Luke Cage

I was looking forward to this more so than the other Marvel Netflix shows, but Luke Cage is easily the weakest of the bunch.

The show improves throughout its run, but it really only picks up over the last few episodes. The story is not compelling, the acting is troublesome at times (mostly early on), and Cage's story arc and motivation (or lack thereof) leaves much to be desired for most of the first season. At times it's hard to believe he's the same character who first appeared in Jessica Jones.

The biggest issue is the tedium. The director appears to have a problem with story telling, but the real issue is there just isn't enough material to fill each episode. Every hour drags on and on. It's awkwardly punctuating by musical numbers that will not be appealing to most viewers with frequent cuts back and forth which simply interrupt the consequential moments of each episode instead of accentuating them.

The villains are too weak for the season to drag on as it did. Cage is very overpowered in this series (far more powerful than in Jessica Jones) and there's no plausible reason he doesn't mop things up by the end of the first few episodes. To account for this, much of the show is filler. Some of the reviews I've seen remark how much character development there is on the supporting cast as one of the show's strengths. Honestly, it seems to be a glaring weakness. Not only is this too, filler, the character development is poor. It not only doesn't explain who these people really are and in fact detracts from the characters as you see how weak and ineffectual the rest of the cast is.

In reality, Cage could have pimp slapped the villain out of Harlem at any point in the entire series and they could have moved on to a new and better story line.