Luke Cage - 'Suckas Need Bodyguards', 'Manifest' and 'Blowin' Up the Spot'

"Blackmail is an ugly word. Let's call it fishpaste."

Luke Cage has been going strong the last few episodes, putting Cornell 'Cottonmouth' Stokes hard on the back foot. With half the season still to go, I guess it's time for things to go south.

'Suckas Need Bodyguard' opens strong, laying out the pubic response to Luke Cage through some voxpops on none other than Trish Talk, a timely reminder of Jessica Jones to lead into a reunion between Luke and Claire. Before that, however, a less cordial meeting. Resentful of his position in Stokes' pocket, Detective Scarfe tries to muscle a little extra cash and ends up getting shot with his own gun. It's a bush league move on Scarfe's part, but Stokes' response shows that's he's losing his cool. Even in the MCU, cop killing isn't a small thing.

"Talking across a table; it's like I never left Hell's Kitchen."

Claire catches Luke at her mom's diner, causing Bobby Fish to make a discrete exit. Clearly they're giving off vibes, because when Luke insists he just wants to get done and get out and leaves the diner, the look Claire's mom shoots her also seems to be telling her to give chase and hit that. It's lucky that she does, as they proceed to find Scarfe bleeding out in the barber shop, and after a moment when it seems Luke might kill him for murdering Chico, Claire gets him roughly stable and calls her mother for a discreet pickup to get him to the precinct to give evidence (after Luke breaks into Scarfe's apartment to retrieve his blackmail book, escaping Misty and temporary partner Perez with a window flit and superhero landing.)

Mariah is doing press interviews, but like Cornell her calm is fraying as Luke Cage sets his sites on her. When the interviewer starts asking about 'Fort Knox' and Mama Mabel, she loses it completely. Cornell sends all he has left after Scarfe, and although they do get him where they're going, he dies moments after they run into Misty. Still, the blackmail book has the dirt they need to collar Cottonmouth and the day keeps getting worse for Mariah.

"I'm not sleeping with you."
"Can't coffee just be coffee?"

Unfortunately, 'Manifest' more or less opens with the case against Stokes falling apart in the face of the police being unwilling to air their dirty laundry so publicly. Scarfe's name is mud and Misty nabbed equally dirty Perez with a slick phone trick last episode, but Stokes is out with a clean record and an apology, and the Captain - who was pretty cool - is being replaced by a political player well-known to Misty. While Misty struggles to retain traction with the Inspector pushing for investigation into Luke Cage, Luke is hanging with Claire and opening up about his past, and his father's determination not to raise a criminal son. When Stokes reveals his knowledge of Luke's past as Carl Lucas, it is Claire who convinces him not to run.

The bulk of this episode, however, is about Cornell Stokes' past. We learn that he was a musical prodigy, but that Mama Mabel pushed him towards the family business, that being crime but not drugs. Like Vito Corleone, Mama Mabel was not cool with the drug's trade. You can run numbers, protection and sex, but no drugs. Because you have to have standards. She clashes with her late husband's brother Phil over Mariah and Cornell's education, feeling that if Mariah is getting to train as a lawyer, Cornell should have musical teaching, but ultimately he falls down when he tries to get in on the Puerto Rican drug trade.
Mama Mabel has the young Cornell execute his own uncle, egged on by Mariah, whom it is also revealed was abused by Phil. It's hard to feel any sympathy for Uncle Phil, but Cornell is another matter, and like 'Rabbit in a Snowstorm' or 'Penny and Dime', 'Manifest' brings us a dramatic new angle from which to view our villain.

The family that slays together...

Back in the here and now, however, things are moving more around Cornell than because of him. While he believes he has neutralised Cage, he is losing the support of his criminal allies. Luke goes after the Puerto Ricans and takes their guns away, while Shades pays a call on Mariah to encourage her to take back control of her life and her name. This provokes a confrontation with Cornell in which he lets loose his resentment of her education and accuses her of giving Uncle Phil the come on.

So she kills him. Straight up, knocks him through the club window in his office and beats him to death with a mic stand, which I genuinely did not see coming; any more than Luke sees the Judas coming as a mysterious man blows a hole in his abdomen.

In 'Blowin' Up the Spot' then, we open with death. Claire gets a friendly EMT to rush Luke off in an ambulance, while Shades appears out of nowhere (seriously, his superpower appears to be entering rooms at the opportune moment) to help Mariah frame Luke for the murder of Cornell Stokes.

In their favour, they really try to make the snake names make sense in the
absence of the actual Serpent Society.

The ambulance is blown up and Claire gets Luke to a women's clinic to try to remove the bullet. Unfortunately, the Judas exploded inside him, and his own super-tough body tissues are forcing the shrapnel deeper. Misty tracks them down and comes to arrest Luke, but they are ambushed by the would-be assassin: Willis Stryker, aka Diamondback. He knocks out Misty and engages in a running battle with Luke, who is weakened enough by his injury that things get brutal.

Claire meanwhile faces off with Misty in the interrogation room. Misty isn't buying the official line provided by Stokes' executive hostess and supposed lover, especially having seen for herself that said hostess was afraid to go up to Stokes' booth without Luke, but the evidence is damning, the new boss is demanding results, and Luke is in the wind.

Claire appears to just home in on injured or soon to be injured superheroes.

Well, actually Luke is in the trash, a shoulder shot from Stryker - if I counted correctly the fourth of the priceless, kill-anything Judas rounds fired in this assassination attempt - knocking him into a garbage truck which drives off (presumably to escape the lunatic firing anti-armour weapons within city limits.) While not an ideal situation, this does at least provide a relative lull in which I can close out this binge session and pause to reflect.

Killing off Cottonmouth at the half-way mark was a work of genius. He was built up as the series' Kingpin, lost control hard and looked to be on the verge of regaining it when his death came from an utterly unexpected - yet completely consistent - quarter, and the mystery man who has been backing him stepped up and, just as the icing on the cake, announced that 'Luke; I am your brother.' So that was a thing. I'm interested to see if they can make Diamondback as interesting as his immediate predecessor, but they've missed very few beats so far.

As expected, these episodes knocked Luke off his game and towards bottom. I'm guessing he'll be leveling out next episode - maybe with some flashbacks - before the climb back up towards the finale. I'll be there to see what happens, every step of the way (if a little behind the true bingers.)