Viewer Log: Luke Cage ep 10

While my job is a major, major, major, major pain in my backside, I did enjoy having an additional day off follow Christmas. First time I’ve actually gotten to enjoy a second day off because of a federal holiday falling on a weekend, but, it is nice. It did allow me to finally catch up with dear Mr. Cage. Let’s get to it.

Netflix, let's recreate this moment
sometime, shall we?

Where did we last leave Luke? Oh right, he was having a heart attack following an attempt to remove the Judas bullet shrapnel in his body. Wow, you folks must hate me for just leaving this hanging for weeks. Claire and the Doc are obviously freaking out as they try to find a way to get Luke’s heart starting again. For some reason, during this highly dangerous medical procedure, the Doc didn’t think to have a DEFIBRILLATOR handy. Claire, thinking fast, drops an electronic device into the chemical soup to restart Luke’s heart. Not the safest of methods, but hey, unusual circumstances require unusual solutions. They find a way to keep the chemical soup from melting Luke’s skin, and Claire then realizes what they need to do to make the reaction work. Boil the ever-loving heck out of it. Doc is initially against it, but relents when Claire points out that the extreme heat that the deceased officer Rackham put Luke through in his assassination attempt was the only thing he hadn’t tried to replicate. They set the temp from hot to Seventh Circle of Hell. Once they get Luke hot enough, Claire works fast to get the shrapnel from Luke’s shoulder. Chitari metal out, Luke starts healing quickly.

Back in Harlem, Misty is still investigating the various “Luke Cage incidence.” She’s got more than a few shots of Willis Stryker, but not anything with a perfect clear picture. Stryker, meanwhile, shows Mariah what his master plan is. In a word, mass production. He and his goons have figured out how to re-blend the Chitari metal in the bullets. They’re less powerful then the Gen 1 bullet’s that Stryker used previously, but, they’re still strong enough to break Luke’s skin if enough shots were fired at him. Mariah argues that Stryker is losing focus, but good ol’ Diamondback counters by saying “He is my focus. Always.” In order to increase demand for his Judas 2.0, Stryker puts on a show. He dresses in a hoodie, puts on some sort of strength enhancing glove, and takes out an older beloved cop. All while shouting “I’m Luke Cage.” God, people are *blanking* stupid if they fall for that. Which they do.

The cops hit the street hard, trying to flush out Luke. Obviously, they turn up just about nothing. They even interrogate the kid that Luke saved when Pop’s Barbershop got shot up. The interviewing officer, who’d been trained by the murdered cop, kind of flips out and smacks the kid around. Why would you let someone so obviously emotionally compromised conduct the interview?

Back with the heroes. Luke is recovering rapidly, within a few hours there won’t even be a scar. After the Doc makes it very clear that he’s planning on replicating the experiment, Luke and Claire decide to look through Riva’s files. When the Doc steps out, they boot up the drive. They quickly look through Riva’s note, and to Luke’s horror, that Riva not only knew everything about what was going on but she personally suggested that they use Luke in the experiment. You know that scene in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, where the evil priest puts his hands on someone’s chest, chants Ka-Li-Ma and the rips out his heart? Yeah, that’s probably what Luke feels like right now. The Doc returns just as they finish the video, and tries to put it into context. This does little to calm Luke, who flips out and smashes the makeshift laboratory before storming out.

From an older episode, but seriously, I wonder how many
hole-less shirts Luke has?

Back in Harlem, Misty finally gets enough of a look at Willis Stryker aka Diamondback to make an id. She also figures out that Carl Lucas IS Luke Cage. This isn’t enough to convince her inspector to shift focus from Luke to Stryker, but it's enough to get Misty to start digging deeper. Love this woman’s tenacity. She goes to and starts interrogating Domingo. Domingo is tight lipped, but reveals that Harlem’s Paradise is under new management.

Luke and Claire bond a little on the shores overlooking Seagate. Luke admits that Riva’s betrayal has shaken him pretty bad, but it won’t stop him. Good on ya, mate. They then travel back to Luke’s home, a church. Said church had been built by his Grandfather, and it iswhere his father used to preach. Inside, it's pretty dilapidated but is still enough to make Luke have some flashbacks to his childhood. Little scenes that, when played in context, made it clear to him that his father was having an affair with Willis’ mother. Got to admit, finding out your father was having an affair with and is the father of your friend turned enemy is probably a bitter pill to swallow. They make their way back to Harlem. Back at the farm-lab, Doctor I-Have-No-Idea-What-His-Name-Is is able to recover his hard drive, and the data. Something wicked this way comes.

In Harlem, Mariah is doing everything she can to follow advice given to her by Diamondback, spin it so it’s all about her. She organizes a rally at Harlem’s Paradise, it’s one part Anti-Luke Rally, and one part Pro-Judas arming the cops Rally. Misty, Luke and Claire all arrive at about the same time. Misty spots Stryker and goes after him, and Luke spots Misty and goes after her. Stryker gets the drop on Misty and shoots her twice, but Luke rushes in and saves her. Everything starts happening at once, shots fired, people screaming, and Luke and Misty get pinned down behind a bar. Not a great situation to be in, not going to lie.

This episode is… good. I enjoyed it, as it began to explain the new background between Luke Cage and Diamondback. Yeah, in the comics, there is no familial connection between these two. This Cain/Abel style story has been done before, but it’s still done really well. I still think that, honestly, they should have saved Diamondback for next season, so we could have several more episodes of character development for both Cottonmouth and Diamondback. Why? Because it makes the question of “Why all this hate,” all the more important. At least for me. I think that the moment with the Doc is also important. Why? Because foreshadowing is important in a serial story. That’s something that I think the Marvel films have actually been doing rather poorly at. Each story is self-contained, by in large, and while the after-credit scenes set up the next story, there’s very little connection. Good stories are focused, but do take a moment or two to show what will come next. It’s what the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies did really well… well that least with Harry Osborne’s story arch. But that’s a story for another time. This is a setup story, plain and simple, but what it sets up is pretty darn awesome. Just wait and see. 

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