Personal anecdote alert: I saw this movie in 1996 with a good buddy of mine and we got into a BIG argument afterward because he insisted that the movie wasn’t “accurate.” I was like, they’re vampires, they’re made up, there’s no “accurate,” movies can do whatever they want with them, but he insisted there were rules…

Even the “setting on fire” aspect is a study in relative cruelty. Bushmaster ties up Mariah and Tilda and sets fire to the house around them, then leaves - intending that they die in the general conflagration or via smoke inhalation. By contrast, Mariah has her men pour an accelerant (rum) all over Anansie, sets him…

YES! I mean, yeah, glad someone else has good taste and that it is a Wynn-Win scenario hahaha

Completely agree. Now I’m going into the last 2 eps rooting for Bushmaster over Mariah OR Luke, and I’m not sure the show intended that.

GOD I love Wynn Duffy.

So are your hot takes.

I felt like this episode went a little overboard with making Bushmaster a sympathetic character. After seeing his mother set on fire and Bushmaster himself getting shot in the gut twice as a kid I pretty much felt like maybe Bushmaster IS justified in doing all the things he’s done this season. 

I thought the first season of Luke Cage had really great politics, because it wasn’t precisely about how white people screw over black people. It was about how the racist system that white people originally created screws over black people. White people are gone, they all moved to the suburbs and left the system of…

You’re not wrong. Barthwell seems to want to forget how Mariah just told Tilda that she has never been wanted and is not loved by her own mother - at the end of a monologue about how she was the product of long-term sexual abuse by a family member and was only carried to term because her mother couldn't get an…

I agree that this was tonally very off. You can’t have a lighthearted Luke/Danny adventure and then show a guy burning alive. Seriously, that’s some fucked up shit. Maybe it’s just me, but to me there’s precious little (maybe nothing) that scares me more than this way of dying. Showing it, so gratuitously, is just…

I feel like everyone’s forgetting that Mariah also told Tilda that she abandoned her in order to make her stronger, which is a twisted thing to say to your daughter, and ended with the fact that she never loved Tilda, which also is a twisted thing to say to your daughter.

I feel like you left out the part where Mariah said it was impossible for her to love Tilda

After last episode this was kind of a letdown. 11 episodes in and NOW they show Bushmasters flashback? 8-7 episodes too late I’m afraid. I give this one a C+ 

Great recap. I also appreciated the flashback, but hoped for something better. We already knew Mama Mable was evil and killed Bushmaster’s family. The flashback was redundant and only showed me that Mariah is caught in a family feud that should have died with the last generation. At this point she’s gone too far, but…

He reminds me a bit of Wynn Duffy from “Justified” in that he’s an unabashed criminal who has killed a few other criminals, is a survivor who doesn’t get too greedy, but also has at least some ideals to ground him and isn't a totally evil supervillain. Also, he's funny. 

The relationship between Luke and James is so baffling. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop or there be this revelation that shows us another side of James, but instead we have this odd character. We have been told that Luke had a difficult relationship with his father as a youth and had so much rage/anger about…

I disagree about Tilda being heartless with Mariah during their scene. Tilda as played and placed within the plot is kind of useless and unjustified, but she isn’t precisely meant to be read as petulant or judgmental, at least in that scene. She’s a character who up to that point has maintained a doomed hope that…

Well since I haven’t seen more reviews yet...this season certainly started out strong, but by the end getting through it was a chore. Yes it was meant to be annoying but if I hear the words “Family First...” one more time, God help me.

People like ‘The Punisher’? The consensus among my circle is that only about the first 10 minutes of that first episode were worth watching. Genuinely surprised to here someone describe it as ‘struck gold’.

No it’s not. Even if I could forgive the blandness that was Danny Rand (and I don’t blame the actor for this, just lazy writing), the absolute poor camerawork and action choreography on what should have been a gold star martial arts series was unforgivable. Case in point: 56 cuts in 35 seconds