Six episodes in and I feel about the same as Desslock.
I think if you tried to look at this show in a social vacuum it would be the weakest so far—still good, but not as good as JJ or DD.
But we’re not in a vacuum, so reactions are a little more favorable because of the issues of race and for just being about a black super hero in the first place, and I totally support that. The praise is warranted.
These shows frustrate the hell out of me. I think you could edit any of them down to great six-episode seasons. But Netflix ordered 13-episode seasons, so you have the hero spend an entire episode limping through a sewer, or buried in rubble, or having a bullet plucked out from where it inexplicably lodged an inch under his skin. I know where every character interaction is going thirty seconds after it starts, and I know that it still has three minutes to go.
And yet the leads are all great. The fight choreography, music, and set design are great. Rosario Dawson is great. Maybe by the time they get to The Defenders and have four hero plot lines to juggle, they’ll have enough material to actually fill a season.
I had to pop in with this.
[quote]
Lack of white people in Luke Cage makes me uncomfortable. This show is racist, how is this on Netflix???[/quote]
[quote]
im not racist but :/ why is luke cage so political :/ why do they talk about being black all the time :/ where are the white characters :/[/quote]
Watched the first episode last night and really enjoyed it. I can definitely see the pacing concerns. I struggled to finish Jessica Jones because of that despite really liking the show. First impression here is that it’s more a case of being methodical and deliberate rather than stretched out. Crossing my fingers that impression holds up.
Every tweet referenced was from an account that was openly trolling or being sarcastic, and yet people are trying hard to manufacture this narrative. Drama queens.
Just finished episode 5. It’s a bit slow-going, but I’m enjoying it quite a bit.
Been universally happy with the Netflix/Marvel shows, across the board. Really looking forward to Defenders now.
I will say that I agree with @Kyle_Wilson1’s point that each of the series feel like they would work better as a tight 6 (more like 9 - 10, imo) instead of a sprawling 13. Jessica Jones, Daredevil season 2 and Luke Cage have all felt like there is about 3 - 4 episodes worth of filler stuffed in to make sure they meet the 13-episode buy.
The boy and I finished this over the weekend. I enjoyed it, though it did drag here and there. I kind of wish there would have been more “action” so to speak. What we got was great though, but it’s no Daredevil, which of course given the main hero makes sense (not much can really provide a “challenge” to him, really, hell they even had to invent Kryptonite bullets or he’d have just rofl-stomped all over to the finale).
The Harlem stuff was great, the social stuff was fantastic, and the writing was really good (as were all the characters and the actors that portrayed them). I think it’s definitely worth watching all around.
I still think my favorite stuff goes Daredevil s2 > Daredevil s1 > Jessica Jones > Luke Cage but that’s like saying Storm of Swords is better than Game of Thrones, imo.
10 episodes in and I am really enjoying it. Not sure why @ChristienMurawski felt the need to graffiti up a church in the tenth episode though.
Not sure I care for [VAGUE DIRECTION THINGS HAVE GONE] in [SOME EPISODE AT SOME POINT], I hope it either changes course or reveals there’s more to what’s going on.
Elaborating with spoilers up through episode nine.
[spoiler]I wasn’t expecting Cottonmouth to be out of the picture yet, but that’s theoretically fine. Always assumed there was someone bigger behind the scenes, or someone more important would rise to power.
But so far Diamondback and Mariah aren’t cutting it.
Alfre’s got some weird ticks and mannerisms that feel a little like she’s trying too hard in her performance, especially when she’s reacting to anything or anyone else. Relative to her importance to the plot, she’s my least favorite performance on the show, so I’m not exactly rooting for her to rise up as a kingpin (and so far, she doesn’t seem to want to).
Diamondback is weird too. From the way he was talked about and the way Shades represented him, I was expecting a powerful crime lord to emerge from the shadows. Instead he seems like a comic-booky assassin someone actually important would hire, and then later regret hiring. I thought he would have some empire of his own—at least a bigger operation than what Cottonmouth had—but instead it just seems to be him and Shades.
So right now the show feels like it’s floundering a bit with Luke Cage out of commission from the space bullets and nothing I’m invested in waiting to oppose him when he gets back into the picture.[/spoiler]
Misty remains strong though, the show’s got her (and pretty good casting aside from my complaint above) going for it.
And in the silliest of complaints, everyone just keeps saying “Luke. Cage.” Emphasizing both first and last names, every time they refer to him. Never just Luke, never just Cage, never saying them together in a casual way. Always LUKE. CAGE.
And now I’m done, spoilers for the rest of the season:
[spoiler]So yeah, it never improves from my problems above. For all the small but effective ways it handles issues of race, the police, etc., it’s unfortunately the weakest Netflix Marvel season by a pretty decent margin. Where the rest of them are prone to lulls around the middle, they all recover. This one doesn’t.
Also, really disappointed that there’s NO Jessica Jones at all, and obviously no Danny Rand. It’s frustrating to see all these shows that feel like they can’t find the material to fill a full season, when there are all these relationships I want to see developed that I fear we’ll never get around to. I want Luke and Danny to be friends, to have a history, to be heros for hire! I want Luke and Jessica to be married! I want Danny to cover for Matt when he’s in prison! Aren’t Danny and Misty a serious thing at one point too?
Obviously they’ll all work together in the Defenders movie, but that’s going to be a lot of introductions and beginnings, I want some existing, authentic relationships. It looked like Jessica Jones was setting us up to at least have Jessica and Luke closely linked sooner than that, but this series kills that. In fact, they basically set Luke up with Claire. I am disappoint.
Worth the time, but it feels like a lot of wasted potential.[/spoiler]
I’m done with this as well, and I mostly agree with everyone else. It’s still good, and I don’t feel like it was wasted time or anything, but it never really lived up to the promise of the first two or three episodes. I don’t mind the stuff that @WhollySchmidt mentions in his second spoiler-post (not really a comics person!), but I’m completely on board with this:
Also, in addition to the season-long pacing that has hit several of the Marvel series, Luke Cage is really bad with the individual episode length. They get longer and longer as the season goes on (other than the finale), to the point where many of the later episodes would be in 90 minute time slots if they were on TV with commercials. Which isn’t inherently bad, but they aren’t really doing anything with it that you couldn’t do with a 40-some minute episode and better pacing/editing. This ain’t a GoT episode that’s overstuffed even at an extended length.
Awesome music and Misty, though.
I have the final 2 episodes to go, and it’s really slipped in quality in the 2nd half of the season, after the introduction of Diamondback.
So much filler in the following 3 episodes, and DB is the weakest villain the Netflix shows had - and it moved away from the strengths of the early season: the use of Harlem itself, incorporating politics in an intelligent way, Cottonmouth’s nuances, and Luke Cage finding himself as a hero (and kicking ass).
Seems unlikely my opinion will change given the other comments on the season, but it’s clearly the weakest of the Marvel Netflix seasons to date, but still was a lot more interesting than the ABC TV stuff.
I’m only halfway through, but my issue with Diamondback is he’s built up as this scary, shadowy crime boss of crime bosses, and then when he actually turns up he’s a dude with a gun. By himself. I mean, okay, it’s a dangerous gun but c’mon now.
If you read my spoilered impressions after you finish the series you’ll see we had the exact same reaction :)
+1. I have to say, though, I quite liked Shades and Cottonmouth.
Diamondback suuuucked. He sucked as much as Kingpin rocked. It’s not the actor, either, the actor seemed competent. It was the writing and direction. Just terrible. A one sided, one dimensional, boring golden age villian. Compare and contrast this with Kingpin making himself eggs with a sense of quiet desperation in DD. Or Kingpin in the art gallery. You can’t be at 100% all the time and be effective.
Oh well, the tone was great, I’ll give it that.
Well, this was fun:
Now we need a Jeffersons and Good Times one too.
Well we’re movin’ on up! To the east side!
