Note: This is the first show I'm watching since having just watched The Wire, so maybe view this through the lens of that.
Finished it yesterday and can pretty comfortably say that I hated it. Boring, plodding, overacted, sloppily written, poorly edited and cinematographically stale and filled with one-dimensional one note characters who are dropped too quickly to become interesting or overstay their welcome and are never fleshed out properly. I found Mariah, Misty and especially Diamondback to be putting in distractingly poor over the top performances and dreaded when the show would decide to switch focus from interesting characters to go back to them. Shades did nothing other than saunter around, whisper and take his sunglasses on and off about 40 times an episode. This may all be an influence of the Blaxploitation genre, but if it is, I can certainly say it didn't resonate with me!
The show also couldn't decide what it wanted characters to be: Diamondback went from unseen mastermind to chaotic gun-slinging madman to evil secret brother to scheming mob boss within the space of about 2 episodes and just kept flip-flopping around without any of it feeling natural for the character. Even where there was a more even character progression it felt forced, noticeable with Mariah.
The second biggest problem for me is that the writers just seem to have written whatever they wanted without establishing any kind of logic or continuity: Where did Hammer seem to get a continuous, unlimited source of the alien metal in the Judas bullets? Why did they make a point of saying they only had 1 Judas bullet left and then somehow have enough to melt down and supply the police department with? Am I really supposed to believe that the police would ignore Stryker hunting a man on a NYC street in broad daylight with a very large gun, or having a dozen witnesses say that he held them hostage? What did Stryker frame Luke for doing that put him into Seagate? Why was everything important about Stryker's character apparently decided on being unimportant enough to be left unsaid or offscreen? How did Stryker's goons fail to find Luke, Misty and Claire in the basement once the one she pushed down the stairs woke up, seeing as Luke punched a giant hole in the wall in the exact place she told the goons she was going?
I have so many more questions like this, but at this point they feel useless to keep asking. Now you might say "go look this stuff up, it was all explained in the comics", but is it really my responsibility as a viewer of a tv show to have to read the background material to be able to ignore blatantly sloppy writing? Daredevil S1 and Jessica Jones didn't have that problem - it was rare I found myself asking anything. Jessica Jones also seemed to better understand the usefulness of a good villain: Kilgrave was arguably the most interesting character in JJ and until his stupid, hammy, overacted surprise death, Cottonmouth was the most interesting, fleshed out and well-developed character in LC. Stryker by comparison was stupid, unconvincing and clashed entirely with the tone of the show they set up in the first 8 episodes.
But the biggest problem is that I feel like this show just didn't know what it wanted to be. They tried to play it straight with what a modern audience apparently considers ~gripping police drama~ and a more subtle, nuanced take on Luke Cage's character and then thrust those more realistic concepts into a Blaxploitation nightmare filled with over the top villains, magic MacGuffins and a bizarrely unfitting retro style soundtrack that only served to weaken any dramatic moments the show somehow managed to dig back out of the dumpster.
I'm not saying there weren't some positives. Mike Colter is as great as Luke Cage in this as he was in JJ - a more subtle look at what an invincible black superhero can be in 2016. Cottonmouth was interesting to watch and the way they pulled you into his backstory was great. Rosario Dawson continues to put in good work as Claire and regularly steals scenes. But that's not enough to justify 13 hours of my life!
Also WE GET IT, HE'S BULLETPROOF. YOU DON'T NEED TO HAVE THE SAME GAG OF CLUELESS MORONS EMPTYING CLIPS INTO HIM EVERY EPISODE. Did their squib supplier need a new beach house or something?
But apparently everyone writing reviews loved it, so maybe I'm just crazy.