![]() There’s also Lala (a charismatic William Catlett), a former student at Garfield High who has since made himself a boss, so to speak. There’s Tobias Whale, made superbly creepy and menacing by Krondon, one-third of 2DopeBoyz mainstay Strong Arm Steady. But there’s time to work that out, and for now we have a compelling social drama with interesting characters that I’d like to get better acquainted with. In fact, the actual work of being a superhero (tossing off one-liners, fighting henchmen, freeing captives, dangling newly acquired informants from high places) isn’t the show’s strongest point. (“Fuck yeah ,” I said, loudly.)īlack Lightning is great but it has its flaws, one of them being - and this is just me here, maybe - the suit looks a little Disney Channel Original Movie–ish. But later in the episode, he chooses to blow up the squad car in his second scrape with the law, this time wearing a tux. Here is Pierce, smoldering with electric, superhuman rage, making himself smaller and more docile to avoid confrontation that could turn fatal in front of his children. ![]() One that you can neither stop nor defend yourself from. Jefferson is pulled over and slammed onto the hood of a squad car by a cop who is more dismissive than he is anything else, and the scene captures both the stakes and the indignity of such an encounter. ![]() The Big Moment follows that, the one you’ve heard most about and likely watched a few times, if you’ve heard anything about this show. Anissa and Jefferson’s back-and-forth is a good moment: two people reaching the exhaustion that comes after exasperation, one young, one old, and neither wrong. She volleys back with “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” Fannie Lou Hamer said that when she spoke with Malcolm X at the Williams Institutional CME Church in Harlem in 1964. “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars,” he repeats, a quote from Dr. Partly about when she decided to protest (on the night of a big Garfield High fundraiser), partly about the overturned cars and smashed windows he’d seen on the news. He’s 48, he wears a knee brace, he’s tired, and he’s flustered. Anissa got detained during a protest that was goaded into a riot, and Jefferson is upset with her in the car ride home. Like Luke Cage, but in a less preachy way than Luke Cage.Īt the beginning of the first episode, Jefferson brings along his other daughter, Jennifer (China Anne McClain), to bail Anissa out of jail. Black Lightning situates itself in the real world and acknowledges that America and all its social mores are still happening at all times, whether or not you’re choosing to look. These all offered different, vague questions about how much power people are meant to have over each other, with the exception of Logan, which was sneakily about the dire cost of othering. Superhero stories tend to couch social critique in allegory - the Batman cellphone surveillance thing, Marvel’s Sokovia plotline, the “Sokovia Accords,” the border run in Logan. Early reviews of the series said it “ doubled as a drama about being black in 2018.” This is true. The show premiered Tuesday, just on the heels of Martin Luther King Day. She’s the eldest and most fed-up daughter of Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams), the upright and distinguished principal of the school who also moonlights as the titular hero of the CW’s new show, Black Lightning. Right: Who is Anissa? Anissa (Nafessa Williams) is a med student who teaches at Garfield High. ![]() I would think of more examples, but I’m tired. The whole shtick is very “thoughts and prayers,” but instead of thoughts and prayers around a specific tragedy, it’s a loose and pliant concern for peace, in general, on earth. It is the American Dream” from his golf course, one morning after he needed to say that he definitely isn’t racist - perhaps the least racist person ever interviewed. What I mean by that is, on January 15, Paul Ryan looked pensively at a bust he verifiably doesn’t think about the other 364 days of the year. It’s easy to be skeptical of public celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, considering how often people sanitize it. ![]()
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