“What’s new in the zoo?” Captain Ridenhour asks an informant. Well, it’s tough to say: a lot and a little. “I Get Physical” only serves to continue the place-setting begun in “Wig Out,” but it also serves to show just how aimless Luke Cage is this season. It’s not necessarily a bad episode, but it is a listless one, with a threadbare plot only loosely connected by scenes. Character development is both rushed and stalled, but the most damning accusation I can level against is that less than twenty-four hours after watching the episode, I can’t really remember what happened in it.
To begin with, what is the show doing with Bushmaster? It’s as if he has both executed his plan and started it, depending on what the show needs at that moment. His episode-ending sucker punch escalates into a fight with Luke, wherein Bushmaster proves that he is the better combatant. Mustafa Shakir looks sharp in a suit, and he fights like an uncoiled snake, to the point that he gives Luke a concussion that lasts the entire episode (Luke got hit with the Iron Fist’s full force in The Defenders, and was mostly fine afterwards, but the show doesn’t comment on this, or indeed seem to remember it).
I have no problem whatsoever with the fight – by which I mean the physical act of fisticuffs between the show’s protagonist and its antagonist. Everything past that, though, doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. For one, we just got an intense confrontation between these two last episode, so Luke Cage is already going back to a well from which it has drawn water (the reason Billions works so damn well is that Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis are only in the same room once or twice a season). Beyond that, what is up with the way everyone reacts? Luke is Harlem’s Hero, so why do the bystanders treat the fight like a particularly juicy fight scene on the Internet? The show posits Luke as nothing less than the soul of Harlem – “I am Harlem, and Harlem is me,” he said recently – so this should be an earth-shattering threat to the city’s populace. Instead Griffith turns right around and sells DVDs of the fight, the police are mocking Luke (ignoring Misty’s complaints that, their personal feelings about Luke aside, he’s still a resident of Harlem), and even ESPN’s Stephen Smith is scoring shots against him.
So what the hell?
Harlem is three miles away from Manhattan, where the climactic battle of The Avengers nearly razed the town to the ground. (Not to mention its proximity to Midland Circle – did everyone just forget that The Defenders happened?) Why is no one more concerned? Even Bobby Fish takes it in stride, basically admonishing Luke to be careful. My point is, the people of New York should, one imagines, have longer memories, and Luke Cage is famous enough that him losing a fight is national news. He’s one of the strongest men alive, and he just got his ass kicked, handily – and yet peoples’ reaction is instant scorn and mockery. They should look at Bushmaster the way they looked at Loki or Ultron: as a potentially world-ending threat. It’s an extremely frustrating bit of narrative contrivance, but more than that, it breaks the spell of the show. Harlem is no longer this tight-knit community; instead it’s just as fickle as, well, real life. Points for verisimilitude, I suppose, but it goes against the very ethos of the show.
“I Get Physical” picks up when Luke and Misty start tracking down Nigel and the Yardies. It’s no secret by now that Simone Missick is the real star of the show, and she and Mike Colter have a fun dynamic. She playfully asks him if he wants to press charges against Bushmaster, then hands him a file, saying she could lose her job for it. “Yeah, what else is new?” Luke quips. During their investigation, they find Nigel’s headless body, which brings me to another issue I have with this episode: Shades hasn’t, until now, told Mariah what happened to Nigel.
Shades is no idiot. Nor is Mariah, but she’s certainly more impulsive this season. But they both come off as idiots here, which is a real shame because they’ve been such great presences all season. Shades tells Mariah that he got way more money from Bushmaster than he was expecting from Nigel, which for some reason failed to raise any red flags, even though one of those bags contained Nigel’s head. The fact that Bushmaster can beat Luke Cage senseless doesn’t seem to alarm either of them. To Shades’ credit, he’s starting to get suspicious of Bushmaster, telling Mariah, “I don’t think he’s in Harlem for Luke Cage; I think he’s in Harlem for you.” Mariah waves this off with by very unconvincingly saying she doesn’t know Bushmaster. “I Get Physical” feels like the characters are doing just what the show needs them to do, regardless of how it undermines previous development or growth.
There were a few nice moments in this episode, however. Luke and Tilda’s meeting was cute, and loaded with the kind of sexual tension that Mike Colter can generate with any scene partner when he’s firing on all cylinders. The reveal that Comanche is Captain Ridenhour’s mole was a nice one, although it spells certain death for at least one of them. (Still doesn’t explain Ridenhour’s intense antipathy towards Luke and Misty; if he rooted against them any harder he’d be working for Bushmaster.) And the soundtrack, as always, is stellar. It’s a smart move to always have a musical act playing at Harlem’s Paradise; it gives the show, at its best, an ease and smoothness that other shows should strive for.
When you start singing the soundtrack’s praises, you’ve officially run out of good things to say about an episode. “I Get Physical” doesn’t do much to justify its own existence, and I see no reason why this episode and “Wig Out” couldn’t have been condensed and then combined. At the end of the hour, Misty gets an encouraging note from Danny and Colleen, along with the blueprint for a bionic arm. It’s exciting, but what does it say about Luke Cage that the appearance of Danny Rand is something to look forward to? I guess that’s two fights he loses this episode.
A Few Thoughts
- Claire is subletting her apartment. Already?
- I liked the talk between Bobby and Luke, where Bobby revealed he’s donating an organ to his daughter. It’s a nice, small way to show the effect Luke has on people: he makes them want to be heroes themselves.
- The thrilling cliffhanger of this episode is Luke getting served papers.
- I also love that Bobby walks into Pop’s late at night, wearing a suit and a hat. What’s he doing? What’s his night like?
2.5/5
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