christopher emmanuel black lightning – Season 3 Episode 11 Recap: What Addiction?

Even if Jefferson now lives in a world where Superman and Supergirl exist, Freeland is still under quarantine. It’s kept deliberately separate from all that. The Earth Jefferson lives on may have changed, but his story hasn’t. So I’m fine with Black Lightning continuing on the path it had before the crossover. Anything else would feel like a cop out, honestly. What I’m less OK with is a story that deliberately takes a couple steps backward to fill out a full season. That appears to be what’s happening with Lynn.

Remember last week’s episode, where Jefferson caught Lynn in the bathroom with Green Light? How she’s been going through withdrawal and becoming increasingly desperate? I bet you thought that was going to lead to something. I know I did. Boy, what fools were we?

Since finding his wife trying to dig drugs out of the toilet, Jefferson has done absolutely nothing. I get that he has other pressing concerns, but for all his talk about family, he’s sure ignoring a big part of it. Plus, it’s not like Lynn’s addiction is innocuous. The drug she’s addicted to is made by the ASA. It’s a tool Agent Odell used to drive another wedge between the Pierce family. As long as she’s addicted to it, it puts her back in the ASA crosshairs. But I guess Jefferson forgot about everything he saw last week, as he doesn’t even mention it all episode.

Hell, he didn’t even tell Gambi. When Lynn visits him, he mentions she looks bad, but it never occurs to him to ask why. Again, I know there’s a lot going on, but when big dramatic moments like last week’s bathroom scene don’t lead to anything, it feels like the story is in a holding pattern.

Especially when Lynn gets her drugs back. She gives Gambi a metahuman virus cure so he can give it to TC. In exchange, she uses his access to the ASA security system to contact Sergeant Grayle, who we see at the beginning of the episode recording a confessional of everything the ASA has done. Lynn saw him pick up her purse full of Green Light without logging it. She calls him over, takes her drugs and everything’s instantly better. She’s more awake, focused and able to create yet another serum. This one gives metahuman powers to non-metas, though the effects only last a couple hours. That could lead to interesting plot developments. If the show doesn’t forget about it.

For now, she needs the new serum to break Tobias Whale out of the ASA facility. Grayle tells her the ASA started trying to make their own cure to turn the pod kids into metas as fast as possible. It’s not going well. Three kids have died already. It really feels like that should be a scene, right? That and the bit with Lynn’s purse. The episode feels like it ran out of time at some point and had to shove big plot developments into single lines of expository dialog. It’s just one more baffling decision in an episode full of them. Every plotline this week felt like a transition. Like this whole episode just wants to get us to next week as quickly as possible.

Lynn tests out her new serum on Grayle, giving him a cloaking ability for a few hours. She then sneaks into the ASA and uses it on Tobias. She breaks him out and leads him to the side of a road where they wait for Grayle. He tries punching her, but it turns out she gave herself powers too. She no-sells the punch and knocks Tobias out cold. It’s a supremely satisfying moment in an otherwise mostly unsatisfying episode.

Grayle shows up and they load Tobias into the back of a truck, and then that moment of badass is undone. A Markovian appears behind them and knocks them out with an electric prod. Well at least next week’s episode has to take Lynn’ story somewhere different now.

The rest of the Pierce family’s story is a little better about not treading old ground, but it still takes a while to get where it’s going. Jennifer tells her dad everything about what Odell’s been having her do. He and Gambi decide they need to deal with Odell now. They leave Jenn out of it because of course they do. I kind of get that she wants to kill Odell, so Jeff is freezing her out to protect her from doing something she can’t take back. But at least let her in on what the plan is.

Black Lightning is reaching Flash Season 3 levels of characters refusing to talk to each other. Yes, a story needs conflict and setbacks to be interesting, but when all those setbacks could be avoided by characters saying once sentence to each other, it feels cheap.

Jeff and Anissa kidnap Odell while he’s being driven through Freeland and tie him up in their home. They threaten to torture and kill him, but what they’re actually doing is compiling a library of voice samples. They plan to use his voice to order the ASA to retreat from Freeland. It almost works, but Jenn finds out about their plan and interrupts, demanding to know why she was left out (valid) and why they don’t just kill Odell (less valid).

Then Painkiller shows up. Whom they haven’t told Jenn about. Seriously, all the things that go wrong in the final scene of this episode can be traced directly back to Jefferson and Anissa deciding to cut Jenn out of everything. Not that Jenn is entirely blameless here. Seeing her ex try to kill her family and her family fighting back, her solution is to wrap both Jeff and Anissa in lightning. This allows the entire ASA rescue team to get off the ground and extract Odell with no further complications. This was a shockingly limp fight scene for a show that’s usually so good at those, and it ended in the dumbest way it could.

The only consolation here is that the episode set up some cool stuff that I desperately hope next week’s episode capitalizes on. Early on in the episode, Odell mentions that if he returns to Gotham City, all hell will break loose. Well, now he’s being taken back to Gotham. The episode did a good job making that mean something, and I genuinely want to know what. Also, TC interfaces with the ASA chip controlling Painkiller. It turns out Khalil is still in there somewhere, and all he said was that he loves Jennifer. That’s both adorable and sets up a complicated love triangle between her, him and Brandon. So that’s a place this story could go.

Oh, and Lady Eve is still alive somehow. She’s running a brothel in town, which Lala finds out about and forces her to work for him. She has to play his game for now, but from what we’ve seen of her, I’m guessing she has a plan in the works.

That’s bad news for Gambi, though. The woman who ordered a hit on him is still alive. Still, she was a fun, exciting villain early on in this series, and I’m glad to see the show bringing her back.

Yes, it’s yet another loose thread in a season stuffed with them, but at this point, why not add another? One of them has to lead to something.

christopher emmanuel black lightning –  airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on The CW.

Previously on Black Lightning: