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NetFlix Original Series
Season 1, Episode 6: Suckas Need Bodyguards
Air Date: 30 September 2016
Starring: Mike Colter, Frankie Faison, Simone Missick, Theo Rossi, Frank Whaley, and Alfre Woodard
WARNING: SPOILERS – review written for those following the show who have watched episode six through its completion!
It’s tough to be a hero. Things are always conflicted. When you try to save people, they appreciate you. Fail to save one, and you might just be made out to be a villain. This episode starts with a bang. Literally. Scarfe gets more than he bargained for when he tries to squeeze Cornell for a cool $100,000. Believing that he has Cottonmouth in an unfortunate bargaining position, he miscalculates the mobster’s ruthlessness. Scarfe winds up a bloody mess on a New York dock.
Luke is readying himself for his own departure, though not of this mortal coil. He talks with Fish about his intentions to leave Harlem as soon as he is done dealing with Cottonmouth. There are nice allusions to Heroes for Hire, as well as a nod to the other heroes in the Marvel Universe and the fact that most of them maintain secret identities behind masks. And Cage makes his re-connection with Claire Temple, which has been building for a bit. Misty Knight, alerted to Scarfe’s disappearance, begins the investigation alongside Lieutenant Perez, who turns out to be not quite the sterling cop that we may have thought him to be.
What I really like about this episode, despite the fact that this is, unfortunately his final episode, is the background we get into Scarfe’s life. His broken marriage, his dead son, and his overall
I also liked Misty and her slow circling of Perez until she snares him and gets him to confess his own culpability. But the most notable thing in this episode is the major step up in Alfre Woodard’s performance. Maybe it is because she finally was given enough meat in her script to really act. There is a moment that seems to hint at some mental instability in her, when she screams at a fallen picture of Mama Mabel. We also see the more sinister side of her in a brief scene with Stokes, where she enumerates several methods for Cottonmouth to try in an effort to murder Power Man. It gave me downright chills.
And there are actually two traps that are set in this episode. The second one is set by a Harlem news crew for Councilwoman Dillard, leading her through a maze of questions that ends in an accusation of corruption and criminal collaboration alongside her cousin Cottonmouth.