Lights Out: "The Shot"

A review of tonight's Lights Out coming up after the jump...


Tonight's episode was an obvious step up from the previous two outings. The action tonight may have centered on Omar, an up and comer whose attempt at the big time obviously speaks to Lights on a personnel level. But it was the emotionally charged scenes that spun out of this plot that really lent some gravitas to this episode. Let's run them down.

Learning How Lights and Theresa met – Okay, so this didn't emit from the Omar storyline, but I think this will be a key scene going forward with the series. Over the past two episodes, Theresa has been the stumbling block to Lights' return to the ring, and it sometimes hard to figure out how they made it this far. But the way Theresa told this story – and the middle daughters probing questions – has given nuance to the family dynamic, deepening the relationships between these women and Lights

Lights and Johnny – So Omar is doing blow, and Johnny knows. But the real question remains: how far will Johnny go to win? Coupled with his other scenes, we now have a deeper understanding of Johnny. He is no longer a man being pushed into questionable activities; he is now a full blown anti-hero.

Lights Yelling At His Girls – Did you think Lights' anger issues were gone, or had been dropped by the show? Think again. What started out as a simple father- daughter misunderstanding, quickly took a dark turn, as Lights took out all of the anger he has over Omar and his drug use on his daughter's closed door. While I doubt he would ever hit his children, we know how dangerous his anger can be, which was underscored with those quick flashbacks to his previous violent encounters, and it was still frightening to see him channel his anger towards his children. How much damage will Lights do before he goes back in the ring? The answer, it turns out, is that we don't know – and that's scary.

Lights and Omar – What drives Lights? We know he loves his children, and we know he wishes to be back in the ring, yet there has to be more to guy. That answer, it appears, is fear. Fear of losing everything, especially due to his own incompetence. As he laid down the truth to Omar in the darkened closet, it became obvious that he was doing for Omar something that had never been done for him, something that Lights realizes he himself was too late in learning.

All of this was capped off with Lights training Omar, and then the tense scene where Omar loses was far more moving than it had any right to be. But this means more for Lights than it did for Omar – what does his future bought hold for him? And will he be over confident like Omar? Or will some other character flaw bring him down just as hard, if not harder?

What did everybody else think?



Additional Thoughts:

- The opening scene was probably one of the saddest depictions of just how down and out Lights really is, and yet it was played as low key. Good job, show!

- Golf is just an excuse for fat guys to pretend they're athletes

- “Armenians get very testy when you refer to them as people of color.”