Luke Cage, Season 1, Episode 12: Soliloquy of Chaos
With two episodes left, this really felt like just herding the cast into a final confrontation between Luke Cage and Diamondback while having the Power Man regain the trust and love of the good people of Harlem, which, while not unexpected, felt... lacking of surprises. And honestly, after the whole exchange where Diamondback shoots Luke with a Judas missile, it ends up kind of... well, not being unexciting, of course, because seeing Luke Cage take down armies of gangsters is always fun to watch, but it is getting predictable. Add that to all my previous problems that Diamondback is kind of a boring villain, and the Luke/Willis drama really felt shoehorned in during the final stretch, and the plot just doesn't really get sustained that well.
So the big cliffhanger from last episode where Luke gets arrested gets immediately revoked. Misty pretends to act like Luke's guilty, but Luke himself ends up freeing himself and running away to finish things with Diamondback. One of the cops (who I don't think we've seen before) holds Luke up at gunpoint, but the conversation is one of trust. The media might've been eating up the viral Luke-beats-cops video, but all the good that Luke did throughout the early parts of the season did not go forgotten and this cop 'lost sight' of the chase. I really wished we've seen Luke save this cop before during episodes 5-6, though.
A good sign of how Diamondback is deteriorating as a main villain is how his subordinates are acting. While Kingpin is also guilty of running an organization where several of his allies turn on him, with Kingpin it's a clear showing that Kingpin was truly in a position of power, and the traitors see it as a very dangerous decision to even think of turning their backs on him, and even then only because they think Kingpin's objectivity is compromised. With Diamondback, we've got Mariah and Shades already openly questioning Diamondback and talking shit about his irrational obsession and obstinate decision-making... that's actually a fair bit worse than the emotion-fueled missteps that Cottonmouth makes. Turk isn't afraid of Diamondback, and neither are Domingo and his men. With all the buildup that Diamondback is this super-elite ultra-mysterious dude who's supposed to eclipse Cottonmouth in competence, it again makes me wonder why he's a threat to Harlem.
Then again, the climax seems to just be building up to a more personal confrontation between Diamondback and Luke, so yeah. There's a fun bit where in Shades' absence after his delightful takedown by Claire and Misty, Zip takes over as Diamondback's right-hand man and tries to emulate Shades' style by wearing sunglasses and shit, but gets absolutely shat on by Diamondback randomly choking him half to death. For no real reason at all, beyond saying his own mind and trying to be Shades. Turk Barrett makes an unexpected return and actually shows absolutely no fear at Diamondback, acts as something of an equal partner. It's a bit hilarious that someone that's normally the universe's punching bag like Turk gets a lot more respect than poor Zip. Turk also leaves Zip with the sage advice that he's nothing but Diamondback's bitch.
Domingo's crew, meanwhile, wants to deal with Diamondback in a more permanent fashion and decides to gun for him as an army. It's just a shame that Diamondback has one last weapon that was never, ever foreshadowed before this, what he calls the wrath of god or something... which is a powered suit. That, well, I'm sorry, really could've been done better. I like the touch of the snake-belly-scale-esque inner shirt, but poor Diamondback's look really felt like bad cosplay. It's not quite as bad as Supergirl's Red Tornado (and nothing can be worse that that, I think) but, I dunno, when other shows that air around the same time have special effects on the level of Agents of SHIELD's Ghost Rider, this is just borderline embarrassing.
We just to Priscilla and Misty's attempts to interrogate Shades, who just replies with fifteen different ways to say "lawyer", which is the most hilarious thing imaginable, and another showing of how inefficient the police is. And between Luke and Scarfe's monologues about how working within the system doesn't solve anything when dealing with lawyer-protected people like Shades and Mariah, we're starting to see Misty Knight's staunch duty to the badge start to crumble here and there. Misty has a bit more success talking to Candace, though she elects to hide her with Claire's awesome mom and not trusting the police to be able to protect her from Mariah Dillard's agents. It's a bit obvious, again, that the coincidence that Claire just happens to talk to the one person that can clear Luke's name in terms of murder.
Mariah, meanwhile, is absolutely pissed off that Harlem's Paradise was fucked up all to hell during the fight last episode. She might tell Cottonmouth to sell the club, but she respects the legacy of her family and what the place represents, and I think it's one among many strings that show to her (and the audience) that Diamondback is out of control. Mariah's assistant, Alex, who really deserved a lot more screentime, tells Mariah to rebuild the club as her thing instead of trying to emulate Mama Mabel or Cottonmouth, and Mariah takes it to heart in regards to her role as the villain of the show. I honestly would've liked to see a version of the show where the second half of it had Mariah and Shades as the two main antagonists instead of focusing on the one-note Diamondback, honestly. She's such an interesting character.
Luke's running around Harlem, and he sees a robbery in action. He's pissed off that he has to break cover to do it, but he stops it anyway because he's a hero. And then we get, like, a full four or five minutes of the dude that Luke Cage saved talking on air and rapping and rapping and on and on about Luke Cage and, yeah, I get that. I get that the public might not believe that Luke's evil and killing people, and the argument that he wouldn't have stopped and saved the robbery if he's truly on the run. But did you need to spend so much time on that? The other dude's probably a cameo that's lost on me, so I don't know. I did feel this part to be a bit of a drag, though all the random people in Harlem wearing bullet-riddled black hoodies to help protect their hero is a very awesome bit. Putting aside the logistics of how they exactly got the same brand of hoodie and put bullet holes in it, it's a very cool and short moment that should've been enough without cutting back and forth to some dude rapping in a recording studio about how Luke Cage's the man.
Luke sets up a meeting with Turk, and after a moment where Turk apologizes for feeding Cottonmouth's organization the information since he didn't know there's going to be a shootdown because Pops' barber shop is like Switzerland in all these gang wars. After getting information from Turk, Luke picks the dude up and dumps him in a garbage dumpster and crumples the exit to punish him until morning, which is darkly hilarious as all hell. Turk just can't catch a break, can he?
After the whole lawyer bit, Shades gets freed by, well, Diamondback's lawyers, but he has no idea what's going on. Zip leads Shades up an elevator and it looks for all the world like a setup for Zip to kill Shades. I mean, Shades has been defeated last episode, it would be a karmic death for trying to evade justice with lawyers and whatnot, and his narrative role as the Palpatine to Mariah's Anakin has been filled. But after a moment where Zip really feels like he has Shades bang on rights, Shades manages to struggle and kill all of Zip's buddies in a surprisingly cool moment of competence. Not being able to fight against a dude with bulletproof skin per se, Shades' physical ability hasn't been shown off a lot beyond kicking a wounded Luke in the prison, but this is awesome. Zip claims that he's only running Diamondback's orders, but Shades just shoots Zip dead. Pretty cool moment for Shades, that's for sure.
Mariah, meanwhile, is called by Diamondback, who wants out of the political game. There's a creepy moment when Diamondback reveals that he's already in Mariah's house while calling her, and basically demands her full cooperation in exchange for money to restore her club and give donations, and Diamondback's speeches about being the cold wind that'll occasionally show up in Harlem even after his business with Luke's concluded tells Mariah that, well, Diamondback's never going to let her go. Mariah herself isn't as helpless as Diamondback thought, though. She's sending Alex to shadow where Candace is being kept, and when she meets up with Shades, they decide to recruit Luke Cage with promises of documents about Luke's old life as Carl Lucas, which may very well exonerate the man. They also decide to frame Diamondback as Cottonmouth's murderer, since they're smart enough to know that the lies about Luke Cage being the murderer didn't stick. It's a cool moment where they basically pick the lesser evil. Yes, Luke hates the two of them, but at least Luke isn't an unstable dude trying to kill them or threatening to kill them and quoting bible phrases and twisting them to suit his insane mentality. There's a moment where Shades compares Mariah to Cornell, noting that, yeah, Cottonmouth never had the innate talent to twist events and adapt to them the way Mariah can.
While Diamondback fights an army of angry Puerto Rican gangsters led by Domingo, he only survives by virtue of plot armour. That's a lot of bullets he evaded. He uses his 'wrath' suit, but we (and Luke) only see the aftermath, where only Domingo survives, barely. There's a brief meetup between Luke and Misty, and then all the good guys meet up with Mariah and Shades in 'Switzerland', Pops' shop. There's a bit of a standoff between Misty, who has beef with both Mariah and Shades, but before they can really agree (Luke looks sorely tempted), Diamondback shows up in his armour.
Which Bobby describes, very accurately, as the Pimp Stormtrooper. And as Luke and Diamondback clash, finally physical equals, Bobby Fish shouts out loud angrily at the two rampaging superhumans that he just fixed the shop up, man, couldn't they have taken things outside? I love Bobby. Why isn't he in the show more? But it's overall a bit of a setup for a pretty bog-standard finale between Luke and Diamondback, and it's a definite shame that Mariah wasn't used as the series villain, really.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
Mariah, meanwhile, is absolutely pissed off that Harlem's Paradise was fucked up all to hell during the fight last episode. She might tell Cottonmouth to sell the club, but she respects the legacy of her family and what the place represents, and I think it's one among many strings that show to her (and the audience) that Diamondback is out of control. Mariah's assistant, Alex, who really deserved a lot more screentime, tells Mariah to rebuild the club as her thing instead of trying to emulate Mama Mabel or Cottonmouth, and Mariah takes it to heart in regards to her role as the villain of the show. I honestly would've liked to see a version of the show where the second half of it had Mariah and Shades as the two main antagonists instead of focusing on the one-note Diamondback, honestly. She's such an interesting character.
Luke's running around Harlem, and he sees a robbery in action. He's pissed off that he has to break cover to do it, but he stops it anyway because he's a hero. And then we get, like, a full four or five minutes of the dude that Luke Cage saved talking on air and rapping and rapping and on and on about Luke Cage and, yeah, I get that. I get that the public might not believe that Luke's evil and killing people, and the argument that he wouldn't have stopped and saved the robbery if he's truly on the run. But did you need to spend so much time on that? The other dude's probably a cameo that's lost on me, so I don't know. I did feel this part to be a bit of a drag, though all the random people in Harlem wearing bullet-riddled black hoodies to help protect their hero is a very awesome bit. Putting aside the logistics of how they exactly got the same brand of hoodie and put bullet holes in it, it's a very cool and short moment that should've been enough without cutting back and forth to some dude rapping in a recording studio about how Luke Cage's the man.
Luke sets up a meeting with Turk, and after a moment where Turk apologizes for feeding Cottonmouth's organization the information since he didn't know there's going to be a shootdown because Pops' barber shop is like Switzerland in all these gang wars. After getting information from Turk, Luke picks the dude up and dumps him in a garbage dumpster and crumples the exit to punish him until morning, which is darkly hilarious as all hell. Turk just can't catch a break, can he?
After the whole lawyer bit, Shades gets freed by, well, Diamondback's lawyers, but he has no idea what's going on. Zip leads Shades up an elevator and it looks for all the world like a setup for Zip to kill Shades. I mean, Shades has been defeated last episode, it would be a karmic death for trying to evade justice with lawyers and whatnot, and his narrative role as the Palpatine to Mariah's Anakin has been filled. But after a moment where Zip really feels like he has Shades bang on rights, Shades manages to struggle and kill all of Zip's buddies in a surprisingly cool moment of competence. Not being able to fight against a dude with bulletproof skin per se, Shades' physical ability hasn't been shown off a lot beyond kicking a wounded Luke in the prison, but this is awesome. Zip claims that he's only running Diamondback's orders, but Shades just shoots Zip dead. Pretty cool moment for Shades, that's for sure.
Mariah, meanwhile, is called by Diamondback, who wants out of the political game. There's a creepy moment when Diamondback reveals that he's already in Mariah's house while calling her, and basically demands her full cooperation in exchange for money to restore her club and give donations, and Diamondback's speeches about being the cold wind that'll occasionally show up in Harlem even after his business with Luke's concluded tells Mariah that, well, Diamondback's never going to let her go. Mariah herself isn't as helpless as Diamondback thought, though. She's sending Alex to shadow where Candace is being kept, and when she meets up with Shades, they decide to recruit Luke Cage with promises of documents about Luke's old life as Carl Lucas, which may very well exonerate the man. They also decide to frame Diamondback as Cottonmouth's murderer, since they're smart enough to know that the lies about Luke Cage being the murderer didn't stick. It's a cool moment where they basically pick the lesser evil. Yes, Luke hates the two of them, but at least Luke isn't an unstable dude trying to kill them or threatening to kill them and quoting bible phrases and twisting them to suit his insane mentality. There's a moment where Shades compares Mariah to Cornell, noting that, yeah, Cottonmouth never had the innate talent to twist events and adapt to them the way Mariah can.
While Diamondback fights an army of angry Puerto Rican gangsters led by Domingo, he only survives by virtue of plot armour. That's a lot of bullets he evaded. He uses his 'wrath' suit, but we (and Luke) only see the aftermath, where only Domingo survives, barely. There's a brief meetup between Luke and Misty, and then all the good guys meet up with Mariah and Shades in 'Switzerland', Pops' shop. There's a bit of a standoff between Misty, who has beef with both Mariah and Shades, but before they can really agree (Luke looks sorely tempted), Diamondback shows up in his armour.
Which Bobby describes, very accurately, as the Pimp Stormtrooper. And as Luke and Diamondback clash, finally physical equals, Bobby Fish shouts out loud angrily at the two rampaging superhumans that he just fixed the shop up, man, couldn't they have taken things outside? I love Bobby. Why isn't he in the show more? But it's overall a bit of a setup for a pretty bog-standard finale between Luke and Diamondback, and it's a definite shame that Mariah wasn't used as the series villain, really.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- STAN LEE cameo! Well, a photo of Stan Lee on the side of the shop that was being robbed.
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