YMMV / Black Lightning (2018)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Khalil really driven to madness by his injury or was he a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing? In-universe, even Jefferson isn't sure.
• Anvilicious:
  • The show has a general message of "police brutality is bad", which is delivered with all the subtlety of a baton to the temple. Same goes for the "racism is bad" message the show practically screams at its audience. Depending on who you ask, either people think it makes the show feel bloated with audience moral teachings that never stops hammering home at the anvils mentioned above, or it's one of the highlights of the show, and people should take notice of systemic racism, something that needs addressing in cultures around the world. What we're saying here, is that the show isn't subtle about its content.
  • The show makes no bones about the fact that many of the police are racist and in some cases actively on Tobias Whale's payroll. In addition to mirroring real life problems that African-Americans deal with, it helps to further establish the need for Black Lightning, as even many of the police that are not brazenly corrupt don't show overmuch interest in distinguishing the 100 from the rest of the city's black population.
  • Episode 11 spends an awfully long time for a scripted show on Jefferson's processing after being arrested, including the strip and cavity search, despite nothing plotwise happening. What it does do is give the viewer an appreciation of how completely humiliating the process is, and how being innocent doesn't change that.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Lala's resurrection. It 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 bring back, time and time again for more services.
  • 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, 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. 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 by both Black Lightning & Lightning, and then being tossed into a blacksite meta prison that is designed for him and other dangerous metas to be jailed.
• Awesome Music: The full version of the show's theme by Godholly. It captures how much of a Hope Bringer Black Lightning is to his community.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After all the horrible things he had done, including tearing out Khalil's spinal implant, seeing Tobias get curb stomped by Jefferson and Jen in the season 2 finale is very satisfying.
  • As ruthless as it was, Khalil shooting Agent Odell in the back, paralyzing him is much deserved revenge for Odell's crimes, including using Khalil to kill his own mother.
  • Tobias being killed off for real in the series finale following all his plans being foiled is very cathartic.
• Complete Monster: This series is not subtle about its villains, especially these two vile racists:
  • Season 1: Martin Proctor is the racist in charge of the Freeland operations of the sinister A.S.A. Repackaging a dangerous vaccine as a drug to circulate within his city to create an army of superpowered pawns, Proctor's plans lead to an epidemic of death while he takes the survivors in for experimentation. Forcing his rival Gambi into surrendering to him by holding a crowd at gunpoint, Proctor expresses sadistic disappointment at Gambi's surrender forcing him to spare their lives. Seeking to ruin hero Jefferson Pierce's reputation, Proctor, when his plans finally fall apart, aims to take the surviving teens from his experiments with him to continue his abominable operations.
  • Seasons 2 & 4: The Looker is a metahuman with the power to control minds who enslaves the white population of South Freeland as her "Sange". When called out for her hypocrisy of claiming to have saved the town from a drug epidemic by her mind control being far worse, she casually murders him for questioning her. Viciously prejudiced, the Looker has her slaves hunt down and lynch the town's black population and stops at nothing to hunt down the children of the Sange to ensnare them in her racist, subservient cult.
• Fan Nickname: The Arrowverse connection happened too late and too abruptly for the series' pre-Crisis universe to receive a canon designation, but unlike the other universes that went poof during the search for the Paragons, it wasn't some random one-shot universe but the setting of an ongoing series. This led the Arrowverse Wiki to designate it "Earth-BL" so they could give it an actual page. This was replaced with "Earth-TUD5" after the wiki set up a "Temporary Universe Designation" system.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Marvel's Black Panther movie, which came out only a few weeks after the show premiered. It helps the two properties stand out in what are mostly white-led franchises. Both Jefferson and T'Challa have similar views on how to help the less fortunate and even have similar arcs — both were reluctant to use their powers outside of helping their immediate circle before realizing how they can no longer stand by.
• Growing the Beard: After Jefferson and Anissa find out about one another's abilities and start working together, the show's fight scenes massively improve, and the characters stop butting heads and start communicating more.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • A flashback in season 1 had Lynn compare Jefferson's need to be a superhero to drug addiction. Episode 4 of season 3 reveals Lynn has been manipulated by Odell into becoming addicted to Green Light so her focus on curing the meta virus can be increased.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Prior to this show, one of Cress Williams' best known roles was in Friday Night Lights, where he played the father of Michael B. Jordan's character. The same year that Black Lightning started airing also saw Jordan play Erik Killmonger in the Black Panther movie, meaning the father went on to be a superhero while the son became a supervillain. Williams even joked about the coincidence during an interview with Steve Harvey.
  • James Remar played Raiden the God of Thunder in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. In this show, he's the sidekick/father figure to a superhero with lightning powers. Becomes even funnier since Black Lightning appears in Injustice 2 as an alternate skin for Raiden.
• LGBT Fanbase: The show has garnered attention in the LGBT community due to the primary romantic subplot being lesbian, with Jefferson's daughter Anissa and Grace Choi, who is bisexual, averting TV's history of No Bisexuals.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Anissa's sharp, echoing inhale to activate her powers.
• Narm:
  • 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 "Lawanda: The Book Of Burial", which sounds like it could have been said by The Grinch.
  • For some, the flowery and religious document-esque episode titles.
  • The many times the show depicts black culture, and using bowdlerised forms of racial slurs when in conversation, which can be difficult to take seriously, since they can't use any slurs that are worse than 'negro' for most of the runtime (this being CW show and all). However, they make up for this by having characters casually express highly racist opinions with very little subtlety, which can get... pretty silly at times. In the season 1 finale, Martin Proctor's racism is so over the top that he becomes a caricature, to the point he utters the phrase “Make America great again” in a sentence shortly before his death.
  • It's quite hard to take the Sange seriously whenever their name is spoken, as it's pronounced exactly like the name Sanjay. Their enemies the Perdi (meaning it just sounds like hillbillies saying they're pretty) aren't much better.
  • Grace suddenly having a nervous breakdown and screaming as if somebody stubbed her toe during an argument between Jefferson and Anissa.
  • One of Odell’s soldiers literally calling resistance fighters “rebel scum,” like they think they’re the Galactic Empire.
  • The Jen of Earth-2, meant to be a cautionary tale of who she’ll 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.
  • The Shadow Board are supposed to be terrifying, but as episode 12 of season 4 shows, they look utterly ridiculous.
• Narm Charm: Fowdy's stiletto heels have actual stiletto knives in them.
• Older Than They Think: The local gang being called The 100 often results in quite a bit of Narm, thanks to lines that sound like people just really hate another CW show; however, it's justified because the gang is actually called that in the comics.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Camp Gay clerk who helps Anissa create her superhero outfit.
• Questionable Casting: Some fans of Grace Choi have taken issue with the fact that her actress is much less muscular than her comic counterpart, pointing out that women, and especially Asian women, usually aren't allowed to have that body type in media.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • After a whole season of Lowry’s supposed amazing track record being an Informed Ability, as we never get to see him as anything but an apathetic bully who doesn't really care for the kids unless they follow his sometimes arbitrary rules, Season 3 has him actually stand up for one of his students against the fully armed soldiers abducting him, taking a rifle butt to the jaw for his trouble.
  • Khalil was heavily disliked in Season 1 for picking up the Idiot Ball and falling for Tobias' Obviously Evil flowery speeches, not realizing the negatives until it was too late. However, over the next few seasons, Khalil got a lot of character development and fan response warmed for him, so much so that the creators wanted to make a spinoff starring him, with a Poorly Disguised Pilot in Season 4. When the series was not picked up, a number of fans were quite angry at The CW.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: In season 2 the mostly white school board forces Jefferson to resign as principal, due to his presumed absence when Tobias attacked the school (he was there, but as Black Lightning). We're clearly supposed to side with Jefferson, particularly when he acts like it's some racist gambit on their part when his replacement is white, but what were they supposed to do? The head of the school is nowhere to be found when a notorious gang leader shows up with his Dragons and starts assaulting and threatening students. Doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture.
  • 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. And Jefferson's shortcomings can paint a bad picture of irresponsibility; it's also a case of he can't be everywhere at once while the replacement they got for him is an outright Jerkass.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Lynn's reason for making Jefferson give up Black Lightning — she doesn't want their daughters to see him a bloody mess — seems solid. However, in the years since she made him quit, the 100 have made Freeland a hellhole of criminals and corrupt cops. Mitigated during the pilot; when it hits her how bad things are (when their daughters are kidnapped) and she realizes he's going to suit up again, she gives him her blessing and support, and quietly accepts it when he decides to renew his quest against the 100.
  • Jefferson and Lynn lecturing Jennifer about fighting after she breaks a bully's wrist, completely ignoring that she was being physically attacked two on one. While she might have taken it a bit far by breaking one of their wrists, she didn't really have a choice but to defend herself, which makes their lecture seem like a recipe for Pacifism Backfire. Then the Season 1 finale features a teenage Jefferson posing the same question of what he was supposed to do in a similar situation to his father, to which his father doesn't even try to answer, yet the scene still acts like he's spouting some brilliant comeback.
  • 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 and persecuted part of society in their world a la 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. At least until the later seasons reveal that Freeland's metahuman population is not only more vast than initially believed but have a long history of being targeted and inhumanly experimented on by both the ASA and the Markovians in an attempt to weaponize them for their ongoing Secret War.
  • Anissa's growing infatuation with becoming an Anti-Hero and Resistance Fighter during the ASA's Occupation to the point of explicitly disregarding her father's numerous warnings and concerns despite being the more experienced vigilante. While it's framed as a big Calling the Old Man Out moment over Jefferson's inaction as Black Lightning while Freeland's metahumans are being targeted as well as his Control Freak behavior when it comes to his family and crimefighting, Jeff is right to be worried as the ASA is a highly militarized threat that is way bigger than any street level gangs they've dealt with in the past. This gets particularly egregious when Jeff finally does decide to suit up to assist Anissa in some of her greatest times of need, only for her to get mad at Jeff for seemingly undercutting her authority as a Rebel Leader, making her come off as more of a Glory Seeker rather than a genuine supporter of the cause.
• Watched It for the Representation: The show is a huge draw among audiences, especially African-Americans, for starring a black superhero in a landscape where the majority of superhero shows are led by white protagonists. It also has an LGBT Fanbase courtesy of the title character's lesbian daughter and her relationship with a Korean-American woman named Grace Choi.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • Black Lightning's modern suit has been derided by many, in large part because of the overly-armored and busy appearance. Ironically, the show does include a comics-accurate suit as what Jefferson wore during his original tenure as Black Lightning, but it's passed over when he returns to action, with Gambi claiming the new suit is better^note Somewhat addressed during the show, with the flashbacks showing how Jefferson was heavily injured in the past due to his activities, whereas the new suit offers greater protection, including handling bullets.
    • Interestingly, the brightly glowing lightning designs make it one of the brightest superhero costumes in the CW’s line-up of DC Heroes (Supergirl & the first three seasons of The Flash (2014) keep their title characters’ reds and blues but they’re very muted.)
  • The painfully fake dreads Khalil has as Painkiller only make it obvious that it's a wig.

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