>- Open the season with some episodic episodes. Give us a
>sense of the area, the side characters, etc.

There’s been a ton of this from what I’ve seen. I can’t think of a single side character that needed more screen time. Further, I think the call for short eps and shorter seasons makes these even more problematic.

I see zero benefit in devoting more time to guys like zip or that dude Luke put in the dumpster.

I think you could
>do one half of the season episodic and then those episodes
>bring you to the arc.

What about this makes the show better or tells the story 90% of us actually care about more effectively?

>Let's see more of the lives of the villains besides their evil
>plots.

We saw an awful lot of that in each of these shows thus far. The villains and their lives have gotten a ton of screen time telling their back story and those stories have been told at least as well as the heroes in each outing.

I’m not sure what’s lacking there.


>Let's see
>more of the henchmen to get a better feel of them.

For what? Particularly given that you want shorter eps and shorter seasons. In a 16 ep season of 52 minute eps, knock yourself out, but when you’re calling for 42 minute eps and think 13 eps is too much it’s unfathomable to devote a greater percentage of less screen time to throwaway characters.

Cage has four central villains: Cottonmouth, Shads, Mariah, and Diamondback and they each got a significant amount of time. We don’t need zip getting more time in a smaller window when there’s plenty to work with there, particularly when you add at least two crooked cops and one cop who is on the fence for a fair portion and is still a protagonist to our hero despite being a hero herself.

There’s just no good reason to devote more screen time to Henchman 1 and 2, particularly when you’re calling for less screen time overall.
>- Saner, smarter villains. I hated Fisk and Diamondback. The
>bad guys can be crazy ala Heath Ledger's Joker but they have
>to be competent.

Each his own i guess. Fisk was excellent. Diamondback was fine, i’m not excited for him but I’m not terribly bothered by him. He could definitely be improved but Fisk? Fisk was on point. You can always improve but he doesn’t particularly need anything more.

>And get a smart henchman or two. I feel like they're just
>there to do something stupid and get themselves
>discovered/killed by the main bad guy. They're never a real
>threat.

Nor should they be. That’s why secondary villains like Shades are there and helps Mariah rise through the ranks. We have Mariah playing two sides of the fence all through the show.

>- Lighten up. By jumping into the serialized stories right
>away, the shows are HEAVY. It's weird how Marvel TV is more
>like DC films while DC TV has more humor like Marvel movies.
>(To be fair, SHIELD made hamfisted attempts at humor that
>usually fell flat.)

Two different formats and it makes perfect sense to establish a different identity for each.

This just further proves the point that some people really do just want all their comic book shows and movies to ape the MCU blueprint and add a joke every two minutes. Serialized dramas are huge hits over and over and over again, so I don’t see an issue with keeping that formula for these. The MCU has plenty of gut busting, side splitting wisecracks to keep people properly sedated. This format doesn’t really need more of the MCU temperament, particularly with the characters they’ve chosen for these shows.

>Also, make it so people are one upping one another and not:
>Evil guy fall into trap, good guys don't have the evidence or
>ability to hold the bad guy, bad guys spin that into making it
>seem like good guys are bad, Run, good guys, run!

Well this I can agree with.


>- Get out of NYC. People will probably hate this but I don't
>see any reason why Luke Cage could have taken place in the
>South. Have him walk into Harlem at the end of Season 1.

Well, again, that’s just not the story being told and NYC is absolutely central to these characters. Sure, this season could have taken place in the south, but for what? But NY is central to the story being told and central to all the characters chosen for these shows.