McCall needs help when she is asked to help retrieve a painting stolen during the Tulsa Massacre…

The Tulsa Massacre of 1921 has seen repeated mainstream prominence in popular media in the last 3-4 years. Watchmen gave visceral detail of the horror, Lovecraft Country took the discussion a step further by examining the emotional trauma outside a ‘war’ setting, and now The Equalizer, the only one of those shows dedicated entirely to present day, takes the opportunity to discuss the legacy of past suffering by minority groups and the subsequent profiteering from the violence of white oppression.

The client therefore is the granddaughter of a survivor of the 1921 massacre, the grandmother at the time a child in a wealthy family of ‘Black Wall Street’ who were attacked by a white family, the Nardonis, who are now prominent in the international shipping business as they profited directly from the blood of this particular African-American family, the Watkins. It sets up a heist plot for McCall as the grandmother’s dying wish is to see her mother’s face, on a valuable portrait Nardoni descendent Roger possesses and hides to this day.

As this level of high-security break-in falls beyond McCall’s natural skillset, she has to call in specialist backup. Enter Jada Pinkett-Smith in a much-publicised special guest appearance as art thief Jessie Cook, reuniting her with Queen Latifah after years of previous collaborations including Set It Off. It is clear Pinkett-Smith is enjoying herself immensely, with Cook quickly established as a highly skilled counterpart to McCall. She also happens to be something of a force of chaos, which makes her the sort of comic relief not been seen on the show previously. Their partnership, as might be expected, works very well, though it feels on occasion that Cook pushes a little too hard for laughs and their time together on screen noticeably alters McCall’s presence. There are some fun callbacks to Latifah and Pinkett-Smith’s screen highlights from the past though.

Roger Nardoni proves no better than his forefathers, remaining highly exploitative in corporate villainy on an international scale as a toxic waste dumper who actively harms the world whilst swindling others with his art deals. It is a pity that he is perhaps the show’s biggest disappointment, for we discover most of this by through exposition, which is in itself sound for the kind of investigative elements natural to the show, but does have the noticeable failing on this occasion of the show villain being as one-dimensional and uninspiring as he is theoretically heinous, which does not do enough justice to the story being presented. Even with the time on offer for the show, his presence may have served better from having been felt as opposed to mostly just described. Even when on screen, there is no stage at which any true threat feels carried, which lets down the rest of the setup.

The show smartly uses the B-plot to echo the theme of recompense from past exploitation as Delilah finds herself taking issue with her friend Vera referencing for the first time her Latina heritage in an attempt to advantage her scholarship application. There is well-handled nuance here in that Delilah feels as if she has a solid point with Vera having passed as white her entire life and only just bringing her ancestry into the conversation at a point which suits her, yet Aunt Vi, as is often the case, adds a voice of reason which notes that it is not appropriation so as much as an opportunity for Vera to embrace her roots. The resolution is a positive one as Delilah’s initial callout leads to Vera’s entire family taking that same opportunity, whereas perhaps they would have met with less harm in previous years by simply ‘passing’. For its short time, this is one of the stronger elements of the episode.

The episode’s strengths are in the message it is attempting to deliver, and is certainly strong of theme. It is let down somewhat by the antagonists being more background noise than does the message justice. On one hand, it could be argued that Nardoni is representative of a number of faceless white antagonists who profiteered from Tulsa even if solely by the destruction of the community and generationally continued to do so. On the other, the episode structure has an imbalance of powerful messages against a plot which doesn’t quite do it the justice it demands and leaves it far more reliant upon the guest appearance than such a good idea ought to have done. That said, Jessie Cook deserves to be a recurring character and will hopefully be served better in future episodes should this prove to be the case. 6/10

Russell A. Smith