I just finished binging Luke Cage and I can't find an outlet to get my nerd on, so I've fallen back to this community in case anyone is still wandering around these halls.
I thoroughly enjoyed the episodes. It was a bit of Blaxploitation, but that's fine with me. I'm glad they went that direction unapologetically.
Nearly all the villians were all tragic figures. Their downfalls were MacBeth-esque with the exception of Shades, in whom I found zero redemptive qualities and zero sympathy for. So the black villians were somewhat sympathetic, making them a bit "grey" whereas the white villian was totally dark, in my opinion. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but that's epic irony. The fact that Diamonback's primary issue is unresolved father-brother-son issues makes his psychosis on par with David Tennant's Kilgrave. Kingpin had quite believable motivations in the Daredevil series, but the leap from jealous half-brother or jilter lover to evil super-villian/arch nemesis seems to be a pretty big one to me.
There was a gang of Dominicans (or were they Cubans?) got offed by Diamondback along with one other white gang leader and one Korean. Then there was Detective Scarfe (white) was another death. But the number of black bodies that stacked up in this first season was taller than the Empire State Building. It was like every black dude that had the smallest speaking part would end up dead. I just wanted to say to the screenwriters, "Hey man, black lives matter." I'm sure Harlem is predominantly black in demographic, but I wonder if the percentage of dead by race matches the actual demographic in Harlem, which I imagine is a little more diverse than how the show made it out to be. Oh, and based on Marvel/Netflix series track record, you knew Pops was doomed the moment his sage black mug appeared on the screen.
Did anyone else fully expect that Misty Knight would certainly lose her arm to amputation after the hostage situation in the club? And then her arm is totally fine in the next episode. I was so disappointed (does that make me a bad person for wishing she'd lost her arm?). In Jessica Jones, Trish Walker started going down the Hellcat path with all the self-defense training. I was so sure this was the set-up for Misty's role in Season 2, but the screenwriters pulled one over on me.
The "tiara" and armbands that Carl was wearing when he broke out was a nice touch. Die hard old-timey Luke Cage fans will appreciate it. (Image to explain what I mean)
The show drops allusion after allusion to Heroes for Hire, but all we got were these little references in phrases from Luke or lyrics in a rap song. Thanks for throwing these little bones to us fans, but I wanted more. I forgive them for not including White Tiger or Hercules. They would be hard to shoehorn into this gritty drama that was going for realism. But no introduction of Iron Fist at all? That's hard to forgive. ...Unless that's who owns the martial arts studio that Claire gets the info on at the end of the series, but I couldn't read any of the text on the flyer. No, even if that was the case, it's not enough.
Ok. I've passed my nerd and I feel better now. Thanks.