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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
It is also shifting the attention, since Diamondback doesn't really have a connection to Harlem. We have the first half of the show which is has this interesting theme of betrayal running through down to the question if people who proudly say that they "don't nark" aren't actually betraying Harlem by not speaking up against those who treat it as their personal playground. The whole story with the brother doesn't fit into the theme at all. I mean, I guess Diamondback was betrayed by a father who didn't do for him what he did for his official son, which later lead to him framing Luke, but we don't even know for what Luke was framed or why Luke thinks that he was guilty on some level or another.
To use another recent blockbuster as an example, there's a reason why the death of Han Solo in TFA had far more of an impact on many in the audience than the death of BILLIONS of people earlier on in the movie did. It's because, we never met those people and were given no reason to care about them. Whereas Han was not only a beloved iconic character, but we follow him a lot throughout this particular film, and they set up a personal connection between him an the villain.
Same thing goes for seeing Obi Wan Kenobi die at Darth Vader's hands in ANH vs. Alderaan getting blown up without use ever really getting to know it or it's people.
The audience is almost always going to care more about the characters that they have a personal connection to, even if they're limited in number, vs. ones that they don't (even if they are far larger in number).
I'm good at contextualizing what big numbers actually mean in my head, so I actively try to avoid invoking A Million Is a Statistic when watching movies or tv shows.
Sounds like Fury is in Avengers 4 after all
(of course he is) and that Jackson was just lying. I don't know why anyone was fooled tbh.
edited 9th Sep '17 5:45:18 AM by comicwriter
Luke Cage, Episode 13!
Way too late to be trying to make Diamondback's betrayal shocking, show. This flashback adds very little to their relationship at this juncture.
"Hammertech, made just for you." I do like the quiet implication that Diamondback's suit is one of Hammer's attempts at building an Iron Man suit. That's the direction they were trying to go in before Justin Hammer was arrested, so it makes sense that they'd keep trying to hash out ways to do it. Halloween Costume Robocop is a bargain bin Iron Man.
Still looks like trash, though.
Having this fight take place in Switzerland would mean more if Tone hadn't already shot the place up and killed Pop. More and more, I feel like that was a mistake. I get what they're going for here. Establishing Diamondback's irreverence for Harlem by having him kick in the door at Switzerland after spending a season talking about how this is sacred neutral ground is a great way of setting the stage for the final showdown. But Pop's already dead and this place is already trashed. It doesn't mean anything now.
"You have to let go of the past before I really have to hurt you." No, Luke, you have to let go of this subplot because it hurts every scene it comes up in. This line indicates that Luke's fighting with kid's gloves on. After all the shit Diamondback's done to this point, that's not an indication that reflects well on his character. It makes him look like a self-centered toolbag, which really hurts his position given that he's one of the two brothers who couldn't be arsed to take their fight elsewhere and are consequentially hurting Harlem every second they continue being in it.
Explosive grudge matches that get people killed and property damaged between a villain and a hero with personal grudges towards each other are really popular with superhero writers, and that's bad because they always just make the hero look less effectual. As a rule, you never want your reader going, "Wow, I feel like everyone's lives would have been much better off if Hero Guy just never f*cking came to town."
Set against a dumb personal connection like this, the best thing Luke can do to counteract that feeling is to take Diamondback completely seriously and do everything in his power to bring him down as quickly as he can. He's done a fair job of that, but lines like this one where he suggests he's sandbagging the fight because he doesn't want to hurt his brother don't help.
"I know you want to be out there." Why on earth would Claire want to be out there? What could she possibly think she could accomplish by running into the barbershop and letting Diamondback punch her skull off her neck? She's the f*cking Night Nurse, not Captain Marvel.
Claire persuading the Candace to be content with her important but not directly combative role is brutally ironic given that the f*cking Night Nurse is dashing off to go defeat a super-armored assailant with medicine.
And now they're out in public, effectively absolving Luke from the cop's murder with the reveal that there is more than one black guy in Harlem who can punch a person across a street. Ties that up neatly.
Hey, Luke, you see that glowy bit on his back? Instead of standing around like a dumbshit and letting him get back to his feet, maybe stomp on that. It looks important. It might cripple the suit.
Or don't. Walk away from him and go catch your breath in front of the car, giving him time to get a second wind and come back harder. That works too. F*ck's sake, man, at least try to pretend that you give two shits about winning this fight.
"Wait, wait, wait, you two dudes talkin' 'bout your moms, Luke? You reppin' Harlem, you better put it on him, son!" That guy. That guy is the best character in this entire series. I have no idea who he is. I don't think he even has a name. But he just became my favorite character.
"This is nothing less than a battle for the soul of Harlem." I mean, it should be. But this? This is an idiotic grudge match between two assholes. One selfish idiot who doesn't care who he hurts as long as he gets his and another selfish idiot too concerned with not hurting the first selfish idiot to actually prevent him from causing further harm. This should be epic, but all the emphasis on how the important thing about Diamondback is that he's Luke's brother has utterly ruined any sense of actual stakes this could have.
I mean, what's the worst case scenario here? Diamondback kills Luke? Great. He doesn't care about Harlem, he has no resources or criminal empire, even his men are all dead or quit. If Diamondback wins, he'll still just be one crazy idiot with no real reason to stay in Harlem any longer. It does not matter to the district of Harlem or to the fate of any of these people who wins this fight. That's about as anticlimactic as you can get in a conflict as thematic as this was originally built up to be. The only stake in Luke and Diamondback's fight is which of them is going to be walking away at the end of it.
"I'm done, Willis. I'm not doing this anymore." Are you f*cking serious?! You're really going to try and quit the fight? The "battle for the soul of Harlem", as the show wants to call this? You're just like, "Meh. F*ck it. I don't care how many people my brother hurts. Fighting him is hard."
This. This is why the personal connection is terrible and detracts more than it contributes. Because it leads to shit like this. Luke's still giving off that impression that he's not really trying, and that just makes him look worse and worse as a hero with every instance in which it comes up.
"You want me dead? Then kill me." I can't believe he's actually doing this.
"Remember who you are." Really. That's what was so important that Claire had to come down here in person and do? Say four words to make Luke stop being an idiot and remember that he's supposed to give a shit? God, this scene can't end soon enough.
"Luke! Luke! Luke! Luke!" And then the entire point of Claire being here was immediately rendered moot. So. Great. Her point in coming down here was that Luke needed to know that someone had his back. This would have happened with or without her whispering to him, so that entire bit was basically pointless. Shit, they could at least have had her be the one that starts the chant.
Also, Luke should be street pizza right now. Those cops with the Judas guns were supposed to fire when they see an opening. Diamondback finished punching Luke and f*cked off to go catch his breath and now Luke's slow-walking ominously in his direction. That's a perfectly good opening, but I guess we're supposed to forget that the cops are a thing for now.
"On the ground now!" Okay, seriously, what happened to the order to take the shot as soon as it's clear? I mean, that would be bad policework, but the lietenant did say to do it so, like, you'd think at least someone would care about following orders.
Misty getting hers with Diamondback on the ground would be more impactful if he actually got to be a crimelord. God, so much of this second half would have been better without that shoehorned personal connection.
"The more I hit him, the more he dished out. So I stopped feeding him hate." Y'know what, that's fair. It's an actual boxing technique to let your opponent tire himself out and then go in for the takedown. We see bits of it during this episode's flashbacks. I just wish Luke hadn't gone for the tired "not gonna fight you anymore" cliche leading into it. It does, however, make me feel better to know that this was just another example of the characters obligatorily saying things 'cause they're standard Hero/Villain lines rather than because they mean anything.
This show has a lot of needless posturing to make it seem more comic booky than it actually is in the second half.
"Thanks for keeping Harlem safe!" Safe from what? The lunatic who was only here to kill him, specifically?
I'm glad that Misty's taking Luke in. That is still a thing that needs to be done. Even though he's innocent, they still need a statement. Hell, if they want to stick much of anything against Diamondback, they're going to need Luke's testimony to explain what this was all about. Without that, Diamondback could easily claim that he's the hero in all this, trying to bring down that cop-killer Luke Cage.
"Most of these guys wear spandex." Uh, no. They don't, actually. Nobody wears spandex in the MCU. So many pointless lines meant to make this seem more arbitrarily comic booky.
"I need to bring you in. Can't risk being followed." Well. Candace's dead. Misty mentioned at the start of the episode that she'd lost her phone, which means that's probably Shades texting her. And I was just thinking about how unusual it is for the Netflix shows to actually let her live to see the season's end.
"I WANT MY GODDAMN PHONE CALL!!!" Good on Mariah to be pissy about getting arrested. She's very good at managing her public image and how she behaves in that interrogation room is important. Monitoring a suspect's attitude is why they keep them waiting for so long in many cases. It's deliberate obstructionism, meant to get under your skin. A guilty person is polite. They're nice. No matter how long you make them wait, they stay helpful. They don't want to rock the boat. They'll do whatever they can to help your investigation, of course!
But an innocent person? There's only so much an innocent person can take before they start to get pissed right the f*ck off. Innocent people have a breaking point. They'll deal with the runaround at first but eventually when it starts majorly inconveniencing them, they become more and more vocal about how much they don't appreciate being treated like this. An innocent person is more likely than a guilty one to reach a breaking point, stand up, and demand you either arrest them or let them go home.
Mariah's a politician, so she surely knows this basic premise of how to behave when you're under arrest. She's throwing a fit, which is exactly what an important person like Mariah Dillard should be doing if arrested under false pretenses.
"People needed someone that didn't require a warrant or shield to get things done!" Maybe not a great line of argument when you're sitting under police interrogation, Luke. You should stick with the Pop argument. That's a fair case for temporary insanity due to emotional grief. But when you say shit like that, it makes you sound like a premeditated vigilante.
"Call it a vigilante or a superhero, call it what you will, but like it or not, I finally accepted that that someone had to be me." And there's Luke confessing to vigilantism openly. Wow. Luke, you know that's a crime, right? Jesus. Claire wanted to go get Murdock to defend him and maybe that would have been a good idea, assuming Murdock's not too busy f*cking off to go punch ninjas to actually take a case.
I love Luke's speech about Harlem. It's exactly how this season should end. It's the closing statement on the battle for Harlem's soul. It's just a shame the journey getting to it had so many failings.
Mariah's story about Diamondback being Cornell's killer is a pretty good one, actually. This is a smart play. Especially since Shades is taking care of Candace, which is going to prevent her from undermining it.
"Mariah killed him." "What? How do you know this?" Oh, yeah. I forgot she took that recording. Good job, Misty. I'm not sure why she's laying all the evidence out in front of Mariah, though. Book her, pass it on to the prosecutor, and let the system do its job. Rubbing it in Mariah's face just gives her early warning of what she's going to have to discredit in court.
"If you can help us nail Shades and Diamondback, we can make your stay a little bit easier." Ah. Fair enough. Misty's trying to get her to roll over on the other two. Not sure she really needs to, though.
Okay, Misty going off on Mariah is really dumb. "You stole my phone! I know it was you!" Why would you think it was her when Shades was standing right next to you?! How do you think she murdered Candace from the confines of this interrogation room? This was clearly Shades and Misty's smart enough to know that. He did it in conjunction with Mariah, but it's still him and trying to go Police Brutality on Mariah's face isn't going to help anything.
"Candace should have been in protective custody, she should have been here, and I should have known about it." Priscilla's dead right. Again.
Misty says, "The system is broken," and it's like, no, Misty. The system didn't let Candace down. You did, because you are a Cowboy Cop who doesn't play by the rules and shit like this is the consequence for that behavior.
"Mariah Dillard walked out of here today because of you." Yeah! What she said!
"I'm innocent. I can prove it." No, actually, you're not. I mean, you were innocent of the original crime that put you in jail but jailbreaking is itself a crime. This is a legit arrest. Even if Claire finds that file and clears Luke's name, he'll still need to go back to prison for breaking out of it.
"It doesn't matter what you can prove. You still owe the state of Georgia time." Yeah. What he said.
"Like I said, I know a really great lawyer in town. I'll call him." Murdock's just going to tell you the same thing I just said. Luke is legitimately guilty on this one.
"It suits you." "Yeah, it does." I know she's a civilian and all so it's to be expected but Mariah has terrible trigger discipline. While she's patting her new gun against herself, the barrel is constantly pointed at Shades. Now, this could be foreshadowing that Mariah's going to tie up loose ends by killing Shades which would make me tremendously sad because he's awesome, but it could also just be because she's not properly trained in handling firearms.
Never point a gun at something you don't want to destroy. Even if you're sure it's unloaded, that's a major don't.
"We can stop for coffee at Dunkin' Donuts before we hit the bridge." I really like the cops in this show. These two guys are out-of-states cops come to take Luke in for his jailbreak and so because we like Luke, they'd be totally within their rights to depict these guys as a pair of proper assholes. But they're actually pretty cool.
"I was innocent before and I'm innocent now." …no, you're actually not.
Oh, hey. Colleen Wing's self-defense training. That'll probably tie into Iron Fist.
And Diamondback's getting treatment from the guy that gave Luke his powers. Great. So we can look forward to more of Diamondback playing to his weaknesses rather than to his strengths next season. I'm thrilled.
Well. That episode was flawed. I mean, the actual showdown between Luke and Diamondback tried to be the conclusion this series deserves but the point of conflict between the two undermined it at every step. Also, Luke is very bad at understanding how law works. But apart from that, this was a pretty solid conclusion and I was very satisfied with where Mariah and Shades left off. I'm much more interested in the promise of their villainy next season than I am in that last bit with Diamondback.
I feel like this show had a lot of potential to be better than it actually was. It's definitely better than both DareDevil seasons in my opinion. When it's being philosophical or inspirational, those parts generally click. There was a strong outline of conflict backed up by some pretty good characters. Nearly all of the characters were fantastic, in my opinion, but the consistent problem was in the details of how they're used. Luke, Cornell, Mariah, Diamondback, and Misty were all pretty great characters who were interesting and well-developed but frequently given things to do, certain lines to say, and a couple of virulent plot tumors that undermined the show's central themes at every turn.
For this reason, I have to put it below Jessica Jones. But there was an effort here as well as a passion for the material those themes were about that can't be denied. I'm glad this show exists. I just wish it was written better.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Eh the whole "you were innocent of the original crime, so you should have never been in prison to begin with. But because you broke out of the prison that you never should have been in to begin with, you have to go back" is such bullcrap double-talk that I'm quite sure that a competent lawyer could get it thrown out on any number of technicalities.
In fact, I've heard of several real-life cases where this has happened.
Also, between the fight rings and illegal experimentation both being conducted by the prison staff, a competent lawyer could argue that his escape was justified under duress. It's a mitigating factor that, when combined with him being innocent of the charges that placed him there in the first place, could result in a reduced sentence or even a pardon.
edited 9th Sep '17 8:41:58 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!The court can't offer a pardon. That would have to be offered by the governor of Georgia. Given that we're talking about a black man in a Deep South state, however, I wouldn't hold my breath if I was Luke.
Now, the court could refuse to press charges on the jailbreak. Alternately, there have been cases where the judge sentences the convicted to an amount of time no greater than the amount of time he's already been in prison under the original false charge, then declares his time already served to retroactively apply to the new sentence.
However, that option depends on a sympathetic judge and, again, we're talking about Luke being at the mercy of a Georgian court.
edited 9th Sep '17 8:49:22 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Right, right, should have specified that the pardon would be by the governor.
Considering Dr. Burstein is still a respected-enough doctor to get ahold of Diamondback and not rotting in a cell for unethical research and prison corruption, apparently nobody blew the whistle on the Seagate scandal, so that is a point against Luke's favor.
Considering he's out by Defenders, though, something must have worked out well.
edited 9th Sep '17 8:51:06 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!Plot holes. Plot holes are what worked out well.
Specifically of the No Endor Holocaust kind.
It would be hard to blow the whistle on Seagate. The only physical evidence of what transpired is on a flash drive Luke and Claire can't open. I mean, there's also Luke's superpowers, but no way to definitively prove how he got them.
His testimony alone won't make a dent in Seagate's legal defense. Especially because he's a black man in Georgia. Seriously, the Deep South is a bad place to be black.
END: Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if the Official Story on what happened to Rackham is "Carl did it."
edited 9th Sep '17 8:57:24 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.A lot depends on how exactly Luke was framed. If anyone in the police force or DA's office was complicit in framing Luke, then he could sue the government for his wrongful incarceration. To avoid that, they might cut a deal where he agrees not to sue, they agree not to press charges for the jail break, and they all walk away and never talk about it again.
edited 9th Sep '17 10:36:51 PM by RavenWilder
Agreed. I would have liked more time building an animosity between Luke and Shades in prison as well as more time devoted to what, exactly, Diamondback framed him for. There was plenty of room for both if you cut out all the "Luke, I am your brother!" bits.
That could have been their personal connection right there. Luke resents Diamondback for sending him to prison, Diamondback doesn't really know what he's on about but wants to shut down his meddling in their Harlem operations.
That would also have given them a chance to have Luke find a way to clear his name without having to rely on Shades pulling a Magic Exoneration Folder out of his ass. "Here's all the evidence that will prove you're innocent." Okay. Cool. Why is that a thing? How is that a thing? Did Diamondback just pile all his documentation into a Frame Carl folder? Why would he do that? Why was there documentation in the first place?
edited 10th Sep '17 8:23:42 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Why would there be a Frame Carl folder? Was he into keeping mementos? Did he just like leafing through the evidence when he was sad and lonely? Is this his idea of a porn stash?
It is nonsense. It is a giant folder filled with nonsense.
edited 10th Sep '17 7:14:19 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I doubt Diamondback would have a "Frame Carl" folder.
He'd have a ham-fisted bible-named document (like THOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS") stashed inside a KJV bible in a library of KJV bibles he keeps in his hideout which is a church with a giant snake at the door and a neon plaque saying DIAMONDBACK in the entrance.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I don't know why but I LOVE the idea that Diamondback just keeps folders of evidence that could exonerate innocent people just so he could leaf through it as his version of masturbation.
"Hhhmmm. This guy was convicted of killing his wife but I have here a photo of the real murderer committing the crime. Oh, yeah. That's right, officers. He murdered his wife good..."
Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.Hurricane Irma is forcing productions on some MCU movies to shut down.
Stupid hurricane...
In lighter news (please!), Leonardo DiCaprio wants to play Stan Lee in a hypothetical Stan Lee biopic.
Has he got the skills for it, true believers? You decide!
edited 11th Sep '17 8:16:07 AM by TargetmasterJoe

Usually, the purpose of the personal connection is to establish personal stakes. This is related to A Million Is a Statistic. As a rule, audiences are usually much more invested in whether the hero and his best friend are going to patch things up after that rough fight they just had than they are in whether the villain's going to kill a billion people we don't know and will never care about. What's going to happen to the important characters takes precedence over the fate of countless extras.
This is where you get weird shit like the prevalence of Always Save the Girl; the hero's personal journey means more to the story than the fate of the world or whatever the villain's doing, and sometimes writers go a little overboard with it.
However, what writers fail to understand sometimes is that the personal connection isn't necessary when the stakes are already personal enough. Or when there are thematic stakes that make up for the lack of personal ones. Luke already had a personal stake in this conflict: Pop's murder, which set him on the road towards the battle for Harlem's soul. That battle is the thematic stake of the series.
Where Diamondback's personal connection falls flat is that it ultimately carries a complete lack of personal stakes, which are the only reason to even have a personal connection between hero and villain. There is nothing at stake here for Luke. It's a point of trivia at best; it serves as a motivating factor for Diamondback but contributes nothing to Luke's journey.
Luke's best friend who has never even been mentioned before now turned out to be his brother all along! And evil! Uh...whoopie? Without having a chance to get invested in this character, it's impossible to feel appropriately shocked and horrified by the reveal. It's introduced like an obligatory afterthought and then proceeds to overtake the rest of the narrative.
edited 8th Sep '17 5:20:12 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.