Spoilers Luke Cage - Netflix (Season 1)

I was reading elsewhere that Turk is from the Daredevil series but I dont remember him from there. I thought he was named Turk because he was playing chess along with Bobby Fish(er). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

 

I wonder how The Defenders will be shoehorned in with so many plot points dangling from Luke Cage and the other shows. I've heard about the contract thing but The Defenders feels like something that should wait.

 

It's also known as the Battle of New York.

Which is kind of funny because he features in Daredevil a lot more than in Luke Cage. He's easy to spot, he looks like a smacked-out version of Rhodey.

Or the threads can wait...I tend to think a lot of them will actually help rather than hinder, such as Matt's friends being out on their own so we don't necessarily have to worry about them 'til DD season 3.

 

Finished the whole season and I agree Netflix did it again. It's very hard to rank these at this point because each one has its own different strengths and weaknesses, but I think I generally agree this one is about equal to DD season 1, and just behind Jessica Jones.

I agree Diamondback turned out to be a weaker villain by himself, but I think he had a lot of great stuff to do and I really liked the whole criminal environment going on with lots of different characters with different agendas, rather than 1 guy running everything. The family relationships going on with Cottonmouth, Mariah, Shades, Zip and Diamondback were kind of fascinating. I really loved the way the show went more realistic with the criminals (in a way I've almost never seen before) by showcasing the common truth that criminals often aren't that smart and make lots of mistakes, but doing so without ever undercutting how incredibly dangerous they can be. I also found it interesting how much of a running theme it was to see conflicts between bosses and underlings.

I was glad to see I was right that Luke has some sort of healing ability going on - that makes large parts of the show much more believable. Unfortunately, I do think the whole acid bath sequence was rather poorly handled in comparison to the rest of the show. It almost felt like the writers couldn't make up their mind about whether they were trying to recreate the original experiment (which was supposed to heal people) or break down Luke's super-skin (which is basically the opposite of healing people). The fact that recreating the original experiment was even mentioned is actually kind of weird to start with, because there's no logical reason to do that. And then they put so much stress on his body that he dies, Claire's quick thinking brings him back and... they just let him stay submerged for like a full 30 seconds while they calmly discuss what to try next. What? That whole sequence needed serious work. But the doctor was at least a funny character. When the scene came up at the end showing him with Diamondback in his custody my wife actually shouted at the screen 'What kind of messed up world is this?!'

I also agree that this show had a lot of great characters in it. The cops were great, the criminals were great, the civilians were great. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Claire's part was bigger than it was in Daredevil. I actually grew interested in Zip before he died, which I wouldn't have thought possible at first glance. Even Turk felt like he'd been elevated as a character to a much more entertaining level. Luke Cage is possibly one of the best ensemble shows ever.

Another interesting thing was the fact that this one tied into the wider mcu not just incidentally but also thematically. Luke Cage was actually a more in depth exploration of vigilantism and the Sokovia Accord mentality than Civil War was. And the fact that Diamondback's power came directly from alien technology left behind from the Avengers was pretty cool. Although that suit of his could've used a bit more work.

Overall I was by far the most impressed by how respectfully, topically and powerfully they handled the whole thing. Luke Cage is, after all, the first black superhero. I'm not necessarily in the best position to judge, but I thought they handled him wonderfully. I especially loved the convenience store scene and 'Bulletproof love'. I'll be really curious to see what the wider public reception of the show is, especially in the current climate.

Breaking out of jail, especially violently, is a crime in and of itself. Depending on the circumstances, a wrongfully convicted person probably would get away with time served if for no other reason than that it's very bad press for the state to be all hard nosed about a case which they blatantly screwed up, but legally speaking they wouldn't necessarily be obligated to let it go.

 

Turk was in the very first scene of the first season, selling girls as slaves to the Russians. He sold the defective gun to the assassin from the bowling alley. He sold out the Russians to Fisk. He was shown to be arrested by the FBI in the finale.

He only appeared in the first and last episodes of season 2. Again, he was in the first scene. DD broke up his weapons deal and threw his car keys into the river, while Turk taunted that he would be out in a month anyway. In the finale, he was the fellow hostage that Karen befriended that was wearing the ankle alarm.

 

I get the impression that's just what New Yorkers call it. To everyone else on the planet it was "The Battle of New York".

 

I agree. It was very sloppy. To the point where they almost completely ignored the second wound. Not planning on taking that shrapnel out, or did it off screen while we weren't watching?

 

Yeah. I assumed they did it off camera, but that was also a little jarring.

 

The Defenders might not just be about the heroes joining forces, we gotta figure out how or why their opponents (the villains) from each show follow through separately or together, unless they're needed to combat an entirely new threat?

 

I agree the whole acid bath sequencing was poorly handled. Definitely felt like a case of trying to get from point A to point B without thinking too hard how to get there. And overlooking the second wound really annoyed me.

I know this is a superhero show, but the science throughout the whole thing was very iffy.

"We need saline!"

*Claire throws in random amount of salt*

Yeah...that's how chemistry works.

 

finished the series. luke cage himself was fairly bland, the other characters really made up for it. the combination of cottonmouth dying and a less interesting replacement badguy who just happens to be lukes brother made the second half of the season a bit meh. and his disco combat suit was awful. (these shows don't do costumes very well.)

i'd say not as good as jessica jones or daredevil s1, probably better than dd s2.

and i'm glad these shows aren't getting contaminated with anything from that terrible agents of shield show.

 

I don't know that "9/11" is any more of a proper name.

 

^ Actually, I think it is.

As for the second wound, I was also wondering why they didn't do anything about that. Did the bullet pass through or something? I didn't see an opportunity for anything to happen off screen..

 

I'm pretty sure the shot of Claire removing shrapnel was from the shoulder wound, and since Claire's original diagnosis about the shrapnel happened before he got that, we know that the gut wound definitely had shrapnel, too. Either way, the show's explanation was that once the shrapnel was removed his body healed itself, so the fact that neither wound healed on its own should be pretty much proof that neither bullet passed straight through.

 

Great Scott!! An Easter Egg!!

http://io9.gizmodo.com/luke-cage-easter-egg-brings-back-to-the-future-into-mar-1787334095

 

^If that's about the newspaper sidebar story, I actually managed to spot that one! Normally those things fly right under my nose but somehow that one jumped out at me. Might have something to do with happening to catch the movies on TV just the other day

 

Just finished Luke Cage.

Netflix Marvel shows are starting to outshine the movies for me to be honest. I love the movies but they're starting to get a little stale and formulaic to me.. a one third mix of big SFX battles/one third comedy/one third character drama seems to be the going formula for quite a while now and i miss the big surprises or good character development. Don't get me wrong.. i really like the movies and i have seen them all and will see them but they are very sanitized big hero movies for nearly all ages whereas the Netflix shows are for adults, plain and simple.

The heroes have layers and are not always the most shining examples of mankind, there are no posterboys like Captain America there but people who have their own problems and a few abilities no one else has. The same goes for the villains.. for the most part you will have not scenery chewing villains like Loki or Ultron but more subdued and maybe even more interesting ones like Kingpin, Kilgrave or Maria Dillard.

I love the grounded aspect of the Netflix shows, their setting and style.. something that Shield was supposed to be when they announced the show but quickly abandoned when they expanded the scope (i also like that show but for different reasons). The Netflix shows play by different rules and they do it very well.

Luke Cage fits right in there and his show has a unique style. I know jack about life in Harlem besides what movies and a few international news reports told me so i can't judge but from what i read from others (and i don't know or can't verify that they know more than me) it seems like it does a good representation of a "black neighborhood", so much that Luke Cage really feels like the protector of his home turf.

Mike Colter is fantastic as Luke Cage and so most others.. Simone Missick as Misty Knight and the ever great Rosario Dawson seems like the Phil Coulson of the Netflix shows (in a good way.. a nice solution to tie them all together until they get their team show). Alfre Woodard as Maria Dillard is great but Maharshala Ali as Cottonmouth (don't call him that!) just knocks it out of the park so much that his death came as a real shock in episode 7.

Now up until then the show was firing on all cylinders.. a compelling villain, the hero on the warpath all heading to one big confrontaion when suddenly it switched gears and unfortunately not for the better. Diamondback was mentioned several times and i was loooking forward to his reveal because if he seemed like such a player that people like Cottonmouth were beholden to him then he must be one hell of a character.

It turned out to my disappointment that he was just a crazy, violent psycho and it only got worse as the episodes went on. It's just not a compelling villain who just kills anybody who crosses him and in fact he's just this moustache twirling villains who are evil just because.
With Maria and Cornell you knew where they came from and what made then who they are and we know that if circumstances just played out a little different they would have been just regular citizens.. Maria a lawyer and Cornell a musician.

After Cottonmouth was dead and Diamondback took over they show went slowly down because Diamondback was just not that interesting enough on the level as the Kingpin or Kilgrave to have lasting appeal.. even the reveal of the family feud with Cage he was continuing or the little flashback scenes didn't make it much better and that lame ass "Hammer" outfit he wore was just embarassingly bad and corny as if they realized they were over budget and had to cut corners.

However the slightly disappointing second half of the show aside it was still a very good show.. maybe not on the same level of Daredevil but a good start. I loved the music and caught myself numerous times just bobbing my head alongside not paying too much attention to what went on besides it and i loved the real setting in Harlem that is always a refreshing breath after the high polished look of the movies. I'm definitely looking forward to the next shows from Netlflix as they seemed to have a pretty good handle on what they want to do and how to do it.

 

Great Scott! I missed the sidebar because I was looking at the main headline too much. I love it when the production team puts a lot of effort into details like that, Easter Egg or not.

 

@Evil Headhunter --

Luke mentioned the Reva kept tabs on him.

Mariah was in police custody when Candice was killed. What better alibi?

Oh! And I was wrong about something earlier. Apparently Carl Lucas was briefly a cop.

@Reverend --

Nope.

Even not taking the obvious connection of the Claire character, it seems to me as if they are setting up connective tissues in advance. Claire tells Luke in the finale that she "knows a good lawyer" (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). Matt, meet Luke. With the folder of evidence left at the barber shop, Matt frees Luke. At this point, Luke knows Matt and Jessica.

Meanwhile, we have Foggy at Hogarth's firm. In the comics, the Hogarth character originated in the Iron Fist comics, and Carrie Ann Moss is already confirmed for Iron Fist, making for any easy connection between Matt, Danny and Jessica.

 

What bothered me more was them working around boiling acid in a poorly ventilated room with no face or even eye protection. That's just asking for trouble.