random 100 gang leader by rising up after being shot in the head. A pretty cool scene, and I guess Lala's trying to be sort of a gangster-man-for-the-people?
Meanwhile, Odell and Williams are monitoring another project... they've resurrected Khalil "Painkiller" Payne, and he's, like, a programmed robot. And if you need any confirmation that Odell is a soulless, cold motherfucker, he decides that Khalil's first mission is to go off and murder his grieving mother. Not even out of any real reason other than to see if all traces of the human that Khalil once was has been obliterated. And it's pretty heartbreaking to see Khalil's mother with the joy that her son came back to her jump straight to confusion right before her neck is snapped. I don't really know if it's so wise to bring Khalil back so soon, particularly after so much of season two is so focused on Khalil, his death, and Jennifer grieving him. It'll lead to some more angst in the season, I'm sure, but, again, the pacing and how this is built up feels a bit lacking.
The Jennifer, Lynn and Odell dynamic is pretty neat, and I actually do like the conflict and the setup between them. It's not a whole ton, but while they both are savvy enough to know that Odell is bad news (despite the small gestures of niceties that he makes to them to totally try to be "I'm not as bad as you think, believe me"), I do find it interesting that Lynn is trying to work within the system, making use of the resources the ASA provides her to help find a cure for the current Green Light metahumans, while Jefferson is just one or two more steps away from starting a full breakout and revolution, having been going around and using his new super-sense powers to spy on Odell, disrupting the monitoring devices and talking to other metahumans like the titular Maryam, a metahuman who has chameleon-like powers, but is dying due to her usage of her meta-gene. The argument between Jefferson and Lynn about what the best thing for them to do while they are the guests of the ASA is interesting and well-done.
In Freeland and around it, though, things are a bit more messy. Gambi gets a bit of a scene with Hendersen to fill the exciting-action quota of the episode. Hendersen's frustration with the ASA forces enforcing martial law is pretty neat, but otherwise this sequence is kinda dry and formulaic. Gambi eventually manages to establish contact with Anissa, who, with the rest of the refugee metahumans have ended up in the graces of the Perdi farm, and I am so unenthused to return to the Perdi/Sange conflict, but for now it's just limited to Anissa basically strong-arming the Perdi into helping the refugees (their concern that 'this is too many people, this is too risky' is a very valid one), an act that felt a bit too much of bullying to be heroic. Eventually a compromise ends up being reached after a display of power from a plant-manipulating metahuman, but it's still kind of off.
Anissa ends up fighting against a group of Markovians speaking mangled Russian who are making border patrols in search of metahumans, proving that, hey, the Markovian threat does exist. It's a bit of a damned if you will, damned if you don't situation, and Anissa elects to fight the Markovian squad, alerting Markovian commander Yuri Mosin to the meta-humans in the area. It's all kinda exciting build-up, I guess, but everything around the Markovians is surrounded in so much ambiguity that I kind of feel myself pretty un-invested either.
We get a brief bit of Jennifer and Odell, I suppose, and Jennifer's absolute sass is great in that scene. Odell's play-acting of being somewhat sorry about their condition and delivering a telephone that she can use to contact the ASA for help any time is neat, and nicely toes the line between being maybe somewhat sympathetic or being a master manipulator. Jennifer himself gets a bit of a scene in school where she stops two boys fighting, and then puts them down on their asses when they try to attack her. Okay, then.
Going back to the two Lazaruses of the episode, though, Lala is going around the locked-down Freeland, somehow having obtained Tobias Whale's case from the second season and also having revived. We also get to see him actually doing Tattooed Man stuff, summoning cars and henchmen from his tattoos, and later on intimidating the members of the 100 gang pressing people for money just to get food and water, and scaring the hell out of the random 100 gang leader by rising up after being shot in the head. A pretty cool scene, and I guess Lala's trying to be sort of a gangster-man-for-the-people?
Meanwhile, Odell and Williams are monitoring another project... they've resurrected Khalil "Painkiller" Payne, and he's, like, a programmed robot. And if you need any confirmation that Odell is a soulless, cold motherfucker, he decides that Khalil's first mission is to go off and murder his grieving mother. Not even out of any real reason other than to see if all traces of the human that Khalil once was has been obliterated. And it's pretty heartbreaking to see Khalil's mother with the joy that her son came back to her jump straight to confusion right before her neck is snapped. I don't really know if it's so wise to bring Khalil back so soon, particularly after so much of season two is so focused on Khalil, his death, and Jennifer grieving him. It'll lead to some more angst in the season, I'm sure, but, again, the pacing and how this is built up feels a bit lacking.
Overall, a very slow episode, and one that feels like things are kind of just happening to build up, but other than the Jennifer/Lynn scenes, or the bit where Painkiller murders his own mom, I genuinely don't feel much interest or emotion from a lot of the other scenes. The pacing's just a bit disjointed and the events that are going on all feel just a bit too oblique. It's not terrible, but I didn't enjoy this episode as much as I otherwise would've.
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