McCall investigates a community activist’s “suicide”…

If I briefly described this week’s initial setup, it would have been easy to have mistaken it for a classic Blaxploitation plot. A murder in the heart of a Black community of a well-respected figure leads to dealing with someone very much fitting the description of ‘The Man’. That’s somewhat amusing as a former ‘Mr Big’ is McCall’s central ally this week.

Black Lives Matter. Black Trans Lives Matter. Messages which stand at the centrepiece of the episode at every turn and many a visual cue, including titles and images from Te-Nehisi Coates, Malcolm X, James Baldwin and other such luminaries for all to see. And that’s merely one scene. It doesn’t even matter whether Malcolm King is the victim’s real name or not, the framing hits us square as a sledgehammer and is just as deliberate.

Continuing the theme of subtlety not being a watchword of the episode, McCall’s interactions with Dante take a freshly uncomfortable turn. He’s not exactly reciprocating her somewhat brutal attempts at flirting; it’s very much written as one-way traffic, though I wonder if this is supposed to be a quirk of hers. It doesn’t come off well though, certainly not when taken alongside her digital stalking of him previously. His professional respect for her is at odds with his by-the-book methods, which is in turn at odds with his need to succeed at taking down the bad guys. The clash of methods is a part of that subplot which does work. However that becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile with the problematic side of the simmering romance. I almost hope it’s intentional, because it shows up as a dangerous flaw McCall possesses, and could go somewhere. The situation is percolating, but I can see it reaching a dangerous crescendo at the business end of the season.

If we were recently lighter on the espionage element, the CIA thread is firmly visible this time around – McCall’s pledge to use the CIA’s powers for good acts as a subversive contrast to some of the COINTELPRO exercises during the Civil Rights movement. The choice of name for the murder victim takes on a further meaning with this in the background. Bishop, our ‘Mr Big’ in question in Chris Noth, clearly has great fun pairing with McCall as they get into a number of old fashioned tradecraft tricks – and a couple of new ones, in order to save the day. I found it interesting to note that there were a few more apparent failures and complications with McCall’s and Bishop’s plans in the episode. Apparent, because it also cements how much they had each other’s backs in the past.

There’s a spot as well where one of McCall’s disguises sees her put on an indeterminate accent which ends up feeling like three. Oddly, that actually helps the scene in that it also reflects upon the marks’ failure to notice this. This in turn reflects upon the competence of their boss, who is not a particularly complex villain, but makes total sense here.

The conceit of the episode is ‘it’s up to you’, the community, to make important changes happen. It is a call to action to the audience as much as it is to the agency of the characters, and cleverly echoed with the interactions with Delilah this week. Aunt Vi particularly shines in her usual spot as a voice of conscience and a bridge between McCall’s personal past and present. The episode could have been a protest on how bad elements of a community can tear it down, but crucially ensured more positive coming together to truly resolve in a way Team Equalizer cannot by themselves.

Verdict: I really enjoyed what they were aiming for here and it mostly made sense that they kept it simple in terms of plot framing in favour of reinforcing their central message. They are walking a fine line with the McCall/Dante subplot though which distracted me enough from the rest to mark down a bit. Which is a pity, because the episode structure as a whole really worked for me.  7/10

Russell Smith