Marvel's Luke Cage

re: slowness -- i didn't feel this re the pace of the story, but i did feel it in some of lay back and conversate scenes, starting with the barbershop in the first ep; which seemed careful and stately when conversations in such places tend to be fast and, well, unstately

this wasn't a huge deal but it meant a scene that was important to setting a mood and a community and culture was more tell than show (i felt)

(i only know marvel via the movies -- the vast interconnectedness daunted me as a kid, even tho lol i was a kid like 40 years b4 most of the rest of you, and i never embarked on them -- anyway, this is entirely watchable and explicable w/o needing to know anything abt other storylines)

many many xposts: scott upthread lamented there not being "a great black family drama to watch on t.v." and it suddenly made me flash on a series from, i'm guessing, the early 90s, which was exactly this -- i think it was named for the name or number of the house, but i honestly don't remember much about it except that it was a bit groundbreaking for being about urban black american life and family without being embedded in crime or social justice issues? haha this is not much of a clue -- maybe i shd ask my sister, i watched it with her

227

well wait that was a sitcom, not a drama

was it this? http://www.famousfix.com/topic/413-hope-st

huh totally don't remember that

p sure it was not 227 tho lol

yes i think it was, dan, thank you -- i was going to say i think it was cancelled before first season finished, which it was

wikipedia: "The topics addressed by the series included drug addiction and recovery, HIV and AIDS, foster care, re-integration into society after incarceration, and homelessness" <-- so a bit more social-justicey than i remembered

anyway, digression, sorry

there was another series that meets the criteria (well maybe not the number in the title) that ran around the same time - maybe earlier? - and only lasted like one season. arrrgh what was that, I remember there was an episode addressing dark-skinned vs. light-skinned cultural hierarchy stuff

I can totally picture the lead and can't recall his name. bah!

ah Frank's Place

ha I was going to try Frank's Place next

(frank's place definitely earlier)

i liked frank's place. i want to get the live season of roc on dvd. do you guys remember when they did that?

a t.v. version of the movie crooklyn, that would be good. i dunno, doesn't have to be super nostalgic. just something good. like i said, just so many talented people out there now who could make such a great drama.

huh, i do not remember that hope street show. but if it got cancelled right away that might be why.

you guys probably didn't watch the show Southland but in that show Regina King played a detective and there was lots of home life stuff with her and she was by far the most compelling part of the show. and i sometimes wished that the whole show was about her and her mom and their dating lives. but i'm kind of an old maid....

also really liked abraham from the walking dead on that show as the gay cop. probably the best role he'll ever have.

oh yeah I remember Southland

I also don't know that there's an effective metric for actually measuring that popularity atm.

xps Southland was ace. Such a shame it never really broke through

wow episode 4 (the origin story episode) was *terrible*

man that really stopped things dead, way too many dumbshit cliches w him + the prison psychologist

pvmic

you're welcome :)

There's more to be revealed about the prison psychologist (AKA his ex-wife, as anyone who's watched all of these shows like a TRUEFAN already knows).

oh... great

The writing/directing cliches and often terrible acting in this pretty much killed it for me. Not a patch on Daredevil which, while also riddled with awful acting here and there (I see u, Karen Page actress), was still sufficiently weird and entertaining. And it felt like it didn't take place in a three -block radius throughout the entire damned series. Plus the villains and their ambitions were weak.

So there.

Who were the terrible actors, if you please?

the black ones

Off top of my head: Guy who plays Shades (awful)/ guy who plays Cage's doc/Cottonmouth/...

Not a patch on Daredevil

lolwhut

I think he meant that DD is even worse.

No, I meant I prefer DD over this. Crazy, huh?

yes

Origin ep was my fav out of the ones I've seen.

right!?

I dunno what kind of ingmar bergman shit ppl expect from this show.

we need our own *forget it jake it's ilx* nicholson scabby nose jpegs

God forbid everyone's not on the same page about something lol

nah, its not that. for me its more the "this show is kinda cliche" kinda thing. about a show based on a comic book. that was made for children. i mean the cliches are built in. i see that on ilx a lot. but hey people have high standards!

i see this all the time now when it comes to kid's stuff though. not just here. "that movie that was made for 8 year old children about the cartoon fish just didn't MOVE me like the first one did..."

ingmar bergman shit

lol this is... not what I'm looking for

this show is not for kids, it's basically a blaxploitation/noir homage, as noted upthread. the comic book stuff is more or less window-dressing. cliched writing is never good.

i'd say they were aiming for 14-21. male.

shakey otm. the argument that properties based on comic books don't have to be good holds no water. the entire point of the MCU and the reason for its success is based on the radical notion that filmed entertainment based on comic book properties doesn't have to suck.

i loved loved loved what this show was trying to do. tremendous cast and attention to detail in the production kept me going, and if you pressed me i could even tell you what it was about (vgl guy restores his future by coming to terms with his past), but in the most fundamental sense there was almost nothing by way of story or character. just this happened and then that happened and then oh hey this other thing is happening and now it's over.

that all the screenwriting techniques were present just made it worse bc none of them were put to any use. Commissioner Burrell saying "always forward" every other line doesn't count as plant and payoff; quoting scripture or wearing sunglasses doesn't make a villain interesting; and while all of the four major heavies bore structural relationships with the hero none of them actually served as foils.

tbf none of the netflix joints have really done much for me but this one was more of a downer bc it set its sights so high

i didn't say they didn't have to be good. just that genre stuff plays by different rules.

"I'm going to tell you what the story was and then turn around and say there was no story" is what I'm taking away from your post.

i feel like almost everything is held to the same standard now, and i think there are different standards. that's all.

(though it probably bugged me even more in the old days when people would do that: hey, this is actually pretty good for a horror movie/sci-fi book/metal album/etc!)

With most cultural objects, I feel that it's worthwhile to make a rational consideration of what the likely goals of the creators were and then judge the work on the basis of whether it succeeded in those goals rather than pooh-poohing when the thing fails to clear a bar I've independently set for it but that it was never trying for in the first place. YMMV, of course.

none of them actually served as foils.

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Tuesday, October 25, 2016 9:25 AM (thirty-one minutes ago)

I think you have a weird definition of "foil"

old lunch otm. was this a pretty good comic book t.v. show? yeah, it was a pretty good comic book t.v. show.

"I lost my phone at the barber shop" smdh

That was really the only thing that irritated me

the music stuff reaaaallly pulls a lot of weight in making this enjoyable for me. I mean, they even used my favorite John Lee Hooker song ("It Serves You Right to Suffer") in a brief bit.