DC TV Recap Round-Up, Week 11: Prison Blues!

Welcome back! Let’s get right into recaps for this week’s episodes of The Flash, Supergirl, and Black Lightning…

“Lawanda: The Book of Hope”

Jefferson seems content to put away Black Lightning after putting on the supersuit one more time to save his daughters, but fate has other plans. He finds out the motel The 100 was using for prostitution is still running after Black Lightning’s visit, and one of his prized former pupils, Lawanda, needs help breaking her kidnapped daughter out of there. He’d rather try to handle this as himself, but that doesn’t work out so well, especially with a humiliated and unstable LaLa running things over there. And then LaLa has to go and kill Lawanda, which forces Jefferson to confront whether he could have done more for his city as Black Lightning than as a high school principal.

Whatever the case, Black Lightning shows up to take down LaLa, only to narrowly evade the cops as they arrest LaLa. That incarceration is brief, as Tobias simply walks into the police lockup and superchokes LaLa to death! Jeff’s girls are still recovering from their kidnapping experience, with Jennifer finding a seemingly nice boyfriend and fighting depression, and Anissa realizing she might be like dear ol’ dad when she uses super strength to stop a robbery. While Black Lightning’s back, his chance to reconnect with his ex-wife Lynn seem to be disappearing with it as well.

Oh NOW everyone can see a giant walking neon sign! This was such a problem last episode!

–Credit for having one of the more honest and sweet lesbian cuddling scenes on any DC TV show with Anissa and her girlfriend. Also good to see Anissa is finally starting to become fascinated in a good way by her burgeoning super power, even though she’s not sure what it means yet.

–Oh yeah, LaLa’s cousin, who kidnapped Jefferson’s daughter’s last episode? He escapes police custody (just one more thing the Freeland PD totally sucks at) only to get killed by LaLa.

–Odd symmetry that Tobias thinks Black Lightning is dead and that a copycat has shown up, while Jefferson thinks Tobias is dead. What happened that made them both think this about each other?

–Once again, the soundtrack for this is great stuff. It’s hard to go wrong with Al Green.

–“Don’t mistake my patience for weakness, boy.”

–A fun note with the hotel staff being really helpful when Black Lightning drops by. “A brother needs all the exercise he can get.”

“Fort Rozz”

To find answers on Reign, our gang seek out a potential source of information in an imprisoned Kryptonian priestess on Fort Rozz (remember that from season one?), but there’s a catch: the blue sun it orbits will deprive Kara of her powers and will kill any man in its vicinity. So Kara and Imra have to team up with some familiar non-trustworthy faces, Livewire and Psi, to head into space and break into Fort Rozz. Things don’t go so hot for our girl power team once they get there, and that’s before Reign gets wind of this operation and shows up. That priest is killed by Reign just after telling Kara there are other Worldkillers like Reign on Earth, and Livewire sacrifices herself to save Kara.

Back on Earth, the guys get to hang at the DEP and basically offer intergalactic tech support to our heroines. Alex gets to play babysitter to Ruby and she even gets to help deal with a schoolyard bully too. When Sam returns, though, she tells Alex she is terrified because she does not remember what she did for the last day or so (but of course, we know). And that mention of other Worldkillers seems to be true when a random woman ends up being hit by a car, and survives!

Man, Kara needs a better stable of villainesses to recruit for a deadly mission into space.

–In cameo time, Sarah Douglas, who played Ursa in Superman I & II, is the mad Kryptonian priestess who unfortunately doesn’t get rescued by Reign as she hopes as much as she gets heat vision through her chest. Pity.

–Maggie leaving her passport in Alex’s apartment and calling her for it MONTHS LATER was maybe a bad light on her. I mean, she left it, and is so lucky Alex didn’t burn that thing up.

–Psi actually proves to be useful in all of this by giving Reign that psychic whammy, which maybe reveals who she is to Kara. I think. I mean, Kara doesn’t tell anyone about this after she gets back, so who knows?

–I dig Wynn and Brainiac 5 as tech buddies!

–“You got a problem?” “99 of them, but you ain’t one.”

–“I’ve seen espresso machines with more processing power.”

“The Elongated Knight Rises”

With Barry in Iron Heights, Ralph has become the default hero of the city now (hey, Kid Flash, you gonna let that stand?). That attracts the attention of Axel, the son of the Trickster, who just got broken out of prison by his equally crazy mom, the Trickster’s old sidekick, Prank! Axel wants to prove himself to dear old dad, and thinks killing Ralph might be the best way to do it. Ralph has to also confront his own fears after a near-fatal encounter with Axel puts the zap on his head, but with Barry’s encouragement, Ralph manages to stop the mother/son crime duo and become the hero Central City deserves…the Elongated Man? Eh, sure, it’ll work for now.

Barry is also trying to stay on the straight and narrow in prison, and finds help in Big Sir, a fellow inmate who owes his life to the help of Barry’s dad. Barry returns the favor by helping Big Sir survive a prison fight, so at least he’s making new friends while he’s there. Meantime, while Cisco and Ralph are grabbing coffee, they run into that nervous girl we all saw at Barry and Iris’ wedding. She seems very helpful and all, but she is also writing in a diary in that scribbling we saw Barry use when he came out of the Speed Force! Hmmmm…

“Great! I no longer look like I’m wearing full body pajamas!”

–The streets DeMeo and Bilson is a reference to the last names of the original executive producers of the 90’s The Flash TV show.

–Another callback to the original Flash show is the actress who played Prank in the Trickster episodes there is here as Axel’s mommy.

–Big Sir is a random character in the DCU, but a fun pull to be an ally for Barry while he spends however many episodes he does in prison.

–“LEXI LAROCHE!”

–“What the hell is Kryptonite?”

–“This kid has a face for radio!”

NEXT TIME: Black Lightning returns to help Freeland during a time of mourning, Kara has to deal with more danger from Morgan Edge, and The Flash helps a fellow inmate prove their innocence by having the team deal with a metahuman that can shrink people.