In the penultimate episode of Luke Cage Season 2, Bushmaster makes his final attack on Mariah while Luke and Misty try to keep her alive and catch her red-handed at the same time.
Let’s go over five things about “Can’t Front on Me.”
1. Bushmaster protects his name.
Once again, the similarities and differences between Luke Cage and John McIver play out for us. Bushmaster receives the same treatment as Luke with a drug named after him. His namesake, however, is a way to besmirch his name rather than cash in on it.
The drug makes people attack and even bite each other. It almost seems to be a dark take on nightshade, although there’s no reason to think that Yang and his people know anything about where Bushmaster’s abilities come from.
The drug is bad enough that it made me wonder how long Yang’s people planned on producing it and at what cost. As soon as word of its effects hit, you would expect sales to drop to zero.
The episode opens with a couple using the drug during a party and then attacking the rest of the partygoers. We cut to Pop’s and D.W. Griffith’s girlfriend is demanding that Luke take action.
“What you gonna do about it?” she asks. It’s nice to get another touch of “Hero for Hire” in the midst of the run to the end of the story.
Luke and Bushmaster arrive at Yang’s distribution facility at the same time and take it down together in a well-choreographed fight scene set to a Wu-Tang track.
Luke has to stop Bushmaster from killing thugs a couple of times, and the scene wraps up with Bushmaster try to blow the facility and Luke up.
Bushmaster won’t let his name be taken down by Yang and Mariah. Mariah knows this and “plays” him. At the same time, however, Mariah’s self-destruction continues. Enter the drug market was crossing a Rubicon. Poisoning the clientele is setting the river on fire after you get to the shore.
2. Shades fronts.
Shades “fronts” at the Precinct. He’s a child, gleefully talking about Cottonmouth throwing Tone off a rooftop and how he screamed all the way down. He sounds like a pre-teen bragging about an R movie he watched without his parents’ permission. He’s such a creep that his lawyer recuses herself.
But he finally loses his composure when Misty produces a photo of Anansi, and then again when Comanche’s mother spits on him. For the briefest of moments, maybe an entire 30 seconds, he almost seems human.
I have a real problem with this character.
3. The Battle Royale
Mariah more or less invites Bushmaster to the Paradise by holding a “Unity Jam” sponsored by her Family First Foundation and Bushmaster Rum. She’s betting on Luke protecting her and taking Bushmaster out. (See #4.)
Her ruse works, and we get our Battle Royale between Luke and Bushmaster.
Setting the battle at the Paradise is a nice touch. Luke even goes through the same window Cottonmouth went through. Bushmaster makes it down to Mariah’s panic room, which she needs to try to get a refund for if she ever makes it out of prison.
The final fight is a no-nonsense, toe-to-toe, brawl. Luke fights like a boxer that knows you’re probably not going to knock him down. Even though Bushmaster does a couple of times, he prevails. He gets Bushmaster in the sleeper hold we’ve seen in stills for the show, and then he has a choice; Mariah screams for Luke to kill him, Misty pleads for Luke to release the hold.
Luke releases Bushmaster and he flees, jumping through that same window on his way out.
The fight is fast. There’s no banter or Bushmaster swagger. He’s jacked up on Tilda’s super-nightshade and is relentless. It’s a visceral fight scene that is figuratively and literally hard-hitting.
Of course, Mariah is not dead, and Bushmaster is still out there. It’s not over.
4. Mariah tells us who Luke is.
“I saved you twice. I won’t do it a third time,” Luke tells Mariah.
“There ain’t no deception like self-deception,” Mariah says prophetically, and then sums up the state of Luke Cage as we enter the end of the season.
Continued belowLuke is still a “goofy kid” that doesn’t know what to do with his powers, but he’s still the only man she has ever been able to count on.
“You are a real man of the people,” she tells him. She intends it to be disparaging and calls it his weakness. But she’s right, even if it’s for the wrong reason. With all of the struggles with his anger, with ends justifying means, and the letter of the law vs. the spirit of the law, Luke has never failed to do the right thing.
5. There’s a new lawyer in town.
Even though Shades’ proffer is still valid and he fulfilled the terms of his deal, he’s probably going to need a new lawyer.
The good news is, Irving Forbush is taking cases in Harlem now. He looks like a real nice guy, too.
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“Can’t Front on Me” gave us the knockdown, drag-out, slugfest we’ve been waiting for, but things are hardly settled. What do you think? Let us know in the comments!
