Rapman Episode 5 supasel It resolves the suspense of the previous episode and shows us what it’s like for several superheroes to be in the same place and fighting the same battle. Episode five focuses on the collision of Rodney Cullen’s (Calvin Demba) super powers.
Rodney decides to visit his estranged mother. In a quick but informative scene, we learn that she’s living with a man that Rodney doesn’t like. He offers to help financially, but she promises that she will have a good life and be happy. Distraught, he asked to stay and even offered to pay rent, but she turned him down because her partner Rick wouldn’t agree. This meant that Rodney’s white mother chose this new man and family over his biracial son, which prompted Rodney to reunite with Michael and the other superheroes.
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Throughout the series, we see an experimental facility where a white man oversees superheroes and black captives in a prison. In this episode, we learn that he and his crew have been actively tracking the main characters, and are particularly interested when he learns that four of them were in the same place at the same time. The facility appears in more cutscenes this episode, emphasizing how intrusively they track superheroes.
Whenever multiple heroes are near each other, people in the facility will notice. Since Dionne, a community social worker and Michael’s fiancée, doesn’t have superpowers, she’s able to fly under the radar while investigating the disappearances.
We continue to see the devastating effects of sickle cell disease as Michael’s mother goes through a crisis. He spends the night at the Sickle Cell Center and then decides to tell Dion the truth about the future and her possible murder, as he learned by visiting the future when he first used his powers in the first episode. He lamented that he could not change the outcome of her death, even if he gained some information he might need. Michael’s perceived inability to change his mother’s fate with Dion represents the larger picture of the struggle of the black community in the show, as well as the greater human experience – like always swimming against the current.
As we now know, the sickle cell gene is also linked to the superpowers the characters possess, exposing pain in a more chronic way and bringing the characters together to heal.
Dion (Adelayo Adedayo) investigates Jasmine’s disappearance and finds her parents. She learned that Jasmine’s father suffered from sickle cell disease, but Jasmine used her powers to cure him of his affliction. Michael’s mother’s health crisis reunites Dionne and Michael, who have a chance to talk, but they are interrupted by Rodney, who insists that Michael leave now.
This is ugly. Michael is always looking to help everyone, save everyone, and do the right thing, but he fails. Instead of telling Rodney he needs to wait, Michael ditches Dion and postpones their important conversation.
supasel and female characters
This could have been Michael’s chance to tell the truth, but he fails to do so, and for a weak reason… At the beginning of the series, Michael was easy to root for. But like many male characters, he treats women as an afterthought, not even an object, making it hard to believe he’ll act responsibly in the future – even though he can see the future himself.
My assumption is that his failure to warn Dionne or be honest with her will result in her death, making her one plot point and another Frozen female characters in superhero history, because an inspirational tragedy is more important to Michael than making him respect his fiancée. I hope the show goes in a better direction, but adding that Sharlene’s (Rayxia Ojo) abusive behavior becomes her personality in addition to the plot doesn’t look good. Meanwhile, Taz (Josh Tedku) becomes instantly more irredeemable when he threatens to murder a woman in broad daylight.
Sabrina’s (Nadine Mills) good news is overshadowed by Sharlene’s constant descent into danger. Here, however, it’s not careless writing buried in tropes, but rather Sabrina’s professional achievements being overshadowed by abuse and violence, which is a clear injustice.
The male characters in the play are constantly scrutinized, judged and captured by the social system. In fact, most of them don’t trust each other, which is why it took Michael and Rodney so long to get Andre (Eric Kofi Abrefa) to trust him and consider joining the team . Even so, Rodney only wanted to help Michael because he believed Michael could and would turn back time to help his injured friend. The overall power structure deliberately undermines trust and the black community. But it is clear that women suffer the most, while men cannot escape the cycle of accepting injustice and perpetuating it.
Overall, this episode should have had more similar moments tied together, but the storytelling was disjointed and flat. Hopefully the final episode packs a bigger punch in terms of connection, or allows Michael to use his powers to access the past in a way that changes the story and empowers all the characters, including Dion.
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