Luke Cage S02E13 Review: Luke Corleone

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 13: They Reminisce Over You

The final episode of Luke Cage's second season is meant to be an extended coda, but it's not a coda that works particularly well. A lot of the plot threads explored in this episode is only introduced in the previous episode, and you'll forgive me for not remembering the names of gang lords Rosalie Carbone, Eric Hong and Anibal Izqueda. The whole fact that apparently all of these other gangsters were trying to shoehorn their territory into Harlem and that Mariah's solid leadership was what was keeping them out is also sort of news to me. And so with Mariah on trial and Bushmaster suffering the side-effects of concentrated nightshade (or whatever magic plant they decide to call a nightshade, anyway) Luke spends this part of the episode just running around trying to make amends and basically replace Mariah and Bushmaster as Harlem's gang lord. He views himself as a sheriff, but neither Misty nor DW are particularly pleased with this whole "Luke Corleone" gig. 

And after the season gave characters so much grief for compromising their moral identity, I really wished that the season actually gave Luke a fair bit more characterization to make his transformation into the "good" crime boss actually make sense. Because other than brief hints from Sugar that Luke would make a good replacement, the show's really light on this side of Luke and if anything it seemed to be building Luke up into a mercenary-esque Hero for Hire more than anything. I appreciate them trying to shake up the status quo, but this transformation on Luke's part really felt jarring and not quite earned by the show. He's basically  accepted his ruthlessness, I think? And decides to make a deal with Italian mob boss Rosaline Carbone? I dunno. It feels kinda weird seeing heroic, unyielding Luke throughout the entire season who barely tolerates working with Mariah and Bushmaster -- and even then only to save lives -- and then he ends up shaking hands with a gangster?  

Mike Colter, thankfully, manages to at least sell that after all the personal conflict that he's been through in this season, he's finally carving a path that he's choosing by himself. There's a neat hint of Mariah trying to manipulate Luke and corrupt him with power, and when Luke takes over Harlem's Paradise instead of burning it down there's a neat show of Luke being framed against the crown that both Cottonmouth and Mariah have often been shot against... only for Luke to replace the painting with a different one. Neat. 

He does tell Claire in her return to leave, though, truly embracing his mob boss mentality. I don't think I really care about this scene at all, if we're being honest. 

Throw in a huge, huge misstep in how the show gets rid of Bushmaster, and it doesn't do any favours to how I feel about this episode. Bushmaster's great buildup and charismatic personality might not have been handled ideally in the past two episodes, but he's still a pretty strong presence in this season. The fact that he basically just loses his mind, without even a monologue about either Anansi, the nightshade, Luke Cage or whatever? I don't care that he loses his mind -- it's pretty logical considering the nightshade abuse, and being forced to return back to Jamaica with his aunt Ingrid and presumably his buddy Sheldon is a neat enough karmic move that still manages to spare him while punish him at the same time. What the show does absolutely wrong, though, is to let this scene happen off-screen. And considering how memory and history had been such a theme in Bushmaster's story, it's the perfect karmic ending yet it's not even shown to us.

Do you know what gets shown to us? A long scene of DW ranting about how Luke Cage is selling out. Oh, and a whole scene of Tilda crushing herbs. Oh, and Mariah killing a bunch of random prisoners. 

Mariah, meanwhile... she tries to go out in a blaze of glory as she's being put on trial, talking about how she's the safeguard of Harlem (tying in to the Don Luke bit), while at the same time her assassins (how does she still have men listening to her?) kill a bunch of minor characters, like her secretary Alex and Korean mob boss Eric Hong... which is neat, but, again, not quite necessary. We also get the aforementioned extended scene of her fighting and killing a bunch of people in jail. Basically we get to see everyone leave Mariah, with both Shades and Tilda showing up as a final "fuck you" before going away, but Tilda is so convinced that Mariah is evil that she kisses Mariah with some poison lipstick, which causes Mariah to die halfway through her talk with Luke, who condemns her and wishes her a painful death, but keeps her company all the same. It's... I dunno. I guess it's a suitable death for Mariah, and I will definitely miss her. 

My problem really is with Tilda, honestly. What an inconsistent character, flip-flopping between a terrified civilian and the sort of hard-ass mother-killer that will use poison lipstick to kill her own mother after her original plan of siccing Bushmaster to kill her fails. I dunno. Tilda's just such a bland and inconsistently-written character and I can't like her at all, really. She apparently changes her last name to Johnson, revealing her as a pre-existing Marvel villain called Nightshade? I, for one, am not excited to see her again should she prove to be a recurring character. 

Also, as one last fuck-you to the treacherous Shades -- and, mind you, he did end up implicating Mariah, but Shades is arguably far worse than Mariah as a human being -- Mariah's death ends up nullifying Shades's deal and he gets captured and sent to jail. Also, speaking of minor characters... good old Sugar, who I haven't been talking a lot about but really loved, was the only character that Mariah spares from the purge because of how he got Mariah clothes when she was on the run. Nice bit, there, and Sugar eulogizes Mariah a bit at the end.

Anyway... it's a neat ending, for sure, despite my complaints. Mariah's dead, Bushmaster's gone, Luke's the Godfather. Despite many missteps this season takes, I actually enjoyed this season of Luke Cage, and it might be perhaps the first second-season Marvel Netflix show to actually improve upon the first. Good season, weird ending.

Speaking of which, thank you for anyone who's been reading through Luke Cage's second season with me. I realize that I don't churn these Netflix reviews fast enough -- everyone tended to have finished watching the season in the first week as they get released, while it takes me some time to get through watching and subsequently reviewing these episodes. After Luke Cage is over... we're still some months off from getting the general seasonal DC/CW shows back up, and I'm about to run out of Young Justice: Invasion episodes, so let this be an announcement of my project next month: I'm finally reviewing a Marvel comics cartoon, starting with the much-requested Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! See you next month for that, and maybe, if I find the time and energy, another cartoon show!

Luke Cage S02E12 Review: The Confrontation

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...

Luke Cage S02E11 Review: The Flashback Episode

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 11: The Creator

Okay, but did we really need that many flashbacks? I get that showing Bushmaster's backstory is neat and all, but we already had that long monologue from Bushmaster when he tried to burn Mariah alive. Showing an elaborate sequence with Young!Bushmaster witnessing the McIvers and Stokes-es arguing about the division of the shares for Harlem's Paradise just feels indulgent, and really doesn't fill that many holes that needed to be filled. We also get some nods to how Bushmaster is always "special", never succumbing to a sinister vaccine, and Anansi at one point took him to a healer that healed him with nightshade when he was shot by one of the Stokes' assassins. But really, why did we need these to be full-fledged flashbacks? Having Bushmaster or Sheldon tell this on his own really wouldn't be that much more different. The only real part of the flashback that I genuinely found effective was the horror show that little Johnny felt when his house was burned down, and for Mama Mabel to stroll up and make jokes while throwing the actually-legit paperwork into the fire. 

It doesn't quite have the same impact as the Bushmaster monologue tells us, because it doesn't really fill anything that really needed to be filled, and seems to just buy time while Tilda work her vague super-awesome-herbal-remedy skills to heal Bushmaster. It doesn't even realwer anything about the origin of Bushmaster's power -- it could simply have been "the nightshade gave him insane recovery abilities" but the flashbacks insist that something inside John McIver is always super-strong that made him compatible with the nightshade, and it doesn't really answer anything. We're just waiting for Bushmaster to wake up, find out about the massacre and swear bloody murder against Mariah (even more bloody murder, anyway), making the flashbacks particularly expensive filler.

Meanwhile, Luke is rightfully furious at the massacre at Gwen's, swearing to kill Mariah, and trying to keep that anger down -- I really think that having Luke be actually angry at Mariah, and then having Danny tell him to control his anger would've worked far, far better because other than the incident with Cockroach, prior to episode 10 Luke has been pretty much calm. Really did feel that the main Luke stories in 10 and 11 could've been swapped. 

The rest of the episode is the revelation that Ingrid wasn't actually dead last episode, and managed to crawl out... did Mariah and company just didn't make sure everyone died? I mean, Bushmaster did the same thing when trying to burn her -- it's honestly a pretty silly storytelling. Luke ends up going to find Ingrid, who isn't willing to sell out Bushmaster, and we get some escort mission style scenes and some "we can't have more war answer war" dialogue. Oh, and Shades can't bring himself to kill a civilian after spending a good chunk of the episode conflicted (catching Mariah getting frisky with Alex didn't help him either). 

Meanwhile, we get some scenes here and there, like Misty getting more and more comfortable with her position as future police chief of Babylon, Mariah striking a deal with Yang (of the Yangsi Gonshi, minor antagonists during Iron Fist) to finally break her one rule as a crime lord and get heroin flowing through Harlem, Luke and Bushmaster having a brief civil conversation in the morgue, and Shades arguing with Mariah about how she crossed a line by killing civilians -- Shades doesn't care about killing actual snitches and traitors and former lovers, but apparently his line is civilians, which I really wished we had learned a bit sooner. 

Overall, though, it's clearly just a buildup to the climax of this season, and buildup episodes tend to be relatively unsatisfying. We'll see just how many of these characters will end up with a proper character arc at the end of the season, yeah? 

Luke Cage S02E10 Review: Heroes For Hire

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 10: The Main Ingredient

Huh. This episode's... really has an inconsistent tone throughout it, huh? On one hand, the team-up between Luke Cage and an amazingly-improved Iron Fist is easily the best part of the episode, and definitely one of the highlights of the season. It's light-hearted, fun, and gives Luke some much-needed character moments that isn't just about his daddy issues. On the other hand, in the very same episode we have Mariah Dillard Stokes committing a pretty god-damn horrifying and cold-blooded murder of a bunch of civilians to truly put her on top of the food chain as far as the big bad villains go. 

Danny "Iron Fist" Rand is a character I have not been shy about critiquing. But the Defenders and this particular guest spot really shows that the problem with Netflix's iteration of Danny Rand mostly really stems from the atrocious and horrible direction Iron Fist's first season went, and not Finn Jones himself. Removed from all the moronic and self-indulgent tendencies Danny ends up doing for a good chunk of Iron Fist, Danny here shows up as a genuine friend who helps Luke Cage not only to help hunt down Bushmaster's attempt to regrow the magic nightshade, but also to help him center himself. Sure, it's done with some vague talk of Tibetan medicine theory, but instead of sounding arrogant, Danny here sounds earnest in trying to help Luke center himself and get through his anger problems. 

Sure, the pacing ends up being sort of ground to a halt because you'd really think that Luke would get Iron Fist to help him root out Bushmaster instead of just beating up the thugs guarding the Grow House (although that is a pretty dang badass scene, and I think this one action sequence is more pleasing than the entirety of Iron Fist), but hey, guest star episodes work by different rules. And Danny ends up learning something too -- don't shy away from actually using money to solve crime-fighting problems. We get a lot of fun scenes, like the two of them interacting with D.W. in the barbershop, or them confronting Mariah, or the scene near the statue overlooking the city... Danny's fun, and those aren't two words that I thought would ever use to refer to Netflix's version of the character. 

We even get the once-a-season cameo of good old Turk Barrett, selling bongs in a basement and being an informant for our heroes! Apparently, Turk can see Danny's aura? What's that all about? We also get a fun little continuity nod to the plotline of both Iron Fist and Defenders. 

The thing is, the tone of this episode feels definitely off, especially coming from the fact that Bushmaster's gone on a bit of a rampage, beheading many people, beating up Luke twice, blown up a police vehicle, and briefly put out a bounty on multiple people that led to some shootouts in the city. The fact that it's apparently been three days between episodes 9 and 10, and Luke isn't quite as worried about hunting down Bushmaster... it feels jarring and off. 

Misty goes on a bit of a side-quest when she basically investigates who sold them out to Bushmaster in the previous episode. It's Nandi, of course, and her entire screentime this episode is basically a sub-plot for them to figure out Nandi's complicity in meeting up with Bushmaster, and then arresting her. I don't have much to say about this subplot... mighty convenient that everyone that questions Misty Knight is actually secretly far more corrupt, huh? It's honestly just building up Misty's own sense of moral superiority, making her previous conflict about her nearly crossing her own moral code feel abandoned in favour of reverting Misty back to status quo, and it's not that well-executed. 

Meanwhile, Bushmaster is, of course, being treated by Tilda, who's basically quasi-kidnapped by Bushmaster's number two man, Sheldon. Danny and Luke find Tilda's place ransacked, and they... don't even inform Mariah? I felt that was a bit weird. 

Speaking of Mariah, she is perhaps the reason why this episode whiplashes around so hard. After spending the first half of this season trying to escape the gangster life and trying to do good for the community, she's finally done with all this. She's abandoned even her own daughter, is flaunting her power, and is insanely cruel. She threatens Big Ben to never, ever betray her again (it helps that Ben got her money back), and, of course, tortures Anansi psychologically before the brutal scene at the end. Perhaps the biggest part is that she insists to be called Mariah Stokes in this episode, accepting the brand of gangster villainy that she herself associates with the name. Again, I kind of wished we had more than just being traumatized by Bushmaster to really show the change in her character, but being nearly burned alive, having all her money taken from her, all for something that she wasn't even part of... yeah, she definitely wants some payback from Bushmaster. 

And, of course, we get the brutal finish to this episode, with Mariah, Shades and a bunch of her henchmen marching a bound-and-gagged Anansi slowly towards Gwen's, knowing full well what's going to happen. This even got Sugar so disgusted he picked up and left, and Sugar was the only one that stuck around with Mariah when she was hounded by bounty hunters! And as Mariah slowly confronts the patrons in Gwen's, she shoots the treacherous Billie dead... and then shoots her sister, and then just starts shooting patrons one by one. And that's what's shocking, really. Bushmaster's attempt on Mariah and Tilda Stokes is horrible since they are only related to Mama Mabel by blood. Mariah killing Anansi? Horrible, but still understandable. Billie? Definitely, she was complicit in betraying her. But killing all the random patrons that just happen to have the misfortune of eating dinner there? The scene was shot horrifyingly too, because after killing Billie the shot just zooms out, and we just see the gunshots light up the restaurant as everyone begs for mercy. It's a genuinely brutal death, and you can't blame Anansi for regretting telling Bushmaster to exercise restraint.  

And then as Anansi cries when his restaurant and a bunch of innocents were executed in cold blood, including his wife Ingrid... Mariah goes up and sets him on fire, and then shoots him in the head. It's so cold-blooded and brutal that even Shades is shaken, and Shades was the one who pushes Mariah to embrace her inner gangster. 

Overall, though, I think that the back-and-forth between the more light-hearted, chill Danny/Luke scenes contrast pretty poorly against Mariah's dark broodingness. It's still a pretty strong episode after the previous one didn't impress me, and I can deal with a little mood whiplashing if it gives us some neat character moments. With three more episodes left, and both Bushmaster and Mariah being built up to be big bad monsters, we'll see which side Luke picks, yeah? 

Luke Cage S02E09 Review: A Deal With The Devil

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 9: For Pete's Sake

This is a bit of an odd episode, huh? After last episode ended with the ominous bit where Luke, Misty, James, Mariah and Tilda are basically under threat of the Jamaican bounty hunters, Luke calls in Danny Rand for a favour... and ends up just borrowing a building they can hunker down in, and end up leading to a stand-off against Bushmaster and his Stylers. The majority of the episode is just our characters interacting and talking until the buildup to the confrontation between Bushmaster and Luke, and it... doesn't really work all that well. 

The big revelation here is Mariah talking to Tilda, telling her daughter that she never loved her, and that Tilda was born out of Mariah's rape at the hands of the jackass uncle Pete -- a child of incest and rape, and that Mariah married a gay man. It's cold, harsh, and genuinely shocking... and probably would be, if I did feel that it was not-so-neatly foreshadowed. We know Mariah's a smart manipulator and actress, and it's conceivable that everything that she did was to keep Tilda close as a way to boost the PR ratings. But there were moments when Mariah was genuinely panicking in earlier episodes with Tilda in their house, or when she begged Bushmaster to let her go and stuff. It's a bit inconsistent, I feel. Tilda here is being sort of built up as a woman that can make or break Mariah, and this harsh backstory is definitely leaning a lot more towards "break", but I genuinely don't think Tilda herself is that well-realized of a character. 

If nothing else, this episode really tries to build up Mariah as the Greater Evil in the inconsistent fight between Mariah and Bushmaster, where previous episodes have shown Bushmaster to be the vengeance-obsessed savage murderer. I guess that's so that we don't feel quite as bad for Mariah when she gets put away or killed at the end of the season? I dunno. It's pretty consistently portraying Mariah as starting to break down all the PR-friendly fake smiles she's built around him, and revealing the monster and the stone-cold gangster Shades keeps telling her she is, although at least she does have a pretty traumatic backstory to base it off of. Woodard is fantastic as always and her powerful performance is perhaps the only thing making this character work.

Mariah and Misty go through this long, long negotiation on Mariah bringing down Bushmaster the legal way in cutting a deal and really sort of undermines Misty's story by forcing her to agree to the notion of entertaining cutting a deal with Mariah, huh? The problem is that this takes on for the bulk of the episode, and when Mariah just basically runs out of the building in the chaos with the aid of a gun, it makes a good chunk of this episode feel like wasted time. At the end of the episode, Mariah is in full-on gangster mode, meets up with Shades, and is a woman with no real resources other than the handful of men loyal to him... and Bushmaster's uncle Anansi, tied up in Shades's trunk and likely to be killed in an upcoming episode as an act of vengeance. 

Meanwhile, Luke gets to talk to both James and Tilda, and it's... it's honestly nothing we haven't heard before. Luke did end up properly reconciling with James, with a lot of "d'awww" moment of forgiveness like when he refuses to throw Mariah out to the wolves for the simple fact that he was "raised better than that". The ultimate fight in this episode between Luke Cage and Bushmaster's forces is... sufficient, I suppose, leading to Luke finally paying Bushmaster back and knocking him out. But with four more episodes down the episode, Bushmaster makes his escape after giving a long speech about the history of the Jamaican rebels, before blowing up the police escort car with a bomb he's hidden in his palm. 

It's honestly a very slow-paced episode and one that feels the most grating. The actors try their best to fill up the time with their charisma, but this is a bottle episode that really felt like it's just buying time with easily-shot conversations. 

Luke Cage S02E08 Review: Reverend Punch

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 8: If It Ain't Rough, It Ain't Right

Yeah, updates are a bit slower -- sorry about that. Just been real busy currently.

We're in the second half of Luke Cage's second season now, but there's definitely a significant chunk of this episode that just feels like the same old plotlines being retreaded. And honestly, so much of this episode is just untangling the heavy deaths and revelations from the previous episode. While it does deliver some interesting character beats to some of our characters, for the others it really feels like we're just spinning the same old wheels until the plot catches up to them. 

After a brief action scene saving Mariah from Bushmaster's bounty hunters, Luke basically tries to reconcile with Reverend James and just kind of hangs out with daddy Lucas and protects him from a bunch of Bushmaster's minions at the episode's climax... a scene, that, pretty hilariously and awesomely, involves Reverend James punching one of the Stylers in the face. It's a neat sequence of scenes, but, again really feel oddly disjointed compared to the rest of the episode. 

Bushmaster, on the other hand, is just sort of stuck in a side-quest of sorts. His minions are hunting down Mariah, Tilda, Luke and their loved ones, but because his power comes from the nightshade herb (apparently different from regular nightshade?) he's taking time off to get his goons to try and grow some. 

Meanwhile, Shades is... kind of all over the place. After killing his ex-lover and best friend Comanche, he's conflicted and has a scene with Comanche's mother... but honestly, so much of Shades's actual scenes with other people is pretty much repeating the same song and dance of him loving Comanche but loving Mariah and the gangster life more, while at the same time he's feeling insecure about his place in Mariah's organization. Particularly when Mariah, thinking that Shades is a possible snitch, leaves him to hang dry in the police precinct. Misty and Shades get a bunch of enat scenes in the interrogation room, but, again, so much of Shades's characterization has him trying to fool someone that it's really hard to pinpoint what the dude's real motivation is beyond "help Mariah".

We did, at least, get a scene between Shades and Mariah in the burned-out remnants of her brownstone, but even then that's just a huge screamy fight that ends up with them pledging their loyalty to each other, because I guess they're all they have left? It really, really helps a lot that Theo Rossi and Afre Woodard are spectacular actors, because neither of their characters feel written particularly well. 

We did get a fun bit from "Big Ben" Donovan, Mariah's lawyer, as he switches sides to Bushmaster because he pays more. That's kind of fun. 

Misty... Misty's kind of all over the place, I think. Simone Missick is a good actress, but I'm genuinely not sure just what the show's trying to do with Misty, genuinely going back and forth about whether she wants to be a cop or not. The show tries to sell the fact that she's flawed and borderline hypocritical at times, but every single time she's portrayed after that moment of temptation to frame Cockroach, she still has that moral high ground over every other corrupt cop... which the show doesn't really even address. It's odd. And after all the conflict with her own inner demons regarding Scarfe and her missing arm, she spends this episode -- and the rest of the season -- just sort of back to being "Good Cop Ally", and I really felt that a lot of her more redundant scenes could've been cut out to give her a proper character resolution. 

Speaking of a character that didn't really work out for me... Tilda Dillard is also kind of weird, huh? She feels more of an accessory than anything, but her relationship with Mariah feels genuinely inconsistent, her friendship with Luke feels jarring, and the fact that she keeps talking up the herbs just feels absolutely silly and genuinely overplayed. 

Throw in the genuinely bizarre flip-flop end-goal for Luke, who can't decide if Bushmaster or Mariah is the bigger threat that needs to be taken down, and I really feel that the show could've really used a bit of run through the editing process to trim off some of the more repetitive scenes. 

Luke Cage S02E07 Review: Death All Around

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 7: On and On

Wow, this episode cleaned house with the cast, huh? It's slightly past the middle part of this season, and after last episode being a bit slower, this one goes at a breakneck speed as characters straight up just die left and right. So let's go through all the deaths last as we discuss our two main protagonists, Luke and Misty. Sure, the two of them did have a brief action scene and continue to find clues and stuff -- scenes that easily count as the driest in this episode and feel more procedural than interesting. 

But the big Luke Cage scene in this episode is him meeting up with his father and finally having that conversation, which is something that I've honestly felt shoehorned into this show pretty hard. Reverend James Lucas is played by one of the strongest actors in the show, and his... interesting characterization as someone who flip-flops between a genuinely morose man who wants to apologize to his son, but also has such a huge ego that he ends up alienating him further and further. The problem really is the buildup honestly -- I don't mind the actual conversation, which is pretty strong (as jarring as it is edited in this episode, cutting back and forth with the Bushmaster/Stokes scene) but the buildup here is honestly a bit weird with everyone and their mother telling Luke to talk to his dad like a game reminding you to do the main quest. It feels jarring, honestly, and it's not like "what is the friction between the two of them" is some sort of huge mystery. There really is genuinely no difference if Luke had this conversation all the way back in season two or now, halfway through, so to build it up constantly without any logical in-universe reason has always felt weird to me.

In any case, Luke and his father reach a bit of an understanding -- Luke understands the whole fact that James is in sorrow because his wife is struck with dementia, and the scene where James basically tears Etta away from the prison, while Etta still believes in her son... Luke's sorrowful recount of how it's the last time he ever saw his mother is genuinely heartbreaking (and also forms a neat parallel to Bushmaster's story). Oh, and then Luke brings up the whole Willis Stryker situation and shit just got even more complicated as to what we're supposed to feel about James Lucas. I suppose, if I may borrow to the as-of-the-time-of-writing recent issues of the manga Boku no Hero Academia with a similar character, Endeavour, it's a similar situation. Reverend James is a genuinely shitty person and all the airs he puts up is bullshit, but the attempt to reconnect with Luke is genuine. That's... that's neat, I suppose. 

Misty, I think, is the most detached of this all, trying to find her place as basically a superhero that's not willing to work with the law, and the Misty scenes are honestly just sort of waffling around and genuinely feels like padding, with a brief burst of action before she goes and has a pointless scene where she flirts with some random dude in a bar. At least she does get to say a final "fuck you" to Captain Ridenhour, although the way that doesn't really wrap up Misty's dynamic with Ridenhour is kind of a bizarre writing choice. 

Meanwhile, Mariah has been sort of... static and flailing around for the past three or four episodes. Alfre Woodard does her best, but it's clear that Mariah Dillard's just sort of showing up for each episode to remind us she's one of the big villains, but we're just building up to this confrontation with Bushmaster. And honestly, poor Mariah is such a spectator in everything that's going on that I genuinely felt kinda sad as she just tries to alternate between "oh no panic crisis" to "I got to take charge" before, well, the final confrontation with Bushmaster. It's a good thing that she survives since if this was all we got out of the character it'd be genuinely be shit, but her story's been so stale and repetitive as of the past couple of episodes, repeating the same old song and dance with Shades and Tillda, that anything is going to be interesting -- even if, as it seems, her hiring Luke Cage after Harlem's hero saves her from the fire.

Tilda is a character that just plain doesn't work for me, by the way. The actress is fine, but her lines are pretty badly-written and she's such an accessory to Mariah that I genuinely am just waiting until she ends up being the lynchpin to Bushmaster's downfall, or if she's going to become a dramatic death to shock Mariah. 

Bushmaster, the other main villain, has been shown to be immensely efficient and ruthless, racking up a body count and decapitating Mariah's allies like it ain't a thing, including the grisly off-screen killing of Piranha Jones in this episode. But when it comes time to killing Mariah? I genuinely feel that that particular scene felt rather bizarre. After this whole long story and a season-long insistence on his hatred of the Stokes, he cuts Tilda loose, burns up Mariah's apartment... and just leaves? And apparently Mariah is tied down to a chair far enough from the fire, but the fire spread fast enough to burn down the building but not reach Mariah, who's like three meters away? And also Luke somehow reaches that scene in time to do a dramatic rescue, but Tilda can't find a knife or something to cut her mom out? That whole sequence was genuinely pretty badly shown, honestly, and in genuine contrast to Bushmaster's economical ruthlessness throughout this season.  

Bushmaster's big epic speech about his backstory is... well, it's well-told, at least. The backstory honestly feels like a retread of the Diamondback/Luke "your family screwed over my family", only with gang wars thrown in. But the dramatic reveal is sort of lost its luster with me basically already figuring out Bushmaster's big beef with Mariah (the Stokes' ancestors killed Bushmaster's parents in a intricate gang war). Again, Mustafa Shakir is terrific and really sells his two big scenes in this episode -- the rant to Mariah and another conversation about vengeance with Uncle Anansi, but Bushmaster's fast settling into the same problem of kind of being static and not leading to a big buildup. 

But hey, people die his episode! And the most regrettable death is definitely poor, poor Piranha Jones. Piranha's final lines in the show is him telling Bushmaster that Luke Cage's never going to lose to him, so even though he's technically a bad guy, I really do like the sheer amount of charm Piranha has, and just how much he's a Luke fanboy. It's really a shame that the episode moving from episode 6's "okay, Piranha is safe, now time to deal with Bushmaster" to how we open here with Piranha being captured offscreen, having a brief scene and getting killed. I felt the pacing is absolutely off there. Having his head bobbing around in a piranha tank is absolutely grisly, though. (Wonder where all that ruthlessness went when Bushmaster had to deal with Mariah?)

Meanwhile, Shades and Comanche had this storyline going on about how Shades basically figured out Comanche was the traitor from the very beginning of the episode when Ridenhour told Mariah about something that only Shades (and by proxy Comanche) would know about. It makes the whole bit about the conversation between the two of them to be a lot less scary and more just waiting for the shoe to drop, and it dropped in a confrontation where Comanche shoots Ridenhour dead to protect his cover (because he clearly values Shades more than immunity), but then Shades kills Comanche for betraying him... while also saying he loves him? The relationship between the two is nice and sweet, and I guess I can sort of comprehend why Shades kills Comanche on an intellectual level -- he loves Mariah and the thrill of a life of crime more -- but the way the actual scenes are framed and built up to, especially with the lack of follow up on their past apparently-romantic relationship made the whole thing feel pretty sudden and aborted. RIP Comanche, you were fun while you were around. Ridenhour... a bit less so. 

Overall, though, definitely a very rocky episode. A lot of individually strong scenes that don't necessary have the oomph it requires thanks to bad pacing, and the Shades/Comanche and Bushmaster/Mariah confrontation genuinely felt like they lost their bite due to some rather odd sequencing of events. Overall it's still fun to watch, but left me scratching my head a couple of times. 

Luke Cage S02E06 Review: Bushmaster Used Stun Spore!

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 6: The Basement

This is a bit of an interesting episode, for sure. I'll try to be a bit faster and more succinct with these Netflix episode reviews and not ramble a bit too much because, again, these are meant to be binge-watched, and doesn't really lend itself particularly well to episode-by-episode reviews like this. 

We get a couple of characters sort of sequestered from the others, reacting to the huge upset that Bushmaster set into motion at the end of the previous episode. We've got Luke Cage and Piranha just hanging around in some random shack hiding from Bushmaster's gangster cabs, with the two of them talking and discussing pretty interestingly about just how Luke Cage should behave... and don't get me wrong, Piranha Jones is played by the extremely charismatic Chaz Lamar Shepherd and practically every line out of his mouth is gloriously funny, but once more and honestly quite apropos of nothing, the conversation goes to Piranha's dad, and then to Luke's dad... and then Piranha, like Claire, decides that Luke really needs to go to his dad and properly reunite and it's just so bizarrely set up. 

After a pretty damn badass action scene against a bunch of Mariah's goons (to quote Piranha, "god damn!") in the middle of the episode, Luke ends the episode stashing Piranha in his father's church, having a brief and civil conversation with Daddy Lucas, before demanding a one-on-one match with Bushmaster. It's a badass Western-side showdown on top of a bridge, and we get a fun action scene... but Bushmaster ends up pulling out some paralytic dust that allows him to beat down Luke. 

Meanwhile, Shades and Comanche get a surprisingly neat scene as the two of them sit and stake out Pop's Barbershop, and the two end up talking to each other, with the surprising and genuinely subtle revelation that apparently Shades and Comanche were romantically involved while in the prison -- something that Shades viewed as it being a thing that happened in the prison out of needs, while Comanche is fairly more serious about it. It took me a while to actually "get" what they're talking about, though, because when the conversation went and hinted about the things they did in prison, I legitimately thought they were talking about being Warden Rackham's henchmen in getting other people to fight in the prison's Fight Club. It's a neat reveal that frames a lot of Comanche's interaction with Shades in a new light, for sure, with a decent bit of buildup. No real complaints, other than the honestly pretty vague reveal that I didn't actually catch until after the episode ended. 

Comanche's advice about Mariah is finally settling into Shades, though, who ends up confronting Mariah near the end of the episode, telling her that she's basically kinda getting soft? Mariah herself sort of juts lets herself gets tossed from one end to the other as she gets increasingly frayed, from the faceoff with the police commissioner (her high school sweetheart, apparently) to her rant about all her loved ones leaving her, to the final talk with Shades where Shades basically tells her to stop moping and start being a badass. It's an interesting situation for sure, although this episode is mostly just setup for what's to come next.

Misty Knight gets a neat storyline where she finally quits her job. Interestingly, Inspector Douche is actually reasonable about this, allowing Misty's attempt at planting evidence to slide when she admits it, but Misty feels so terrible about it that she resigns anyway because she knows her moral code's been all over the place thanks to that moment of vulnerability. It's neat, I suppose. 

Prior to his fight with Luke, Bushmaster certainly has an interesting conversation. When the news of the heads stuck on a pike is televised, Bushmaster's uncle, Anansi, condemns the action as savagery and shameful, knowing full well his nephew is behind it. This leads to a surprisingly emotional confrontation between Bushmaster and Anansi when the shop's closed, with Anansi being absolutely furious -- he doesn't care and even condones that Bushmaster wants to have vengeance against the Stokes family, but he doesn't have to use barbaric savagery to do this. Bushmaster's restraint and clear love for his uncle is also neat here, and I was legitimately worried for a "villain kills a loved one that questions him to show how evil he is" trope to happen here. 

Overall, it's... it's an okay episode,  I suppose, with some great performances from Comanche, Shades, Bushmaster, Anansi and Piranha, but ultimately this episode ends up feeling disjointed with the plotlines sort of just all over the place without any real focus, and with the power dynamic between Bushmaster and Mariah being rather vague -- so it makes Luke weirdly going back and forth on which villain he has to confront next. Not a bad episode, but not a stellar one either. 

Luke Cage S02E05 Review: Heroes For Hire

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 5: All Souled Out

Well, howsabout that ending, huh? This entire episode features a suspicious lack of Bushmaster other than briefly being mentioned by Luke Cage when he's questioning people, and that ending more than makes up for it. It straight-up goes into horror when Bushmaster's plans (at least I assume it's Bushmaster's plans) apparently went off smoothly off-screen when, simultaneously, Misty Knight discovers Cockroach's decapitated corpse, Mariah Dillard opens her Family First clinic to find a whole lot of severed heads strung up like a morbid display, while Bushmaster's minions try to abduct poor Piranha Jones and if Luke and Shades hadn't been around, he'd probably end up with the same fate. 

That's actually a pretty damn skillful move of less-is-more, as I'd imagine that a longer episode of showing Bushmaster cutting away at these three people would be simply more graphic than the subtle way of how Shades is complaining that "Ray Ray" never shows up and Comanche just assumes he's under the police payroll, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that Mark Higgins is merely pissed at the way Mariah blackmailed him in the previous episode instead of, well, straight-up being reduced to a head. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the episode is pretty neat, too, exploring with the themes of having to make deals with the devil and embrace darker parts of themselves to succeed in life. Mariah Dillard is perhaps slightly reverse to this, although she does give this big speech justifying making money off of guns and blackmail and it's all right now that she's going to go legit and do something productive to the society. Yes, it's also Mariah just trying to build up a reputation, but it's hard not to sympathize with Mariah's point of view about how at least she's trying to be clean. She ultimately loses the support of Tilda, though, and Shades seem not quite content with what's going on, even asking to buy out Harlem's Paradise from her... if nothing else, to get Mariah to get out of town because Shades can sense that something's not quite right. Good thing for him that the heads that ended up rolling wasn't his or Mariah's, but blood has been spilled. 

Misty Knight's story is also likewise detached and self-contained, but easily the strongest Misty has been in this season. As she struggles with the new mechanical arm that Danny Rand fixed up for her (yay!) she also starts to remember scenes in the past that might've shown that Scarfe might not be such a nice mentor after all. The scene where he 'magically' discovers an incriminating gun, the little 'joke' he makes to gauge if Misty would plant evidence (that gauging scene was actually amazingly subtly acted, and if we didn't know Scarfe was corrupt it'd easily fly over our heads)... and yes, Misty is a good policewoman and wants to put away the abusive shithead Cockroach for good, but in the eyes of Cockroach's wife? Misty as a police officer can't do jack shit, and she ends up going to a pretty low point and a dark place, betraying her own code to plant evidence to frame Cockroach and land the fucker back in jail... except she can't actually do that, because Cockroach is dead. God damn, show! 

Meanwhile, Luke is being sued by Cockroach, and while he seeks the aid of everyone's favourite lawyer buddy Foggy Nelson (yay Foggy!), the amount of $100,000 is a pretty big sum to pay especially for someone who's crashing in Pops' old barbershop, and we get a pretty hilarious montage of dudes that rejected Luke's offers or are just offering plain insane deals (one dude wants him to FIGHT A SHARK and I must admit I'm disappointed we didn't get to see that). Foggy and Luke ends up taking up Piranha's deal where Luke ends up showing up as a celebrity star in Piranha's party. Also, yay Piranha, who is immensely entertaining in his scenery-chewing moments. 

And, of course, poor, poor Luke ends up being treated as a prop. There is that one nice girl who is genuinely a fan, but between Piranha's little Luke Cage trophy wall and the fact that he sort of just wants Luke to be there as some sort of a fun "lookit this fancy new thing I got" and just show off that he can shoot the bulletproof man ends up absolutely demeaning. But then he ends up showing that he can still be a hero, beating up the assassins coming to abduct Piranha in a pretty badass scene (Shades helped in a neat bit of hero-villain team-up) and then while interrogating Piranha about Bushmaster... and then Luke decides to drop the line of "you wanna hire this hero?", kind of setting up the mission statement of his comic-book title.

Overall, though, a pretty dang good episode, with the obvious spotlight of dragging Luke and Misty to some pretty low points before offering them a chance to redeem themselves, while simultaneously toppling Mariah from her tower of power, and making great use of hiding Bushmaster from the spotlight to suddenly show his deeds off in a pretty horrifying way. Good episode. 

Luke Cage S02E04 Review: Bushmaster Backflip

Marvel's Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 4: I Get Physical 

This episode isn't quite as strong as the previous entries. Last episode ended in a huge emotional confrontation which led to a pretty damn awesome cliffhanger. And the follow-up is pretty neat as Bushmaster actually shows off that he's not just some nameless crime boss in town, but actually straight-up does a badass backflip kick to lay Luke Cage down on his ass straight in front of everyone -- even Luke's self-appointed chronicler, recurring character D.W. And a not insignificant portion of this episode is spent showing the reaction people have to Luke getting laid down on his ass by Bushmaster, the new badass in town. And the delusion that Luke has had about him being invulnerable has been utterly shattered.

And this episode sort of drives it home -- it's kinda sorta meant to be like a dark mirror to the first episode in a message of "popularity is fleeting" sort of way. Luke's biggest fan DW sells DVD's of Luke getting his ass laid down by the Bushmaster. Claire ends up moving out, leaving her apartment and not picking up his calls -- even if Luke wants some actual medical aid instead of "coffee" this time around. It's a bit unfortunate, of course, but at the same time it also builds up to the sheer life-shattering situation Luke's found himself in. Hell, even the random civilians seen here (Claire's land-lady and the random dude that serves Luke at the end of the episode) are noticeably colder to Luke compared to everyone else in the first couple of episodes. And even the people that don't desert Luke completely -- like good old Bobby Fish -- are taken away from him. 

In Bobby's case, he has to go to San Diego because his daughter has a kidney problem and he's the only donor available... and I so hope this isn't a "kill the nice old man" situation. Bobby's great and that whole speech about him feeling like a hero is a great tearjerker moment. Honestly, that scene is genuinely pretty powerful, with two very great actors playing off each other well. 

Meanwhile, Misty Knight, seeing that no one at work is really going to give her any sort of meaningful help and is either too intent on leaving Luke Cage's assault unmolested out of spite, or telling Misty to piss off out of spite. Misty ends up helping Luke out in her own "support the vigilante... legally" way, eventually leading to the two of them stumbling upon Nigel's bloody headless corpse. We also have the rather awkward and honestly too-soon scenes of Luke implying that he wants to crash in Misty's home, with a rather subtle undertext of finding a quick rebound. Thankfully Luke doesn't push it and Misty tells Luke to get his bag out of her car so he does't have an excuse to come by tonight. 

Misty, meanwhile, ends up getting a robotic Winter Soldier esque arm from Danny Rand! Danny does something right, yay! She also gets a rather intro-dumpy scene where she interrogates one of Bushmaster's old gang buddies (who I don't think is a character we've seen before) who tells Misty of Bushmaster's motivations, about the man on top of the hill and the man living at the bottom of the hill. Clearly, Bushmaster sees Mariah Stokes as the woman on top of the hill, and wants to come up and take what is his. 

Luke ends up finding some sort of healing-slash-solace from Tilda, which... does everyone just happen to walk into Tilda's herb shop? The scene was done well, and there's certainly chemistry between the characters, but I really felt that this was a bit of a contrived coincidence. Also a coincidence -- Tilda randomly figuring out the weird ritual that Bushmaster was doing with the herbs he bought. Unless there's far, far more to Tilda than we initially expected? 

Meanwhile, after the beatdown he delivers to Luke Cage, Bushmaster's big scene in this episode has him come face-to-face with Mariah, and the confrontation was... not quite friendly. It doesn't end with anyone punched in the face, but Bushmsater makes it clear that he's apparently the descendant of a family that constructed Harlem (or the Harlem's Paradise club, anyway) but apparently his ancestors were denied their fair share or something along those lines? Not the most complex of motivations and barely explains Bushmaster's obsession with his birthright... but sufficient enough to whet our appetite at this fourth episode, I suppose. Bushmaster's enjoying an increased amount of popularity at the Jamaican restaurant Gwen's, with some great bonding scenes with his uncle and aunt. 

It's a bit of a shame, then, to see Mariah sort of self-destructing. The parallel with Luke's own story, again, is present. She ends up alienating everyone around her who tries to give her advice. It's hard to be sympathetic to her when she keeps dismissing poor, poor Comanche as a thug throughout the first couple of episodes. It's somewhat forgiveable, I suppose, when Comanche was just speaking out of turn, but this episode has Comanche come to Mariah and talking to her about how you must understand scams and that Mariah's being scammed by Piranha Jones, she just straight-up refuses to listen to Comanche and ends up causing him to abandon his post in the climax of the episode. Bushmaster, thankfully, didn't come with the figurative machete to cut off Mariah's head, but who can blame Comanche for deserting Mariah?

And then we get the revelation that Comanche was actually working for the police as an informant, adding a whole new wrinkle to the Comanche/Shades dynamic.

Shades himself, meanwhile, also finds himself alienated by Mariah. Perhaps not quite as much as Comanche or Bushmaster (there's really no reason for Mariah to be an ass to Bushmaster), but she's way too eager to just mollify and control Shades with promises of how she's in control and sensual favours. The problem is, just like Claire Temple, Shades isn't a dumb person and is an independent person in his own right. Shades hasn't quite made his move just yet, content to sit back and observe Bushmaster as he goes back to his restaurant, but it's definitely interesting to see how this plays out.

Luke Cage S02E03 Review: Usain Bolt

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 3: Wig Out

The third episode of Luke Cage's second season is another episode that feels more like a "things happen, things escalate", and I don't think it's quite as good as the first two episode... right up until the final scene. Sure, it's kind of a hackneyed trope in a superhero story to have a superhero and their love interest go into a shouting match and then noncommittally walk away from each other while being sad to form a cliffhanger. But the way that this was set up, and the history we have for Claire Temple that significantly elevates her beyond a mere civilian love interest makes that sequence very powerful. I'm not sure if I honestly buy into the whole "Claire really wants Luke to talk to his dad" thing, but the whole conversation about how Claire wants Luke to not brutalize people, while Luke wants Claire to accept him for who he is... that's a gloriously scripted conversation that makes both Luke and Claire's points really well-showcased to us.

Luke wants to grow as a human, he wants to find a place where he's comfortable with himself... but how much of it is him finding himself, and how much of it is him buying into the hype he's built around himself? After all, as Reverend James Lucas is happy to remind us, Luke Cage is merely just a man. Meanwhile, Claire does have a fair bit of points going on -- as much as Luke's arguments make sense, they did come partially from a place of selfishness and machismo, and she does have a point about brutalizing someone in front of their kid. Throw in some neat race/gender commentary into the whole deal very organically, and honestly that final scene made for easily one of the stronger moments in Netflix's superhero shows. And when Luke finally does snap (and while Claire have a point, maybe don't pull the "you'll be like your dad" card) the deafening sequence of punches Luke leaves in Claire's wall is pretty damn horrifying. Great job on this scene.

The rest of the episode... is a bit more unstable, but by and by the strong moments of this episode really end up overshadowing the weaker parts. Plus, y'know, that pretty great Luke/Claire scene. 

I'm not quite as enamoured with Mariah's storyline in this episode. Afre Woodard is as entertaining as ever, but even then this episode honestly felt rather haphazard as it bounces around showing Mariah bullshitting people with a speech, trying to reconnect to her daughter, having some weird friction with Shades who's jealous that Mariah's daughter is getting all of her attention... it's a bit weirdly paced, I think. Her intimidation scene with Mark Higgins is pretty neat, and the sycophantic devil-may-care Piranha is just fun. Shades is also just kinda there, lurking in the shadows and basically got all his problem solved when he walked up to the Yardies and found Bushmaster ready to deal and give him the money owed to Mariah. I dunno. The actors were absolutely fine, but the pacing just felt off, like they felt the need to burn through all these scenes as quickly as possible.

Bushmaster is pretty fun, though, finally meeting Shades in this episode -- albeit as a business partner, so we don't get any real connection between the two. Luke Cage, on the other hand, goes through some investigation of his own to try and find the mysterious new leader of the Yardies, and in the process the Jamaican community gives Luke shit for "disrespecting Usain Bolt", something that I'm definitely okay if they're using this as a running gag. That scene in the Jamaican restaurant is also a great way at differentiating Luke's community and Bushmaster's community, and plays into the people's hero title that Bushmaster seems keen on ripping from Luke.

Luke challenging Bushmaster in his own yard, and basically no-selling his jumping martial artists, machienguns and grenades is pretty neat, but at the same time I felt that the scene was paced weirdly with it ending in Luke just... walking away? That honestly made a lot of the cat-and-mouse game Luke did with the random goon kind of pointless, yeah? Bushmaster gets to monologue a fair bit about taking over Harlem, but as great as Shakir's performance is, it's also a bit jumbled just what he's trying to do beyond vaguely playing all sides and whacking Luke Cage in the head as the second cliffhanger of this episode. At the very least, we know Bushmaster's buddy has sent Stephanie-no-Billie to infiltrate Mariah's organization to train as a honey-trap information gatherer, which is a neat plot twist... although not an un-obvious one considering Stephanie-no-Billie gets a fair bit of weirdly standalone scenes that's clearly there to make her stnad out.

This episode, though, gives us a Misty/Colleen team-up, where Colleen Wing helps Misty through her confusion and anger through a session in a boxing ring, which is just glorious! Simone Missick and Jessica Henwick are really fun actresses and they play off each other so well. Misty beating up a creep in a bar while Colleen just sits back and enjoys the proverbial fireworks is just pretty dang fun, and at the end of the day the two of them walk away as buddies, with Misty's confidence restored. It's a great way to make use of a guest star, and Colleen is easily the best character from Iron Fist (though admittedly the bar isn't high), so seeing her back here without the horrible script of that particular series is a godsend. Misty isn't a slouch either as she works through the emotions when she was told point-blank that, yes, the other cops straight-up wish she wasn't around and as far as Commissioner Douchebag is concerned the only reason she is still a cop is thanks to the PR backlash that could come from firing a heroic one-handed cop.

Overall, there are some weaker parts of the episode in the whole Luke-Cage-plays-detective storyline, and doesn't quite make the gangster-drama bits work quite as well... but the episode more than makes up for it with its very strong character moments. 

Luke Cage S02E02 Review: Everything Burn Down

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 2: Straighten It Out

The second episode of Luke Cage's second season is still strong, although this episode does feel more like a "things happen" episode, which these Netflix shows tend to be able to get away with thanks to their whole deal about viewers being able to view an entire season in one go. It continues the previous episode's slower pace as we continue to build up the action, but I defintiely am in favour of taking the time to focus on the characters' motivations and personality. 

One of the bigger speech moments in this episode is Claire trying to tell Luke to reconnect with his dad, because Claire herself suffers from a significant amount of regret for not being able to make up with her own father before her father's death, but at the same time it does feel rather pushy and repetitive to hear Claire say the same thing a couple of times in the same episode, and this is a plot thread that could easily be exhausting if repeated ad nauseam throughout this season. And while I don't agree with Claire's breach of privacy in trying to force Luke to deal with his dad NOW, I do appreciate Claire trying to keep Luke human.

Because after the events of the previous episode, as badass as it is, Luke's starting to finally cash in on a god complex. This isn't something quite as world-shaking as, say, Superman deciding to be mankind's saviour or Iron Man deciding to take the policies of the world into his own hands. No, Luke Cage is basically sold on his own hype and his invulnerability that he starts actively showing off. No, he's not being a huge showman about it in the way that the Tony Starks of the world would, but he definitely ends up garnering attention from the ongoing joke of the Harlem Hero App and that showcase of his superhuman strength, speed and endurance in the middle of town. This leads to him having a pretty big head so that when he confronts Cockroach and his (honestly pretty badass) six-barreled shotgun, he was blindsided while shit-talking and gets shot out of the window and dislocating his arm.

And after a bit of an argument with Claire, he ends up closing the episode by beating up Cockroach in front of his wife and kid. Did Cockroach deserve it? Absolutely, especially since the reason Luke arrives in the apartment is because the little old lady neighbour decided to call Luke when Cockroach's beating his wife and kid. And don't get me wrong -- it's still a pretty damn badass scene to see Luke Cage bursting in to stop Cockroach before the fucker can beat up his kid. But the way the proceeding beatdown is framed is definitely done in a "what have I done?" way. We'll see if this affects Luke's popularity in Harlem. 

Speaking of which, while it would be easy to dismiss Claire's ranting about invulnerability as that of a worried girlfriend character in a superhero show, Claire does name-drop Matt/Daredevil, who, as far as the cast knew, died in Defenders and Daredevil was a man who's convinced of his invulnerability in the same way that Luke died. Nice way of the show to make use of that continuity, for sure. 

Meanwhile, poor Misty Knight definitely isn't doing well in the department. Good ol' Bailey is still on her side, but everyone else either treats her with pity or, in officer Nandi Tyler's case, with outright derision for what she perceives as Misty trying to play up the sympathy marks. We get to see Misty cut out of investigations, and that scene where she shows off her stump to everyone is definitely a well-earned one. Poor Misty. To make things worse, she even has to see Arturo Rey walk out of the police department when the lawyers come (featuring the return of "Big Ben" Donovan, Kingpin's prison buddy from Daredevil season two).

Speaking of antagonists, one of the biggest complaints about last season's big bad, Diamondback, was the lack of proper backstory and the fact that beyond his (admittedly entertaining) scenery-chewing bluster, there's not much to Diamondback as a person. Especially when compared to other villains in Luke Cage like Cottomouth and Mariah Dillard, both of whom have a relatively large amount of character work put in. I have a feeling that they're trying to do the same for Bushmaster by having him be a presence in the show from episode one. This time around, we get to see Bushmaster as he wanders around Harlem, meeting with people from the Jamaican community (in a restaurant apparently named after his own mother) and talking to kids to get a sense of what this "Luke Cage" fellow is. It's clear that Bushmaster stands opposed to Mariah Stokes, and that he wants to take the fight to Mariah... but only to take Harlem for himself, and he despises the fact that Luke Cage has its heart. Also, I absolutely love the offended expressions on everyone in the Jamaican restaurant when the TV reporter says Luke Cage is faster than Usain Bolt. 

We also get to see the source of Bushmaster's maybe-mystical, maybe-mundane superpowers. He's using some nightshade to perform an Obeah ritual, which is why he's apparently able to withstand bullet wounds. This brings Bushmaster into the proximity of Mariah Dillard's daughter, Tillda, who runs a herbal drug store, and who Mariah tries to reach out to for some good PR. We're still in the mysterious-villain stage with Bushmaster, though at least we do get a somewhat definite goal (take over Harlem -- not just the streets, but also its heart) and a great actor. So yeah!

Meanwhile, while Bushmaster is taking his time in scoping Harlem out, the other villains are not quite so happy to take things slow. Mariah is kind of desperate to regain her power (although she draws the line at selling the ever-so-valuable painting Cornell was so fond of) while at the same time distancing herself from the crimes that consumed her family. There's the whole reconnecting with her daughter thing going on, of course, which Alfre Woodard portrays amazingly well. The obvious parallels of Mariah reconnecting with her daughter and James Lucas trying to connect with Luke isn't lost on me, but I do appreciate the show from resisting the urge to have the Luke/James and Mariah/Tilda scenes shot back to back or anything. 

Shades and Comanche are now this duo of bros and I absolutely love their dynamic more than I should. Last episode established how Comanche is Shades's good buddy, and this episode shows that while also keeping Comanche as this confused, beleaguered outsider to Mariah and Shades's very close relationship. And apparently Shades is in love enough to straight-up murder Arturo Rey for insulting Mariah one time too many. It's interesting how a good chunk of this episode and the previous one involves setting up Arturo as this character whose gun deal will set Mariah up for life, and in the space of a single episode the poor dude ends up being freed from jail and subsequently shot in the head by Shades.

Tilda's arrival at Mariah's doorstep near the end of the episode is interesting because I'm not sure if it's motivated by her fear of Bushmaster or out of some genuine desire to reconnect, but as Comanche points out, Tilda did just "take his seat". Whether this would lead to the pairing of Shades and Mariah to fray, or if Shades already did it by his emotion-driven murder of Arturo remains to be seen. Overall, another fun episode of Luke Cage for sure. It might not aim for some epic overreaching storyline, but I think that's a huge part of Luke Cage's appeal -- its simple storylines are bolstered and empowered by very strong performances and character writing.  

Luke Cage S02E01 Review: The Rock

Luke Cage, Season 2, Episode 1: Soul Brother #1

Well, we're back with the second season of Luke Cage! The first season of Luke Cage was certainly entertaining, but it was plagued with a fair amount of pacing and storytelling problems, in particular swapping out villains around halfway through. And we'll see if season two of Luke Cage ends up being better, yeah? If Jessica Jones and Daredevil sophomore seasons of these Netflix shows tend to have a slight dip in pacing and storytelling quality.

And this first episode of the second season is a neat little re-affirmation of the setting as we move back to Harlem after Luke's little crossover stint in Defenders. Everything's all good for Luke Cage. He's going around beating up drug dealers in a very fun first scene, he's still in a relationship with Claire Temple, Misty Knight's one arm short but making her way back into the police department, and we even get the return of Bobby Fish! Most interestingly, though, is that Luke Cage has reclaimed his status as a folk hero, and everyone is just totally in love with Luke Cage as this local celebrity that everyone takes selfies with and posts on social media. There's even a "Harlem Hero App" that helps fans to look for where Luke Cage is. And a good portion of this episode has Luke and Bobby discuss about just what Luke should do, especially since all this vigilante stuff isn't paying the bills. (And I know Heroes for Hire is a thing in the comics, so)

And there's a definite sense of Luke Cage settling into his role as Harlem's local hero, because he exudes this confident-yet-humble swagger throughout his scenes with anyone that's not in his immediate circle of close confidants. He's enjoying the popularity without basking in the glory like, say, Tony Stark, without shying away from it like Steve Rogers. Hell, Pop's Barbershop has been turned into a funky little gift shop, even, and there's a neat little bit with Luke wearing charity-sponsored T-Shirts when he goes and busts some goons. 

And he's just riding a high throughout this episode. Hell, even last season's big threat, the Judas Bullet, ends up actually doing absolutely jack shit to Luke and apparently his super-invulnerability has grown even stronger. His badass walk into the police department to just drop the head of a drug operation, and then walk straight into Mariah Dillard's office and threaten her to her face that "if you so much as speak Claire Temple's name" that no force in the world can stop Luke from killing her. Bad. Ass. 

Honestly, the only thing that gets under Luke's invulnerable skin in this episode is the return of Reverend James Lucas, Luke's shitty excuse of a dad, who we briefly glimpse in the first season as the indirect cause between the whole Luke Cage/Willis Striker deal. Played by the excellent Reg E. Cathey (who unfortunately passed away earlier this year), James Lucas's monologue opens the episode excellently as he talks smack about how one man cannot change everything in a community, but later on reaches out to Luke. Luke points out that James is a shitty father who refuses to even visit him in Seagate Prison and returned all his letters, but now that Luke's a famous superhero he thinks he can just walk in and 'cash in' on Luke's popularity? On the other hand, as horrible as James's attitude towards Luke is, it's interesting to see just how much James Lucas's attempt to reach out to Luke is out of genuine love and the man's just too accustomed to being an uber-controlling patriarchal figure to get past it, or if it's motivated by guilt or a desire for fame. I dunno. Maybe I'm superimposing Trish's mom from Jessica Jones here. 

Misty isn't faring so well, and that's not just because she's an arm short. We get to learn that she's been accepted back into the police department, but thanks to Scarfe being a corrupt cop in the first season, a lot of his old arrests have bounced -- including one who taunts Misty in front of her own apartment. There's a neat running theme in this episode where Misty ends up being sort of treated as this object of pity by everyone around her, even her own commanding officer (who I think is a new character?) and basically everyone other than Luke. 

Meanwhile, the villains that were quite literally handwaved aside in Defenders have returned, with Mariah Stokes-Dillard and Shades returning to town after being 'in the wind' between the first season of Luke Cage and Defenders. And while she's still clearly in a position of power, Mariah is also apparently trying to go legit. Oh, and their romantic relationship is definitely in full display here, as much as the age gap might disturb or catch waiters and other characters off-guard. It's... interesting, to say the least, to see this relationship between a younger man and an older woman. And their relationship's pretty positive, too, it seems!

There's also a fair bit of new players that this episode sort of intro-dumps onto us, although I would say that it's an actually great introdump. The episode's focus is definitely on showing how Luke, Claire, Misty, Mariah and Shades are after the brief time-skip, and having some neat character moments, and the new gangsters and baddies are worked in pretty seamlessly. Among the new players we get to hear being mentioned include Arturo "El Tescero" Rey III, who's apparently successor to season one minor antagonist Domingo Colon, who's the mastermind behind the whole drug sales on the street and gets quickly taken down by Luke. The other big player, it seems, is the hilarious "Cockroach" Hamilton, the dude that was freed from jail after the whole Scarfe deal and gets some of the best lines in this episode. We also get to briefly meet a dude called "Piranha" Jones, a business partner and possible criminal that Mariah wants to deal with. Oh, and we get a brief scene where Shades meets up with his old prison buddy Comanche (who we very briefly see in the prison flashback episode from Luke Cage), and there's a neat bit of bro-ing out between the two.

Basically, Cockroach, Arturo and some dude called Nigel are trying to sort of buy into Mariah's organization. But Nigel, head of a mainly-Jamaican organization, ends up being supplanted by a literal new-comer, who seems to be shaping up as the main antagonist for the season. Bushmaster, played by Mustafa Shakir, is introduced as a brand-new player who seems to be very keen on reclaiming Harlem because it's his "birthright", and speaks in a very glorious Jamaican accent. Bushmaster confronts Nigel, and after a brief talk about Luke Cage, shows off some badass martial arts moves, kills Nigel and a couple of his bodyguards before showing off that he, too, is impervious to bullets -- although they are lodged in his skin instead of bounce off. It's interesting, and while slightly basic, is a badass introduction to this season's big threat to topple Luke's newfound confidence.

Speaking of which, because I can't find anywhere to fit this little detail in, I liked the return of Sugar and his scene with Luke, as well as the little subversion of Luke's folk hero status when Sugar ends up actually luring him into a trap. Overall, definitely a fun return to these characters, a very welcome new villain in Bushmaster and a pretty well-done season premiere!