Luke Cage
Season One
(SPOILERS) The
tepid response to the fourth Marvel Netflix series seems to have caught up with
my general apathy towards their output, such that I’m almost left thinking,
well, it wasn’t really that bad, was it? And Luke Cage isn’t bad, it’s
just that it’s about eight episodes too long (so that’s about four longer than
average Netflix season is too long) and takes most of them going nowhere
especially interesting with what story it has. You’d be forgiven for thinking Netflix’s
approach to TV superheroes hasn’t really made any leaps and bounds since The Incredible Hulk forty years ago.
Those were
self-contained, Littlest Hobo reset
plotlines, of course, whereas this is almost exhaustingly serialised. I’ll
never go back to wishing for such unmotivated days, but you have to actually
have an ongoing story worth telling. Luke
Cage has a number of solid bedrock essentials; Mike Colter is an instantly
more winning lead than Charlie Cox in Daredevil,
and he isn’t beset by an irritating supporting cast like Cox.
On the other
hand, most of his supporting cast lack especially strong characters, from
Simone Missick’s all-over-the-clichés cop Misty Knight to the selection of
villains, local crime boss Cottonmouth (Mahershala Ali, from House of Cards, giving probably the best
performance here), his ineffectively corrupt politician cousin Mariah (Alfre
Woodard) and most of all the tiresomely OTT, Bible spouting loon that is Luke’s
half-brother Diamondback (Erik LaRay Harvey, like Cox ex of Boardwalk Empire).
Rosario
Dawson is more successful as the returning Claire, and the most diverting
interlude during the thirteen-episode slog has the wounded Cage taken to the
doctor (Michael Kostroff) whose experiments imbued him with his super skin. But
so little offers anything in the way twists, turns or surprises that would
justify the show’s obstinate length; it lacks even the up-the-ante quality that
usual happens with these Marvels about the midpoint. That’s when Diamondback
enters, but he’s so risible a cardboard psycho, and his means of inflicting
injury on Luke so uninspired, it made it difficult to muster even the
dedication to even see the show through, all the way through to the limp showdown.
Everyone here plays to expected types, from Frankie Falson being a loveable old
goat to Frank Whaley turning out to be a bad seed (there was a time, a few decades’
past, when he also played good guys, but those are long since over).
Luke Cage is the kind of show that even plumbs such corny
depths as having a villain stop short of killing a lead character with “I’ll hurt you later. You’ll suffer more that
way” (that might work in a comic strip panel, but the show is so devoted to
faux-realism and a non-heightened milieu, it comes across as simply amateurish),
when he has a clean shot, and bases a whole episode around a siege situation
(in which bad guys don’t immediately
deduce there must be a basement after Luke vanishes into thin air), something
the most formulaic cop shows usually wait a season or two to fall back on. And what
Theo Rossi, one of the least threatening or imposing actors around, is doing
cast as a heavy, is beyond me. Removing and replacing his sunglasses mostly,
while trying not to blink.
Still, the
music from Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge is exemplary, and this at
least feels like the most comfortably
brought to life of the Marvel series to date. Unfortunately, Luke Cage just hasn’t found a decent
story to tell; the pre-hype was big with “the
world is ready for a bulletproof black man”, but was it ready for a show
that does absolutely nothing of note with him, other than spouting rote
platitudes ad infinitum?
It’s
unfortunate that Luke made a better supporting character in Jessica Jones, but
without superheroic face-offs and fireworks these Marvel shows absolutely
require dense twists and turns of plotting and sustained arcs to justify
themselves, the sort of thing Joss Whedon did week in, week out across Buffy and Angel for nine years. Perhaps he’s answering his phone now the trauma
of Age of Ultron is easing somewhat? Luke Cage probably isn’t any lesser than
Season One of Daredevil, but fatigue with
the Netflix formula has now firmly set in, so it really feels its sluggishness. Is “That’ll do” really their
yardstick?
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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