I had a lot of hope for “Grab The Strap”, but once again Black Lightning seemed to get in its own way with far too many plotlines and cheesy dialogue in spots.
Starting off with Jefferson “confessing” to Gambi was a good way to go, it helped set a very personal tone to the episode. And when you combine that with the final scene between him and Lynn it was very powerful stuff, but the stuff in between was the bad bits.
On one hand, we got the introduction to Gravedigger, played by the amazing Wayne Brady. His introduction did not disappoint, and he delivered a very unique presence to the show. And his fight with Kalil? Dang, that was awesome. But I’m not sure how long he’s going to be around, and they made it seem like he was dead at the end so hopefully I’m reading that wrong.
Speaking of fights the use of SFX and the fight choreography was great about 99% of the time (Geo-Force’s powers during the Jace scene felt off in many ways), including the fight between Gravedigger/Kalil, Black Lightning taking down everyone, the team-up of Thunder and Erica, it was all the best fighting of the season in my opinion.
But when they went into the more personal story arcs of all the characters it was just too much. Lynn/Jace’s storyline was fine, and scary. But Jennifer still hating on Anissa, Anissa suddenly not trusting Painkiller, Painkiller’s MULTIPLE scenes about him running away…and then obviously coming back. EVERYTHING with TC, it was just all too much. Plus, with the TC “oh you don’t have to worry about the chips, I disabled them” we lost what could’ve been a really compelling element to the episode.
Plus, what exactly happened to Tobias? Because as far as I could tell he wasn’t on that plane, and the mission was to get him AND Lynn, so…does Markovia still have him? And while Geo-Force’s hate of Dr. Jace was well founded, his “you can die!” scene was just painful to watch (and a horrible use of powers to kill her. Was he just going to shake her to death?)
This was a case where too many characters led to too much talking and not enough action. When the action was great, it was GREAT, but it just wasn’t enough.
In the end, “Get The Strap” was fine, but too many elements led to bogged down dialogue scenes and weird moments.
Todd Black
Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!
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