Genre: Superhero/Action
Network: CW
For various reasons, it has been fairly quiet over here at The Guild. One of them being more focus from our founder C. Marry Hultman on The Wrestling Guild Podcast, writing for sltdwrestling.com and working on launching a new website for a book series. With 2018 already kicking off the goal is to get more content up here again. Most of it will still be about literature, but we will try to squeeze in more TV shows, music and comics as well. Therefore it seems only fitting to getting started with the latest from the CW.
To many, the announcement of the Black Lightning TV show came as a surprise. Not that CW would not want to capitalize on the success of Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl while the DCEU appears to fall short. No, because few knew he even existed. It would be a foolish task to attempt to give a complete summary of this hero when the information is easily attained on Wikipedia, Comic Book Resources or DC’s own homepage. This is instead a straight review of the show and what is the interesting thing is that once one deconstructs the first episode one realizes why it was made.
Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) is a divorced high school principal with two daughters, both of them quite talented. He is a pillar of the community, referred to by a local thug as the black Jesus of the same. He has been more than just a pillar in his day, once he was Black Lightning, a vigilante crime fighter with the power to harness electricity. In the first episode, the viewers know little of his past apart from his wife leaving him over his nocturnal activities. The city is run over by a crime gang called 100, run by the evil Tobias Whale.
Even though the city is run over by gang violence and that the police force seems to be racist; Pierce is pulled over by police officers looking for a black man who has robbed a store, he is hesitant to don the suit again. He is pushed by his tailor Peter Gambi (James Remar) after an altercation at a nightclub, where Pierce uses his powers to take down two police officers, but to no avail. it is revealed that he promised his ex-wife to retire Black Lightning years back. As is often the case though, his daughters get into trouble with the bad guys. After hindering a school shooting by a boy his youngest girl met up with at the club, Pierce confronts an old student by the name Lala. The meeting backfires and his girls end up in the firing line, it forces his hand and Black Lightning returns.
This show has a lot going for it. The fact that the main character is fairly unknown to most will let the writers construct their own world without running the risk of upsetting the die-hard fans, like in the other CW superhero shows. That it has been claimed that the show lies outside the world of the so-called Arrowverse is also a boon as it can play by its own rules. What sets Black Lightning apart from the other shows as well is its very clear social commentary. The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow avoid such things like the plague, being more kid-friendly, while Arrow, the more violent of quartet clumsily deals with things like drug addiction or poverty. One can see it in the aforementioned scene where Pierce is pulled over at random, just because he is black. The gun situation at the high school, cameras monitoring the same and when Lala chastises his nephew for playing video games while the white kids who he deals drugs to are getting ready for their future as the leaders stepping on the Black Man. It is all very poignant and also disturbing as Pierce has to witness the volatile situation between the gang banger and his kin.
The show is, of course, held up by a stellar cast. One that does not have to deal with tired stereotypes of writers who are out of touch. Ones who feel genuine and are in tune with their characters and the world in which they live. There is much to be pleased about when it comes to Black Lightning and maybe this is the superhero show that we didn’t know we needed.
-C. Marry Hultman
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