I Can See Why Pieces Of His Home Planet Weaken Superman #Krypton #3weekroundup #recap #review

I Can See Why Pieces Of His Home Planet Weaken Superman #Krypton #3weekroundup #recap #review

All pictures courtesy of Syfy Channel and WB DC

Sigh! I don't know why it is that I feel like if I had a few thousand subscribers I would somehow be able to make a living off of ripping Warner Bros. DC these days, but that's where we are. I'd love to fly straight to the review and finish with this but that's not how we do it around here. Let me stop stalling and adding more words to what is already shaping up to be a long piece. This week, we're looking at Syfy's new show Krypton. So, is this show poised to take flight into a new stratosphere of mythos and intrigue for the Superman legend, or should this planet have stayed blown up and forgotten about? Let's find out together—well, I already know that it kinda sucks, but you're finding out as I write this.

Krypton is DC Comics' latest TV show because they can't do anything good concerning their movies. Birthed from the mind of David S. Goyer (one of the writers on Man Of Steel), we venture into the historical lore of Superman's famed home planet. Yes, we know that Superman was shipped away from the dying world by his parents on the eve of the world's destruction, but what happened before that, and why should we care? Frankly, we probably shouldn't, but some of the stuff we can assume could be relevant with his parents and whatnot, right? Wrong! Because this show doesn't follow his parents but his grandfather. What?! I know. It's rather crazy. Even crazier, we begin with his grandfather's grandfather being executed. OK, first some basic setup.

The planet, or at least the city we are dealing with on Krypton, is divided into a caste system. You have the rankless or the lowly workers (though I haven't seen much of what they do, similar to on ABC's ill-fated Inhumans, but I digress) and you have the ranked. The ranked members of society are split into houses that are labeled by name. So you have the house of El (remember, el was always like a surname for Superman and Supergirl and their respective parents), house of Zod, so on and so forth. These are the people who are ranked high and generally have high education and high jobs in the government. Remember, I usually try to watch the first three episodes of a series twice and take notes on them before writing one of these reviews. Here, just like on Inhumans, I can't remember them ever saying why there are the ranked and rankless. It literally just is because it is. The only thing I can assume, however, is that the rankless still give birth naturally which is why their quarters are overpopulated. That would make sense to me on why they would be deemed rankless because they would be going against the grain of the rules society has put into place.

From these rankless there is a small faction of rebels (some of the high-command call them terrorists) called The Black Zero. What their agenda is, I'm not quite sure. Again, it's rather murky. Yes, they want to overthrow the current oppressive government, but I'm not sure if they want to rule themselves or install something new or what. It's a little too early to tell. Right now all they are doing is terrorist stuff, and I know that's how most wars and rebellions start, but it would be good to know their list of demands. I'll do more world-building as we go throughout, but just know that there's some government and military stuff going on that tries to mimic every other political drama out there right now.

Val-El

So, back to Superman's grandpa's grandpa. His name is Val-el, played by veteran actor Ian McElhinney. Oh yeah, as an aside, everyone is apparently English on this series for some reason. Why, I have no idea. As if there aren't tons of really good American actors that need work, but I digress. Val is in court and has been accused basically of two things: working on a secret scientific project that the leaders think is something destructive and that tries to prove his ridiculous theory (Oh-ho-ho, more on that theory later. It's a doozy for this show), and that he has been working with The Black Zero. Frankly, he isn't quick to deny either assertion as they're both partially true. So they make him walk the plank out of the dome and into the frosty abyss.

Ready for more world-building? OK, so apparently Krypton is actually an ice planet that is nearly inhabitable, save for these few domes in which the people live. That's fine as some (NOT ALL) of the comic writers have pictured Krypton as this as well, not to mention the Donner Superman also has the planet being like some kind of frozen tundra of beautiful white. But, in most of those renditions it was understood that the Kryptonians could still survive in their planet's own environment, you know, because if you're not a religious person, then... Science. Look, I am a Christian myself, but I know that science tends to say that through evolution dominant species evolve enough to live in and pseudo-conquer their environments. In other words, dominant species are able to live on their planet's surface without much need of other coddling from nature or their own ingenuity. But with the planet ravaged the way it is, it makes me think one of two things: either the planet has been plunged into this chaotic ice desert due to the Kryptonians own mismanagement (ie. Some kind of climate change/environmental destruction message which I would be all for even though they've said nothing to that effect), or they are not native to that planet. Both conclusions bring up intriguing questions.


The second conclusion speaks more to the bizarreness of the show, which I'll touch on further down when I reveal Val's big theory. But the first conclusion also is interesting because it posits that the planet wasn't always this way, and we even see what are clearly supposed to be ruins of an old world now reclaimed by the frost. The problem I have with that, however, is that why not show us that Krypton? Hell, if you're gonna go back to his grandpa, why not go all the way back to when Krypton, I assume, was thriving, and then show us the destruction through the years. You could even expedite it and have this ice thing coming insanely fast, panicking all of society and sending them into this archaic governing system. Hell, the writers and producers on this show talked about how “unexplored” Krypton was as fodder for great storytelling. They literally could've done anything far more creative here, but kinda missed the ball. Frankly, that is the entire critique of the show that you might read multiple times throughout this post. I digress.

Getting back to the story, Val is convicted of the two crimes, his honor and his house's name and rank are stripped (no more house of El) and he is forced to literally walk a holo-plank out of the protective force-field bubble around the city where he then plummets to his icy death. This all happens in front of his family and his nine-year-old grandson who absolutely adores him.

Kem and Seg, the more handsome one. 

And then we zoom ahead 14 years. Val's grandson's name is Seg (formerly of the house of El). Now a 23-year-old rankless trotter, he works cons down at the local pub owned by his friend Kem (I think that's his friend's name, although it could be the name of another character). His friend owns the bar/tavern and makes bets on him about if he can get into fights and how long he can last in them or if he can win them. They win a little money and Seg leaves.

Now, for about the next two paragraphs it is really going to seem like I didn't actually watch this series at all, because you're gonna hear a common frame of me not knowing stuff. What Seg does for his regular job, I really don't know. In fact, similar to on Inhumans, I can only see maybe five jobs that are even available for people on Krypton. If you're ranked you can be a politician, soldier in the guard/army or a scientist (whether that's working in the baby farm or teaching). For the rankless you can be a bar owner or a salvager of the old lands. I assume that there's maybe some kind of mine somewhere to work because most rankless look dirty like they've been digging coal to power the force-field, or that there are farmers to feed everyone, although I guess the scientists could also be doing the food creating. Frankly, I don't know any of this stuff because the show does such a poor job at trying to meld two far-different dichotomies: hyper-advanced future with medieval barbarism.

Anyway, I mention Seg's job (or lack thereof) because he somehow winds up in the high court just as the many-faced god (or maybe it's priest?) and the other guy in charge Daron-Vex (again, Vex is the surname) are about to make a ruling on someone. The guy on trial is a member of The Black Zero and has a bomb implanted in his arm. Seg suddenly appears, sees the bomb and tackles the guy to the ground before he can blow it, which was strange because the dude had the bomb's trigger in his hand and only needed to press his thumb down and everyone would've exploded. Anyway, the guards shoot the guy's arm off with a cool laser blaster and everyone is impressed.

Suddenly, just from that little act of heroism, Seg is brought in front of Daron and his daughter Nyssa, and told that because of his hard work (again, doing what?) and heroism from earlier in the day, he is being absorbed into the House of Vex. He is to marry Nyssa but must take the Vex name (again, he technically has no name anymore as El was banished and it is even a crime to say that name). While he already hates this, he thinks that at least this will be good for him and his parents to get out from living in the rankless slums. They know they can't go with him, and they still believe in what his grandpa was doing. So, before there is even some kind of ceremony he and Nyssa go to that Matrix-looking baby farm, give some blood through a thumb prick and have their baby start to be grown in an egg. They learn the imprinted future of the baby and everything, learning that it'll be a boy, he'll live for 173 cycles and will serve in some government office nobly and faithfully for years. This way is efficient.

Jayna on the left; her daughter Lyta on the right

Meanwhile, we also learn of the warriors/soldiers. Here, we learn of the house of Zod. As the current leader of the house of Zod we have Jayna Zod. I usually mention race just to give a full-rounded picture of what's going on and for we POC to be able to cheer on people that look like us getting roles. Here, however, I have to point out that Jayna, her daughter and most of the soldiers are black (or of other minority races) for a later critique. Yes, you already know that critique partially, but I digress.

Jayna seems to be the commanding general or at least one of the highest ranked in the military at the moment. She is teaching a class on combat to her young soldiers when we meet her. We also meet her daughter Lyta-Zod who is part of the newest class of soldiers officially ready to take to the field. Lyta is currently arranged to be married to Dev-Em (another black guy). He seems to be the hallmark of a potential favorite son-in-law: tall, dark, handsome, follows orders, is intelligent and sticks to the status quo. But Lyta is actually in love with another.

Yep, you guessed it, Lyta-Zod is in love with Seg formerly of house El. And that's when you realize that they have made the legendary fight between Zod and Superman into a Hatfields vs. McCoys feud that has been going on for centuries. Yes, in both films Jor-El was against Zod but it still didn't feel like two families feuding because one broke the other's heart. Here, that's exactly what it is shaping up to be. Jayna makes an example of her daughter by stabbing her through the hand in combat and telling her that she is weak because she asked for mercy and this group of warriors never ask for mercy. You fight to the death, period. So she sneaks off and has a roll-around with Seg where they talk about not making waves and his offer to be part of house Vex. The funny thing is that their dialogue isn't filled with longing and heartache as they discuss how madly in love they are or how they wished that the rules were different. I assume that maybe they aren't really that much in love, but who knows.

At this point I must mention that this first episode, with commercials removed, really only clocked in at around 37 minutes because they followed it up with a 9 minute discussion from multiple comic book artists, writers, movie writers and everyone you would associate with Superman on screen or on paper, even Geoff Johns. I say that because I will mention it in the review but also because it sorta cuts the episode short.

Seg and Superman's Cape

Next Seg runs into this guy who is dressed in human clothes and looks like a human and is wearing a Detroit Lions hat. This guy gives him that weird little Superman-emblem crystal like from Man of Steel and tells him to find the fortress. Seg's parents debate whether to tell him or not. Finally, his mom rescues him on the street from being beaten by some guards and hovercrafts him out to this place where Val used to come to do his science stuff. There's an apartment there that they can get into and another space that he must use the crystal to open, and she says that they tried opening it but couldn't but now maybe he can. But then she's caught and is accused of being a traitor like her father-in-law. When they ask who was in the hovercraft with her, her husband steps forward to take his son's place and lie. Her husband then, for no real reason, tries to shoot the Vex only to be blasted. His wife soon follows.

Seg, knowing his parents died to keep this secret and hoping to do something with the crystal, goes back to the place Val had hidden in the icy always-blizzarding tundra and inserts the crystal. It opens into a Fortress of Solitude that his grandfather had. And poof, the Detroit Lions guy is there again and gives him the disintegrating cape of Superman, tells him that he is a time traveler from centuries in the future where Seg's grandson is this symbol of greatness but that the future is in danger because Krypton is currently in danger from a powerful force. This force is the consumer of worlds known as Brainiac. So together Seg and this mysterious guy must work to stop Brainiac from taking Krypton because Mr. Tentacles is already out there and is coming there way. Oh, that big theory that his grandfather had: that they are not alone in the universe and that he saw a biological life form heading their way. Whaaatttt?! Yeah, I know it's kinda blowing your mind and making you question everything you knew about Superman and his home planet.

Episode two sorta picks up where we left off. Seg explores the fortress more and comes to discover a hologram of his grandpa is all up in and through that place. His grandpa does this info-dump on him and talks about how he was working on technology that could see far into the stars and even let him travel to these places. Mr. Detroit or Mr. Strange (or something like that; sorry, I can never quite catch the names in shows no matter how hard I try. But he's supposed to be a known comic character who uses a stone to travel through space/time) tells him about Brainiac. He says that he himself is from earth and that Brainiac collects civilizations, planets and cities he finds interesting, often destroying the rest of the planet or civilization in order to preserve what he thinks is the most perfect example of that civilization. He travels across space looking for planets and is headed their way. He urges Seg and Kem to help him look for any forward scouts that Brainiac sends out to make sure there is life on a planet and it is worth taking or “preserving.” So while Seg has to continue to deal with his new status as part of house Vex, Strange and Kem go into the forbidden lands to search for an orb that Brainiac sent out.

Lyta's Betrothed

Meanwhile, Lyta tries to prove that she belongs not only in house Zod but that she belongs in the warriors brigade and should be taken seriously as a fierce warrior and leader. It's your basic legacy-stuck-in-her-parent's-shadow story that you'd find in any teen fantasy book or show. There is some trouble and whatnot that's brewing down in the rankless sections, and they are planning to go to war with them to combat The Black Zero before it grows even larger, but Lyta doesn't want that because, even though she is highborn, she has always looked at the rankless as people too, especially now that Seg is part of it (we are to assume that they knew each other as children all the way up to age 9, hence the romance that seems improbable). So she challenges her superior officer of her squad to a ritualistic dual that has its basis on the actions of some previous dude that came along, climbed to a mountain and decreed that anyone who thought they could rule could come and challenge him in a battle to the death. Somehow, he became the first general or ruler. I should take this opportunity to say that, among the things I don't know is what kind of government this is: kingdom, twisted republic, etc. Yes, the castes are there and it seems to be Vex calling most of the shots, but he's not the most powerful one from what I can see.

Anyway, everyone doubts her, and her betrothed and mother both say she'll probably die and that it was stupid for her to challenge this dude. She beats the guy, he asks for mercy, and she utters the same line her mother said on the first episode after she snaps his neck.

As she is proving herself worthy, Seg wanders around and sorta does a lot of nothing on this episode. He manages to say that he will not bow to house Vex and take their name because he won't be used as their puppet, but will, somehow still remain among the ranked. Now, at this part I will say that I got a little bored, let my mind wander (on both viewings) and missed what he figured out, but it was something that he thought he could use to somewhat lord over the Vex's head. And we also learn that Nyssa chose him to be her betrothed through some kind of twisted plot. In other words, she somehow influenced his being at the courtroom to stop that bomber that day so that his heroism could be a huge public spectacle. Why? I don't know. But again, I assume that Seg, Lyta and Nyssa all knew each other when they were young and all still part of the ranked. However, it's hard to think that she might've had a crush on him that lasted for 14 years or that she could know who he is now as opposed to then, so I'm not sure why she chose him. A mystery for the season.

The biggest thing was that Detroit (my nickname for him) and Kem went to the ice lands and did find an orb that they learn at the end of the show is one of the scout orbs that Brainiac sent. This signifies just how close he is to the planet (basically, he's already here).

Brainiac's Skull Ship

Episode three dives deeper into Brainiac. We learn—get ready for this one because this is gonna sorta blow your mind—that Val actually created the Phantom Zone. That's not the kicker, though. The kicker is that the Phantom Zone to him is not some prison or empty zone like it has been in pretty much every TV, film and, for the most part, comic book iteration of Superman and/or the Justice League that has come along, but is actually like some kind of wormhole. Think of it as a mix between The Flash's Speed Force and that strange four-dimensional book case from Interstellar. According to Val he explored the universe by using the Phantom Zone, was able to go to different planets, and he learned of Brainiac through one of his Phantom Zone excursions. Granted, the way he talks about it is that he has done all of this through some sort of phantom projection similar to Marvel's Doctor Strange, so he wasn't there physically and the zone acts sort of like a TV and telescope combined. But the idea is there. To recap, the Phantom Zone is not a prison, it's not an empty vast void like it always has been, it's actually a tool or passage to another dimension where the mind can travel freely across time-space.

Val's Fortress hologram explains that it is because of this travel that he knows that the orb they found is supposed to be filled with a parasite. Brainiac himself can determine if a planet has organic life. Once he knows it does, he sends out the parasite to latch on to any organic host. That parasite is supposed to get the lay of the land in order to send info back to Brainiac on whether this city, culture or planet is worth taking. But the parasite always kills the host after relaying this info. Of course the orb they find is empty. They immediately switch to the rankless outlands scavenger who found it to show us that the parasite has gotten into her and it's just a matter of time before she is taken over completely. We're supposed to feel bad for her because she has a daughter and is a friend of Kem and Seg, but she loses it halfway through the show, beats up a bunch of guards and runs off for Seg to find her later. Seg does manage to find her and sees her eyes completely blacked out like Brainiac's usually are. She tries to strangle him for a while, but he manages to bop her on the head as she is trying to tear some stuff up with a computer, so she can learn and send the info back to Brainiac. They then bring her back to the fortress only to realize that she has become a Kryptonian transmitter and is sending B the info right now.

As that is going on, Lyta is sworn in as her squad's new leader after killing the old one. Even though her mother is proud of that accomplishment, she's still upset because she doesn't think Lyta will be good at this job and disobeys the way it is too often. Her betrothed thinks the same. She proves them both half-right when she and her squad are dispatched to the rankless slums to quell the hottest breeding bed for the radicalism of The Black Zero. They're supposed to question and arrest people and put fear into them that they should not try to help these rebels. One of her troops gets overzealous and shoots one of the people, claiming self-defense. Lyta has her arrested instead of the rankless, ruffling House Vex's feathers. But Lyta has more to be concerned with because Seg comes to her with news of his grandfather being right and an evil alien coming to attack them soon. She suggests they take such proof to the top government officials, but he says no because he actually has a brain and has been paying attention to the show. We end with another shot of Brainiac in the middle of his skull ship with all of his tentacles crawling across his face as he gets his jollies on anticipating his next takeover.

Seg, Daron-Vex, Nyssa-Vex

What's my grade? I give it a shaky C. Yep, that's the first time I've ever given a TV show a shaky grade. I say that the grade is shaky because one, I'm not grading just for myself but for you too, and with that in mind, I would say that whether you enjoy this show depends on so many variables it seems almost unreal. All I can say is what I do and don't like and why I have judged things that way.

For starters, this show is waaaayyyy too dark. Not just in tone but in actual aesthetic texture. I was literally ten minutes into the first episode and knew how I'd feel about almost the rest of the series and came up with this line: they took the Man of Steel aesthetic but seemingly dropped most of the history and mythos built within that film. That's factor number one on whether you'll like this show.


I'm guessing you're reading a post about a comic book show based around the legacy of Superman because you like Superman, and if you like Superman you probably saw Zach Snyder's version in the last three films of Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman and Justice League. If you like those portrayals, particularly all the stuff from the opening 30 minutes of Man of Steel when they are on Krypton, I'm not saying you'll like this show, but I am saying that your probability of enjoying it has increased by 50%. (For a marker, I semi-enjoyed Man of Steel, but still felt it was far from the Superman we want and deserve, and thought the opening was incredible). Even better, I think I can confidently say that they (Syfy and WB) clearly spent some good money on this show. The sets, for the most part, are real and not CGI/greenscreened to death. The CGI that they do have (some of the flying vehicles and beams of light and Brainiac's spaceship, etc.) have rendered fairly well (better than that monster they expected us to call Doomsday in BvS). And the angles and shots sometimes (not all the time) have a film-like quality to them.

This Aesthetic Appears Only Once or Twice An Episode

However, with all of that said, this aesthetic, this vision of Krypton does not fully match the vision of any other Krypton. I usually watch my shows late at night after everyone has gone to bed and I am done with my writing work. That way my eyes can adjust and let more dark light, shades and tones in, so I can see stuff better, but this show still felt dark at 1:00am. Everything is soaked in black or dark blue, all the sets are moody and gray or a dirty white and even much of the reddish hue that you saw in Man of Steel's rendering or that you might see on CW's Supergirl, Smallville or in the comics is gone because everything either happens at night, or the few day shots you do get the red is more of a burnt sienna or auburn color. Now, I get why sci-fi TV shows dealing with space often adopt this kind of aesthetic (look at Expanse, the 90s Star Trek shows, Battlestar Galactica): because filming with dark tints or color-adjusting in post helps to hide flaws of set design, costume design or even bad CGI, etc. It's just like how indie filmmakers will often shoot a film in black and white because it's cheaper than color-correcting. But my god, you've got to be able to see all that's going on.

Worse still, this, like the Man of Steel franchise (we'll just say this for now and include BvS and JL in that), uses a character in Superman who is uniquely associated with light and strips away all the vividness of the precursor narrative. No, they don't have to show some kind of happy-go-lucky people like what Superman is, but if the name Krypton was not on the show, you wouldn't think this had anything to do with Superman. It feels more like a Batman prequel which leads me to my next point:

The plot and tenuous connection with Superman. Back when Gotham first premiered I remember some of the live-or-die-by-comic-books fanboys losing their mind and bawling their eyes out because they were going to feature a Batman show without Batman. Now, while some die-hards still hate the show, it has garnered a healthy and loyal following that has supported it through multiple seasons. Remember, Gotham along with Krypton (it took much longer to get this show off the ground due, I'm hearing, to massive story problems) and Marvel's Agents of SHIELD came along in a time when the studios wanted to capitalize on their comic book properties more than ever but didn't want to overexpose their big-name properties, so figured they could give side stories that surround our mightiest heroes lives. In other words, you don't get Thor but maybe you get Lady Sif to come and help out with a tiny non-world-threatening mission. But where Krypton differs from Gotham and, to an extent, all of those other peripheral shows, is that it has nearly no connection to Superman, nor what we know and love about the character.

On Gotham it is intriguing to see how the city became so corrupted and grew increasingly more and more desperate until Batman became a needed force in the streets. Not only that, but we are able to see the genesis of some of his villains, especially the older ones. Batman had a gaggle of different ages of villains, whether it was the much older Penguin or Professor Strange or Ras Al Ghul, or those nearer to his age in Catwoman and Poison Ivy. Was there a desire to see them all in their youth? No, but there was intrigue to see how they became the desperate, damaged people they are, and what, if any, noise they made during Batman's formative years. It let us know that people didn't suddenly explode into villains once Batman came on the scene, and they weren't all stable adults that had one bad day and decided to start killing. No, they were around and living often normal lives but had secrets that slowly revealed themselves. And Bruce no longer had to be this Jesus-like character: we learn of one instance in his childhood (Jesus was in the temple being about his father's work) and then zoom forward to him becoming Batman in adulthood. His transformation isn't triggered by one or two things, but a slew of horrible things that forces him into the cape and cowl.

Brainiac Does Look Cool

On Krypton, we have almost none of that. For starters, setting the show almost a hundred (or maybe a couple hundred, according to Detroit) years in the past is such a baffling idea that I can't for the life of me figure out why they made it. If you're going to go to the past, either go to the extreme past, like before the world became the ice palace it is now, or close in the past, like showing his father either as a child or doing his own fighting as an adult. This intermediate selection disconnects us from both. Those ruins, how they got there and why the people now live in force-fields seems like a far more interesting story I would want to see enacted rather than told in an expo-dump later this season or in seasons to come. On the reverse side, showing a young Jor-El maybe falling in love, fighting with Zod, fighting to save his planet or learning of its imminent destruction is also more intriguing. But in this show, they decide to choose his grandfather? Huh? Even worse, his grandfather is talking to his grandfather, which lets me assume that the world has been like this in these bubbles for a while. And then they make it into a political show where the have-nots are fighting against the haves on a planet we all know will soon blow up. Like, huh? Why should I even care? Because it's not like there's any drama surrounding a potential countdown before the world explodes. They don't even now they're in danger and the danger they have is superfluous to Superman, really. Again, why should I care? I don't know.

The time is also interesting because we have no idea how time works on Krypton, and they refuse to tell us in any solidified agreed-upon way. We first hear that time operates in years because the show skips ahead 14 years to catch Seg as an adult. But during the baby Matrix conception we hear that his and Nyssa's child will live for 173 cycles. So is a cycle a year? Does that mean he'll be 173 when he dies? How does the time on Krypton compare to the time on Earth? How old can they live to be on their own planet? And yes geeks and freaks out there, I know that time and measurements of it work differently depending on your revolutionary path around the sun and rotational spin on the planet's axis, but there has to be some set marker of time between their planet and ours that we can properly identify. We need that because of my third point on time:

The villains' ages. If this makes it past season one and it probably will because it is super-expensive and studios don't like giving up so easily on expensive stuff related to tentpoles, I assume it will feature more galactic villains that are familiar to Superman fans. OK. I'm fine with that, but you have to tell me how old they're supposed to be, because if they're thousands of years old by the time they get around to fighting Superman, then they should've clearly won those battles on the count of them being wiser. But even more to the point, these villains are world-ending villains. How would these backwoods Kryptonians defeat them enough to not have killed them but allowed them to go free and terrorize some other part of the universe until arriving at earth? With Joker/Jerome (now his twin brother) on Gotham we know that the kid has been through a bunch of craziness already and has gone to Arkham and been dead before, so once he and Bruce finally make their full transformations we'll understand why they haven't already destroyed each other and might never get around to it. Here? Brainiac is coming and I have no idea how they're going to defeat him in an adequate way that will make me think he could still come back and be this huge villain against Superman, especially because of my next point:

They didn't know they weren't the only ones in the universe. Like... what? Remember back when I started the review section and said that this show took the aesthetic of Man of Steel without taking the history. This is what I meant. In that movie, Zod mentions that they've been going around to different planets and scouting them to see if they could hold Kryptonian life for thousands of years (yes, we're back on the time thing). How would they not have encountered aliens? If they were doing any kind of interstellar travel, wouldn't Oa have contacted somebody about this? Don't know. In fact, the show posits that they've never done any kind of space travel. That only leads to more questions. Are they really an advanced society, because it seems like they're a society that Captain Kirk and Spock would have orders to not interfer with. Really, the only super-advanced thing I've seen them have is how they make the babies, and a few flying cars here and there. But everything else seems primitive. And if they do get all of this technology (maybe they obtain it by beating Brainiac), then how do they get adept enough to use it to send a baby off to a far-off planet populated with people when they DON'T EVEN KNOW OTHER BEINGS EXIST! This show is nonsense.


How would they learn all of this knowledge about the universe—enough to have those tons of crystals for Superman to study in his Fortress of Solitude—within the span of two generations? Again, I see where they are or at least could go with this and use Brainiac as the Deus Ex Machina that launches Krypton into a golden technological age that would dwarf our own of the last 60 years in comparison, but gimme a break. Would it even be fair to call them an advanced civilization at that point if they only get advanced in the last two generations of their existence? This is one of the problems I had with Black Panther: they are this super-advanced society yet still settle matters of a thousand different other things, including their politics, by rather barbaric means. I get the fascination for writers to juxtapose the two ideas of technological advancement with caveman-like behavior but when does the line get drawn? Hopefully on an alien planet.

Seg and Lyta

Speaking of alien, for all my sci-fi geeks out there, this show is the most geekworthy-devoid show I probably have ever seen on the Syfy channel, and I don't watch much of the Syfy channel. There's almost nothing in it that tells you it is a science fiction show, and that goes doubly for a show based off of a superhero or comic book character. Dark Horse comics or some of the other comic vendors that don't have the big name of DC or Marvel behind them, I can see this being one of their shows. But a DC show? This? I don't know what this is. On Krypton none of the Kyrptonians have any superpowers which I'm OK with (maybe their superpower is to live excessively long regardless of what planet they are on), although I would've liked it if everyone had at least one power that everyone could do and to them doesn't seem super, but I digress. They live like humans, have the same kind of governmental problems as humans, fight like humans and even love like humans, but they just don't procreate like us. But here's the kicker, they also don't seem to have an atmosphere all that different to earth. I say that because of Mr. Detroit's (Strange) seemingly unaffected demeanor from walking around on Krypton. Granted, we have no idea how long he has been there or if he himself is an alien to both Krypton and Earth, but what we do know is that we never once see him in a space suit or struggling to breathe in their air or adopt or adapt to their culture and environment. It literally feels like an American Michigander crossed the border into Canada and discovered everyone speaks curiously with a British accent.


With a lack of alien presence (outside of Brainiac who still isn't on the planet yet), politics that are playing out too similar to our own (but surprisingly with dumber twists to them; think India's caste system and sprinkle in a little bit of Brexit), a weakly-plotted and executed environmental message (again, where's the story about the ruins and why the planet is so cold that they can't survive for too long outside of the force-field), and the fact that they are only just now realizing that they aren't alone in the universe (mimicking our current NASA-fueled questions) it makes you wonder as to why they even decided to make this show and call it Krypton. You take three things out—the names, the cape, Brainiac—and this is a run-of-the-mill Syfy channel show with no draw, no comic book fanbase and rather boring politics. It's trying to be a knock-off of Game of Thrones but takes none of the good parts of that series and doesn't add in its own good parts.

Remember, I've gone through this entire review without talking about the strange mixing of races which I promised to talk about, the fact that they felt compelled to use the Man of Steel aesthetic yet used the Donner movies Superman music, inexplicably have a Fortress of Solitude for Val (so Superman can't have anything that he himself came up with?), have yet to show the red sun in all of its glory, have failed to explain the dude who wears the mask of the many faces, have failed to explain why the Vex and the others in charge are so against Val and anyone else talking about life beyond their planet and have failed to make me adequately care about any of the characters. Still, with all that said, this is a toss-up to me.

Finally, I go back to something that Geoff Johns and Goyer were saying. They were talking about how DC gives their artists so much leeway to do whatever they want with material. They (Goyer specifically) stressed how Superman is, even though he grew up in the Midwest, an alien. They even talked about how he as a superhero is so important and what he means as a character. Ultimately, the reason why I still hear bad stuff coming out of DC (this time about Aquaman) is because I still don't think they understand their properties. Sure, Geoff and Goyer might understand the character but fail to understand what really shapes the character and how the fans view the character. Yes, he's an alien but the only thing that makes him an alien are his powers. Superman... Clark Kent... Kal-El is ultimately a humble boy from Kansas who grew up being instilled and filled with love, an appreciation for all life and understanding the joy of living it. He's not a hero because it's in his blood or because he feels it is his duty, he's an ordinary guy who does heroic shiznit because he is the one who can do it. Literally none of the history of Krypton shapes Kal-El. Kara on the other hand...

Yet, even in here, within their own declaration do they fail. While Superman is supposed to be this big alien playing human, they do nothing to make this world feel alien to us. In fact, this world is no more alien to us than Mexico is alien. And before half of the population starts spouting off about illegals and drugs and poverty and blah, blah, blah, remember that we have all that crap, too, not to mention the same dominant religion. Now, Americans going to some place like Iraq or Jerusalem would be way more of a culture shock than Mexico.

Should you be watching? This is why the grade is so shaky, because I really don't know if the average viewer would enjoy this or not. Granted, there's been plenty of stuff that I've said is stupid and manages to stay on TV while stuff that I enjoyed was canceled, and I still watch Agents of SHIELD after all this time, so... But with that said, I know that some of my own expectations probably clouded my judgment. I was really excited to see this show because I wanted to know what they would and could do with a famous name and an almost blank slate waiting for creativity. What I felt I got was an amalgam of some of the worst ideas and retreads that I have seen in an original property in a while. It, sadly, feels like Goyer's other series Flash Forward which premiered to amazing numbers and had an amazing premise but sputtered out after only a few episodes because it was big on concept, yet had no emotional weight and terrible execution. It was a great idea in theory, but in execution... Eh! Feels the same with Krypton. If you like political shows where the politics is fuzzy, you might like this. Like young people rebelling against their parents? Might like this. Like Game of Thrones but don't like that pesky magic or the intricate writing? Might like this. Liked the aesthetic but not the story of Man of Steel? Might like this. Like your sci-fi and fantasy shows light on sci-fi and fantasy? Might like this. But if you like something that is fresh and new and exciting and filled with adventure, or doesn't move slowly, or feels like stuff actually happens on every single episode, or you're looking for cool Superman Easter Eggs, or think that Krypton is going to be this rich world full of fantastic stories to tell, then look elsewhere because this show is not for you. Krypton airs Syfy Channel Wednesdays at 10pm EST.

What do you think? Have you heard of Krypton? If not, do you think you'll check it out now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Do you like it? Was I too rough on it? What is your favorite part? Do you think Brainiac will be the main villain for the shows duration or will they bring in other extraterrestrial rogues? And tell me honestly if you would've preferred to see a show or at least something about the ancient past of the Green Lanterns instead. Let me know in the comments below. 

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “It's a bird!” “It's a plan! It's su--”

'Hold on! Why the hell are we all suddenly looking up in the sky and pointing at things that fly? Is this some weird flash-mob thing I'm in? Or do you two guys just always travel together and do this in random groups of people to make them think they might see Superman?'

P.S. Yeah, I never quite trusted some of the writers behind these Superman comic books. I always get this sneaking suspicion that they actually hate Superman as a character and think that he's too goody-two shoes. It's strange that people are loving Captain America right now but so many comics fans always credit their dislike of Superman by saying that he's too perfect or too goody-goody. What the hell do you think Captain America always was? I digress. I still want to write a Superman/Justice League movie, because I think I can do the characters justice, but that's just me. I'll think of a better sign-off next time.

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You Heard The Thunder Now Here’s The #BlackLightning #3weekroundup #recap #review #CW #DC

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.

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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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