In Review: Black Lightning (S4 – Ep4) The Book of Reconstruction: Chapter Four – A Light In The Darkness

Synopsis: In ‘A Light In The Darkness’. Jefferson pays Tobias a visit and warns him to stay away from his family. Gambi and TC come up with a way of sabotaging the DEGs.

The Story

Reeling from seeing his wife talking to Tobias Whale. Jefferson continues to fight at La La’s illegal Fight club. Things go wrong when TC and Jennifer find an online stream of Jefferson fighting and TC hacks it so as to reveal the identities of the fighters.

Having been discovered. Jefferson gets into another fight with his wife Lynn. Jefferson expresses his disappointment at the fact that he found her talking to Whale and things escalate from there. A light in the darkness comes along when Jefferson is drinking at a bar. Some of the bar regulars are debating whether or not Black Lightning will come back or not. Jefferson pipes up with a negative rant about his alter ego, which gets an unexpected response from one of the bar patrons. Detective Shakur tells the bar about how Black Lightning save his life. But also saved the whole of Freeland during the war. Hearing how much of a difference he made spurs Jefferson on to start putting his life back together.

Things are about to get bad…

Elsewhere, Tobias Whale is working with the Mayor of Freeland and the new Police Commissioner to host an event designed to reach out to the community. Unbeknownst to them. La La and his gang plan to crash the event.

Meanwhile, Gambi and TC have figured out a way to sabotage the new DEGs so that they cannot harm Black Lightning, Thunder, or Lightning. TC continues to be concerned about Lightning’s repeated visits to the Ionosphere. And Gambi begins to work with Lauren Caruso on a new piece of technology for a mystery benefactor.

The Acting

Cress Williams does a fair bit of the heavy lifting again as we see a conclusion of sorts to Jefferson’s meltdown. But for me. The highlight of this episode is the speech that Detective Shakur makes at the bar. Wallace Smith does a brilliant job of delivering the speech, which paints a wonderful picture of the good that Black Lightning has done for Freeland.

Overall

‘A Light In The Darkness’ feels very much like the turn of the wheel with regards to the story arc. For the last four week’s we have been getting very much the story of Jefferson’s guilt and trauma, which has been bloody difficult to watch at times.

This episode is very much the turning point where we see Jefferson and his family begin to reclaim their lives. Although the episode’s ending will likely bring them a bit more grief to deal with before they can begin their fightback against Tobias Whale.

A possible concern for future episodes is just how close Gambi is getting with Lauren Caruso. We’ve already seen one episode where he has failed to be there for Lightning when she went out to fight crime. And it very much looks like this could be a problem as the story moves forward given that he is getting a lot closer to her.

Overall. Not a bad episode and a definite improvement on the previous week’s now that we are moving out of the gloom factor. Or are we?