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I imagine they just want to avoid the baggage and they know that if a year from now they want to link them it will be no harder than Supergirl was. I'm kind of sad they're not because I'm a mark for the teamups and big world stuff, but I also guess I'm glad it can just do what it wants and not have to worry about the bigger picture and not being linked now doesn't mean it will never be.
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Jan 5, 2018 21:08
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Eh, I don't think it would be really hard to handwave that there was a superhero in some other city on the other side of the country decades ago and most people dismissed it as urban legend. Or he could be in Supergirl's universe which has a vague extensive history of super powers. But that's all decision making, baggage, and stuff that if you state now you're locked into. The Arrowverse has already established the multiverse of 52 (+1) so you might as well just do your own thing and you can become Earth 36 later on if the decision makers really want to.
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Jan 5, 2018 21:12
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It depends on what their world is establishing. If they're doing like Supergirl did and just kind of saying "yeah, heroes and villains are a thing and Black Lightning was one of them" then it wouldn't really mesh with Barry and Oliver's world but might with Kara's. If they're going with "Black Lightning was a guy who operated in the shadows" then you could easily work it into Barry and Oliver's world, with Oliver maybe having heard rumors and Barry having followed some story when he was a teen. But if you have no current intention to bring Barry, Oliver, or Kara into the show then you have no real reason to make any of those decisions up front. All it does is handcuff your creativity and you get nothing in return expect continuity questions like that you have to dance around.
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Jan 5, 2018 21:23
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Unless it tanks I really do assume it will just take the Supergirl path to the Arrowverse. Developed elsewhere -> Written to be separate -> Ends up on CW with the rest -> CROSSOVER SYNERGY NERD TEAMUP FUN! Someone will say "No, the show runners have said clearly that they don't intend to do that" and then I'll just remember that we had the same conversation about Supergirl so we just gotta wait and see.
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Jan 6, 2018 03:52
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Just watched the episodes, and really enjoyed them. I kinda get why its separate from the Arrowverse since its got a different tone and the whole "are their other super powered people?" seems like a "yes" but kind of murky so its easier to just be your own thing. The costume is kind of goofy looking but I'll give it time. Besides it obviously being body armor I got the impression from the DWB pullover scene that he has to pull the electricity from other stuff and the suit has its own power source to keep him "charged." So it seems to at least have a clear purpose why it is the way it is. Plus he seems REALLY strong. Like stronger than even a beast like him should be. I guess that could be a result of the powers and something like him pushing off with a charge but I wonder if its part of the suit too. I'm in. I mean, I was probably always in but now I'm genuinely IN in.
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Jan 25, 2018 07:35
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Avalerion posted:One thing I don't get, why does he keep getting hosed up so bad when that suit appears to be bullet proof? "Bulletproof" isn't actually bulletproof. Bullets can still go through a kevlar vest and even if they don't they're still projectiles hitting you at high speeds which cause damage. Its like putting on a poncho in the rain. It will help you get less wet, but if its pouring you're still probably gonna get wet. That's a terrible metaphor and don't kill me for it, people who care a lot about guns and vests.
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Jan 25, 2018 23:37
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I'm a white guy so take it with the appropriate grain of salt, but I think the difference between "blacksploitation" and "black show" is the "exploitation" part. Those 70s things stand out that way because they were all exaggerated stereotypes and regularly offensive ideas. Luke Cage and Black Panther were both "blacksploitation" characters when invented, so there's going to be some characters or themes that carry over, but like both seem to have been reformed in modern times to be role models and much more balanced representations. I mean, I haven't noticed a lot that's exploitative about Black Lightning so far. The villain is an interesting question as an albino African American who hangs out with white underlings and seems racist towards his black ones. I'm not sure that's "exploitative" though. Otherwise Jefferson Pierce is an educator and olympic gold medalist with two seemingly well adjusted kids (the older one excelling), his best friend is a top cop, and his father figure is a white tailor. None of that screams "racist stereotype" to me. And they're tackling serious racial and community problems right out the gate. But white dude, so maybe I'm missing something.
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Jan 26, 2018 20:57
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It seems like a question of degrees. Like, "blackploitation" is going to use a lot of things that are true to black communities or culture, it just plays it up to a cartoon level or comes at it from an outsider's perspective. I would think a lot of the difference comes down to if the people behind the scenes are making what they know or making what they THINK black people are like. So like you can turn on Luke Cage or Black Lightning and say "lol, listen to all the hip hop and soul music for the black characters." But like... hip hop and soul isn't a stereotype in and of itself and lots of people both white and black love it. If nothing else there's no pimps in fur coats running around either show yet.
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Jan 26, 2018 22:37
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I really likes the whole argument between Jefferson, the Rev, and the cop. Three community leaders who all seems to sincerely want the same thing and all have legitimate points about the methods to get there. Like, I'm really intrigued by the cop because I can't quite figure him out. In another show he'd be crooked or at least blindly obsessed with catching the vigilante. But he actually seems on the up and up. I'm curious to see if that holds up and when/if Jefferson lets him in on his secret. Also very curious to see when his kids find out. It all seems very set up for Black Lightning to cross paths with Anissa in the streets and for Jennifer to find out when she finds her dad convulsing in pain on the floor with electric bursts. And Tobias is an interesting villain and now I'm not even sure if he's the top of his food chain. Generally there's just a lot of stuff I'm interested in going on. I'm hooked. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Feb 1, 2018 |
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Feb 1, 2018 23:38
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Adder Moray posted:So I am fairly positive Eve isn't Tobias' superior. More likely something of a more senior equal in whatever enterprise their group is in. You don't bring a peace offering to your boss as apology for your (underlings') gently caress up. That's already your boss' money. But she's definitely got more clout than he does. He was cautious, but not fearful. Yeah, I didn't get the sense that Eve had direct power over Tobias but he was clearly somewhat respectful and cautious with her. Maybe they're just rival crime leaders working with a shaky peace, and she's just got more man power or something. But it just made me curious to see more and like there might be a bigger story on that side of the show.
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Feb 3, 2018 21:58
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Yeah, something like that. I'm not really speculative about it because it feels like they've got a world worked out and I'm just curious to see it unfold.
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Feb 3, 2018 22:13
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I'm getting a mutual respect, different approaches with the same goal, love interest in the Vice Principal. The fact that her presence in this episode played against Jefferson's ex wife pulling away and disapproving of Jefferson not only with the phone calls but the dinner conversation sold it more to me. All the while the VP went from someone Jefferson thought he was at odds with but who gave him a different perspective but support for his decision. Gambi I'm not sure but my first thought was that he recognized Nyssa or at least recognized the powers. Maybe he knows the kids have powers somehow. Or maybe there was another Thunder somewhere along the line? Its worth considering that Gambi didn't seem to retire when Jefferson did and he might have worked with other people in the nine years between Black LIghtning. I don't know. I definitely think Gambi is hiding stuff but I'm not sold its malicious. And yeah, what the gently caress voodoo poo poo from Jill Scott! BrianWilly posted:Anissa said in the second episode that she couldn't look too clearly at BL's face because it was too...powerful, or something. He's like Zeus.
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Feb 11, 2018 06:40
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He's unquestionably hiding stuff from Jefferson and feels guilty about it. I think people were speculating that he told Jefferson Tobias was dead, but that seems like the kind of thing Jefferson would have figured out on his own was lie in the last 9 years with the way he's shown to be plugged in with the streets. We're only a few episodes in so its probably likely that whatever Gambi's hiding hasn't even really been revealed to us at all.
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Feb 13, 2018 21:47
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My memory is that the scene is shot in a way where he's watching the monitor and we're behind him as she walks just out of our view obscured by his body. Then he reacts and turns it off. So theoretically we don't actually see what he reacts to. She could have turned to the camera or revealed herself or maybe not. It seems to have been left intentionally obscured to keep Gambi's motivations mysterious.
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Feb 14, 2018 00:06
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Yeah, she's done a really good job of becoming a character despite not really doing or saying anything so far. If she ever busts out in a fight or something its going to be fun.
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Feb 27, 2018 21:25
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I'm loving this show. It really goes for it. The Charlottesville stuff done with no apology or cover. Nyssa going to her mother so soon and finding out about dad. A Black Lightning vs Thunder fight. I got that super sad feeling when the episode ended and I just wanted to binge the next one.
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Mar 2, 2018 05:25
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I guess if you see the show as centered around the conspiracy/secrets with Gambi, Jefferson's father, Lady Eve, and Tobias than the show can be considered "slow." But that's clearly not the driving narrative of the show. The show is about Jefferson and his family's social consciousness and wrestling their sense of devotion to each other with their need to act for the greater good. The origin conspiracy is a side thing for now.
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Mar 2, 2018 23:16
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I ain't mad that the cool rear end comic show with a social conscience had an episode where they upped the comic crazy.ShakeZula posted:If he knows he's BL then there's no way he would default to assuming that his best friend just decided to murder three innocent (as far as they know) people out of nowhere. Yeah, it was just a tease for us and Jefferson to say "Errr? Does he know?" If he knows he's being really weird about it and now that he thinks Black Lightning assassinated some people and went out of his way to express his anger at BL it would make no sense for him to coverup for Jefferson if he knew. Or not just confront him. I would assume Lady Eve is a known criminal and if not all the guns and poo poo they find at her place would be a tip off that they weren't just civilians, but like, going all Punisher on her is still crossing a line.
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Mar 9, 2018 20:07
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Ah, I was dozing off and I guess I missed that. My bad. And i guess Tobias' assassins could have cleaned up before calling the cops.
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Mar 9, 2018 20:32
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It was definitely odd that they seemed to kill off 3 of its villains in one episode. But like I'm not prepared to call Toledo a truly big loss and Tobias' sister was kind of just a plot device to motivate Tobias so far. If you had told me she was a figment of his imagination I wouldn't have been shocked. But I'm definitely sad to see Lady Eve die so soon. Assuming she's dead. Which I'm not sure she is. But I'm sad thinking we've lost Jill Scott.
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Mar 11, 2018 23:18
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At some point (probably around next year's mass crossover) Black Lightning is totally going to join the Arrowverse and go full comic book and some people are gonna be real mad. Other people will just be shipping Sara Lance and Nyssa. edit: Anissa... obviously. Duh. Idiot screwing up his own joke. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Mar 12, 2018 |
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Mar 12, 2018 00:53
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I must have made the same auto correction in my head. Brain fart.
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Mar 12, 2018 01:09
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Please tell me there's a bunch of "Time Lesbian, not Time Bi-Sexual" truthers who insist Sara never hooking up with Constantine.
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Mar 12, 2018 01:28
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I more or less buy his loose story to Jefferson since it's obvious he was protecting him (at least his identity) from Lady Eve and the rest. But like that's kind of secondary to the part where he was complicit in decades of secret experimentation on poor people as well as the perpetuation if the drug trade and organized crime. Gambis gonna have to work to walk that back with me. That's pretty drat bad and im going to feel a little uncomfortable if he's just welcomed back into the fold later because he's needed or forgiveness.
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Mar 17, 2018 05:52
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Aleph Null posted:He's clearly be lying to both sides for decades. We honestly don't know what he has or has not done at this point. Yeah, at the bare minimum he's been playing along and working with the ASAs actions which include Lady Eve's involvement with crime, drugs, Tobias and the 100. We saw Gambi talking with Tobias, Eve, and the boss. We saw Gambi go on a killing mission. I buy Gambi's broader argument that when the full weight of things were realized I tried to blow the whistle and when that got Jefferson's dad killed he worked to protect him ad his family. But like he still seemed to do a lot of skeezy poo poo in the process.
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Mar 17, 2018 19:18
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Green Lightening is the name of the designer drug going around that gave that one kid at Jefferson's school super strength and let Tobias' sparring partner go against him. And I believe the ASA boss specifically named it as their experiment in his talk with Gambi and there was a vial of it in Jefferson's dad's stuff. So it's almost certainly the ASAs experiment.
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Mar 18, 2018 20:24
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Aww, crap. My bad. Guess I was just filling in the blank everytime someone said the name.
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Mar 18, 2018 20:31
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I assume super powers were an unintended side effect 30 years ago (or however long it's been for Jefferson) and they've been trying to replicate it since. Their focus shifted when the realized they had failed to make an effective "docile citizens" drug and had stumbled on "super powered soldiers".
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Mar 18, 2018 21:24
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I mean, of course we all know that the real answer is that it was just a cutesy reference to the Arrowverse and they probably had no idea where they wanted this show to fit in when they filmed it. I think if we get a second season that's when we'll get some definition about where this show is in the Multiverse but trying to figure out rules or anything now is probably tilting at windmills. But yeah, its been established there are more heroes beyond what we've seen on both Earths so who knows? Earth 1 could know about Supergirl from that time she saved the President of the United States and Earth 38 could have its own Vixen. Or maybe the Legends are gonna do a mission there or something. There's all kinds of possible explanations.
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Mar 28, 2018 03:12
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MiddleOne posted:Isn't it more likely he's one of the originals like Gambi? I mean the editing made it seem like his awakening had everything do with Lady Eve's death but then they've just seemingly dropped it for the last episodes so who knows. Its possible. I think we're all just expecting some kind of payoff for that weird voodoo zombie poo poo Lady Eve seemed to be doing and since LaLa resurrected at the same time she died we're assuming a connection. But its possible (a) we all misread it or (b) its coming but unrelated to LaLa.
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Mar 28, 2018 21:54
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Dude's got super strength. He doesn't need vanity muscles.
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Apr 12, 2018 23:57
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I was assuming that the darts he was throwing were filled with Green Light (them being green and all, and the ASA's scheme being to test the drug on kids). They were just going with a mass exposure thing since they needed something to draw out Black Lightning. So theoretically the Green Light neutralized BL's powers. Probably an unexpected and unintended result. Khalil just used what he had available. I don't know, that's how I interpreted it. There's a lot of swirling mystery around where Tobias' powers come from (or what exactly they are) and now what the hell is up with Syonide's lizard skin thing. Neither seems to be tied to the ASA's experiments based on the way the boss was talking to Tobias. I'm not sure I expect that stuff to be revealed by season's end. Toss in LaLa and whatever Lady Eve was doing with that body I like that there's a separate thing happening with Tobias' side of things that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the ASA.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:50
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Since Jefferson also said he looked "mature" I think they were just trying to "age up" Khalil a little for the purposes of him going from Jennifer's high school boyfriend to Tobias' thug. I imagine he took magic comic book hormones or steroids or something. A small nitpick, but I sort of feel like they probably should have just thrown in a 6 month break or something in there. It could have been time for Khalil to be away and grow out his hair and "mature", Tobias to heal up, But its a nitpick. Its fine the way it is. edit: I'm horrible with names and keep calling Aneesa "Nyssa". STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Apr 13, 2018 |
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Apr 13, 2018 20:12
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Yeah, everything just feels like its happening a little faster than feels natural. Which is why I think they probably could have just thrown in a time break after the big reveals of Jefferson finding out about Aneesa, Gambi coming clean, Khalil joining up with Tobias, and Tobias getting hurt to just create some room. Would have given room for Aneesa to grow into the role along with all the other stuff. But again. Its a nitpick.
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Apr 13, 2018 20:34
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Rhyno posted:They only had 13 episodes. Would you rather this be paced like Flash or Arrow this season? Like I said, I think they could have probably just tossed in a 6 month break between a couple of episodes and said all that stuff happened during that time period. As it is I was kind of assuming that they were quietly inferring a longer time pass until someone in the Pierce family outright said "the last couple of months." That just feels fast for the events of the series. But again like I said, its nitpicking. I'm willing to look past some mild pacing issues in the name of getting the ball rolling.
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Apr 13, 2018 20:39
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I mean, I think there's been some pacing issues and this finale felt very compressed and like they threw a bunch of exposition in and glossed over some big stuff. But how do you do not see that the point of Jefferson losing his powers was to empower Jennifer as a hero? And that Jefferson's coma let us meet his father and had him face his own guilt about his dad's death and find some personal peace. I thought it was some of the best parts of the episode. Along with Tobias just fully embracing being a comic book villain and handing out codenames and knocking down pieces while cackling. I'm glad him and his team survived.
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Apr 20, 2018 21:43
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Yeah, I was a little worried she wouldn't deliver when she stopped lurking in the background and started talking and kicking rear end but I was delighted by the results. Also I love that Khalil's origin story basically plays out as... Khalil: I'm angry at everything! Tobias: Its Black Lightning's fault because... whatever, I can make you walk. Khalil: I'm in. So why's Black Lightning the bad guy? Tobias: gently caress it, we're the bad guys. But you walk now and have poison blood so what are you gonna do? Shut up and get in line or Syonide will shoot you. Khalil: Ok. That whole crew is just comic book villains in my absolute favorite way. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Apr 22, 2018 |
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Apr 22, 2018 06:44
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