Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 12: Can't Front On Me
This episode is the obligatory final battle! And it's definitely a fun one, culminating in a nightshade-empowered, vengeance-driven Bushmaster assisted by resident plot device/wild card Tilda charging headlong into Harlem Paradise and tossing goons left and right aiming to kill Mariah, whose only real ally in this thing is Shades... who, in turn, is working with the police. Oh, and Luke Cage and Misty Knight are swooping in to try and stop any one of the villains from dying, because that is what good superheroes do.
And the actual action scene is pretty intense and well-shot, really. No real complaints about that, and I find it absolutely hilarious and terrifying that the oh-so-vaunted safe room built to withstand a nuclear blast just buckle under the punches of Bushmaster.
The buildup to the fight doesn't really feel all that good, though, and if nothing else feel kinda messy. Mariah has apparently been spreading around a drug called the Bushmaster that gets you super-duper angry and feral and ready to chomp down on someone's neck just to smear Bushmaster's name even further. And it's a tie in to the Luke Cage drug on episode one, sure, but on the other hand it just comes out of nowhere, leads to a pointlessly long DW scene, and honestly after killing a bunch of civilians and his uncle, throwing this extra bit on top of "horrible things Mariah does to Bushmaster" feels absolutely comical.
Also bizarre is the extended sequence where Luke and Bushmaster join up to fight the Yangsi Gonshi drug-dealers in a form of back-to-back badasses, with a hilarious bit where Bushmaster throws an axe into Luke's back (ineffectively) halfway through the battle, and just giving him a shrug. I sort of get what the show's trying to do, showing that Bushmaster still has some sort of code of honour, but honestly teaming up with him, I think, is taking 'sympathetic villain' a bit too far especially with all the crap Bushmaster's done all season long. And the fact that the two of them will have to face off at the climax of this episode? I dunno. Just feels bizarrely off, and I think the series would've been served in a far stronger way if the only positive Luke/Bushmaster interaction was the "we coulda been brethren" scene from episode 11.
Meanwhile, a significant amount of this episode's screentime is taken up by Shades making a deal with Misty Knight and the police in order to bring down Mariah once and for all, and we get Shades recapping a significant amount of the first season. And while it's appreciated to show just how much Shades is willing to bring down Mariah, I really do feel that the change doesn't feel quite as well-executed as it could've been. It's not an ass-pull as despite doing some horrendous shit like killing Comanche, Shades has been showing subtle discontent with the direction Mariah is going in her gangster career, but at the same time it does feel jarring that apparently shooting a bunch of civilians is enough to suddenly make Shades turn 100% traitor. It's believable, of course, and Theo Rossi is a competent enough of an actor to sell the hell out of it, but I kinda wished Shades and Mariah's scenes weren't quite so repetitive, which would really have gone a long way to making this character change work. This does lead to Misty and Shades teaming up to get the Plot Device Evidence Antique Gun(tm) from Mariah as the huge deal in this episode.
Also great? Shades's slight breakdown regarding both Comanche and Anansi's deaths after his bombastic, sadistic recount of so many other gangster incidents. Theo Rossi sells the HELL out of those scenes, especially when Comanche's mother steps into the interrogation room.
Luke himself is sort of reactive, with both Bushmaster and Mariah noting just how easy it is to get Luke to help them -- all they need is some sort of motivation. In Bushmaster's case, it's getting Luke to shut down drugs, because drugs are bad. In Mariah's case, it's gathering a huge crowd of civilians at her party to make sure Luke will be there to stave off the inevitable Bushmaster attack, and if so, Luke will be obliged to save her. It's neat, but on the other hand Luke has like three or four separate character arcs throughout this season (his anger problems; his daddy problems; his popularity problems; and now this) that are always explored separately in different episodes, which I felt isn't quite the best to build a proper three-dimensional character.
In addition to all that, we get to see Mariah and Yang meet up with a bunch of other mob bosses -- the Irish, the Koreans and the Puerto Ricans. Sure, the Korean one notes how they're unwilling to work with Mariah after all the Diamondback business, but all these really honestly just seem to be awkwardly-shoehorned in setup for the next season. And... and Tilda is just such a non-character and such a walking talking plot device that I really can't think of much to say about her, if we're being honest.
Overall, though, still a pretty fun episode despite some strange pacing issues. By the end of this episode, Mariah's arrested, Bushmaster's been given a bloody nose and likely can't use his superpowers, and the good guys get a victory. But we still have one more episode left...
No comments:
Post a Comment