You
Heard The Thunder Now Here’s The #BlackLightning #3weekroundup
#recap #review #CW #DC
All pictures courtesy of the CW
The
wait is over! Well, I guess it’s sorta been over for a long time
now. In any case, black superheroes have returned to your screens
both big and small... and handheld. Though Black Panther still has a
few weeks to go, Black Lightning is here to bless you with that
Mandingo power you've been lookin’ for. Don’t act like you ain’t
been lookin’ for it, you know you have. But is Black Lightning
electrifyingly good or is it shockingly bad? Let’s find out
together!
Black
Lightning is the CW’s newest addition to their superhero lineup.
Though it currently doesn’t feature into the same universe as
Arrow, Supergirl, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow, never say never
as Supergirl was previously not part of the group also, and it does
have a producer in common with Greg Berlanti behind it along with
black producers Mara Brock and Salim Akil (a married couple; Mara was
behind the show Girlfriends). Here, we are introduced to a new (to
the audience) hero with a storied past. Black Lightning or Jefferson
Pierce is unlike any of the other superheroes we have seen on the CW
so far. Played by veteran actor (you’ve seen him before but
probably never knew his name) Cress Williams, Jefferson Pierce is a
middle-aged high school principal with two near-grown daughters (one
is a student at the school and the other seems to be a teacher there
but maybe also a college student) that lives in the fictional city of
Freeland. A city similar in tone to Chicago or some other Midwest
city, it has its pockets of good and bad neighborhoods with decent
houses and decent people while also having gangbangers and thugs
lurking around many corners.
Right now the city is in the throes of
another bad run which has given rise to a gang known as The 100 (RIP
CW’s teen drama The 100). A predominantly black gang, it has many
members stretched like tentacles throughout the city but seems to be
run by one Tobias Whale; however, the front man for Jefferson’s
section of the city happens to be a man by the name of Lala, a past
student of our do-gooder principal. I don’t want to age neither the
character nor the actor, but I must point out here that it does give
me some pause to think about just how old Black Lightning is supposed
to be. I get that he could’ve been a young teacher that has only
recently taken on the principal role, but on the second episode we
meet a woman who was a past student of his and who also now has a
daughter that goes to the same high school and I’m like what? I
thought he was supposed to be closer to 40 but maybe he is closer to
50 than I thought. I digress.
Lala
being one of the heads of The 100 has to operate the business as he
sees fit and tries to play the big baddie of the hood. But because he
was once a student of Jefferson the kind-hearted principal thinks he
can reason with the man. See, Jefferson has actually had a deal with
the surrounding gangs for a number of years: his high school remains
off limits to and for any illegal gang activity. In return, he
doesn’t get the police involved in stuff that could be gang-related
in his area. But this deal gets broken when his daughters get into
some trouble.
His
youngest daughter Jennifer, played by China Anne McClain of Disney
fame, is still a teenager exploring who she wants to be as she comes
of age. She does normal teen stuff like lying to her parents to sneak
out to parties. She does exactly that when she skips a stuffy
adult-laden school fundraiser in favor of a party down at Club 100
with a friend (yes, Club 100 is the favorite hang spot for The 100
gang). Well, she gets into a little trouble when a guy starts
flirting with her in the club. Young, the boy looks near her age and
is trying to get down to business, but she is not that fast. But when
members of The 100 gang come and grab the boy, they take Jennifer
too. In some crazy prostitution plan, they say that the boy has a
debt and that “his girl” can work it off down at this seedy motel
the gang runs. But Jennifer doesn’t really know this fool, and he’s
certainly not her boyfriend. Still, that doesn’t quite matter to
Lala and his brood.
 |
| At Center Focus: Jennifer played by China Anne McClain |
Meanwhile,
as Jennifer is getting into trouble, her father is at the charity
dinner schmoozing donors, talking to one of his old friends and
current cop Inspector Henderson. Henderson is taking heat for all of
the gang violence that seems to have swept through the streets in the
last ten years. He’s trying his best, but the cops can only do so
much. Jefferson is committed to trying to choke the power of the
gang’s by choking off their membership. He feels that if he truly
invests in the youth in a meaningful and uplifting way, then they
will never be tempted to join a gang. As a partner in his vision for
the school, he has Ms. Fowdy. Let me get this outta the way right now
and say that all the women (including the daughters) on this show are
fine as hell and that you probably won’t find a better smoke show
this season. #BlackExcellence. Ms. Fowdy, from what I can surmise,
may be the assistant principal or the administrative assistant, but I
don’t think she is part of the ordinary faculty. In any case, she
seems to have a crush on Jefferson.
Though
Ms. Fowdy may have eyes for Jefferson, he only has eyes for his
ex-wife and mother of his children Lynn. The character list on IMDb
says she never reverted to her maiden name which means—in
conjunction with the heat they make on the show—that there’s a
strong possibility of them getting back together. Neither is over the
other and the only reason she left him was because she felt it was
too dangerous for her and her mental health to be married to him as
he continued in what she sees as his “addiction.” Funny enough,
the girls still lived with him. Frankly, they need to explain this
discrepancy better to me.
 |
| Left to Right: Anissa, Jefferson Back Center: Ms. Fowdy |
Finally,
there is Jefferson and Lynn’s eldest daughter Anissa. She is the
Black Lives Matter, power to the people protestor that is supposed to
be the troublemaker. As said before, she seems to be a young student
teacher still in college or maybe just subbing on the side. Anyway,
she covers for Jennifer when the latter goes to Club 100. Well,
Jefferson finds out what’s going on with his daughter and goes to
the club to rescue her from whatever dubiousness she might’ve
gotten into. When he does, things get a little hectic. They won’t
let him through to see his daughter in the boss’s back room, so he
shuts the lights off and shocks a few people. Oh yeah, he’s Black
Lightning.
See,
about 20 or so years ago Jefferson was this amazing superhero called
Black Lightning. He has electricity surging through his veins, and he
can wield it at will. The problem, though, is that Lynn who saw her
man coming home half-broken and beaten every night and wanted a
normal, safer life. So while the streets were safe, she didn’t feel
she was loved, and she left. Ever since, they’ve been co-parenting
successfully while he managed to give up his crime-fighting in favor
of time spent with his children. Still, he and Lynn didn’t quite
make it back to what they once were. He’s retired from the hero
biz.
Until
that night. The electricity going out frees up Jennifer enough for
her to escape into the crowd of the rest of the panicked patrons. The
police come to make the crowd disperse and Jefferson hits them with
some electricity too just for being idiots. The rest of the episode
plays out like your standard kidnap and rescue. Jennifer is
confronted at school by the same boy from the club who agreed to sell
her into sex slavery to pay off his debt. As it turns out, he is the
cousin of Lala and is part of The 100, and doesn’t even go to that
school. Anissa embarrasses him by flipping him to the ground and
showing that Woke Bae got some serious key-raw-tay skills. He comes
back with a few of his fellow goons and kidnaps the both of them
right out of class, whisking them away to the seedy prostitution
motel. They’re gonna repay his debt to Lala.
So,
while that is unfolding, Jefferson goes to see an old friend, a Mr.
Peter Gambi played by veteran actor James Remar (you’ve seen him in
a helluva lotta stuff, I’m sure). Gambi is like a mix between
Batman’s Alfred and The Flash’s Harrison. A suit tailor by day,
he’s been waiting for Jefferson to come back so that he can aid him
in fighting crime again. In anticipation of this day, he helps
Jefferson get cleaned up from his most recent soiree in the club and
also makes him a cool new suit as he knows the old one probably
doesn’t fit anymore. Now, dressed in a cool black and electric blue
suit with hints of yellow on it and an eye mask similar to Batman’s
Robin, he’s ready to get down to crime-fighting, if only for one
night. He goes to the motel and beats through a gaggle of goofy goons
before reaching the boy who kidnapped his girls. Having just missed
Lala, he throws the boy off of a two-story balcony onto a car and
rescues his daughters. The cops show after the fact to start
arresting people and the day is saved for the moment. But not all is
good. Lynn, while thankful and relieved that their babies are safe,
sees his one-night-only foray back into the superhero biz as a
harbinger of more to come. She’s starting to get scared again, and
just when she was this close to caving and going back to him full
force. Even crazier, the episode ends with the eldest daughter Anissa
getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and
having some kind of super-charged red energy surge through her body
until she unwittingly breaks the porcelain sink in half like it’s
nothing.
Episode
two focuses on the aftermath of Black Lightning’s sudden
reappearance and re-retirement. Naturally, we get the “people are
intrinsically stupid” trope here which sees parents asking why
Black Lightning came back and only saved Jefferson’s daughters but
not anyone else’s. Like, really? For real? For realsies? The dude
doesn't even wear that good of a mask. Two and two have never been
more eager to be put together but I digress. When he learns from one
of the mothers (the former student I was talking about) that the
whoring motel the cops raided after he took out all the baddies is
now back open and that she thinks her daughter was kidnapped and
taken there, he gets super angry and re-commits to his life as Black
Lightning. Lynn steadily talks about his addiction to using his
superpowers which he simply one day discovered he had, but he says
that he was doing good with them before, and he feels compelled to
start doing good with them again. Yet, he still insists that he only
has to suit up one more time. In his mind, Lala is the one who is
running things (he doesn’t seem to know about Tobias Whale yet), so
he figures that if he takes out the homicidal thug, then he’ll have
put a serious damper or end to The 100’s infestation. All he has to
do is bring Lala in with the proper evidence to convict him.
 |
| Lala |
As
it so happens, Lala makes it easy on Black. First he kills his own
cousin after springing him from the ambulance just after Lightning
dropped him onto the windshield of that car. Yes, they say some BS
story about how the kid hopped out of the ambulance himself but
really? Really? Dude’s back should’ve been fractured in three
places not to mention shards of glass embedded deep in it. In any
case, Lala dumps his cousin’s body in a dumpster. He then kills the
anguished mother who came to the motel looking for her daughter. Not
wanting to be bothered, he shot her a few times in the parking lot,
not knowing that she had a cameraphone set up in her car window
recording the whole mess.
The
cops find the recording, now all they need is to go and get Lala. As
it happens, Lala is currently holdup in some downtown high-rise
stacked with tons of bodyguards throughout the entire building to
prevent any do-gooders from raiding. The police probably would’ve
made a valiant effort to get through and lost. But Black Lightning is
on the case because a brotha needs all the exercise he can get. He
double-handedly takes out all the bad guys up the stairs leading to
Lala’s place, electrocuting them and just outright beating them
silly as he climbs to the top. And once he finally gets close enough
to give Lala a thunder-slap beatdown, the cops burst in like they
actually did somethin’ and look at him. And for a second we get
this glimmer of recognition from Inspector Henderson but are unsure
if he knows it’s his buddy or not. Black Lightning makes a clean
escape, leaving Lala to be arrested and taken in on murder charges of
that mother.
Obviously,
Tobias Whale can’t have this. While Black Lightning might not know,
the police do know that Lala is just a small cog in the gang’s
overall dominance. It’s just a matter of time before they pressure
him into a deal where he is going to talk about ways to bring Whale
down. Who is Whale? Whale is the big boss similar to The Kingpin in
Daredevil (at least I thought he was). He is, from what I can tell, a
large albino black man who thinks he’s the coolest brotha alive and
dresses like the pimp-gangster that he is. He runs all the crime in
the city and has too many connections to count. And he wants Lala
dead. Does he get one of the many cops on his payroll to kill him?
No. In a supreme boss-level move, Whale and his right-hand woman go
down to the police station where they are escorted into the building
by a few cops and walk straight into Lala’s holding cell. Whale
then proceeds to do some short but sweet pontificating about the
idiocy of Lala for getting caught before one-hand choking the dude
clean out, killing him with an effortless palm squeeze. At that point
it is not known whether or not Whale has superpowers.
We
end the episode with another glimpse of Anissa’s budding
superpowers of her own. While we don’t get the same red flashes of
lightning that we got from the first episode, we do get her being
able to throw a robber clean across a convenient store, then
shrugging it off. And it seems that using her powers makes her
headache go away. Up until this point, they’ve been super sparse
with the details on these powers for both her and her father, but
this may tell us two things: these powers are hereditary, and maybe
they actually do need to be used as some kind of stress reliever. I’m
unsure.
Episode
three starts with the funeral of the slain mother from episode two—or
maybe it's just a wake or something because it's at night and far too
late for a funeral. Jefferson, Lynn and Jennifer all show up to sit
in the pews and listen to this pastor preach on how the mother was
standing up to the gangs and how she didn't deserve what she got. In
a feeble but exasperated attempt to do something, he calls on his
congregation to take a stand against this violence from The 100 and
march with him, something which Jefferson is hardly a fan of.
Jennifer wants to go which ropes in her mother to go as well
(chaperoning). Jefferson and Inspector Henderson try to talk the
reverend out of doing this because they know that it will simply put
good people in harm's way and escalate the violence even further. As
a viewer, you understand both sides. The cops can't seem to do their
job fast enough because they have so much corruption in the force,
but are trying. Meanwhile, though the pastor is criticized for
rocking his thousand dollar watch, he also wants to help, wants this
to stop but truly has grown so frustrated that he's run out of ideas.
In Old School Days, you wanted change you marched. Now...? But he
sees the return of Black Lightning as a harbinger of hope again. He
feels that he and the marchers will be protected by Black and that
his return was a sign from God.
Meanwhile,
as the rest of her family sits in the church, Anissa is out in some
dark junkyard trying to train herself to use her powers. In what has
got to be one of the fastest “let's see what I can do as a
superhero” scenes I've ever seen, she beats on an older washer for
a few minutes before getting super frustrated, nearly hurting herself
and then coming to the epiphany that it all has to do with her
breathing. Funny enough, the way this is filmed, I don't actually
know if she was speeding up her breathing or what she was doing, but
it works. When she was hardly able to make a dent on the washer, she
can now kick it clear across the yard.
Anissa
seems pretty jazzed about her powers for a while until she comes to a
library and finds herself lost amid the stacks, searching for
research books on mutations and powers and whatnot. There she runs
into this cute Asian chick who is into comics and shows her one of
her books. They flirt a little and I was like, “Hold up, doesn't
she have a girlfriend?” The Asian girl tells her about this costume
party they are having at what appears to be a lesbian bar (or maybe
it was just ladies' night??) where she works and invites her to come
dressed as a superhero or villain herself. Here, we also get our
first reference to one of the other DC superheroes/shows on the CW in
Supergirl. I'll withhold my judgment of that until the critique.
Anissa
goes to the club and predictably grinds all over the Asian girl until
her girlfriend suddenly pops up out of nowhere, and I was like, “Huh?
What? Like... huh?” Was she tracking/stalking her? I digress, but
just know that I thought it was kinda weird for her to just show up
and find her. This leads to their break-up and Anissa having to give
back her girlfriend's key. She doesn't hook-up with the Asian chick
but she does sit at the bar and have a drink, so it seems that we
might see this girl again.
With
the march set for the end of the week, Jefferson and his apparent
tech guru Peter Gambi (yeah, the tailor) have to figure out how to
change the protest route to keep the marchers safe. Can I just say
here that they kept saying “parade route” instead of protest
route and it bugged me and the people I watched this with. Parades
are for celebrating; protests are for when there is little to
celebrate. Anyway, Gambi also makes some improvements to the suit
which allow Jefferson to shoot a single concentrated beam of
electricity toward a person and not hit bystanders, so he can safely
take out gang members in the crowd. But while that is going on he and
Lynn have bigger fish.
 |
| Lynn, Jefferson's Ex-Wife |
That
bigger fish happens to be Jennifer's deflowering. In a super-modern
parent-child relationship, Jennifer tells her parents (and at family
dinner no less, sans Anissa) that she is ready to have sex. Yeah.
Black Rob circa 2000—Like, Whoa! She is very diplomatic and
straightforward with it, too. She and her boyfriend plan on losing
their virginity to each other (yes, he confessed that he was also a
virgin in a rather cute little scene of acceptance) on Saturday,
during the day, at a hotel room they'll be renting. They said she
could always come to them to talk about it when she was ready, and
she actually did that shit. Oh my god! Listen, I always thought I was
a fairly good kid, but even I don't think I would've done this if it
came up at that age. Naturally, Lynn and Jefferson are stunned by her
decision and honesty and just want to make sure that her young self
is having sex with the right person, and from what we've seen of
Khalil (her bf) in the previous episode when he chastised Jennifer
for drinking and being a bad role model for the other girls, he can't
get any more righter at this point in life. This dude first lied
about being experienced in sex, and then went back and told the truth
on his minty-fresh dingaling. Hell, I still know at least five dudes
in my life that swear up and down they made it with Beyonce and ain't
never even been in the same building, let alone the same room with
her. He is literally a younger, lighter version of her father—the
epitome of what young black boys should be.
Still,
being a father, Jefferson must interrogate the boy in as awkward of a
way as possible. While he doesn't threaten him like most dad's might,
he does ask the boy about his personal hygiene to check to make sure
the boy isn't going to infect his daughter with some kind of fungus
or something. It was a very funny but completely ridiculous scene and
will be mentioned in my critique.
In
an episode that feels like it moves super fast, the march is upon us
in no time. Peter has put up construction signs all through the city
to direct the people into safe areas that Black Lightning keeps watch
over from the rooftop. When a thug hired by Tobias Whale jumps out
with a machine gun to try killing all of the marchers, Black jumps
down and puts up an energy force field to absorb the bullets. He then
shoots the dude down with one of his bolts, along with another gang
member that hid in the crowd. Saved, the group starts to sing Amazing
Grace as the pastor stares at Black as if he was Jesus. From down the
street, Whale and his henchwoman sit in the car talking about how
much he hates churchgoers. Henchwoman takes a shot at Black but
misses, instead hitting the pastor just above his heart. But the
bullet flies through the pastor and ends up in the spine of Khalil—no
loss virginity for Jennifer this weekend. Luckily, both the boy and
the pastor survive, but this has only stoked the lightning more.
Little does he know that he is not only battling against Tobias Whale
but also against another, even bigger boss in Jill Scott's Lady E.
Yes, the singer Jill Scott. What will the future hold? This family
can only stay together to make it through.
What's
my grade? I give it a solid B. Being
black I definitely want to see more minorities succeed, so I try to
judge things as fairly as possible. With that being said, there are a
few flaws in this show and pet peeves of mine, but let's start with
the good. The casting is phenomenal here. I can believe that the two
girls are the daughters of Lynn and Jefferson. Everyone has good
chemistry and there's no level on which I feel that any of the people
don't know or are uncomfortable with their character. Out of all the
late-40s actors that they could've chosen, I think that Cress
Williams was actually a perfect choice for the role, considering the
budget that they have and what they would ask him to do. He fits the
role well both physically and presence-wise and seems like a high
school principal. I also like Tobias Whale, even though he is thinner
than I would expect for someone with the name Whale. I will say that
at some times his acting is a little suspect, however, knowing that
this is a comic book show and that he is supposed to be this
over-the-top gangster allows him some wiggle room.
I
also like the overall positivity of the show and how it displays a
black family (any family, really) where the parents are both
successful, and successful at co-parenting while not together. They
broke up and don't hate each other; in fact, they still love each
other but things are complicated. If you want good images of black
people, this is it. Hell, the youngest girl is the picture of what a
perfect daughter looks like. Yes, she's trying to be a little
rebellious but you even get the strong sense that it is a phase and
that she really just wants to be a good girl.
I
also like how the show confronts the inner-city's issues head-on.
It's not just about crime, it's about being socially conscious of the
community, and what you can do to help it. And finally, I also like
the costumes and the special effects are on par with every other CW
show.
Now,
for some of the bad and ugly, we have to discuss this writing, y'all.
That third episode could be indicative of the people they have in the
writer's room and if it is, God help us. The third episode was a
mess. Everything from the strange conversation between Jefferson and
Khalil, to Anissa's girlfriend randomly catching her in that bar
grinding on that Asian chick, to Anissa magically learning how to use
her powers in a snap, to Whale being able to stop and monologue about
how he hates the protesters while sitting right down the street
within their view. Almost all of it rang false and played false on
the actor's lips. There's a problem with the writing when you have
too many conveniences. They can make the writing overly melodramatic
(some melodrama is fine, but too much and it becomes kitschy) and can
make the audience put aside their disbelief in favor of asking too
many obvious questions with no answer other than “because.” Why
did Anissa's girlfriend know where she was at? Because it's
convenient to the plot. Why did the mother get out of her car and
start waving a camera in Lala's face? Because it's convenient to the
plot. Why is it that the suit tailor happens to also be the tech guy?
Because it's convenient to the plot. Too many of these will frustrate
an audience.
Also,
it feels like there's no backstory here. Other superhero shows on CW
started with some kind of “creation moment” as I call it. It's
that time when the person goes from regular guy/girl to superhero.
Yes, we get a little of that with Jefferson, however the fact that he
was a superhero before and is now returning to that somewhat cheats
the audience. Look, you can do this with other, more popular
characters like Batman or Superman or Marvel's main characters, but I
had no idea who Black Lightning was before this show and three
episodes into the series, I still have little idea of how he became
the superhero in the first place. Yes, they have a full season to
show his story, but they could've fit in a little flash back to his
very first day on the job or what turned him or how he got his
superpowers to let us know that he wasn't always this stand-up
superhero man. Viewers need a good backstory in order to identify
with the hero on a more human level before they exalt them to their
pedestal.
And
finally about the writing, how many bosses are there on this damn
show? Because in episode one we see Lala, and I'm like, OK, cool.
Then at the end of that episode we learn that he's working for the
higher-up Tobias Whale. And I'm looking at this spooky,
surly-looking, mean-mugging dude and I'm like, “I like this!” But
then in episode three we see Lady E and I'm like, “Hold on. I like
Jill Scott but what the new hell is this?” Because the way she
spoke (and didn't offer him a seat) made me think she was the big
boss. For starters, do any of them have superpowers or are they
similar to Daredevil's many powerless rogues? And which one is the
biggest one, the crown jewel of the underground? And am I always
gonna meet one boss at a time, and that person is then taken out and
replaced with another bigger boss? I mean, does Lady E have someone
over her? Am I someday gonna see Jill Scott actually fighting in an
action scene against Black? It's both intriguing and exhausting to
think about. I never saw the first seasons of Arrow and because of
that I don't watch it regularly now, but on all the other superhero
shows on the CW there was always one main overarching villain for
that season, and they were helped by other smaller weekly villains.
And usually those villains were smart and/or had some kind of good
twist to them.
Here,
it's very different. There is no clearly defined main villain. He's
just battling street punks, which is fine but can get repetitive if
the stakes don't feel like they are steadily increasing on a weekly
basis. I've already seen Black take out dudes with guns three times
now. When will I see him take out dudes with something else, or truly
see him actually be challenged on a physical level? With him already
knowing his powers as opposed to bumbling through a learning process,
and with every villain he beats being some dude with an illegal gun,
there's almost no tension in his fights. He's Superman against
non-Luthor humans. Basically, all of his villains so far have been
red-shirt Trekkers (Trekkies are the fans, Trekkers are the actual
characters) that are easily thrown away. And we keep hearing about
how Whale thinks he killed Black himself a long time ago, but how? We
haven't even seen a cool weapon that would match Black's powers and
truly put him dire straits. He just wins all the time. And that can
get boring, even if we are supposed to consider him an aged superhero
who knows what he's doing.
Then
there's the soundtrack. OK, so this is a pet peeve that will sound
rather off-putting, especially to some younger black people but I
have to be real when I say that I actually don't like all the Hip-Hop
in the show. I know, that sounds super crazy because I do like Hip-Hop and can be found listening to some Drake or Kendrick Lamar when driving. And I know that supporting rap or
R&B, which is predominantly black-created music, is exactly what
we should want from a show like this, however I don't like it for a
few reasons. First, I kinda hate when black movies and/or shows do
this: assume that all black people like or want to hear rap, R&B
or Jazz all the time. This is partially why you look at a lot of
black films either from the past or current ones and will see
soundtracks filled with the latest hot rappers that are often rapping
about nothing. Or you will get the occasional theme song filled with
weak lyrics from a black rapper that you don't know and couldn't
recognize in a sea of white people. For some reason blacks always
seem to do this, save for the times when there is extreme oversight.
We did this on an almost continual basis in the 90s with everything
from superhero movies to just about any black-made movie that came
out. Unless it had high studio hopes, it got a soundtrack filled
mostly with Hip-Hop, which, at the time, was often superior than what
we hear today.
As
I've said multiple times on this blog (usually in posts about movies)
a soundtrack and overall sound of a movie or TV show can play huge
into how well it is received and can even affect it's quality, either
enhancing it or degrading it. The subtle tones followed by thumping
beat of The Dark Knight soundtrack blended so perfectly with every
scene that it helped to raise the tension throughout the entire film.
Go and re-watch that police station interrogation scene starting with
Gordon and then having Batman come in to beat on Joker. The music
adds to the conversation, ratcheting up the insanity of Joker AND the
intensity of Batman. Even in the movie Get Out which, thankfully,
doesn't suffer from this trend, we hear one really good R&B song
at the beginning (Redbone by Childish Gambino) which fits with the
overall tone of the film both philosophically and music-wise. The
song is slow-building just as is that song, both possessing a
haunting quality to them. They pair well and each one feeds well off
the other. Hip-hop often does not pair well.
With
Rap or any form of Hip-hop, what we usually get is some form of a
dance when the music is played. Often used in fight scenes, the
repetitive nature of the beat (or just about any radio-commerical
song) doesn't lend itself well to any climax in the fight. All
cinematic fights need to steadily crescendo up but here? Eh! They
don't crescendo, making them cool but far less effective to the arc
of the hero. If it doesn't seem like the hero is ever really
overcoming something while defeating his enemies, the music is
partially to blame. The non-orchestral music makes it feel like every
fight he gets into is just a warm-up/workout and that we haven't seen
him actually challenged or tested in any capacity, which lowers the
stakes. Often, the only good times to use Hip-Hop in a fight (or any
radio-commercial songs) are to make a comical point.
The
second reason why I could do with less Hip-Hop is because I want the
identifiable orchestral music. We all grew up knowing the themes to
the original Superman, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, James Bond and a
gamut of other films and TV shows. One of my gripes with the new
Dynasty was that for the first two episodes they ditched the original
music in favor of that pre-loaded synth-drum beat. Now they have a
rushed, party-like version of the original music that strips away the
grandeur of the original orchestration, which exuded wealth—the
main thrust of the show.
Here,
what do we get? There's a bevy of songs both old and new, both
secular and religious coming at you every week, but none of them
stick around for a second episode. And the theme song is barely
understandable save for the last few words, “... Black Lightning's
back!” Unlike the rest of the superhero shows on TV, it doesn't
feel heroic. When you think theme song for a superhero, you want
something that will either cause you to want to, or where you can
think of the superhero themselves, stand “Supermanning” in a
posed position of triumph. (For those unaware, the term Supermanning
means standing in a position with your fists on your hips and your
chest poked out and proud like you've just accomplished something,
like Superman was always seen doing in the early comics). This music
elicits none of that imagery. It feels like they went with what they
thought would be the coolest thing to do, but sometimes, especially
concerning superheroes, it's better to do what you think will be
legendary than it is to do what will be “cool for the moment.”
This theme song is not legendary and, in fact, feels almost like a
placeholder for something better to come in the future. I would just
like to see more orchestral music than this, but I know that there
are going to be plenty of people who like the music as is, especially
the younger crowd. But it's not like black people don't create
orchestral music, too. Still, I like the show.
Should
you be watching? Yes. If you are looking for a family show and/or are
looking to add to the many comic-based shows you inhale, then I think
that Black Lightning is different enough for you to like it and enjoy
it as a family. I haven't seen the Luke Cage show so I can't compare
the two, though I read some reviewer say that Cage's show was darker.
Black Lightning fits perfectly with the rest of the CW shows. The one
big question is: Will this show somehow fit into the wider DC TV
universe and unite with the other superheroes on the CW? As yet, I
don't think a decision has been made about it, but that Supergirl
reference was enough to wet the appetites of CW viewers I'm sure, and
it is from the same producers. If they do decide to cross in the
future (remember, Supergirl wasn't originally part of The Flash and
Arrow's universe) then it would be interesting to see in which world
this would be set. With the other shows having established that there
is a multiverse of 52 worlds, this show could very well take place
either on Supergirl's world, Flash/Arrow/Legends world, or some other
world we have yet to explore. Ooo, what if it took place on Earth-2
(or maybe it's three now) which Cisco and Barry visited in season two
I think where their current HG is from (not Supergirl's world)? I
think the possibilities are grand. Anyway, diverse superheroes are
back in a big way. Support and we could see more. Black Lightning
airs on CW Tuesdays at 9pm EST. Catch up on the first three episodes
at CWTV.com.
What
do you think? Have you heard of Black Lightning (not to be confused
with Black Panther the movie)? If you haven't, do you think you'll
tune in now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Did you like
it? Was I being too harsh on it or too soft? If you haven't read the
comic, how do you think Jefferson got his powers? Who is Peter
really? When will Jefferson learn of Anissa's powers? And do you
think Jennifer has powers too? Let me know in the comments below.
Until next time, “We didn't land on
Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on us!”
P.S.
To the people of power, stand strong. Happy Black History Month! I'll
think of a better sign-off next time.
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