Tuesday, June 26, 2018

The Review: Luke Cage Season 2



Luke Cage Season Two 2/10

There will be a bunch of spoilers. To say I am disappointed would be an understatement. Season two of Luke Cage pisses me off not just because these Netflix series have been floundering when they get to the second season, but because it was not as if there were changes to the cast or anything. They just decided to take what you liked most about certain characters and flip them until they made no sense, dragged out the story (this could have easily been eight episodes), and tried way too hard to be cooler than the first season and failed super hard with that. I don't care how many musicians you have perform on the show. And why would these people want to even perform at a club that is owned by someone publicly known for being a criminal who deals in weapons and eventually drugs? And the songs were also too on the nose. If Cage is walking down the street the song would be like “Bulletproof Black man walking down the street, oh yeah...”

Luke Cage is back and played by Mike Colter and he is loved by the people. They take pictures with him, ask for help, and even track him using an app which is the worst thing you could have as a hero. Seriously, if he is seen by anyone they tag him and now everyone knows where this guy is. Fucking stupid. This guy D.W that sells Cage based merchandise started the app and annoyed me every time he was on screen. I know what his character was supposed to be but in the previous season he would've been some idiot that got bonked on the head and left for police to arrest. Luke is stopping people from selling a drug that is named after him. 

Meanwhile the absolute best part of the show, Bushmaster, shows up and it turns out that he is bulletproof like Cage but has zero problems with killing people. He is out for revenge and when you find out why there is no reason why Cage should be trying to stop him and should just say “Know what? You right” and let him do what needs to be done. Instead Cage fights him, gets his ass knocked out cold, recorded on video by D.W who is not his friend I don't give a fuck what the writers of this show say, and sells the video. Oh, I need to mention that Cage is broke. Yeah, Iron Fist (more on him later) is his friend and has billions but Cage doesn't want to ever ask for fucking help so he is losing the barbershop that he has as a base of operation. Cage is getting progressively more violent and attacks a guy that was beating his girlfriend and child almost killing him. I need to point out that it is not fun watching Cage after a while just stand there and get shot. It gets boring which means that his supporting cast needs to be interesting to keep this going and that is not the case. The interesting people have the smallest amount to do and this season ends up focusing whack ass folks and their drama. And why in the fuck can't Luke Cage fight?! After all this time I would love for him to have some form of fighting technique other than bonking people on the head or just throwing them.

Black Mariah/Mariah Dillard/Mariah Stokes played by Alfre Woodard who was so damned cool and scary in the first season is not this erratic and scared old woman. They took everything that made her interesting and said “You know what? She too good. Lets make her dumb.” By the time she begins to gain more power through murder and making her empire grow it made no sense for other criminals to join her. She is a massive target for the police and Cage so hooking up with her is just damaging in every way. 

Shades played by Theo Rossi who is now her lover is revealed to have boned down with his friend in jail who is working undercover to help take down Mariah. It felt added just to say that a gay/bisexual character is on a Marvel series. They are never shown having the sex or even holding hands or making out. As Mariah acts more erratic Shades eventually turns on her and reveals all the crimes she committed. At one point she sets a man on fire and then shoots him dead and the gun she uses leads to her downfall. It took so long for her to die that by the time she does it isn't even that big a deal to me. As good of an actress she is she could not make what was written sound good. They have these scenes that are long and rambling and full of Mariah and Shades and I swear it felt like they had the same conversation twice per episode. The guy on the right in this photo annoyed the hell out of me whenever he was on screen just so you know. I'm not sure what show he was acting for but he was a terrible choice for this one. That's another thing. The acting on this was so all over the place. People who were evil were obviously evil to where when people didn't call them out they seemed stupid.

Rosario Dawson is back as Claire. She and Cage are living together and while she likes that he is fighting crime the escalating level of violence he uses makes her nervous. She sees how violent he is getting and worries about his mind and soul. She lets him know about the violent environment she grew up in and does not want to repeat and he responds by shouting at her and punching a hole in the wall. She leaves his dumb ass and with her gone so is a big part of what makes his character likable or relatable. Now he is just this big, angry Black guy that scares the only woman that loves him and has to escape him for fear of her safety. 

He is officially not a hero and harder to see as someone I want to see succeed and win. He gets upset and even accuses her of being a superhero groupie which was super shitty. Yeah, she boned down with Daredevil but their relationship seemed more organic than the one she had with Cage. With everything that the character of Claire has done she deserved way better than this. She tried to help him in his relationship with his father the preacher and they have her continue to push it in a way that would cause anyone to snap. She ends up contacting Iron Fist to help out and talk to Cage but it was after Def-con Level 5.

Speaking of Iron Fist, he returns portrayed by Finn Jones. As soon as I saw him I groaned because his season was so damned bad and The Defenders revolved around him making it worse than it already was. By this point there had been one good season of Daredevil, one bad one, a good Luke Cage season, and one good Jessica Jones. I was surprised that he was not as annoying. I could not figure out if it was because I was so unhappy with how this season was going or if he had actually improved. The fact that he is acting more logical and trying to calm down Cage shows how ridiculous this season was becoming. 

They removed all the nonsense Iron Fist spoke almost every time he opened his mouth and were able to make it come across like he could fight unlike in his own season. He comes to terms with the fact that while he hates being known as a rich kid that his money has power. It was a nice change of pace. I also liked that he did not struggle to use his power and they hinted at a Heroes For Hire team up because Cage needs this and Iron Fist do more than another solo season for either of them right now. If they took these two and made it the first fun Netflix series from Marvel I wouldn't be mad. But with the way they ended this season I'm not sure that's even possible. You know, with Cage becoming the fucking drug kingpin of Harlem. Christ...

Simone Missick is back as Misty Knight. In case anyone doesn't know because they were smart enough not to watch The Defenders she lost her right arm while protecting Claire. She starts off with everyone treating her like shit because she does not have an arm but eventually she gets a new bionic one thanks to Iron Fist. I like her character but it gets so lost because she has to work around whatever Cage feels like doing. She tells him to stay out of cases but he doesn't listen and she is there to cover for him. Misty is pretty much an enabler for Cage and I will be shocked if she doesn't try and arrest him next time she sees him. She has some conflicts of integrity and almost plants evidence on someone guilty of other shit (the same guy Cage almost kills). She confesses but gets no punishment. 

Actually, she never gets punished even though she breaks the rules constantly. They show more of her ability to recreate crime scenes from being there or just photos. It is cool and they use it just enough for it not to become annoying. Out of the three main women on this series (including Mariah and Claire) she comes off not weaker than in the previous season. She gets tougher and stronger but it is lessened by everything that Cage does.

Now for the best part of this season for me. Mustafa Shakir is John “Bushmaster” McIver. This guy is fucking great. This is another villain that has every right to be doing what he is. Let this man kill everyone! He is bulletproof, fast, and unlike Cage knows how to fight. The only thing that is his downfall is that he does not know when to be satisfied with a certain amount of revenge. He gets called special and ends up becoming more powerful when he smokes this stuff called Nightshade. He gets a supply of it from Mariah's daughter who you will notice I have not mentioned because I just didn't care. 

When they show a flashback of how he gained his powers and what Mariah's character did to him and his mother he has every fucking right to kill her. So now you have Mariah who Cage should have killed years ago or the cops should have arrested and this Bushmaster that absolutely deserved to. So when they have her die because of some Poison Ivy type shit it robbed everyone of closure. It wasn't even poetic. It was lame as shit. You can not have Mariah set his family on fire and have a dozen of his people killed and then have her die because of a kiss. I'd call it a cop out if it made any sense. Bushmaster shows up and knocks Cage out and ends up running the city pretty damned quickly. If he was running the city it'd be better off which is sad to say. He was effective but not erratic and very focused. He kept telling Cage how they could have been brothers and how similar they were which turned out to be true seeing as how Cage ends up taking over Mariah's empire.

I would not recommend watching this to someone who enjoyed the first season. I really wish that this had been good but after watching I saw how almost every episode was written and directed by someone else and I for sure felt that. It felt like they were given an overview of how the show starts and ends and to just make up whatever the fuck they wanted for everything in between. Weak story. Weaker characters except for Bushmaster. Making people act out of character. Heavy use of n-bombs. I knew something was up when the first episode said it was directed by Lucy Liu

I know how this sounds but I am using the Black Panther theory right now. This should have all if not mostly been written and directed by Black people or people that have an understanding of Black people and their reactions to situations. So many times they had Cage saying he did not want to look like the angry Black man trope while doing nothing but being the angry Black man trope. People deserved better than this shit.

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