Luke Cage may have been given the gift of super strength and durability, but there’s been times over the last couple of episodes where I’ve been wishing that he’d caught a dose of super-speed too. The reason for this is that the show is currently in that final third dip that seemingly effects all of the projects made by Netflix and Marvel thus far, and guess what – it ain’t going away with “Take It Personal” either. However, despite yet another episode that strains to keep all of its major players in that same damn holding pattern, there actually seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.
Could it be that Luke Cage could once again manage to pick up speed, and get back to business before the finale occurs? Could it be that some of those urban politics manages to seep back into proceedings? And could it be that the writers might suddenly remember that Misty Knight is supposed to be a gifted detective? Luke Cage may not yet be back up to full strength just yet – with with a few more episodes like this, he could be.
After his heart gives out thanks to the boiling acid bath he’s sloshing in to soften his unbreakable skin (wimp), Claire has to take extreme steps to get his ticker pumping once more. But while Dr. Burstein stands around with his mouth open catching flies, the former nurse’s instincts kick in and she makes numerous deductions on the fly in order to ensure she can finally get tweezers into the impenetrable wound to dig out those pesky bullet fragments. Succeeding by the skin of her teeth, Claire is gratified to see that Luke heals up pretty fast and soon they’re ready to head back to Harlem.
However, in their absence, both William Stryker and Mariah Dillard have been busy tarnishing his name. After using a strength-enhancing glove to punch a cop onto the next life, Stryker successfully frames Cage enough so Mariah can both stir up public opinion and piss off the police. As tensions rise, a quick tempered detective roughs up a young witness which makes things understandably worse, and soon Mariah has Harlem eating out of her hand when it comes to weaponizing the outrage of the public. But one person who isn’t buying it is Misty, who is neglecting her search for Cage in order to get more info on Stryker and bust this conspiracy wide open.
With no clue that all this is happening, Luke has a couple of hard truths to face that hurt way more than a bath of boiling acid. It turns out that his murdered ex, Reva, wasn’t as much of a good apple as he once thought, and that she had full knowledge of the illegal fights at Seagate Prison as she was only assessing his ability to withstand Burstein’s experiments. Trashing the doc’s ability to continue his research, Luke then has to accept the fact that Stryker really is his half-brother due to a painful trip down memory lane. But once he gets back to Harlem, he decides to crash the anti-Cage rally Mariah is holding at Harlem’s Paradise. Needless to say, bullets fly.
Just because the pace has finally picked up in Luke Cage, it doesn’t mean that “Take It Personal” doesn’t still have its fair share of problems. However, after a couple of episodes that frustratingly insisted on jogging in place, things really do start to feel like we’re about to start covering some new ground any moment now. Yes, the last episode saw Luke injured, Claire helping, Misty sleuthing and Mariah and Stryker scheming – which is exactly what we see them doing in this episode – but while the show is starving for some variety, it really does seem that the writers finally have some actual points to make. However, while we dive back into some real-world social ills and see Cage wrestle with some harsh truths, the show seems to eager to get back some traction, it blows through some important character moments without giving them the gravitas they deserve.
Firstly, we pick up with Claire Temple’s makeshift, DIY operation as she finally manages to figure out how to soften Luke’s skin enough in order to dig around for that troublesome shrapnel. The scene should be edge of your seat stuff, but it’s somewhat undone by the fact that it occurs at the start of the tenth episode out of thirteen – simply put, there’s more chance of Woody and co. dying in the furnace in Toy Story 3 than there is Luke croaking three episodes before the end of the season and we know it. What’s more, Claire’s panicked problem solving is so chaotic (Add salt! More heat!), it feels more like an episode of Hell’s Kitchen if Gordon Ramsey had segued into makeshift surgery. Still, after numerous episodes of being nerfed by a super bullet, Luke finally gets back to full strength, but not before we discover that the late, lamented Reva wasn’t as virtuous as we were led to believe. But what should have been a devestating twist kind of splutters out mainly because the Reva plot thread has been stretched out so far (it actually started in Jessica Jones, remember) that it’s now lost all meaning. Also, it’s a little confusing, because even though we’re supposed to see his ex in a new light, didn’t she still risk her life to save his back in prison? Honestly, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to feel when it comes to this rather convoluted thread.
Also stirring up a worrying lack of shock is some random flashbacks that take us back to Luke’s childhood that reveals the true parentage of the villainous Stryker. Again, what should be rocking us back on our heels in shock just seems like confirmation of something we already presumed was true anyway, so the fact that the hero and villain are brothers ends up being about as shocking as discovering that water’s wet.
However, business picks up with other parts of the episode as it touches on some rather salient issue from actual headlines. As the cops turn Harlem upside-down after Stryker murders an officer in broad daylight (while yelling “I’m Luke Cage!” no less), issues of angry cops overstepping the mark are broached while Mariah stokes (pun not intended) the fires of public dissent. If feels like some of the more forward facing politics of the earlier episodes had faded into the background for a while there, but after a boy is beaten up in police custody, both the show and Mariah go all out to make a point of it.
Even Misty Knight seems to have remembered how to put facts together as she fearlessly rocks up to Harlem Paradise to dispensesome justice, it’s just a damn shame she immediately takes a bullet and has to be saved by Luke, who has decided to crash Mariah’s rally. I get that we’re now teasing the fact that the detective is destined to lose her arm, but to have her be a damsel in distress again is just the latest boot the show keeps putting into the character. Still, we get an action sequence as Cage is strafed by gunfire from Stryker’s mercenaries, but even though the budget still can’t quite stage feature film worthy acts of strength, it’s encouraging that Luke Cage has finally stopped staggering and started striding once more.
We’re still a ways to go if the season wants to reclaim the confident strut it had when it first started, but at least things are all starting to move in the right direction. But can it prevail, or has enough damage already been done to prevent Luke Cage from healing from this particular wound?
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