Season 1

Seeing it just after, I can't help comparing it with Iron Fist.

Iron Fist was cheap but fun. Can't say any effort was put in any particular aspect. Story, acting, visuals, nothing stands out, nothing is really good. Nobody will praise it for its artistic or intrinsic quality. Yet it's fun and the watching pass by pretty fast.

On the other hand, Luke Cage is shit in very expensive make up. A lot of work has been put into it. Clearly. And yet watching it "please god let it end" is what goes through your mind most of the time.

The visual, the atmosphere, the soundtrack, you can really see and feel the effort to create something here. There is a real style and identity. Not really one I particularly enjoyed (jazzy's not my sound, yellow's not my color), but can't help but have respect for that.

However it was a little, I don't know, out of place ? It actually did not fit with the show.

For the biggest part, the Cottonmouth arc, it is a neighbourhood gangster story. Not a Luke Cage story or even a Marvel story. It is the most cliché gangster story you can think of, everything is a total cliché. The setup, the plot, the characters.

:arrow_right: The local gangster. He hides behind a sophisticated facade, but make him angry and he can't control his rage and beat people up.
:arrow_right: The dirty politician that hides her criminal dealings behind a neighbourhood spirit front.
:arrow_right: The OG gangster that turned his life around and tries to keep the kids off the street
:arrow_right: One of said kids, that became a cop
:arrow_right: Her partner, who is dirty

Every single one of them is more cliché than the other, to a point that is barely believable. And every one of their interaction follows the exact schema you expect in a story you already saw 20 times. Luke Cage is barely an element in the story, replace him by whatever cliché protagonist you'd get in that story, guy coming back to see his young days neighbourhood has changed, maybe the father looking for vengeance for his daughter, and you get the exact same story.

Again not saying it's badly done, it's mostly good or even top level performance for Mahershala Ali. He's really good. BUT. He is not on the Luke Cage set. He's playing in his own unrelated gangsta movie. And despite the performance, everything is so cliché and expected that it's rapidly boring as fuck.

On the other side of actor's performance spectrum is Mike Colter. He looks the part. He has a great back to stop bullets. And that's it. Anything that requires a little bit of acting, he sucks. It can mostly pass as being a stoic guy, so it's actually not an issue most of the time. But there are a few times where it is painful.
Meeting one of his idol in a shop ? Would have been a fun cameo scene, but can't sell it.
His whole life turned upside down when he learns that Stryker is his brother or that Reva has been working on the experiments all along ? Barely registers.
The flirting, first with Misty then Claire ? Makes for a passable awkward one night stand flirting, but who could ever buy that as romance ?

And what's worse ? The second arc is actually a real Luke Cage story instead of a copy paste gangsta movie, and boy does it turn bad as soon as they don't copy an existing story.

Diamondback might be one of the worst villain ever.50% corny lines, 50% daddy issues. He's pretty pathetic and uninteresting, certainly a downgrade from Cottonmouth,while not being that much of an upgrade in a fight against Luke.

The problem with Luke is that he has three moves and that's it. Just grab a guy and throw it. Turn his back to stop bullets. And make a ball out of guns. So you hit a limitation in action scenes pretty quick. He seems to have trained in boxing as a kid. You definitely don't see that in his fighting technique. Combined with that the difficulty of finding an antagonist that can actually hurt him.
You get three choices.
1⃣: something more fantastic than these Netflix shows allow.
2⃣: make him fight while full of kryptonite shrapnels. It's done, this plotline is passable but still full of holes
3⃣: give the baddie a supersuit. Done also, it's pathetic. I mean, the final fight needs sitcom like crowd shouts to be watchable

On the good points ?

Claire. She's not as fun as in Iron FIst, and totally sucks, by no fault of her own, as a love interest, but still.

Shades. By far the best character that appears to be a part of this show (unlike Cottonmouth).I liked almost
every single one of his interventions (not the prison part, but that actually shows the character's growth. Great that he stays for season two, certainly more interesting than Mariah. Though we're still missing someone to fight Luke.. I'm still not sure if I genuinely enjoyed this character or if it was the lack of competition that made him shine.

Wu Tang's Method Man's "Bulletproof love" rap is the best moment of the season. But here I know that it's by lack of competition.

Let me first point out that I am a human being – a flawed human being with imperfections and biased opinions. I have never liked film noirs, jazz music, gangsters, the mafia, or anything to do with thugs. Furthermore, I find it difficult to enjoy a TV show if I cannot connect with the main character…or any other character at that. Luke Cage has all of that – which is why I considered it boring, and my least favorite of the three shows. I watched others talk about how great it was…how it is better than the other MCU Netflix shows, or even other recent Netflix shows like Stranger Things and for once, I’m out of the loop because I don’t get it. However, with this universe, it is pertinent to watch these shows for potential continuity.

So I watched the show, and I was ultimately bored with it. There were good episodes, but in general – I found it a lackluster experience from the get go. The best episode was the third, and some others came close as well. However, this show tried to do what Jessica Jones did – as his abilities are practically unstoppable, they introduced an emotional aspect to it that served as his vulnerabilities. The difference between the two comes down to if I can connect with the character – and for Luke Cage, I just couldn’t. As I pointed out before, I also didn’t like the music choices or even villains – the end fight was trying to be epic in a way, but it was so typical and blah-inducing – I’m having a hard time finding something in this show that can be considered a “wow” factor. I’m just glad I’m caught up and don’t have to worry about it anymore…I just know there’s going to be a second season…sigh.

I had a decision to make – how was I going to rate this…because I didn’t want my own personal objections to get in the way. So here’s what I came up with. Netflix had a specific goal in mind when they made this TV show, and a lot of people really do like it – so I have to say they did what they sought to do. However, I believe there is also an entirely different group of people that didn’t like it – and I feel like this rift between the two is more apparent than any other the other shows Netflix has done with Marvel. I’m not one to explain why that is – but I can tell it exists. So I’ll just say this – Luke Cage is a well-done show that positively achieves what it wanted to achieve – which told a story without worrying what an audience would think of it. If they loved it great, if they didn’t, oh well. However, when you take that kind of risk – you create something that is possibly not entertaining – which is what I experienced when I watched it.

Look. I’m not a genius, but when I’m struggling to get through a season and groaning at the idea of watching another one…I’m pretty sure they did something wrong. That being said, I can’t ignore where it did go right – so that’s how I came up with my score.

Before Black Panther there was Luke Cage. Marvel's first project centered on a Black superhero is ambitious and promising- especially during the first 5 episodes, but its boring villains, lackluster writing, and unbalanced story cause it to quickly lose steam after a strong start. Mike Colter returns from his arc in the first season of Jessica Jones with a simmering intensity that carries the season. Even as the overall quality drops off as it progresses, his scenes all sing. (Except for the awful final action set piece. Ugh.) The music and shooting style, done mostly on location in Harlem, is a loving homage to the Blaxploitation roots of the Power Man comics, but it doesn't always quite work. And that's a shame. Also, the constant name-dropping of Black intellectuals, artists, and politicians from history starts to get to be a bit much. We get it; Black culture needs to be centered and honored, but they lay it on pretty thick sometimes. What never gets old, though, are the ways that the show depicts & explores the complex relationship between the police and marginalized communities. There's a lot to talk about there, and it's done with a raw honesty that is refreshing to see in a piece of mainstream pop culture that came (at least partly) from Disney.

Mahershala Ali and Alfre Woodard are brilliant actors who give it all they've got as the gangster Cottonmouth and corrupt politician Black Mariah, but they are hampered by stilted dialogue, an overwrought plot, and ultimately unrelatable characters. Even Rosario Dawson's Nurse Temple isn't given much to work with. Her purpose seems to be to administer First Aid and whine about how Luke needs to be the best vigilante he can be (after spending 2 season trying to convince Matt Murdock that he shouldn't be one). The brightest supporting character is Det. Misty Knight, brought to life by Simone Missick, who gives a knock-out performance. But the person who steals almost every scene he's in ends up being Frank Whaley as Misty's jaded partner, Det. Rafael Scarfe. His arc is easily the most interesting of the season, and he absolutely kills every line he's given. If Luke Cage season 1 had been 8-10 episodes long, and followed the model of Daredevil's season 2 by running both major villains' stories in parallel, it could have been a triumph. Instead, it just ends up falling flat.

For sure it's not an epic show, one of that you'll never forget and you'll always compare in terms of "greatness"! I did not like it, did not like Jessica Jones and did not like very much Daredevil (which is still the best among these); I'm a big fan of Marvel comics (especially oldest ones): this is hte reason why I still watch Marvel shows and I'll continue watching; and this is maybe the reason why I found the best moment of the season the scene when Luke just escaped from Seagate and his basically naked, so he stole pants and shirt and WOW, he looks just like he was in first Marvel comics issues! He also had that kind of heat! :D
I also find great musics here: I love that sound and the kind of black groove, I literally adore it! In my opinion the main theme reminds somehow the italian B (and Z) crime movies soundtrack, if you also like it search for some "library music" ;)

For the rest, I hope Marvel and Netflix will improve their shows: we don't need tons of special effect but we absolutely need a solid plot, interesting villains and not movies like dialogues (I mean, most of times I find dialogues here literally non sense or/and non realistic, not sentenced a common man would say in such occasions but just words told to fill the silence, meh)