After our trip to flashbackville, it’s time to get our asses back to Harlem of the present day to catch up on the ever growing grudge between Luke Cage and Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes. Thanks to a well placed subplot that filled us in on Cage’s long overdue origin story (he was introduced in Jessica Jones, remember), the cliffhanger that saw him emerging from the rubble of an exploded Chinese Restaurant (we’ll never forget you, Ghengis Connie’s) to the astonishment of both cops and the press actually still hasn’t been fully addressed yet.
Well, we’ve got time to address it now and it back to some classic Luke Cage action as the people of Harlem react to the superhero in their midst. But while “Just To Get A Rep” continues to give us a solid adaption of the blaxploitation-themed comic, there’s that lingering curiosity about where to show is going to go beyond it’s current story line.
While Harlem muses about the unbreakable black man who crawled out of the ruins of Ghengis Connie’s Restaurant, some sizable events occur that strive to make their minds up for them. But before we get into round two for the battle of the soul of Harlem, a familiar face arrives who has been through the wars recently. After getting shit-canned from her job at a hospital after an attack of undead ninjas, Claire Temple has come to Harlem to stay with her mother, Soledad, and she confides with her parent about all the weird shit she’s seen and how she wants to keep helping these super powered defenders.
Meanwhile, the thorny matter of Pop’s memorial has arrived and it’s going to be a tricky affair that goes way beyond making sure the man’s various girlfriends are all kept apart – because both Cottonmouth and Cage are due to attend. After trying to blow Luke up failed to get any traction, Cage’s assaults on his money houses and an earlier weapons deal gone bad has caused Stokes cash flow issues to got critical. If he calls in über boss, Dimondback, in to help, he’ll lose control of Harlem for good, so Cottonmouth gets his goons to extort the folks of Harlem and put the blame squarely on Cage’s interference in an attempt to turn the people against him.
After Misty Knight delivers some advice that’s sounds like a warning (or a warning that doubles as advice) to stay out of Harlem affairs, Cage instead follows his heart and addresses the complaints from the people affected by heading out and using his powers to muscle the muscle and get people’s belongings back. However, after a tense face to face with his well-meaning nemesis, Stokes starts looking into ways to bring down a man with impenetrable skin and is clued in on something called a Judas bullet – a hybrid of Chitauri metal and Hammer tech.
Soon, Pop’s memorial gets underway and both Stokes and Cage take their spot at the podium to say some words; but while they seem to be speaking about the deceased on the surface, deep down they’re really putting their case to the people of Harlem. But who will they side with?
While the fifth episode once again delivers exactly what you’d want from a Luke Cage show, there is a wonder if Netflix has finally managed to sort out their story issues. It’s been a consistent problem throughout all of Marvel’s Netflix arm, affecting both Daredevil and Jessica Jones at various points in their seasons. In fact, I read it described somewhere as Netflix constantly making four episode stories last for thirteen and while I wouldn’t quite describe it so harshly (yet), I would argue that every show so far (two Daredevils, one Jones) have been at least three episodes too long. In comparison, Luke Cage is going pretty strong, but as we’re only five episodes in, there is a feeling that “Just To Get A Rep” is going over some already familiar material to double down on a point it’s already made.
However, that material is continuing to play to the show’s strengths, so it’s still nothing to worry about just yet. That strong sense of community that the show’s thrived on comes to the forefront when both Cage and Stokes downshift their pissing contest from sizable property damage and vigilantism to something far more subtle. While Frankie Faison’s Pop has now been dead for three whole episodes, the show is very much keeping his memory at the forefront of the story. In fact, there’s a sense that Luke is going to have to accept the dead man’s burden as the unofficial conscience of Harlem if he’s ever truly going to purge the streets of criminal influences. Of course, Stokes isn’t about to let that go unopposed, and while Shades introduces him to that special, exploding Judas bullet that may be just thing for vaquishing an unshootable foe, we get to have a few gripping face-offs between Mike Colter and Mahershala Ali that crackle with social relevance. In fact, the unofficial “debate” the two have at the memorial is yet another example of the show reaching it’s full potential when it comes to merging superheroics, blaxploitation and social themes.
However, slightly less effective are the action scenes that doesn’t seem to be entirely confident about how to stage fight sequences between normal folk and a guy with untested strength limits. Watching him render horribly outmatched thugs unconscious with an open-handed bitch-bop to the head is a cool concept, but it isn’t shot or choreographed with any particular flare and thus is a little underwhelming. Simply put, we need a more physical threat for our protagonist pronto. But still, the more mental threat of Stokes trying to sully Cage’s name before he gets too much support in Harlem proves to be interesting enough.
Proving to be most interesting of all is the inevitable arrival of Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple, the Netflix universe’s closest answer to Nick Fury (as in that she pops up bloody everywhere). However, rather than having her just pass through, we see that she’s been granted a continuing arc after the trauma she experienced in Daredevil’s second season. While she survived that attack from the Hand, her job sure didn’t, so she’s now come to Harlem to stay with her mother played by Sônia Braga. With Temple having multiple experiences stitching up Matthew Murdock and having already met and saving a comatose Luke Cage while cameoing in Jessica Jones, hopefully she’ll have something important to do as she’s shown interest in becoming a triage nurse for busted superheroes. I guess it’s no accident that she’s arrived in the show in the same episode that floats the concept of a Judas bullet…
While it’s settled nicely into its various themes and plots, there’s a sense that Luke Cage may have to up it’s game soon as watching our bullet-proof brother batter helpless thugs with no resistance is already getting a little stale. However, with Chitauri tech on the horizon, Claire Temple in the house and the animosity between Cage and Stokes getting ever more personal, the show ain’t breaking anytime soon.
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