Lights Out: "Combinations"

Once I figure out someone can thumb another guy in the eye while wearing boxing gloves, I'll offer up a review, after the jump....

Tonight's openings segment clearly laid out the theme of tonight's episode: appearances. Like the mock fight between Lights and El Diablo put on for the press, many of the characters in tonight's episode put on acts in order hide the tribulation of their lives – both from the public and from themselves. Take, for instance, Lights attempts to keep his exile from his house a secret from his daughters. Or how Lights tries to keep Mike the reporter from publishing the stories of the cage fight or the car crashed. Or Johnny's attempt to keep the car crash under wraps. Or Barry's secret plans to make sure that Lights and Death Row get in the ring together.

Somehow, miraculously, all of these secrets stay that way...for now. Lights Out, for the most part seems concerned with telling stories about people who are ultimately trying to do the right thing, even if they have to do some wrong things in order to get the right thing done. Lights and Johnny have played fast and loose with their money in the past, though they were doing it in order to make their family, itself a result of Lights leaving the ring (in itself another wrong act) in order to make Teresa happy. Teresa herself kicked Lights out of the house when he returned to the ring, in hopes that he would quit and ensure his health and safety. Barry...okay, Barry's not trying to do the right thing. But you get my point.

This is an interesting dynamic for the show to play with, and I think it helps to create drama on a real, human, emotional level. I think we can all relate to this attempt to be the best, and the disappointment of knowing we fucked up.

There was one other moment in tonight's episode that played into the theme of appearances, though it wasn't about keeping secrets. When Margaret sat down with Teresa, she makes the point of how deep down Lights is and had always been a fighter, that that's what attracted Teresa to him in the first place, and that his down shift to stay at home dad has stifled them both.

And that points to yet another of Light's Out's themes: when are our backs are to the wall, when we are faced with our biggest challenges, that's when our true selves come out. Lights has already found out how angry he is. Johnny has been humbled by his incompetence. And Teresa is being forced to admit that maybe she doesn't need that normal family dynamic in order to be happy.

All of this thematic talk has me thinking that I have been approaching Lights Out the wrong way, or that maybe as the show has changed, my analysis needs to change along with it. Now that we are deep into the story arc concerning Light's return to the ring, the episodes are becoming less and less as individual units, and more like continuing parts of the same narrative. Storylines rollover between episode with far more frequency now, and the quality of these episodes grows more dependent on how the season finale pans out.

Yet all of this forward momentum keeps these episodes more interesting than the series early outings. While nothing in tonight's episode would be particularly exciting within a vacuum, taken in context it becomes very intriguing to watch these pieces falling into place.

Yet I would be remiss if I didn't mention Teresa. She is still a problem for the show, an anchor around its metaphorical neck. Even thought every other character had been fleshed out, or at least shows hints of multiple layers, Teresa seems set on 'nag' mode.

But hey, everything else? It's chugging along just fine.

What did everybody else think?


Additional Thoughts:

I don't know if it was supposed to be funny, but I laughed at Johnny brandishing the chair.

“Nobody's getting a divorce...or a boob job.”