It’s easy to be skeptical of public celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, considering how often people sanitize it. 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. Donald Trump said that “Dr. King’s dream is our dream. 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. 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. I would think of more examples, but I’m tired.
That said, I feel Anissa. In my bones. Right: Who is Anissa? Anissa (Nafessa Williams) is a med student who teaches at Garfield High. 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. The show premiered Tuesday, just on the heels of Martin Luther King Day. Early reviews of the series said it “doubled as a drama about being black in 2018.” This is true. 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. 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. But all of X-Men is about that. 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. Like Luke Cage, but in a less preachy way than Luke Cage.
At the beginning of the first episode, Jefferson brings along his other daughter, Jennifer (China Anne McClain), to bail Anissa out of jail. Anissa got detained during a protest that was goaded into a riot, and Jefferson is upset with her in the car ride home. He’s 48, he wears a knee brace, he’s tired, and he’s flustered. 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. “Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars,” he repeats, a quote from Dr. King. 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. 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. 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. That’s nuanced too.
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. One that you can neither stop nor defend yourself from. 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. 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. (“Fuck yeah,” I said, loudly.)
Think about how Luke Cage seemed to take a direct stance on gang violence, lapel size, Your Elders, and acceptable language in its first handful of episodes before explaining what Cage’s purpose in Harlem was, and notice that doesn’t happen here. Black Lightning realizes it doesn’t need to think for you, it only needs to paint a picture, and it does that well. The racist police, the lawless 100 Gang, Jefferson’s failed marriage, and his daughters all work together to explain why Freeland — a city that could be any city — needs Black Lightning. With the adequately sage help of Harry Morgan (James Remar as Gambi, Pierce’s tailor and cut man), of course. He’s one of the precious few not-black actors in this show, by the way.
Black 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. 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. 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. There’s Tobias Whale, made superbly creepy and menacing by Krondon, one-third of 2DopeBoyz mainstay Strong Arm Steady. There’s also Lala (a charismatic William Catlett), a former student at Garfield High who has since made himself a boss, so to speak. He and Jefferson have a tête-à-tête about where gang activity is allowed, i.e. not on school grounds, and how best to build up black youth: hard or hopeful.
At least, I think there’s still Lala. Tobias shot him with a harpoon in the premiere. (There’s definitely still Lala, he’s billed for six episodes on IMDb.)
Let’s hope, then, that Black Lightning stays this cinematic and tonally complex. Let’s hope the magic doesn’t wear off, and that this show doesn’t devolve into a bland trudge through a disposable vigilante’s id. I’m tired of that. And I think Anissa would be, too.
