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With another episode of Luke Cage hitting the streets, there’s a sense that the show – while still as solid as the main character’s ribcage – is starting to plateau. With practically every card on the table already, it’s been fun watching Cage and his enemy (slick gangster Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes) engage in their little game of one-upmanship as they metaphorically wrestle for the soul of Harlem. But while the show is taking its sweet time to settle (reopen the damn barbershop already), and a bigger picture is slowly starting to emerge, I’m not actually sure where the show is supposed to going.
In fact, by the climax of this episode, it does decidedly feel like you could end the season right here as it ends with a pretty decisive victory. But still, regardless of the fact that Luke Cage seems a little aimless right now, it’s street level musings and the prepping of some supporting characters means that the show still carries some wallop.
While content to lurk in the background and play both sides, Detective Scarfe finally shoots for the big time when – after agreeing to deliver his seized weapons back to him – he decides that now is a good time to hit up Cottonmouth for some blackmail. However, despite being a gifted (if corrupt) officer, Scarfe’s timing sucks balls as Cottonmouth is literally at his wits end with all the trouble vigilante Luke Cage has done to his organisation. After a brief discussion, Cottonmouth decides to pay Scarfe in hot lead as he shoots him in broad daylight with his own gun; but knowing that going to both a police station or a hospital is essentially a death sentence, the distraught detective goes to the most famous safe place in Harlem: Pop’s Barbershop. Luckily for Scarfe, Cage has recently become reacquainted with Claire Temple, who has returned to Harlem to stay with her mother and who once saved his life back in the Jessica Jones days. But while her medical expertise is enough to keep Scarfe stable, he needs to get to a hospital soon before his wounds do him in.
Meanwhile, Detective Misty Knight is determined to find her wayward partner and mentor, but the detective she’s been paired with has slightly a different motive – you see Lieutenant Perez is also in Cottonmouth’s employ and has been given orders to to kill the bleeding loose end. Elsewhere, Mariah Stokes-Dillard finds that her cousin’s illeagal escapades are now starting to blow back on her work as a local councilwoman, especially when a journalist tries to expose her criminal connections in a live interview.
As everyone closes in on the rapidly fading Scarfe, both Cage and Temple have to run a gauntlet of both cops and criminals in order to get the dying cop to the authorities and finally get the goods on Cottonmouth.
If my opening section made it sound like I’m suggesting that Luke Cage has gone off the boil, a can assure you that the show still delivers that cool, neo-blaxploitation vibe and features a central plot thread that changes many aspects of the whole show – it’s just that I have no idea where the show is actually supposed to be going. Obviously, I don’t want the whole game to be given away by a plot that I can see coming from a mile off, but at the same time, everything feels like it’s mostly been wrapped up by the time the credits roll – which is sort of a strange feeling considering that we’re only six installments into a thirteen episode run. By this point in Jessica Jones, or either season of Daredevil, things were ramping up as threads concerning the likes of Kingpin, Kilgrave and the Punisher were cresting nicely. However, it seems that the whole Cottonmouth problem seems to be mostly wrapped up thanks to the issues concerning a dying detective Scarfe.
Obviously I’m not blind to the foreshadowing that encircles the show. You can tell that the magnificent Alfre Woodard is chomping at the bit to edge into more overt villainy and fully embrace her comic book character of Black Mariah (her whip and nae nae jibe to an interviewer is gold standard shade) and the name Dimondback keeps getting bandied around in an end of game boss kind of way, so the show has back-up bad guys if needed, but it seems like a bit of a shame to do Mahershala Ali’s thoroughly entertaining Cottonmouth so dirty. But while the show seems to unfairly have his successors already lined up, thankfully Luke Cage is still confidently keeping its head far above water thanks to its race against the clock nature and the insertion of a familiar Marvel/Netflix lynchpin. Scoring herself something of a sprawling arc ever since first showing up in season 1 of Daredevil, the gradual transformation of gutsy nurse, Claire Temple, into something approximating her “Night Nurse” namesake has been fairly fascinating to watch. However with her arrival in Luke Cage last episode, it seems that she’s getting thrown right in at the deep end.
In fact, watching her suddenly in the midst of a deadly conspiracy that’s seeing her and Luke try and stay ahead of the various people trying to nab Scarfe for various reasons plays in perfectly to the type of action thrillers the show is seeking to emulate. Also, unless I miss my guess, there seems to be a spark forming between the two which means that Matt Murdock and Luke Cage are now unofficially in competition with how much game they have with the ladies. Anyway, the whole thread involving a rapidly fading Scarfe manages to keep the pace up well even if it initially comes out of nowhere, but to make up for it, it does well to effect a range of characters in a bunch of different ways. The main one is unsurprisingly Cage himself, as he has to weigh up doing the right thing in light of Scarf’s confession that he murdered Chico; but far more curious is how Misty Knight reacts to his eventual death. While it’s tough to feel bad for the corrupt cop – even after we hear about the tragic death of his young son that set him on his crooked path – Misty is utterly broken up by the passing of her mentor which feels strange considering that all we’ve seen him do is throttle a man to death with a tie. The juxtaposition of emotion for the death of a particularly nasty individual is not an entirely successful gambit for Misty’s character, but at least it gives Cage the excuse to do some classic, super-strength, hero stuff. After all, if you’re not ramming your shoulder into a speeding vehicle to stop it dead and crumple the front like tinfoil, can you even call yourself a superstrong Marvel hero? OK, it’s been done a little more spectacularly elsewhere (we cut away on impact to save on visual effects), but it’s still a cool image.
While the confusion about where the show is actually going is starting to distract me more than it should, the show continues to expand its universe thanks to the welcome and continued addition of Rosario Dawson. However, with the climactic arrest of its chief villain, are we due some massive, textbook Marvel/Netflix reset to launch us into the show’s second half? And will it actually work this time?
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