★★★★☆ A brown-eyed handsome man and villains to die for

Luke Cage

Cheo Hodari Coker, Marvel, Netflix

The character Luke Cage first appeared on the small screen (as far as I know) in the series Jessica Jones. In the original plans for the Marvel Netflix series of serieses, Luke Cage was to be the fourth to get his own series, after Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist, in that order. However, the reaction to his appearance in Jessica Jones was so positive that he was bumped up to third place, ahead of Iron Fist. This altered continuity has effects on the story. For instance, there are frequent references to "Danny" in the dialog. Danny is Danny Rand, AKA Iron Fist. Indeed, Danny himself is a main character in one episode of Luke Cage, and Colleen Wing, another of the main characters of Iron Fist, shows up in another episode.

Unlike Daredevil and Jessica Jones, which take place in Hell's Kitchen (I haven't yet watched Iron Fist, so I don't know about that), Luke Cage takes place mostly in Harlem. Harlem is a more important character in the series than Luke himself. A big effort is made to present Harlem culture. (Hell's Kitchen, in contrast, appears in Daredevil and Jessica Jones mostly as a corrupt hellhole.)

I have to guess that the popularity of Luke Cage's character in Jessica Jones had a lot to do with Mike Colter being a very good-looking guy. Because honestly, Luke Cage is not a very interesting character. He's basically a cut-rate superman, generic bulletproof good guy with anger-management issues. I will say that Colter does a better job with Luke than Krysten Ritter does with Jessica. After finishing Jessica Jones, I realized that my main reason for dissatisfaction with the show was Ritter's one-dimensional performance. (To be fair, I'm not enough of a show biz buff to guess whether that's Ritter's fault, or the fault of the writers and/or director.) Colter's Luke Cage is a a bit more versatile, mainly in the sense that he spend less than 100% of his time furious at the world.

But the villains, the villains of Luke Cage are really, really great. There are five main bad guys, Cornell (Cottonmouth) Stokes, his cousin Mariah Stokes Dillard, Willis (Diamondback) Stryker, Hernan (Shades) Alvarez, and John (Bushmaster) McIver. They are all terrific. I would have to give the edge to Cottonmouth, played by the great Mahershala Ali. Sadly, he's out halfway through Season 1. Mariah is the villain who lasts throughout the two seasons, and she is deliciously evil.

I also really enjoyed the music. Cottonmouth and Mariah are the owners of a club called Harlem's Paradise. The directors use this as an excuse to feature live music performances by many artists, which they skillfully work into the action. If you like nonstop action, you might find this frustrating, but I did not -- it was one of the best things in the show.

Iron Fist on IMDB

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