Luke Cage 1x09 Review: Mad Science

“DWYCK”
Written by Christian Taylor
Directed by Tom Shankland
 
The Story
Misty has to talk to a police psychologist because she assaulted Claire. He hands her a photo of her and Diamondback, and she relives him threatening her life. That experience was what threw her off so hard that she screwed up the interrogation. He insists he’s just trying to help her, not interrogate her. Luke wakes up in the dump truck and gets out. A band is rehearsing at Harlem’s Paradise, and the window has just been replaced. Shades isn’t happy that Luke hasn’t been found yet. In walks Diamondback. He does a finger gun and shoots one of the lieutenants (with the gun in his other hand). Diamondback is not happy with Shades for nudging Mariah and getting Cottonmouth killed. He almost kills him for it, but Zip points out it’ll be easier to deal with Luke with Shades still alive. Luke staggers to a laundromat and steals a change of clothes. Misty is still with the psychologist. She tells him about having “coffee.” Mariah is in the morgue with Cornell’s body, telling him his dad wanted him, but died, and his mom couldn’t handle it. She tells him she called him Mo because it was short for Moses, not Cottonmouth. She almost apologizes, but then she notices Shades coming in and her walls go up. She says she doesn’t want Cornell’s business, but Shades explains she doesn’t really have an option. A beat cop catches up with Luke, because he looks like he’s staggering around drunk. They go to arrest him, and he knocks one out and takes the full clip of the other one’s bullets in the back, then knocks him out too. Crap. That’s going to be tough to explain. So is stealing a police car!
 
Misty tells the psychologist a story about getting lemonade as a kid. She left her cousin with the boy she was flirting with so she could get a cold drink. Her cousin was kidnapped and killed. She never got justice, so now Misty is a cop who stalks justice. She’s stayed in Harlem on purpose. They discuss Misty’s failure to figure out Scarfe was dirty. The psychologist has her pretty well figured out, at least for why she lost it with Claire. Domingo is at his boxing gym and gets a visit from Mariah. She wants him to run some of Cornell’s business. She wants to meet up with all the bosses so she can offload it. He tells her who they are. Claire is trying to do research on how to treat Luke’s injuries. She finds some stuff about the prison experiments, and then Luke joins her at the restaurant. Misty and the shrink keep talking, and she cries over the lack of control she felt when Diamondback threatened her, and maybe in general. Claire takes Luke all the way to Georgia to find the doctor who experimented on him, since he might be able to help. They have Reva’s thumb drive, which has everything the doctor lost when his lab was destroyed. They come up with a clever yet unsettling way of drawing his blood for testing.
 
Misty convinces the I.A. lady to give her shield and gun back, but only because she figures Luke won’t listen to anyone he doesn’t trust, and he’s not getting brought in any other way. Mariah goes to the summit meeting with all the crime bosses to tell them she’s officially out. She offers them all of Cornell’s business for the price of letting her walk away. However, Diamondback shows up, in a very Maleficent-denied-an-invitation kind of way. He kills two of them, then two more with a single bullet. Domingo’s the only one left. He’s impressed Mariah didn’t flinch. Mariah explains how they can use Luke Cage as an opportunity to make bank by selling the police those bullets that worked on Luke. Diamondback is very impressed, but Mariah still wants out. He’s not letting her out. Music plays at the club, and Misty looks at photos. In order to pull the shrapnel out of Luke, the doctor is going to have to dip him in boiling acid! That sucks. Luke has Claire promise to steal Reva’s data back if it turns out the doctor is evil. They try the acid bath thing, which is super painful for Luke and does not appear to be working. The doctor decides they need to try harder instead of trying something different, and Luke flatlines while giving Claire the “make it stop” signal. Noooo!
 
So here we’ve got the hero hitting his lowest point. He’s a fugitive under his new name as well as his old name now, just about anyone can recognize him because of the viral footage, and he’s, well, dead. For the moment, at least. Nowhere to go but up from here, right? Mariah continues to get scarier without getting her hands dirty again. I’m not sold on Diamondback as a character or as a villain yet. Hopefully that will change. Even if it doesn’t, though, I think the show’s quality won’t suffer noticeably, because everything else is still brilliant.
 
Things I Liked

• HA. I was right about the Moses thing.
• That the experiment worked on Luke because of his DNA. That’s nifty.
• I figured that summit meeting would go very steeply south for most of the bosses.
• Luke and Claire’s friendship is wonderful. If I didn’t irrevocably ship him with Jessica, I would be very tempted to ship him with Claire.

 
Things I Didn’t

• Dang, that footage of Luke and the police is going to be a serious problem
• “murderize”
• That doctor clearly cares more about science than Luke’s life, but I don’t think he’s evil.
• The acid bath

 
The Characters
So the next part of Luke’s Jesus metaphor stuff is coming back from the dead, right? Right?! Anyway, I really hope next episode involves a visit to Luke’s dad’s place, because it seems like it’s as rare for Marvel protagonists to have parents as it is for Disney princesses.
 
Diamondback is making me actually like Domingo by contrast. Domingo at least has some class, but Diamondback is utterly ruthless.  
 
Overall Rating
5/5