Luke Cage Season 1, Bulletproof or not, can you stand up for what is right?

So in my race to watch all of Netflix's Marvel content now on Disney Plus in the correct order, before Daredevil born again is over so that I can actually get the full context of everything, and I mean I need to get to the Punisher for that, and I still have Iron fist left before even the Defenders...

I Still don't know why Marcy and Foggy started dating... and now he is dead...

You see what you did Marvel...

You should have had these connected from the start.

But now that they are, and in my race to watch all these, I feel often I am missing out on the little things, the Street level, the day to day, and that is not good for this show at all as this show relies on detail heavily, it is because of this Luke Cage season 1 in my opinion is the most intricately crafted season so far, and also why this will be difficult for me to do justice to...

The twists and turns in this season are enough to compete with Game of thrones... I think... I haven't watched Game of Thrones...

hahahahahahaha.....

Anyways, you think x is the villain? nope he ded, he killed by the most benign appearing side character ever... you think this is the mentor? Nope! he ded...

Okay can we stop killing of.... oh for the sake of all that is holy...

You Know Luke Cage could almost be a different show, a show where Genghis Connie's was a regular location he hangs with his amazing friends, Pop is a mentor figure, the real villain is Cottonmouth, the evil gang leader, etc. etc.

But Pop dies, Genghis gets blown up, and cotton mouth who is responsible for both gets taken out by his cousin sister who until recently was the loyal supportive archetype who covered for her brother's actions....

But then something snaps, and she kills Cotton mouth.

This other show, that could have been, would also have been a great show, but this is what we got instead, and it is many times better, because it makes the audience feel what everyday people feel when a random act of aggression takes out their everyday hang out.

Or something snaps and suddenly they have done the unimaginable, nothing to do but stick to it now I guess... and so the perpetrator blames the world.

But there is a system right? Something in place that will take care of this sort of thing?

Well, about that system, it is corrupt, and controlled by people like Mariah(cottonmouth's cousin sister)

It is this system that got Luke Cage or then Carl Lucas incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, and it is the same system that gave him to a corrupt racist cop named Rakham to use in an illegal fighting ring, an ordeal that left him scarred and took many years to heal from.

This same system asks him to serve his remaining time after he did so much for the place that he grew up in while the real guilty ones get to walk away.

But someone who staunchly believed the system can be fixed and tried to work inside it despite the problems was Detective Mercedes "Misty" Knight.

She begins the season with being a new potential love interest for Luke Cage, but then things go south...

You know how every time police corruption is brought up people bring up the good cops defense? Well Misty Knight is a prime example of one such good cop, the Irony that it is her partner who is the most corrupt cop of all, the one who facilitates cotton mouth and causes so many of the problems of this show is not lost on me.

It is indeed very emblematic of how precisely the corrupt hide behind a shield of good cops, how so often the good ones defend their colleagues, and yet how it is never as simple as simply taking the corrupt out, because if Scarfe had not defected, then the heroes wouldn't get their best chance against cotton mouth and Scarfe can't defect to the police if he isn't loyal to corruption first.

Misty realizes the problems with the system, yet in her good cop routine becomes a perpetrator of police violence twice, and ultimately while it is her willingness to work outside the system that gets her the best leads, it is also this same willingness that comes back to bite her in the ass.

Cause her boss is right, if their star witness had been in protective custody, she wouldn't have died, but that was really only possible if Misty Trusted the authorities in the first place.

The good cop brought down by her own nature.

Finally it must be noted that council woman Mariah uses the civil unrest that she caused to prop herself up as a false savior against the corrupt police.

While working for and with the worst criminals of all... Diamondback and Shades.

Diamondback is unstable, he is unpredictable, he is violent, he is cruel, and in a certain sense he is almost a lesser villain than Cottonmouth, he lacks the... moral complexity, so why then, do I believe he is the best thing in the entire show?

Well let's start by analyzing one thing, firstly there is a common thread amongst many shows of how most false Idols, politicians and "bringers of paradise" are really just wearing a thinly veiled disguise over what is actually just an overly emotional immature person.

Here the thinly veiled disguise and the overly emotional person are two different people

Diamondback is the person behind the veil, and the veil is Mariah, and plus, every scene Diamondback is in, there is an overwhelming presence, you don't know who he will kill, or who he will spare, and to add to all that he finds ways to match Luke cage first through the Judas Bullets and then through his suit...

He is everything Luke Cage could have been but is not, he is also Luke's half brother, so in the final battle Luke Cage lays to rest literally his worse half...

But in so doing, he potentially lets free two worse Criminals in Mariah and Shades, the strange thing is, at every point, they both do the most Logical thing they can to achieve their goals the best they can.

It is just that their Goals are... well... not the best...

So that was Luke Cage season 1, just Iron Fist to do before moving on to the Defenders...