Black Lightning: Lost In My Grief

Black Lightning | Season 4 | Episode 4 : “A Light in the Darkness“
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For a quick read, go to Review. For a complete summary, go to Recap.

KBear Recap [Read time: 5-7 min]

“Is Kid ‘N Play too hype? The answer is yes, Gambi!” TC

Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning (Cress Williams) dreams that Lynn (Christie Adams) injects herself with a serum. Tobias Whale (Marvin ‘Krondon’ Jones III) appears and tortures Jefferson. He wakes up startled and confused. TC (Christopher Emannuel) and Peter Gambi (James Remar) are in the lab creating a design flaw in the DEGs, to prevent their distribution. Jefferson walks in and grabs a bottle of booze; Gambi sends TC away so he can talk to Jefferson. He tells Gambi that Lynn still hasn’t told him about her secretly meeting Tobias, he doesn’t trust her. Gambi advises him to give her the benefit of the doubt. Jefferson wonders what he should do about Tobias. Gambi is tracking Tobias and he’s at the Chez Louise. Jefferson goes to the restaurant to confront him. After his henchman and woman leave, Tobias orders Jefferson to take a seat or he’ll tell everyone about his family. Jefferson sits down and they argue about Lynn. Tobias relishes Jefferson’s distress.

Anissa Pierce/Thunder (Nafessa Williams) carries her bride Grace Choi (Chantal Thuy) across the threshold. They get into an argument because Anissa calls their home her loft and she doesn’t want to go to storage to get Grace’s “junk” because it wouldn’t fit the aesthetic of the loft. Tobias is having dinner with Mayor Billy Black (Reginald Hayes), Chief Ana Lopez (Melissa De Sousa) and the Deputy Chief Wesley Robinson (Troy Faruk) discussing a large contribution he is going to give to Freeland. Lopez looks a little skeptical about Tobias but the Mayor is totally on board. He tells him about the DEGs the police department is getting and Tobias suggest they make the announcement at the homeless encampment. Jennifer Pierce/Lightning (China Anne McClain) looks drained. TC warns her it’s not safe for her to continue going to the ionosphere. She waves away his concerns. She is delighted to find out she has over two million followers. Lala (William Catlett), Devonte (Rafael Castillo) and other members of the 100 have some stolen DEG weapons. Some of them aren’t working. The Deputy Chief who owes Lala for gambling debts, [He must have bet against Jefferson] shows up and tells them about the large order of DEGs the Freeland police will be receiving. Lala decides to steal the DEGs from the cops.

“Well if it’s not Apollo Pierce!” Lala

Gambi is at Monovista labs with Lauren Caruso (Elena Varela), he warns her there is a design flaw with the DEGs. She doesn’t mention it to her boss and asks Gambi not to either. Jefferson is preparing for his match at the fight club. Lala tries to talk him out of doing this, but Jefferson ignores him. Lopez informs Detective Hassan Shakur (Wallace Smith) about the weapon announcement at the homeless encampment. Shakur warns her not to trust Tobias. Jefferson begins his match, TC is watching it on his computer, the combatant’s faces are blurred. Jennifer walks in and asks TC what he is watching. He tells her about the fight club, she watches for a minute and realizes one of the fighters looks familiar. She asks TC if he can remove the blur off the fighter’s face, he does and to both their dismay, it’s Jefferson.

“So when you talk about Black Lightning, you put respect on that man’s name.” Detective Hassan Shakur

Lynn is waiting for Jefferson to confront him about being in the fight club. He asks how she knows; she tells him that Jennifer and TC discovered it and that Jennifer is too upset to even look at him. This leads to a vicious fight between the two as Jefferson tells her he knows about her ‘date’ with Tobias and that he no longer trusts her. She brings up Henderson and wonders what Henderson would think of him, Jefferson storms out of the house. Lauren stops by Gambi’s place to tell him he was right about the design flaw; he is disappointed to find out that Monovista will have it fixed in a few days. She has another project she’d like Gambi to help her with, but they take a detour to his boudoir first. Jefferson is at a bar getting drunk. After watching another negative news report about Lightning, two patrons complain about the new vigilantes, comparing them negatively to Black Lightning. Jefferson voices a negative view about his alter ego, Detective Shakur defends Black Lightning and advises everyone to put respect on the man’s name. He offers a toast to Black Lightning, and Jefferson takes what he says to heart. Grace comes home, Anissa gives her a gift, a new copy of the Outsider comic she was reading when they first met. She apologizes to Grace and tells her this is her home too and says they should go to storage to pick up some of her stuff. Shonda (Sh’Kia Augustin) tells Anissa that the Mayor doesn’t have enough security at the homeless encampment. Anissa asks if Grace is up for some adventure.

Thunder, Lightning, and Wylde [Grace’s superhero name] arrive at the homeless encampment. Since there is a delay in the new weapons arriving, the Mayor and Tobias are passing out clothes. Jefferson goes back home and apologizes to Lynn. He knows he has to find a better way to work through his issues. Lynn accepts the apology; she assures him she won’t have anything to do with Tobias. To her surprise, Jefferson asks her to work with him. He explains that this way they can find out what he’s up to and get a step ahead of Tobias for once. The Mayor gets up to make a speech when Lala and his boys arrive to kill Tobias. Thunder, Lightning and Wylde fight the 100, but in the melee, the Mayor is shot and killed. Lopez tells our heroines that if they hadn’t gotten involved, the police could have protected him. She blames them for his death.

“I promise you that I will be the man I once was. A man you can be proud of.” Jefferson Pierce

We find out that Tobias had set this up, he knew that Lala would try to kill him there. He had Red (Matt Roszak) shoot the Mayor with police rounds, making it look like the Mayor died from friendly fire. Lauren shows Gambi an energy field emitter she is working on and asks him if he’d help her with it. Gambi tells her he’d be happy to. Jennifer is in her room watching Tobias at a news conference talking about the DEGs the police will be getting and putting an end to the menace of the gangs and the superpower vigilantes. Jefferson knocks and speaks to her through the door, he asks her to bear with him as he works through his problems. Jennifer silently listens; she slips out her window and flies up to the ionosphere. TC monitors her and tells her she’s in trouble. Jennifer can’t move and realizes she’s in trouble, she explodes into molecules.

KBear Review [Read time: 1-3 minutes]

Is Jennifer dead? I know it’s the final season, and China Ann McClain is taking a break from acting, but have they killed Jennifer to let China Ann McClain leave the show, or is she going to be missing some or most of the season? I don’t know and can’t guess what will actually happen. Jefferson has been lost in his grief about Henderson all season, what happens to him if he loses Jennifer. I don’t know how Jefferson, Lynn, Anissa, and Gambi can survive this loss. It would change the show considerably. For better or worse, depending on how you feel about Jennifer. Even with such a major event, other things happened too. Jefferson got busted by Jennifer and TC over being in Fight Club. At least Jefferson didn’t talk about Fight Club. Lynn didn’t tell him about Tobias, so he goes off the deep end. The reason she didn’t tell him was because she knew he’d go off the deep end. When they finally engage in an adult conversation, he decides to use Tobias attempt to work with Lynn to their advantage. It puts Lynn in further danger, but he reasons they don’t have a choice. Lynn might beg to differ. Anissa brings her bride home; Grace finds out Anissa considers the loft her home. She doesn’t want Grace’s stuff to interfere with the aesthetic of the loft. Grace isn’t down for that, and Anissa finally realizes the loft has to be their home. Grace’s superhero name is Wylde, so if Lightning is out of the picture, it will be Thunder and Wylde, doesn’t quite sound right, maybe it should be Wylde Thunder, it sounds like an 80s hair band. Lightning and Wylde Thunder go to the homeless encampment where Tobias, Chief Lopez and the Mayor are. Lala and the 100 show up to kill Tobias but Wylde Thunder and Lightning chase them off. Unfortunately, Mayor Billy Black is shot, Chief Lopez blames our heroines for getting in the way and preventing her from protecting the Mayor. We find out later that Tobias had Red kill him, he knew Lala would show up to kill him, so he manipulated the situation to his advantage, to make the public hate the gangs and metas more. Gambi and TC create a design flaw in the DEGs but instead of significantly slowing down production, it only delays the weapons arrival for a couple of days. His plan fails, but at least Gambi got laid, so YEAH!

It was another very good episode; the drama increases even more. Jefferson hears Detective Shakur praise Black Lightning, so maybe his own anti Black Lightning stance will change. If Jennifer is dead, or lost for an extended period, it could take the show to a lot of interesting and challenging places.

This week’s song selections greatly enhanced the different moods of the episode.

“Anyone Who Know What Love Is (Will Understand)” Irma Thomas