Six notes on the first season of "Luke Cage"
Wednesday, October 12, 2016 at 12:35PM Y'all remember that I wasn't too excited about Netflix's new Marvel show Luke Cage. As previously noted, I had the same trouble getting into it that I have always had getting into Superman movies -- invulnerability is antithetical to conflict and therefore dull in action franchises. But, that obstacle aside, I gradually finished the season -- the arrival of Claire Temple helped. Rosario Dawson was wonderful as always... and with Sonia Braga in tow this time, though the show didn't give the latter much to do. The increasingly complicated and cross-purpose agendas of the characters and plot helped, too. Well, that and the the fact that the show sparked interesting online discourse. That's always a plus.
After the jump five favorite things about Season 1 (spoilers obviously) and a response to the articles on "racial empathy gaps"...
Salon recently published a piece about the show and the "racial empathy gap" which is interesting. But as a white man who has lived in Harlem for ten years now and who gets a lot of the show's literary and historical references (if never the sports references -- but that's true for me with any type of show) I would like to note that I don't feel "excluded" as this article is telling me white people do, nor do I see any real reason why other white people would (the show has hispanic, white, black, and Asian characters so it looks fairly diverse). I read about four or five articles online that cited the exact same three tweets (one of which appears to be entirely sarcastic) in order to write broad generalizations about "White Twitter" and how 'everyone is butt-hurt about the show.' I have not noticed any such displeasure about this show in my feed (quite the opposite actually) ...except for retweets of these articles declaring it to be true.
In this horrific year we're living through right now wherein bigotry has unmistakably reared up its ugly head and roars every time you turn on the TV, we need conversations about racial bias and systemic racism more than ever. But do broad generalizations help move these conversations forward or merely create more divide?
Oh but we've sailed off topic! The point is this: Every person is their own person and we're all at different stages of evolving on every single issue. Each of us has his/her own hangups and his/her enlightened attributes. What's more we each have our our trigger spots where we have to scratch our heads at other people's hangups, no matter the color of our skin. Just my two cents. Sorry to go all kumbaya but I think we do have an Empathy Gap in our culture but I think skin color is only the teensiest part of it. You can see enormous abysses where empathy should be all over the place and surrounding basically everyone. It's bleak out there with all the anger and blaming and shouting without listening.
But back to Luke Cage and happier thoughts. Here are my five favorite things about Luke Cage's first season. Please do share yours if you've watched it!
Would you like to press charges?
01. Claire vs. Misty
Daredevil tried with Foggie & Karen and Jessica Jones and the movies don't really try at all so Luke Cage is maybe the first Marvel product to understand and then capitalize on the fact that stories about superheroes that can't die (lest the show/franchise be cancelled) can really use and thrive on complicated regular human characters who are having very complex feelings about their powerless in the super world... you know just like the people watching the shows. This was best exemplified in that tremendous face off between Misty Knight and Claire Temple. They're both on Luke Cage's side but they're still at each other's throats. And it's not because they're fighting over him (though they're both romantically involved) because that's dumb and man-centric and Luke Cage has a surprisingly robust cast of three dimensional female characters.
I look like a damn fool.
02. Luke in comic book "Power Man" garb and in the Hoodie
It's fan service sure but clever fan service. Grade "A" cameo by the original costume... and come to think of it a solid "A" for reclaiming the most racially charged outfit this side of a burka "The Hoodie" as a superhero costume.
03 The Locations
I live on this street Lenox Avenue, okay?! Therefore I love it. This is the first time I've seen something so familiar on TV while I lived there since various location shots on Sex & The City when I lived further south. It's fun to see your own street so prominently in a TV show... although they are pretty liberal with using shots from all over different neighborhoods within Harlem (which is quite large as sections of Manhattan go)
04 Cottonmouth's Death
This scene actually shocked me which is always a welcome sensation in a genre that is typically short on surprises.
05 Harlem's Paradise and Cottonmouth's Office.
That club sure is a beauty, isn't it? While that 'Biggie, crowned' portrait in Cottonmouth's office made for a tremendous visual note early on in the series, the overly abundant shots of people standing in front of it, symbolically crowned, threatened to turn it into self parody and camp by the end of the season. But the Production Design team saved their asses with one last power move. When Shades and Mariah move in they replace it with a brilliantly in-on the parody but funhouse-abstracted King & Queen painting. Their unexpected (if mostly subtextual until this moment) sexual attraction was kind of awesome.
Can you dig it?
All told, the show doesn't reach any of the masterful levels people keep claiming for it, largely due to its intermittently clunky writing (especially in regards to Cage's angst. Superhero angst is soooo tired), silly anti-climactic villain (we're looking at you Diamondback) and dull action sequences (the climax in particular) but it does get better as it goes along and the cast shines brightly enough that a second season is welcome. Of the Marvel Netflix shows I'd rank it 3rd of 4 seasons behind Daredevil S1 (all around terrific) and Jessica Jones S1 (which lacked quite a lot of range but made up for it with Marvel's best TV/movie villain) but way ahead of the disappointment that was Daredevil S2. I fully expect Iron Fist S1 to be their worst due to casting issues. And The Defenders remains a strange idea since all of the characters they're gathering have basically the same power "super strength / super fighting skills"
We'll see.
Luke Cage, Marvel, NYC, Netflix, TV, Twitter, racial politics, superheroes
Reader Comments (9)
I'd put it above Daredevil S1, honestly, if only just. My gradings:
4. Daredevil S2 (B) (The first half actually was great and it was SO CLOSE to being better than the first season. It just needed to ditch the Elektra stuff almost entirely (keep her in episodes 5&6, but that's IT) and do a full blown "straight" legal battle over The Punisher (maybe casting Jen Walters...?) as book-ends for the back half, using done in one villains to keep up the action pace. Yeah, making half the season somewhat episodic would have helped. MAJORLY.)
3. Daredevil S1 (B+, if only just for Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin. Yeah, when you get down to it, there's just as much in Daredevil S1 that doesn't work as stuff that does. Particularly as far as being kind of over-plotted in general, which only got worse in the second season.)
2. Luke Cage S1 (B+) (No, Cottonmouth and Mariah Dillard aren't as good as Kingpin or Purple Man. Yes, the lack of tension in action scenes with an all but indestructible hero is palpable. Superman only fully works in the comics when they embrace the OTT nature and use it for fun and NEVER tension. And, yes, Diamondback is the first villain the TV vision has produced that is comparable to the movie villains, in spite of noble build-up in the first half. But the stuff it nails, it NAILS.)
1. Jessica Jones S1 (A-) (No, it doesn't quite have the range of the first Daredevil Season. But it also doesn't feel nearly as over-plotted, the theme they grapple with is absolutely worthwhile and Tenant's Kilgrave is flat-out amazing.)
Now, as far as Iron Fist goes? I get the problem. You want to adapt the character for 2016, but, well, you run into a four-letter word problem: RAND. Unlike Steven Strange (neither name carrying specific racial connotations and could have been any cast as any race the makers wanted without changing the naming, and because of that I'd argue probably should have been their "Asian-American" play), Rand is still pretty decisively a "white" last name. So, they're kind of trapped. At minimum, unless they change the last name, he has to be mixed-race and that kind of undercuts the play for diversity that a racial change would normally be assumed to be. So, how do you more easily undercut the problem WITHOUT changing the last name? Make Danny Rand ultra self-deprecating about his life/story at a few points. "I know, I know, this sounds like a racist cliche ripped out of material forty-some years out of date." It doesn't eliminate the problem, but stuff like that would indicate they're not just brazenly unaware. What I'm saying is...I'm giving it at least three episodes and am expecting lines like that to show up at least once or twice in that span.
So, would I have gone for Iron Fist as my first choice for four of these? Honestly, no. If it had to be a fourth "gritty crime drama starring someone who, at least, ENDS as a non-killer with little to no CGI or "big" prosthetic makeup effects" (I know people were holding out for Blade, but we've already gotten a Blade show, a really BAD Blade show), I probably would have gone with Moon Knight. The basic background: Wayward Rabbi's son, working as a mercenary, gets empowered by fictional Egyptian God. There's at least a twisted cultural legacy "thing" going on with that, unlike Iron Fist.
I haven't seen this yet but more Rosario Dawson is always a great thing. Marvel so far has fucked up so hard by barely putting her to use. Does she actually have a decent sized role this time?
But my marvel rankings so far (Cage still unseen) is:
1. Daredevil Season 2. Twas so good. Punished & Elektra were both great.
2. Jessica Jones
3. Daredevil Season 1. Good first season with a lot of promise. Some things they get so right some things so wrong. Some tremendously slow/boring patches of episodes in this one though; which is why it is pushed to #3. I also was not the HUGE fan of Fisk that everyone else was.
Nothing? Sigh. Yeah, if there's nothing by now, there won't BE anything.
@Volvagia - there's an easy way around Rand -- Danny is adopted by a white family.
starlit: Good point. Should have thought of that. But would Moon Knight not have been a better idea regardless?
Honestly, no. If it had to be a fourth "gritty crime drama starring someone who, at least, ENDS as a non-killer with little to no CGI or "big" prosthetic makeup effects" (I know people were holding out for Blade, but we've already gotten a Blade show, a really BAD Blade show), 7 11 stamps I probably would have gone with Moon Knight. The basic background: Wayward Rabbi's son, working as a mercenary, gets empowered by fictional Egyptian God.
This may be Marvel and Netflix's best effort to date.