Just finished! Spoilers ahoy!
1. As soon as the fantastic bass line started over the opening credits, I knew the music on this show was going to be amazing, especially when that twang started up. And I was proven right time and time again. The live music inside Harlem's Paradise was amazing all the way through: Raphael Saadiq, Faith Evans, Charles Bradley, Jidenna, the Delfonics (who I legit thought were dead already), and Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings. And of course Method Man on the radio with blast-from-the-past MTV VJ Sway (I do love me some Meth, but not, you know, meth). But the non-diegetic music is also fantastic (possibly moreso? it's really hard to say with music from Nina Simone, the Wu-Tang Clan, and John Lee Hooker dotting the aural landscape) and fits whatever's happening onscreen so well. Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad (from A Tribe Called Quest, in case you didn't know) were clearly the greatest choices to run the music on this show. And seriously, that opening theme is the best opening theme I've heard in some time (I can't even remember Daredevil's or Jessica Jones').
2. Did you catch all the Tarantino references? I caught a few here and there, but certainly not all of them, and I totally missed a big one: Frank Whaley, the actor that played Detective Scarfe, also played Big Brain Brett on Pulp Fiction! In Pulp Fiction, Jules asks him if his concentration's been broken after shooting him; in Luke Cage, Misty tells him he's broken her concentration :D Somebody should make a list of every Tarantino reference and send it to me to make me very, very happy.
3. I learned a lot about early Power Man comic book lore just by looking up the various characters' names. I had just assumed Cottonmouth, Diamondback, and Black Mariah (who I had erroneously assumed was a less ridiculous moniker for Black Mamba) were just re-purposed Serpent Society characters turned less ridiculous for the purposes of a more realistic take on television, but nope! They're all real characters from the pages of early Power Man comics!
4. Mahershala Ali has just the best damn laugh ever. I could listen to it all day (I mean, when I'm not listening to the music).
5. The scene of Mariah killing Cornell was great for all the right reasons, but also a bit problematic. What sets her off is Cornell's insistence that she was flirting with Uncle Pete, who very clearly raped her (or at the very least, molested her in some way). He tries to gaslight her and says, "You wanted it, Mariah." So she beats the hell out of him and kills him (and I am sad because I don't get that laugh anymore), screaming "No! I didn't want it!" Then Shades shows up and she says "I didn't... I didn't want this." His response? "Deep down... I think you did." And somehow that just passes. Like, can men please stop telling women what they want and don't want? This scene did not sit well with me at all.
6. How is the NYPD gonna fire Detective Kima Greggs!? She's got tons of experience out of Baltimore! She helped take down Stringer Bell and Avon Barksdale, dammit!
7. One thing I didn't like about this series (not counting that extremely heavy-handed final episode; like, how many cliches you gonna fit in there, man?), is how things from everyone's past were revealed at just the exact moment the audience needed to know for plot reasons, damn what had come before. How did Cornell's past in episode seven make any damn sense with what had come in the previous six? Suddenly, he's a tragic figure that just wanted to go to Juilliard? And Luke's "revelation" that Diamondback was his half brother only coming when he's in his dad's church? How was that not ridiculously obvious since you were six, man? Misty's Country Time Lemonade story that made her want to be a cop? Ugh. The only flashback scene handled well was Luke Cage's origin story, and the only "story from the past" handled well was Misty's b-ball skills (since she had already demonstrated said b-ball skills).
8. Luke Cage is lucky he's so big and handsome and has that sexy ass voice because his pick-up game is weak as hell. "I hear that Cuban coffee is particularly robust." Fucking hell, dude.
9. Okay, Diamondback's "pimp stormtrooper" outfit looked stupid as hell, but Luke's "Power Man" costume from the flashback and Misty's red turtleneck at the very end were excellent nods to comic book costumes. But I don't understand why anybody decided we needed to see Diamondback's comic costume in real life.
10. How is every Chinese joint in the US not called Genghis Connie's now? That name is brilliant.
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