Category: Directed by Millicent Shelton

The Equalizer (2021) s02e17 – What Dreams May Come

I’m sure it’s happened before, but this episode has a guest star who appeared on the eighties “Equalizer,” too. In the first scene of this episode, Queen Latifah meets with spy guy Neal Benari to check up on her nemesis, who’s overseas after killing Chris Noth (offscreen). Presumably, we’ll get some sort of return visit from the bad guy this season, with “Equalizer” maybe finally ready to put Laya DeLeon Hayes in real danger.

Hopefully not.

Anyway, Benari was on a couple episodes of the original show.

Hayes gets her own arc this episode, involving her going to therapy to talk about having a vigilante mom with Latifah and a dad who wants to know all about Mom’s goings-on. Roma Maffia plays the therapist and is delightful because it’s Roma Maffia, and it’s nice to see Hayes finally get to do this arc after hinting at it a few episodes ago.

The main story of this episode involves a missing reporter, played by Brittany Bellizeare. Her brother comes to New York looking for her, fueled by physic visions.

In other words, “The Equalizer”’s going to do its supernatural episode now, months before Halloween.

Yusuf Gatewood plays the psychic brother. Gatewood’s way too good for the part. He acts the heck out of the show, which gives him almost nothing to do, but he’s very active doing it.

Rob Hanning gets the script credit. The episode will weave around various cast members’ beliefs in the supernatural, with Adam Goldberg playing the voice of reason. His wife, Liza Lapira, is the avowed non-skeptic, while Latifah’s more guarded and unwilling to take a side. We later find out Lorraine Toussaint is a true believer in the shining. She introduces a new backstory for Latifah involving a psychic premonition before Latifah’s father died.

They don’t say her father isn’t Edward Woodward… fingers crossed.

The mystery’s convoluted but thoughtful, with the psychic stuff being a bit of a red herring once they get to political corruption. Second-half guest stars Shirley Rumierk and Roberts Jekabsons don’t compare well against Gatewood; Rumierk’s okay but nothing more. Jekabsons’s bad.

The family stuff with Hayes is solid; the family psychic stuff is not.

Eventually, the episode cops out on the psychic stuff because, of course, it does.

Oh, and Tory Kittles is back to having nothing to do on the show, making his multi-episode arc just a pointless look into how nice it is when he’s around more.

Hunters (2020) s01e06 – (Ruth 1:16)

This episode opens with what seems like a dream sequence for Tiffany Boone, who outside getting to have a giant afro and an occasionally acknowledged daughter, doesn’t have a character. Not really. She gets home from her shootout with the rest of the “Hunters,” covered in blood (not hers), and gets into bed with aforementioned daughter. It’s not a dream sequence though, it’s just showing the mundanity of being a late seventies Black single parent Nazi hunter.

Boone’s got such a thankless part on the show I’m not even sure if she’s good or not. She’s fine… she just literally gets nothing real.

The main story involves Saul Rubinek and Carol Kane’s daughter’s wedding. Everyone’s going to the wedding, including Kate Mulvany, who’s ostensibly got a double agent plot line to work through this episode, but no, not really. I don’t even feel bad about “spoiling” it since it’s obvious red herring; the reddest herring. She gets some flashbacks—she was a Jewish kid sent to the Catholic Church in England before the war and the nuns made her reject her Judaism, which she did after she got too hungry and seems to forever resent herself for it. Fine.

Rubinek and Kane get some flashbacks too, which are going to be important with Mulvany, but it’s a bummer they don’t really get an episode to themselves. Rubinek and Kane are both really good.

There’s some more great stuff from Dylan Baker and some “I’m more Jewish than Tevye” moments for Al Pacino. Both Baker and Pacino chew the scenery into sawdust, but for Baker it’s a great acting success, for Pacino it’s an appropriate use of his schtick. It’s kind of weird with Pacino, especially during the wedding sequence, which should trigger Godfather memories but doesn’t at all.

The wedding is a lot, especially since it ends up being a target for the Nazis, even though Pacino’s blathering about how they’d never hit it. He’s really unprepared, especially when it comes to keeping stately Wayne Manor protected.

Jerrika Hinton’s continuing her “Mindhunter”-esque story arc with the girlfriend and possibly trusting boss James Le Gros (who’s good) way too much. There’s no reason to trust him. Of course she’s not really grokking the danger of Nazis yet so… it’s on par. She’s also pretty chill about the “Operation Paperclip” stuff (google it), like way too trusting of her government who smuggled Nazis into the country.

Speaking of trust, turns out Pacino’s got another secret from Logan Lerman but not the rest of the team. Lerman has another visit from ghost grandma Jeannie Berlin… weird how it’s ghost Berlin for good stuff and the younger version of her for bad stuff.

The episode pushes a little too hard, especially with Louis Ozawa visiting an old war buddy for information, only the old war buddy has been used in U.S. government experiments (with an ex-Nazi doing the experimenting).

The episode’s fine it’s just… nothing more than fine.