Luke Cage: Tired of Buying New Clothes (Spoiler Thread)

[Werthead]

Almost to the end and it's been a hard grind. The acting is great, the soundtrack is cool, some of the themes are interesting, but the pacing and structure is completely, sometimes comically inept. There's flashbacks inserted at crazy random, the references to the other Marvel Universe shows are just incongruous, the actor playing Diamondback is hammier than William Shatner (with a distractingly similar diction) and the base storyline is tiresomely pedestrian.

Also, whilst I appreciate them filling half the cast with veterans of The Wire, this does only really serve to remind the viewer that The Wire exists and you could be watching The Wire rather than this.

I'm really, really glad that The Defenders is only going to be eight episodes long. But I'm a bit worried about Iron Fist now. Both Season 1 of Daredevil and Jessica Jones suffered pacing problems, Season 2 of Daredevil fell apart in its last few episodes and now Luke Cage has had much more serious and fundamental writing flaws. They're all still better than Agents of SHIELD (obviously) but the shine seems to be coming off the Netflix Marvel shows with each new season they unveil.

Film Critic Hulk has a good analysis of what might be going wrong with serialised TV shows right now, exemplified by Luke Cage but which is happening more and more right across the board.

[Astromech]

This one was a struggle to get through towards the end. The writing was quite bad, which probably had a lot to do with the poor acting. I have to echo what others have written about the pacing and structure. It was all over the place. The villains were terrible. Diamondback managed to actually become more ridiculous as the series progressed. The series started out well, but it was all downhill after Cottonmouth was killed. However, the music was fantastic.

[DaveSumm]

For me, all the Netflix-Marvel series have tried to split being a proper TV show with high production values with being superhero shows. And pretty much all the time, they succeed in the first and come apart when they lean too heavily on the second. Jessica Jones is probably the best of them so far, as it drew far more on its theme of dominance and control in relationships as opposed to fistfights. Luke Cage was at its best when it was about Harlem; Cottonmouth and Mariah's scheming still had  Harlem's interests in mind, and the way people reacted to Luke and to those around him felt more like that was the victory, not to defeat a villain but to convince Harlem what was best for them, and who they really wanted as their hero. But it seems like all of the shows suddenly lose their bottle at some point and think "oh yea, we're a superhero show, guess we need a villain and a punch up". I hope Iron Fist moves away from it, I don't know much about him but on the face of it it seems like the least grounded power and the least grounded protagonist so I'm not all that hopeful.

[The Anti-Targ]

7 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

Eh, we should just drop the argument. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him read the fucking explanation that's been given like five times in the thread.

 

Doubly weird that this insistence on misunderstanding the argument is coming from Relic, who's so well-traveled that he surely must have come across the concept of different languages having different sounds that non-speakers can't necessarily easily recognise or recreate. Which this is similar to, just within variations within English.

The frustrating thing for me about this is that I came in at the tail end of this tangent and I have no idea what words are being talked about.

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

For me, all the Netflix-Marvel series have tried to split being a proper TV show with high production values with being superhero shows. And pretty much all the time, they succeed in the first and come apart when they lean too heavily on the second. Jessica Jones is probably the best of them so far, as it drew far more on its theme of dominance and control in relationships as opposed to fistfights. Luke Cage was at its best when it was about Harlem; Cottonmouth and Mariah's scheming still had  Harlem's interests in mind, and the way people reacted to Luke and to those around him felt more like that was the victory, not to defeat a villain but to convince Harlem what was best for them, and who they really wanted as their hero. But it seems like all of the shows suddenly lose their bottle at some point and think "oh yea, we're a superhero show, guess we need a villain and a punch up". I hope Iron Fist moves away from it, I don't know much about him but on the face of it it seems like the least grounded power and the least grounded protagonist so I'm not all that hopeful.

I dunno, I tend to think the downfall of this grand venture is for shows to move too far away from being superhero shows, basically trying to pretend they're not comic book super hero shows and then only throw in some superhero stuff in random places in order to retain the pop-culture, comic-con identify. IMO they should be honouring the roots, having decent depth and substance and themes, but also good helpings of superhero sugar.

IMO Luke Cage's problem was not the superhero action content, but odd plot decisions and strange pacing.

[The Human Abstract]

Man it started out with great potential, but had spotty writing, pacing, and acting at times.

[Relic]

On 10/13/2016 at 6:33 PM, polishgenius said:

 

Eh, we should just drop the argument. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him read the fucking explanation that's been given like five times in the thread.

 

Doubly weird that this insistence on misunderstanding the argument is coming from Relic, who's so well-traveled that he surely must have come across the concept of different languages having different sounds that non-speakers can't necessarily easily recognise or recreate. Which this is similar to, just within variations within English.

i should have been more specific in the cause of my frustration here. 

  FFS...It must suck to be a sociological illiterate and be so indignant so as to defend the indefensible.... its the same word... one spelling is a derivative of the other.... like Talking and Talkin'... They have the same meaning... it's not like one is a hateful slang word for African Americans, and the other means something entirely different... if you can't use either spelling for the same reason... they are the same word.

Anyway i can understand the phonetic dissonance, even tho i have listened to some (shitty) british hip-hop and was able to tell the difference in their usage of the "ga" ending of the word.

Back to Luke Cage...after Cottonmouth departed this show it went downhill SOO fast. I watched 8 episodes and don;t feel like watching another one. 

[Relic]

On 10/13/2016 at 8:19 PM, Werthead said:

Film Critic Hulk has a good analysis of what might be going wrong with serialised TV shows right now, exemplified by Luke Cage but which is happening more and more right across the board.

I'd love to read what this critic has to say but his ALL CAPS WRITING WITH HORRIBLE SPACING MAKE HIS ARTICLES A FUCKING MESS AND I CANT BE BOTHERED.

[RedEyedGhost]

8 hours ago, Relic said:

I'd love to read what this critic has to say but his ALL CAPS WRITING WITH HORRIBLE SPACING MAKE HIS ARTICLES A FUCKING MESS AND I CANT BE BOTHERED.

I thought the exact same thing when I tried to read it yesterday.

[Astromech]

I thought the article was entirely on point concerning Luke Cage and especially on point when discussing the death of episodic tv.

[Ramsay B.]

10 hours ago, Relic said:

Back to Luke Cage...after Cottonmouth departed this show it went downhill SOO fast. I watched 8 episodes and don;t feel like watching another one. 

It really is amazing how fast it fell off a cliff. I went from binge watching the 1st half of the season in like a day(something I never do), to not even finishing the season. It really lost its way after he died. 

[PetyrPunkinhead]

12 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

I thought the exact same thing when I tried to read it yesterday.

I tried, too. But the all caps and basic proofreading oversights made it impossible for me to finish, which is ironic considering the point of the piece. It actually caused physical pain to try and read. But he seemed to have a good point about the MARVEL Netflix shows lacking strength in their overall season arcs.

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, Astromech said:

I thought the article was entirely on point concerning Luke Cage and especially on point when discussing the death of episodic tv.

It's ironic because everyone used to say that they hated episodic TV and wanted everything to be serialised, and now they're moving away from that a little. The Star Trek reset button could be very annoying, but its episodic format gave us episodes like The Visitor, Far Beyond the Stars, The Inner Light and City on the Edge of Forever. The X-Files ended up with the stand-alone episodes being generally better than the arc ones.

I think the main problem is that if your overall story arc is weak (such as Luke Cage's which basically runs out of steam somewhere around Episode 6 and then spins its wheels), then that makes multiple episodes or even entire seasons weak. With episodic series you might be more patchy, but you can generally recover from a bad storyline as it will be contained in just one episode.

I think the best structure is that used by J. Michael Straczynski (in Babylon 5 and to a lesser extent Sense8) where you have continuing storylines as subplots in every episode, but the A-story of each episode might be a self-contained story or a serialised one. Or it might be what appears to be a self-contained story but then later on is revealed to be important to the overall arc. They weren't as accomplished at it, but Lost, BSG and Fringe did similar things (the article argues that Breaking Bad used the same structure, which is kind of true). That's much harder and tougher to write, but more satisfying overall and gives you the best of both worlds.

[Relic]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I think the main problem is that if your overall story arc is weak (such as Luke Cage's which basically runs out of steam somewhere around Episode 6 and then spins its wheels), then that makes multiple episodes or even entire seasons weak. With episodic series you might be more patchy, but you can generally recover from a bad storyline as it will be contained in just one episode.

 

While this is true, i think the main problem is that everyone decided to jump on the serialized show bandwagon, and proceeded to over-saturate the market with mediocre (or flat out bad) content. There is still good fiction out there, its just lost in a sea of endless fucking television shows.  

[Astromech]

I'm almost finished with Jessica Jones and can't help thinking it would have been perfect for an episodic formula, her being a PI. It seemed it was going this route with the first episode, but was quickly abandoned. Daredevil felt similar after the first episode. I was expecting a new mystery or case each episode after the first episode of each series. Daredevil made the right choice by not focusing too much time on the legal practice(and some episodes spent annoyingly too much time on the law firm politics) and focused more on the overarching story. I would have liked to see Jessica Jones do some more detective work with more cases instead of the serialized story it has. Hell, Hogarth and Simpson were both a waste of time imo.

Luke Cage just never really seemed to have a clear idea of what it wanted it to be. Even the character of Luke Cage was very inconsistent: doesn't want to be a hero, but then does; doesn't want to be famous, then settles for neighborhood famous; is a dick to women at times, then isn't; is a fugitive from the law, then decides to just go back to serve his term. SMH.

[RumHam]

21 minutes ago, Astromech said:

I'm almost finished with Jessica Jones and can't help thinking it would have been perfect for an episodic formula, her being a PI. It seemed it was going this route with the first episode, but was quickly abandoned.

I think there was one early episode ("99 Friends") that had a non-Killgrave plot. It wasn't that great. Once Jessica learns Killgrave is after her, taking other P.I. jobs doesn't make much sense. I kinda liked that they did it as one single plot, though their were problems with the execution.

Maybe in retrospect they should have started with a few unrelated cases and a slightly lighter tone. Maybe with Killgrave observing her from the background and Jessica's having the occasional PTSD flashback. Then the Hope/Killgrave reveal could have been episode three and the series takes a darker turn. I can understand why they wouldn't want to do that, you want to hook people with the first episode. But on Netflix I think this should be less of an issue since most people binge anyway. 

In general I think they should probably just do ten episodes a season and three shows a year instead of two. 

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Astromech said:

Luke Cage just never really seemed to have a clear idea of what it wanted it to be. Even the character of Luke Cage was very inconsistent: doesn't want to be a hero, but then does; doesn't want to be famous, then settles for neighborhood famous; is a dick to women at times, then isn't; is a fugitive from the law, then decides to just go back to serve his term. SMH.

There are, as has been discussed, plenty of problems with Luke Cage, but you just criticised a series for character development. That seems a bit unfair.



As a big fan of heavily serialised storytelling I really hope creators keep at it. Sure, it has its pitfalls that writers need to avoid, but so does every mode of storytelling. And sure, we wouldn't want every show to go that way... but they're not.
And the more we see it done, the more writers will see those pitfalls and the more shows we'll get without them.

And when it goes right it's so rewarding, even if there are flaws in it. Like, Daredevil: without the heavy serial nature the second half of season 2 might not have been as much of a mess, but at the same time we wouldn't have gotten the opening half and the Punisher intro at such a good level, and that was awesome.

[The Anti-Targ]

I would think adaptations from a substantial body of literature would lend itself to a more serialised approach rather than episodic. I guess the problem arises when you are telling a 3 Act story over >10 episodes when things like this really started out with the mini-series, which originally went 3 or 4 episodes of about 90 broadcast minutes each. Which amounts to only 4.5 - 6 regular episodes. Perhaps these shows would benefit from fewer episodes giving us miniseries hours of content rather than full series hours of content. Could this season of Luke Cage been told better in 6-8 episodes? Maybe it could have. Even 10 episodes might have made for a tighter narrative. And left people hungry for more.

Interesting that Defenders is going to be a short season. It might work better.

[Astromech]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

There are, as has been discussed, plenty of problems with Luke Cage, but you just criticised a series for character development. That seems a bit unfair.



 

He wasn't developing as a character, though, when he continued to revert to past inconsistencies. It was simply poor writing. They didn't seem to know who they wanted Luke Cage to be.

[polishgenius]

14 hours ago, Astromech said:

He wasn't developing as a character, though, when he continued to revert to past inconsistencies. It was simply poor writing. They didn't seem to know who they wanted Luke Cage to be.

 

I don't see it. I didn't really notice him being a dick to women at all, so maybe that was going on and I didn't notice, but all your other mentions are pretty clearly laid out plot points about him slowly beginning to accept that he has responsibilities for both the past and the future.

[Astromech]

3 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I don't see it. I didn't really notice him being a dick to women at all, so maybe that was going on and I didn't notice, but all your other mentions are pretty clearly laid out plot points about him slowly beginning to accept that he has responsibilities for both the past and the future.

I shouldn't have said he was a dick to women, he basically just sleeps around hoping to forget about Reeva. We see him mention and mourn her in almost every episode, but then he almost does an instant 180 when Claire gives him evidence of Reeva working with Burnstein. For someone who supposedly loved Reeva so much, he doesn't give her any benefit of the doubt once Claire is in front of him(Granted Rosario Dawson would make me forget about all other women as well). And he never doubted her in JJ, like with the flash drive, saying she was trying to protect him.

 Plot points, I'll give you. The problem is their words are mere lip service to move the plot. He isn't actually changing. He's saying he's changing but he actually doesn't. It's frustrating as hell. Other characters do the same thing: Misty suddenly switching her opinion of Luke from innocent to guilty for no reason; Mariah wanting out of crime but then doing nothing to actually get out, but following Shades blindly. It's poor writing. The only episode in which I saw actual, real character development of Luke Cage was episode 4, his origin story. Luke made more sense to me in JJ.