Over the past six years, the world of DC TV has established itself to be the place you go when you want to see shenanigans and dangerously-close-to-maudlin melodrama directed at legions of die-hard young adult fans. Even Arrow, arguably the most grim of the bunch, manages to keep up the pace with a level of tongue-in-cheek self awareness that prevents it from getting too rain-slicked and colorless.This is standard operating procedure for live action superhero media today, even outside of the `Arrowverse.` The stark binary between seriousness and super heroics is held up almost religiously in the world of shared universe genre TV. On one end of the spectrum, the CW DC shows revel in their superhero source material by leaning all the way into the absurdity and sci-fi camp. On the other end, the Marvel Netflix universe pulls the opposite direction, with bone cracking, blood spitting brutality, shows like Daredevil and The Punisher rarely acknowledging their comic book roots too directly.The middle ground between those two extremes has, historically, been a no man`s land filled with half-hearted one-shot episode attempts at reaching some sort of cringing, self conscious compromise between poles. After all, the logical part of anyone`s brain surely has to balk at the idea of a person with honest-to-god super powers, wearing an honest-to-god spandex costume, dealing with honest-to-god violence that isn`t cushioned by bloodless punches and biff-bang-pow theatricality--or vice versa, the world of genuine, real world violence being legitimately thwarted by someone running around in a domino mask or cape.And then along came Black Lightning.If you tuned into this week`s premier, chances are you were probably surprise by a few things. For one, the show breaks the DC TV mold by dropping us into the story essentially in media res. It`s not an origin story, it`s not a `learning to be a hero` arc, it`s set after Jefferson Pierce, the titular Black Lightning himself, has already ...
|