History YMMV / BlackLightning2018

* {{Anvilicious}}: The "police brutality" message is delivered with all the subtlety of a baton to the temple. Same goes for the "racism is bad" and the "blacks have it hard" message. At least one of these morals will be incorporated into any given episode. While SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped on occasion, especially in a show like this, having too many anvils in a single episode makes the episode feel bloated with audience moral teachings. What we're saying here, is that the show isn't subtle about its content.

* {{Anvilicious}}: The "police brutality" message is delivered with all the subtlety of a baton to the temple. Same goes for the "racism is bad" and the "blacks have it hard" message. At least one of these morals will be incorporated into any given episode. While SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped on occasion, especially in a show like this, having too many anvils in a single episode makes the episode feel bloated with audience moral teachings.

* {{Anvilicious}}: The police brutality message is delivered with all the subtlety of a baton to the temple.

** Season 1: The [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain racist]], revolting [[SmugSnake Martin Proctor]] is the man in charge of the Freeland operations of the sinister ASA. [[RogueAgent On his own]], he restarts a vaccine program with a high mortality rate due to how it can potentially enslave innocent African-Americans and create superpowered pawns. Repackaging it into a drug and circulating it throughout the city to target teenagers with an epidemic of death following, those who develop superpowers are taken for experimentation. When Proctor goes up against his rival Gambi, he has a subordinate force Gambi's surrender by holding a large crowd at gunpoint and is flatly disappointed he can't massacre them when Gambi surrenders. Proctor proceeds to betray and try to kill his ally, crime lord Tobias Whale, while also framing hero Jefferson Pierce as a drug user, not caring if his men kill anyone in the way. When his plans fail, Proctor shores up his losses and intends to take the surviving teens to [[PlayingWithSyringes perform hideous experiments]] on them to his heart's content, even trying to blackmail Jefferson into giving him a genetic sample by threatening to kill his family. A twisted, racist madman who cares nothing for the damage he does, Proctor is only too glad to condemn thousands of innocent young black men to death, justifying himself with the worst racist rhetoric.

** The painfully fake dreads Khalil has when he becomes Pain Killer make it obviously a wig.

** The Jen of Earth-2, meant to be a cautionary tale of who she’lol become if she keeps working with Odell, is so over the top evil that it’s impossible to believe the main Jen would ever turn into her.

** Granted the fact that it seems that they intentionally chose a white man as a replacement for Jefferson for no apparent reason other than that they knew it would frustrate him still has them in the JerkAss territory.

** Sometimes it's hard to keep a straight face when Tobias Whale is on screen. One noteworthy scene is him complaining about the marchers singing in "[[Recap/BlackLightning2018S1E3LawandaTheBookOfBurial Lawanda: The Book Of Burial]]", which sounds like it could have been said by TheGrinch.

** James Remar played Raiden the God of Thunder in Film/MortalKombatAnnihilation. In this show, he's the sidekick/father figure to a superhero with lightning powers. Becomes even funnier since Black Lightning appears in ''VideoGame/Injustice2'' as an alternate skin for Raiden.

** Agent Odell has ''many'' possible moments throughout season 2 and the beginning of season 3, but his most despicable action is without a doubt [[spoiler: implanting a [[BrainwashedAndCrazy brain chip]] into the newly resurrected Khalil and making him kill his own mother to test out its effectiveness, which he ultimately does. Even Odell's [[TheDragon right-hand man]] Carson Williams [[EvenEvilHasStandards objects to this]]; while he claims it's on [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic]] grounds, it's implied he actually finds it going way too far]].

* HarsherInHindsight: A flashback in season 1 had Lynn compare Jefferson's need to be a superhero to drug addiction. [[spoiler: Episode 4 of season 3 reveals Lynn has become addicted to Green Light due to it increasing her intelligence and the stress from trying to combat the meta virus.]]

* MoralEventHorizon: Tobias Whale has several possible moments throughout the series; the first notable one occurred before the start of the series, namely him murdering Jefferson's dad by literally shoving his newspaper articles down his throat until he chokes. But him [[spoiler: brutally ripping Khalil's spinal implant out of his back and leaving him to a slow and agonizing death]] is by far his worst moment and seals the deal of him being an utter psychopath.

** Season 1 also got some criticism of its political message being rendered a bit toothless by Protor being a RogueAgent. Season 3 reveals that he actually ''was'' officially sanctioned by the US government, and Agent Odell is following the exact same project.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: After the show was clearly not allowed to use the N-word in Season 1, severely neutering its portrayal of racism as noted in {{Narm}} below, the network is allowing it in Season 2.

*** Interestingly, the ''brightly glowing'' lightning designs make it one of the brightest superhero costumes in the CW’s line-up of DC Heroes (''Series/{{Supergirl}}'' & the first three seasons of ''Series/TheFlash2014'' keep their title characters’ reds and blues but they’re ''very'' muted.)

** Tobias running free from his crimes in Season 2. While he was the (main) problem throughout Season 1, Tobias is arrested early on in Season 2, but the charges against him are dropped and then, [[spoiler:he starts killing off witnesses or people like Jeremiah Holt or henchpeople close to him like Khalil and Todd Green]]. Not only that, he gets access to his own personal metahuman army, a half of dozen metas in ASA storage, including the Masters of Disasters. [[spoiler:When he is finally arrested at the end of the season, it is damn cathartic to watch Tobias get knock down a peg or two being in a black site meta prison that is designed for him to jailed.]]

** Tobias running free from his crimes in Season 2. While he was problem throughout Season 1, Tobias is arrested early in Season 2, but the charges against him are dropped and then, [[spoiler:he starts killing off witnesses or people like Jeremiah Holt or henchpeople close to him like Khalil and Todd Green]]. Not only that, he gets access to his own personal metahuman army, a half of dozen metas in ASA storage, including the Masters of Disasters.

* InternetBackdraft: Jefferson's comments in "The Book of Thunder" on how he wanted to put "Tobias' ''Albino'' ass in the ground" shocked many viewers since it seemed so out of character for Jefferson to be bigoted. Especially since Jefferson himself has been the victim of quite a few "black ass" threats.

*** It seemed that his anger was more about treating her abilities as something wrong instead of something that was a part of her. She would be perfectly capable of living a normal life with them once she got them under control.

* CompleteMonster: The [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain racist]], revolting [[SmugSnake Martin Proctor]] is the man in charge of the Freeland operations of the sinister ASA. [[RogueAgent On his own]], he restarts a vaccine program with a high mortality rate due to how it can potentially enslave innocent African-Americans and create superpowered pawns. Repackaging it into a drug and circulating it throughout the city to target teenagers with an epidemic of death following, those who develop superpowers are taken for experimentation. When Proctor goes up against his rival Gambi, he has a subordinate force Gambi's surrender by holding a large crowd at gunpoint and is flatly disappointed he can't massacre them when Gambi surrenders. Proctor proceeds to betray and try to kill his ally, crime lord Tobias Whale, while also framing hero Jefferson Pierce as a drug user, not caring if his men kill anyone in the way. When his plans fail, Proctor shores up his losses and intends to take the surviving teens to [[PlayingWithSyringes perform hideous experiments]] on them to his heart's content, even trying to blackmail Jefferson into giving him a genetic sample by threatening to kill his family. A twisted, racist madman who cares nothing for the damage he does, Proctor is only too glad to condemn thousands of innocent young black men to death, justifying himself with the worst racist rhetoric.

** Tobias running free from his crimes in Season 2. Although he is arrest, the charges against him are dropped and then, [[spoiler:he starts killing off people like Jeremiah Holt or henchpeople close to him like Khalil and Todd Green]]. Not only that, he gets access to his own personal metahuman army, a half of dozen metas in ASA storage, including the Masters of Disasters.

** [[spoiler: Lala's resurrection. It [[TrappedByMountainLions does nothing for the main plot]] and both Tobias and Jefferson have no idea he's even back. It's not even explained ''how'' he's back. Tobias killed him in a police cell in 1x02, then he wakes up in a hotel room in 1x07 without any explanation seemingly no worse for wear. We eventually do find out in the season one finale and in season two: Tobias paid good money to have Lala "reanimated" to have a disposable henchman whom he can do anything with. And an disposable henchman that can be brought back, time and time again for more services.]]

* ArcFatigue: [[spoiler: Lala's resurrection. It [[TrappedByMountainLions does nothing for the main plot]] and both Tobias and Jefferson have no idea he's even back. It's not even explained ''how'' he's back. Tobias killed him in a police cell in 1x02, then he wakes up in a hotel room in 1x07 without any explanation seemingly no worse for wear. We eventually do find out in the season one finale: Tobias paid good money to have Lala "reanimated" to have a disposable henchman whom he can do anything with.]]

* TearJerker:
** [=LaWanda's=] death in 1x02 is heartwrenching. After establishing herself as a DistaffCounterpart to Jefferson with a missing daughter in her hotel, she promises to stay out of sight while staking out the Seahorse. But when she sees Lala, her love for her daughter overrides her common sense, she confronts him, and Lala shoots her dead. While her actions helped put her killer behind bars, that fact remains that she and her daughter will never reunite. She was even warned by Jefferson: “What if she comes home safe and her mother is dead?” In the end, that’s exactly how it goes.
** 2x05 [[spoiler:has the apparent death of Gambi. Neither Anissa or Jennefer take the news well and break down crying. Jefferson tries to remain calm and optimistic, seeing as Gambi is the man who has a plan for everything, but when it becomes more and more clear that Gambi is really gone, the grief and stress start getting to him. It finally hits Jefferson when he's sitting in Gambi's shop and sees an old locket he gave to Gambi and he breaks down crying.]] Damn.
** The death of over half the containment pod children. Lynn deals with it as good as one would expect as along with feeling responsible for their deaths many of the families take their anger out on her when she can’t tell them who are amongst the living and dead. It all ends with her getting drunk to the point she throws up.
** Then Jennifer’s disappearance comes along and it but breaks Lynn emotionally not being able to find her daughter.
** 2x11 [[spoiler: ''[[DownerBeginning starts with]]'' Reverend Holt being assassinated by Cutter. The heroes aren't even given time to grieve as they are busy trying to keep alive Khalil, who was mortally wounded by Tobias at the end of the previous episode. Despite their best efforts, Khalil ultimately succumbs to his injury, but not before Jennifer gives him a simulation of a prom dance together. ''[[WhamEpisode Damn]]''...]]

** Jefferson getting mad at Lynn for trying to find a cure for Jennifer’s meta gene. Unlike Anissa, Jennifer had already made it clear that she doesn’t want to be a hero and wants a normal life. It’s a little hard to understand Jefferson’s side when he kinda sounds like a guy complaining that his daughter won’t be like him anymore. While his attitude might make more sense if metas were a common [[FantasticRacism and persecuted]] part of society in their world ala the X-Men, here it seems that the ''only'' people with powers are the Pierce family and those the ASA have experimented on, so his attitude doesn't really fit the setting of the show.

* MoralEventHorizon: Tobias Whale has several possible moments throughout both seasons, the first notable one being him murdering Jefferson's dad by literally shoving his newspaper articles down his throat until he chokes. But him [[spoiler: brutally ripping Khalil's spinal implant out of his back and leaving him to a slow and agonizing death]] is by far his worst moment and seals the deal of him being an utter psychopath.