My son and I are done with the first three and will watch four tonight and so far except a few quibbles (long and unnecessary/boring music videos micro-embedded in the story; unintelligible villain; some small silly story choices, some of which actually get explained minutes later and make me feel bad about complaining) we are actually pretty happy with it. We went in with pretty low expectations though, thanks to IGN giving it a 4.5 overall (I didn’t read that review, despite their claims it was “spoiler free”).
I’ve watched the first 3 episodes of season 2. And I hate it. I have no plans to watch the rest. I pretty much agree with everyone on the first season; the first half was alright, the second half was bad. This is all bad. Half the 3rd episode is Luke having an argument with his girlfriend. Yeah, that’s definitely why I watch superhero shows.
There isn’t one single thing in this show that makes me think, “oh, that’s interesting, I wonder how that will turn out”. Everything makes me think either “oh, this subplot is boring, when will they get back to the main story” (after which I realize there is no main story), or “what does this scene have to do with anything?”
I hated the beginning of the season, I thought it picked up towards the end. In Luke Cage terms I think this one picked up about half as much steam as the first season dropped off after Diamondback came on the scene.
So if you’re bored it might be worth finishing. Not exactly a ringing endorsement but the beginning is especially terrible IMO.
I’m about halfway through the show. Overall, it’s higher quality than season 1, and nothing is particularly wrong. I’m digging Bushmaster and Stokes is paying off the promises that made season 1 feel so false.
Misty Knight as cop, though, is bothering the shit out of me. She goes against very solid advice to take a generous disability pension, and immediately burns her captain, risking her job. Over and over again they bump off each other until he suspends her. The story then forgets about that, because she’s still working the following morning when Cage calls her. She tries to plant evidence on a perp, uselessly admits as much to her captain, and suddenly he’s all sweetness and light! She quits and he starts harassing her to come back to work.
It’s proposterous. None of her character arc in season 2 makes sense.
Finished it and I think overall I liked it. Mostly because of the interesting ending.
There was still a lot of poorly if not outright stupidly written stuff though. I think they just have too many writers and not enough people pointing out things that don’t make sense.
Misty is high on the “who wrote this” list, but I don’t see the problem as being with her as a character so much as everyone around her making no fucking sense.
Misty didn’t take the pension because she loved the job. It’s a trope or whatever, but I’m fine with it. She butts head with the captain, because that’s what she does. Again, fine. But as you said then things get really dumb and make no sense. I put it down to writers changing with every episode and no one in charge going, “Wait, why is Misty good with the captain suddenly? He’s been on her ass literally the whole show.”
Misty was pretty internally consistent and fine imo. It’s just everyone around her making no damned sense and doing donuts in the parking lot with their personalities and motivations.
I watched one more (the 4th) and I just can’t bring myself to watch any more. I just don’t care what happens. Now I’m watching “American Gods” and I feel much better.
So I finally pushed through to the end.
Man this show just dragged on and on. Seems like the second half curse struck again and it just zig zags aimlessly till it finally decides to rush the ending.
My biggest gripe is that Luke is delegated to a aimless supporting character while Mariah hams it up as the gangsta queen and bushmaster basically just fizzles out. Some of the latter plotting could have come straight out of the horrendous Iron Fist. Pointless things just happen because some scriptwriter wanted them to, without any regard for plausibility or internal logic.
The hilarious thing is that Iron Fist’s guest stint wasn’t that bad at all! Who knows perhaps Iron Fist 2 will surpase Luke Cage in quality?? Who’d have thought that would ever happen?
I finally went back and watched this. I actually dug most of the musical interludes and picked up a couple of new artists to watch from the bluesier stuff.
I sort of hated how the season ended. It didn’t really make much sense at all, it was a super gross character arc turn, and then everyone’s reactions to it are very strange and off-kilter to boot.
Watching the two villains basically burn themselves out kinda sucked, because early on, they were both riveting and highly compelling. Bushmaster deserved way better than he got. Mariah deserved exactly what she got (I hated her season 1, but her filthy scheming in S2 starts so strong and confident before she goes off on the crazy train), but still, blegh.
There is surprisingly little superheroing. Lots of terse, dramatic, not very well written arguments between every combination of the principle cast you can imagine, over and over again. It’s a very talky show, and the talky isn’t where it’s strongest.
And again, that turn at the end of the last episode? Poorly telegraphed, totally unnecessary based on any reasonable read of the situation at hand, and just a really dour, unpleasant place to take a show ostensibly about a superhero. Ugh.
Less upset about this one than Iron Fist, but even with Netflix’s protestations about being in control of their own stuff, I can’t help but wonder if Disvel is eyeing the competition. . .
. . . any weasel words about these heroes appearing in future Netflix properties this time around? Heh, decidedly fewer of those to go around. . .
Well, neither seasons of Luke Cage really worked for me personally, but they were still better than season 1 of Iron Fist.
And yeah, with the situation at the end of the respective second seasons, it’d need quite a bit of heavy lifting to have Luke and Danny team up as ‘Heroes for Hire’. ‘Daughters of the Dragon’ seems more likely from a narrative standpoint, though I doubt it’ll happen.
Season 2 didn’t work for me as a Luke Cage show (but was a great Misty Knight & Mariah Stokes show) and the ending didn’t really make sense. Not too upset to see this one go but it certainly puts the writing on the wall for the other series once their current seasons finish airing/filming.
Can’t say I’m sad either although Mike Coulter was born to be Cage. I just stopped watching a few episodes into S2.
Don’t buy their all gone. JJ and Daredevil have both been much more well received vs IronFist and Cage were. Also I’m pretty sure Punisher S2 has already been green lit. I think Netflix is just starting to decide they need to actually cancel stuff now than then. They’ve done this for several shows in the last couple months.
Yeah, I know, but I’m pretty upset we never got to the Heroes for Hire stuff, it’s at least 25% of why I watched their solo seasons! I guess we had that one great episode in S2 Luke Cage, but still. And if we never get to find out about the final scenes in Iron Fist S2 I will be very disappointed.
