Luke Cage: DWYCK
October 1, 2016 7:21 PM - Season 1, Episode 9 - Subscribe

With Luke wounded and on the run, Misty faces a soul-searching interrogation. Mariah's rise to power takes a dark turn.

AV Club binge recap - Luke Cage shines a spotlight on its female characters - "Perhaps the most important thing about representation is that it can’t all come in the form of one character. Had Misty, Mariah, or Claire been the sole woman of color in this series, they would’ve buckled under the pressure of representing the entire black/Latina experience. But since no one character bears the sole burden of representation on Luke Cage (when it comes to either race or gender), they’re each allowed to have an individual humanity that’s so often taken for granted with white characters."

Mariah: You would use my personal tragedy for strategic political advantage?
Alex: Madam Councilwoman, I--
Mariah: I taught you well.

****
Domingo: Why am I still alive, man?
Diamondback: 'Cause no one's comin' at me. They'll ask around, so tell 'em... I'll murderize everything in sight. 'Cause I don't care and I won't quit. You can't bargain with me. You buy or you die.


*Misty has a long psych session/interrogation with Dr. Gabe Krasner, about her experience with Stryker, losing control during her interview of Claire, and why she became a cop.
*Luke climbs out of the garbage truck, utters Sweet Christmas #2, steals a hoody from a laundromat.
*Stryker tells Cottonmouth's crew that he lives by the Bible and The 48 Laws of Power
*Mariah reminisces with Cornell's body at the funeral home.
*Luke steals a police car from two cops who try to arrest him. Dashcam footage goes viral.
*Luke finds Claire at the diner researching on her laptop; she tries to check Reva's USB drive, suggests they take a road trip to Dr. Burstein.
*Ridley clears Misty for duty and to go out after Luke.
*Stryker shows up at the crime-boss meeting Mariah had Domingo arrange, killing all the bosses but Domingo and nixing Mariah's plan to bow out of the illegitimate enterprises. She in turn tells him he should start selling his Cage-killing bullets to the police.
*Burstein is shocked to learn that Cage survived Seagate. Technobabble ensues. Sweet Christmas #3 is uttered. Burstein retrieves all of his Seagate research from Reva's USB drive; attempts to weaken Luke's skin with an acid bath so they can extract the shrapnel, but it appears put him into cardiac arrest.
posted by oh yeah! (10 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ok, sorry but this episode was so unbelievably stupid.

I put up with the science-y* mumbo jumbo but boiling him in acid was just dumb.

Couldn't you just dip the relevant part of him in acid instead of a full-body immerse in a Frankenstein body cage?

Also - the fumes from the boiling acid would have melted both of their faces off.

Maybe this was from the previous episode but they did not need that much blood to do a DNA test. Hell, the line about the wound being "too septic" is BS. When they want to illegally get a DNA sample, police offer the target fried chicken while in custody and are able to extract and identify DNA in the cells in the saliva left on the bones by the target; chicken DNA contamination is not a problem, and chicken DNA is a lot closer to human DNA than bacterial.

If they were able to penetrate his 'mucous membranes' (mumble grumble) they for sure could have done through the same route and injected him with some mighty fine painkillers, too.

*ok, they mentioned "lock and key" which is a common highschool conceptual teaching metaphor for molecular interactions; the "velcro" explanation is actually kinda-sorta ok - changing the strength and concentration of cell-adhesion proteins and stronger extracellular matrix interactions isn't completely implausible; they name-drop CRISPR and it's not totally not ok (it's still not ok unless they developed a vector that infects only his epithelial cells but even the improved C2c2 the efficiency is still pretty abysmal); that the 'treatment' only works on Luke because of his DNA isn't too far-fetched but it would work on a subset of the general population too and they mention that; and...; and...sorry sorry sorry
posted by porpoise at 4:30 PM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Clearly the doctor favors solutions that involve the subject being submerged in a tank of mysterious liquid. The tank was all ready, what was he going to do, not use it? Seems like a waste of a good tank and a giant container of acid he had on hand for some reason!

Anyway, the comic-book science didn't bother me as much as Diamondback's over-acting, but Mariah & Misty were so good in this I can't complain too much.
posted by Jugwine at 8:27 PM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


The dashcam footage shown to Misty not including the bit where Luke shields one officer from the other's gunfire means that it was probably released by someone with nefarious motives (other than, you know, wanting the suspect to seem as guilty as possible to the general public).
posted by ODiV at 12:39 AM on October 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


That was some powerful Comic Book Science going on, yeah.

But some especially strong performances in this episode from Alfre Woodard and Simone Cook, though.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 2:45 PM on October 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I caught that bit of editing on the dash cam, too. Absolutely deliberate.

So, I get that Diamondback is out for revenge and he's kind of unhinged and all, but... What the fuck is his endgame? And how the hell does he have so much pull in the criminal world when he's such an unhinged motherfucker and doesn't seem to have any support staff or anything. Other than Shades, who looks 100% done with his bullshit.

Mariah trying to go straight was surprisingly believable. That totally worked for me. I really believe she wants to.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:28 PM on October 11, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wild-ass guess about the direction of the story: Shades and Mariah turn to Luke for help taking down Diamondback.

Even wilder-ass guess: Reva turns out to be a Wakandan agent spying on other countries' super sister programs, and Borstein reading the USB drive activated a tracking device. Black Panther will cameo, and he'll use his resources to help Luke with his medical problem. Because why not?
posted by tobascodagama at 6:24 AM on October 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


(I meant "super soldier" programs, but I really, really like the idea of super sister programs.)
posted by tobascodagama at 8:26 AM on October 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


OK D-back name-checks Peter Luger's -- in the news this week as being the place rapey Don Trump takes his conquests ---supervillains think alike, no?
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:09 PM on October 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Bad sciencey mumbo-jumbo is bad, agreed. I know it's a staple of comics but unghgghghgh.
posted by desuetude at 10:03 PM on October 17, 2016


Good episode but kind of scattered with three different storylines going at once. I'll agree that the acid bath is silly but we're in the same universe as Thor and Spiderman so you can't expect The Wire here.
posted by octothorpe at 6:01 AM on December 20, 2016


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