Lights Out: "Sucker Punch"

Once I get over the fact that this is the second to last episode we will ever see, I’ll offer up a review of tonight’s episode, after the jump….

“Go talk to the janitor. He’s bigger part of this story than she ever was.” – Johnny

Much like last week’s episode’s decision to bring back all sorts of serialized plot points without much warning, tonight’s episode decided to indulge in a barely mentioned bit of the show’s “mythology” (for lack of a better word) by bringing in the alcoholic, scheming, emotionally disruptive matriarch of the Leary clan. Yet unlike last week, it didn’t work.

I think the main problem, which is perhaps unintentionally tipped off by the quote above, is that Light’s mother doesn’t really work as anything other than a manufactured plot point. She has been mentioned once in the preceding eleven episodes – at least by my count – and that means we had practically  no  idea what she meant to this family before she showed up tonight. Sure, there is some realism in the idea that she was such a terrible mother/wife that no one would want to discuss her, that they would just shut out any thoughts of her in order to deny and move on. But just imagine how much more weight that introduction would have held if we knew something about her beforehand.

Nor does the character arc played out here add all that much to the mix. While I liked the idea of a formerly negligent mother trying to be good, but meeting a large amount of skepticism from her family, the show decided to go something far more route. While having her end up being still stuck in her devilish ways also could have been interesting, the development was wrecked by a) a majority of the characters telling us how bad she is every five minutes and b) the change in character was so sudden and without warning as to seem almost nonsensical. I don’t abject to the show donating the majority of an episode to some random plot, but I do abject to something that was so terribly thought out.  (To say nothing of the ill-timed nature of this plot; why introduces something so inconsequential so late in the game?)

Yet despite all of this, I can’t deny that I enjoyed the effect that the character had, as I found watching the differing reactions that she evoked from each member of the Leary clan to be quite fascinating, the most enjoyable of which was Pops. Even better, we finally got a better look at the family dynamic; we have seen in the past that these people are oddly codependent and fiercely exclusionary, and we finally have an idea why. After being left high and dry by their mother (and multiple times, at that) it’s much easier to understand why they are so paranoid about outsiders, and why they seem so guarded against risky alliances.

But perhaps the best moment of all of this was the confrontation between Lights and his mother’s boyfriend, Lester, in her hotel, where in a fit of rage, Lights break Lester’s arm, letting out all of his feelings of anger and betrayal, using his tough guy exterior to express how he felt deep down inside. It was one of many great moments for Holt McCallany, and another moment in what would have been the “Lights turns into an anti-hero” storyline had the show been renewed for another season.

“I’m not taking a dive. I’ve worked too hard to get here. You’ll have to kill me first.” – Lights

Luckily, all of the other, more serialized elements of tonight’s hour were far more engaging, and actually relevant to the ongoing narrative. Lights is currently fighting off accusations of planning a dive; Charlie, the anchor for the Box Network, keep digging into Light’s personal life in an attempt to find a juicier, more original story; and Johnny, in a brilliant bit of subterfuge/PR, manages to manufacture a story about Death Row having a heart attack, which he creates as a mask for the other fake story, that D-Row beats him wife.

But the best of all of these bits was the shootout on Margaret’s diner. Now, Margaret hasn’t got much to do in the show’s run, and it’s moments like these that make me sad that this is the case, considering how surprisingly affected I was by this development, and how well Elizabeth Marvel played her scenes tonight. Yet this plot point served an even more important purpose tonight, as it made sure that the standalone plot became briefly connected to the ongoing narrative, and for the only time tonight, I was actually interested in the mom story.

What really made all of these disparate elements work was that they all spun of this fear that the fight was being fixed behind Light’s back.  By keeping all of these plot point related, it gave what could have been a confusing set of plot points a thematic backbone, an organizational body that helped the audience to keep all of the developments straight.

Even better, it helped to give extra punch to the final reveal in tonight’s closing minutes. Although Brennan upping the line (is that the phrase? I don’t bet, so I don’t know these things) isn’t in and of itself all that surprising, the fact that he endangered Margaret’s life to do so seems like a particularly nasty action. (At least that’s how I think we are meant to interpret these events, cause I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Barry, and don’t know who else would gain from the drive-by.) And Johnny’s low blows in the face of all of these accusations of fixing the game? Yeah, blood and resentment are going to be flying in the ring next week.

What did everybody else think?

Additional Thoughts:

Johnny doesn’t even have time to list all of the things he’s done.

“If it’s a girl, you better throw it back.”

You wanna know what’s truly entertaining? A man drinking his own urine.

“Not a musician, a drummer. It was a lateral move.”

“If he’s having health problem, my heart goes out to him.”

I doubt this was the show’s intention, but every time I saw that “Box Network” logo, I couldn’t help but think of that joke from the Futurama movie, Bender’s Big Score.