There's a lot to love about a classic red lip. But one of our favorite reasons is that it stands out on its own, making it the ultimate in lazy-girl cosmetics — all you need is a quick curl of your eyelashes, a swipe of red lipstick, and you can waltz out the door looking polished and cool. That's probably why we love a minimalist pairing with this makeup look the most — and we're not alone.

While there's no wrong way to wear a crimson pout, the hue looks incredibly fresh with barely-there eye makeup and full, natural brows, which is why there's no shortage of inspiration for this ultra-chic combo.

To prove that this swipe-and-go trend is a constant classic, we've rounded up a few examples of the leading ladies who wear it best. From Alexa Chung to Joan Smalls, you'll find more than enough iterations of the world's easiest (and most flattering) makeup look ahead. Now all you have to do is pick your hue and click through to see our favorite ways to wear it. You'll be seeing red in no time...

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Update: Greathouse has just relented on his Twitter feed, calling the original blog post "dreadful" and apologizing that he "told women to endure the gender bias problem rather than acting to fix the problem." Here's hoping he truly has learned his lesson — and will actively work to confront his own gender and identity biases in the future.

This story was originally published at 4:20 p.m.

Want to be successful in tech? Work hard, network like crazy — and while you're at it, take your full name off your résumé in favor of your first initial, and pull your profile photo from LinkedIn and Twitter.

Sounds insane, right? But that's what venture capitalist John Greathouse recommends in a blog post published yesterday for The Wall Street Journal. According to Greathouse, "women in today's tech world should create an online presence that obscures their gender. Once they make an initial connection with a potential employer or investor, such women then have an opportunity to submit their work and experiences for impartial review."

Brilliant! Why didn't anyone think of that before? Right, they did. For years, women have tried to obscure their sex and gender to fit into a man's world. Look at George Eliot — a.k.a. Mary Ann Evans, a woman who published classics like Middlemarch. Look at Katherine Switzer, a runner who entered the Boston Marathon under the initials KV Switzer when the marathon wasn't open to women entrants. Even JK Rowling was told prior to the publication of Harry Potter to use her initials rather than her full name so as not to alienate potential male readers. Greathouse didn't invent it — he just magnanimously mansplained it.

So yes, it's a tactic. It's probably one every woman who is a minority in her field has considered at one point. But it absolutely should not be a tactic espoused by a white man in a position of power. If Greathouse, a venture capitalist with the power to fund women-backed start-ups, notices that he tends to favor projects backed by men or people with "male-sounding" names, that is his problem. Repeat: That is his problem.

But Greathouse doesn't see it that way. In fact, he suggests that seeing female names and photographs in a pitch deck is distracting, comparing a pitch deck to a novel. According to Greathouse, "as a reader, I appreciate a book when I don't know the author's gender and haven't formed a concrete image of him or her. If I enjoy a particular work, I then research the writer to better understand how their background and motivations shaped their fiction."

That's great! But reading habits should not be comparable to work habits. And within this stretched analogy, Greathouse is dancing around the fundamental issue: That the combination of his preferences and his position of power are part of the problem. Throughout his column, Greathouse refuses to accept responsibility. He cites studies that reach the conclusion that inherent bias does exist — but he doesn't once turn to question his own behavior.

How many female-backed projects does he fund? Why is it that he wants to see a pitch deck devoid of full names, photographs, and the actual identities behind the ideas? Why does he see a "neutral online persona" as a step forward instead of a drastic step backward, with sex and gender swept away like dirty little secrets?

Tech superstars were quick to deride him on Twitter.

The burden of fixing historic wrongs and systemic biases is not on those who are victimized by them. Hiding oneself is not an answer.

— A. Dash (@anildash) September 29, 2016

.@johngreathouse @WSJ and only one woman partner at #rinconventures. Maybe that's why you passed on investing in @twilio pic.twitter.com/WXapd2Nuog

— Shaft (@shaft) September 29, 2016

What we need from you @johngreathouse is to NORMALIZE and SIGNALBOOST respect for women, not give dealing-w-patriarchy protips.

— Laine Nooney (@Sierra_OffLine) September 29, 2016

But what I can't get past is that Greathouse didn't realize there would be backlash — and that The Wall Street Journal decided to give him credibility by even running his piece. Because, as so many equally horrified women said in their tweets, it is not news that women face a disadvantage in the workplace. It is not news, as Greathouse suggests, that people exhibit unconscious bias toward hiring, promoting, or funding someone whose name is "similar" to theirs. It is not news that these unconscious biases are incredibly damaging. And the "news" Greathouse trumpets — hide your identity and get ahead at work — is a tired trope that needs to die.

Furthermore, the suggestion to remove any photos simply doesn't make sense in the digital age. And I can't help but notice that Greathouse has a Twitter photo of himself on his page; so again, he's saying that it makes sense to literally hide your face, but only if you're a woman. Because, in Greathouse's world, an egg is more worthy of funding than a woman.

Hopefully, John Greathouse (sorry — J. Greathouse, would hate for readers to get distracted by his gendered first name) will learn from his column. Because, as is evidenced by the social media outrage, both women and men in tech have certainly learned to stay far away from his biased venture capital firm.

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Rumor had it that while Carrie and Samantha were friends on-screen, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall were enemies behind the scenes. But Parker recently told Time in no uncertain terms that the rumor had no truth behind it.

"It was always so heartbreaking to me that there was this narrative about Kim [Cattrall] and myself because it just didn’t reflect anything that happened on that set," she said.

In reality, the two were friends, and if Parker's Instagram is any indication, they still are. She dedicated a sweet post to Cattrall on her birthday just last month.

Happy birthday you beauty @kimcattrall Sending love and the very best for a perfectly marvelous, joyous, healthy and adventure filled birthday year. Your ol' pal, fellow mischief maker and "sister", Sj xxx

A photo posted by SJP (@sarahjessicaparker) on Aug 21, 2016 at 7:37am PDT

Parker also made an important point about our tendency to gossip about women's supposed feuds in particular.

"They just didn’t do it to the Sopranos guys," she said. "It was so strange to me and upsetting. I posted something on Kim’s birthday and people were like 'Oh my God, I didn’t know you liked her!' What? We were all at liberty to walk away at any time! But nobody asked those questions of shows with men. Isn’t that interesting?"

It does seem like the tabloids tend to talk about female feuds more, probably due to the misogynistic stereotype that women are catty (though in Lea Michele and Naya Rivera's case, the rumors appear to be true). Thankfully, friendships like those between the Sex and the City co-stars shatter this stereotype to bits.

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Update: Costco's drama with Tiffany & Co. looks like it's finally coming to a (very expensive) close. According to Reuters, on Thursday, a federal jury ruled that Costco should pay the jewelry brand $5.5 million for selling a reported 2,500 engagement rings dubbed as "Tiffany" baubles that were not, in fact, Tiffany pieces. The trial began on September 20, three-and-a-half years after Tiffany & Co. sued the wholesale retailer. That $5.5 million is a far cry from what Costco anticipated paying, if anything, for the allegedly faux bling. At the beginning of the trial, the retailer argued that $781,000 was the maximum amount it owed.

This story was originally published on September 9, 2015.

Counterfeit engagement rings from Costco: Sounds like a cruel joke, right? The wholesale retailer was sued on Valentine’s Day in 2013 (quite the romantic gift, no?) by Tiffany & Co. for using “Tiffany" as a generic term to describe pronged rings and for using "Tiffany” on signage in certain jewelry cases. Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Costco infringed on the venerable jewelry brand’s trademarks; Tiffany & Co. can now battle it out with Costco in front of a jury. A hearing date has been set for October 30.

"Despite Costco's arguments to the contrary, the court finds that, based on the record evidence, no rational finder of fact could conclude that Costco acted in good faith in adopting the Tiffany mark," U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain wrote in the ruling.

Costco has not yet responded to our request for comment.

“We believe this decision further validates the strength and value of the Tiffany mark and reinforces our continuing efforts to protect the brand,” Leigh Harlan, Tiffany & Co.’s senior vice president, secretary, and general counsel, said in a statement.

This isn’t the first time the retailer has dealt with authenticity issues. Costco might be our go-to for a lifetime supply of toothpaste, comically large Grey Poupon, and gigantic samples you can easily make a meal out of, but you can also procure some surprising beauty products amid the restaurant-size salsa and multi-packs of tube socks. There’s a catch, though: Costco isn’t an authorized seller of those awesome, brand-name goodies you’d usually have to hit up a Sephora or department store to score, as R29 reported last month.

It’s called diversion or gray-market production, and it’s comprised of expired or totally counterfeit loot. (Beyond beauty, brands like Calvin Klein and watch label Omega have gotten into scuffles with Costco over gray-market or counterfeit goods in the past.) You can bet that a prestigious beauty brand gets pretty pissed about having its reputation tarnished by being peddled in the vast, decidedly unglamorous aisles (warehouse chic would be putting it nicely) of Costco.

But an eyeshadow palette, no matter how chichi the brand, isn’t exactly in the ballpark of an engagement ring. Plus, a trademarked, brand signature — the Tiffany prong setting — is in question here, not just the value of a brand’s name. It would also be more complicated for a beauty brand to get back at the wholesaler, like Tiffany & Co. is attempting. Unauthorized stock, a.k.a. stuff that’s expired or just otherwise shadily on Costco’s shelves, isn’t actually illegal: once the goods leave a brand’s warehouse, whoever bought the products can do what they want with the stock, meaning it’s out of the brand’s control, as R29 reported.

That said, engagement ring seekers of the world: Check that signage and those prong settings more closely when you’re shelling out hundreds or thousands of bucks, will you? Or maybe just stick to excessive quantities of paper towels and enough hot dogs for a family reunion next time you find yourself at Costco and save the jewelry shopping for another time and place.

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Just two months ago, Dior announced (finally) that Maria Grazia Chiuri, the former co-creative director at Valentino, would succeed Raf Simons as creative director. The decision was monumental not only because of the nearly year-long period that the legendary fashion house went without a head designer, but also because it meant that Chiuri would be the first woman to hold the creative reigns in the company's 70-year history. Today, after much anticipation, she made her debut, and it was unabashedly feminist.

In the lead-up to the show, it became very clear that the house's spring '17 collection would put an emphasis on the power of women. First, the design team invited followers to discover the behind-the-scenes workings at Dior through the hashtag #TheWomenBehindMyDress. Then, as guests filed into the Musée Rodin, they were greeted by a sort of manifesto from Chiuri, in which she offered that "feminist is a recurring word" for her. Shortly thereafter, models would make their way down the runway wearing T-shirts that read "We Should All Be Feminists" and "Dio(R)evolution." Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who wrote the former, was sitting front row.

The spartan show space was a blank canvas for Chiuri's debut, with a minimalist, stark-gray concrete interior and wooden floorboard catwalk. Dior's established ambassadors — an illustrious group of extremely successful women — all came to show their support for the designer's debut, including Rihanna, Jennifer Lawrence, Diane Kruger, Marion Cotillard, and Natalie Portman. Many of Chiuri's colleagues — including her longtime collaborator Pierpaolo Piccioli, who will be revealing his first solo collection at Valentino this Paris Fashion Week — were present.

It was obvious change was afoot from the show's start: Ruth Bell (of former buzzcut fame) opened the show in her shaggy, grown-out cut — a style that felt like a distinct change from the overt femininity we're used to seeing at Dior. She wore a fencing-inspired quilted jacket decorated with a bright red-heart with matching white breeches and sneakers (featuring the historic Dior bee logo). To open the show with this sport-referencing story was a nod to strength and modern womanhood — as seen through the trend-savvy lens of athleisure and streetwear.

In the show notes, Chiuri explained that she strives to make clothes for women to wear today — "fashion that corresponds to their changing needs, freed from the stereotypical categories of 'masculine/feminine,' 'young/not so young,' 'reason/emotion,' which nonetheless also happen to be complementary aspects." Fencing, she wrote, is emblematic of the balance between thought and action, similar to the one she's trying to strike in her new role. Plus, the uniforms are more or less the same for both men and woman: "The female body adapts itself to an outfit which, in turn, seems to have been shaped to its curves," she said.

The aesthetic that Chiuri carefully nurtured at Valentino was never out of mind, though: Next up, there were structured tops similar to the fencing-inspired styles, but paired with soft tulle skirts or delicate lace — both recurring details that turned signature during her and Picciolo's time at the fashion house. As the collection segued into evening wear, with more chiffon, embroidery, and beading, it became clear what Chiuri had brought with her from her 17 years at Valentino. (Though some might argue it was too faithful a nod to the designer's alma mater.)

Throughout the show, there was an interesting interplay between structured suiting (archival Dior), biker jackets (a contemporary staple in French fashion), and romantic skirts and dresses (Chiuri's Italian sensibility), all rendered in a palette of white, black, and red. There was a strong sporting elegance theme — and an even stronger social statement, from the notes in the program to the impassioned T-shirts shown on the runway. This is yet another notable departure from Simons' legacy, whose definition of Dior femininity was more artful and fantastical than necessarily realistic (but still lauded).

Still, Chiuri has seemingly spent time in the brand's extensive archives: The Dior bee motif reappeared throughout the collection (an appropriate pairing to the "Flawless" soundtrack blasting down the catwalk), on top of reinterpretations of the house's classic silhouettes, like the jacket. Her take on the Dior woman was decidedly modern, empowering with a precise measure of sensitivity. "Her boldly feminine outlook explores the rules of modern beauty to transpose them into a collection shaped by the sensual tension that exists between the body and clothing," the show notes read. "She explores the form and shape of a silhouette that's contemporary, agile, and Olympian."

As Simons did before her, Chiuri managed to respect the Dior tradition while looking to her own future at the brand. However, Chiuri's influence wasn't quite felt strongly enough with this inaugural collection. We think it'll certainly take a few collections to see where she leads the label into this new, historic chapter.

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Weeknight dinners are always an adventure. When we leave work at dinnertime and are already hungry, the thought of cooking can make us want to cry on the sidewalk. Often, we end up on Seamless or at a restaurant, and we reluctantly spend our hard-earned cash just to avoid dealing with the kitchen Monday through Friday. But, luckily, there are a whole bunch of fixes out there for people just like us. Whether you need a super-quick meal or want to keep a dinner trick or two up your sleeve for emergencies, we're here for you. Click through to find our favorite weeknight dinner tips.

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Falling asleep is a natural process, so it should be easy, right? Ha! We wish. Of course, we've all had trouble getting to sleep at some point. But for many of us, it's a nightly struggle.

According to the CDC, about a third of us get fewer than six hours of sleep every night. But insomnia is actually more common among women than men. Without sleep, we have a harder time feeling optimistic and having gratitude. Weirdly, we also find it harder to have a sense of humor. And unfortunately, sleep deprivation can cause some seriously impaired driving.

We've heard all the classic advice (keep your timing consistent, limit caffeine, get your exercise in), but we're ready for the next steps. To help all of us get those necessary ZZZs, we're collecting our favorite sleep tips — all backed by recent studies.

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Waking up (makeup-free — because we know you always wash your face before bed, right?) with utterly perfect, lit-from-within skin is on our list of #beautygoals — right up there with making our manicure last more than two days without a chip. Does it seem trivial in the grand scheme of things? Possibly, but boy, would it be satisfying to toss our foundation and concealer for good. (Not that we don't love the ones that work hard for us every morning.)

In order to get glowing skin — without the help of highlighter — great skin-care products are key. From resurfacing masks to illuminating moisturizers, a good lineup will get you there — but you've got to commit to a regimen. Hey, nothing worth having comes easy.

Ahead, we rounded up some of our favorite brighteners, but first, a quick, three-part cheat sheet. Dermatologist Whitney Bowe, MD, and Vanessa Hernandez, consulting celebrity esthetician for L’Oreal, both say to always be on the lookout for skin-care products that contain vitamins C and E, retinol, hyaluronic acid, and ceramides; get in the habit of throughly washing your face; and make exfoliation a top priority. Ready to glow? Let's go.

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When it comes to penises, we’re often told that bigger is better — but in reality, that's far from the truth. In fact, studies suggest that, other than than a boost in confidence, larger penises don't afford the men who have them with any extra prowess in the bedroom.

And confidence? Well, that can be learned.

The truth is, no matter what someone’s penis size, creativity and a willingness to experiment can be key. But there are some positions and techniques that are specially suited for various sizes of penises (even the Kama Sutra touts this).

So for those of you who have sex with people who have penises, we consulted four experts on the art and science of pleasure: Dr. Zhana Vrangalova, head researcher and professor of human sexuality at New York University; Kenneth Play, a sex educator based in Brooklyn who leads workshops on kink and pleasure; Amy Levine, sex coach and founder of Ignite Your Pleasure; and Alfred Kendrick, a personal trainer who specializes in workouts that improve your sex life. They’ve helped us create a handy guide of sex positions and tricks that will finally lay the “small” penis stereotype to rest.

Forget your preconceived notions of penis size and read on for the positions, tools, and moves you may want to try with a male partner — not despite his small penis, but because of it. (And hey, these can totally be tried with a trusty strap-on, too!)

The gap between what we learned in sex ed and what we're learning through sexual experience is big — way too big. So we're helping to connect those dots by talking about the realities of sex, from how it's done to how to make sure it's consensual, safe, healthy, and pleasurable all at once. Check out more, here.

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Libra season is upon us, showering the world in cooperative vibes — and we could certainly use them right now! Until the 22nd, the sun floats through the sign of peace, love, and harmony, inspiring people to partner up. Expand your search radius: With friendly Mercury and worldly Jupiter also visiting Libra, our perfect pairings could come from different cultural backgrounds or far-flung corners of the Earth. (Take that wall and shove it, Trump.) Love wins when Libra is in the house. When the sun moves into Scorpio on the 22nd, we'll all be playing for keeps. That said, relationships could hit a make-it-or-break-it moment in October's final few weeks. No faking it! If you're not fully feeling the love, move on to find a better fit. But if you are, surrender to the happily-ever-after vibes — with scintillating Scorpio at the wheel, they'll be ultra -sexy.

Motivator Mars and power-thirsty Pluto are both in Capricorn this month, making us all obsessed with our goals. The cream will rise to the top — especially during the full moon in Aries on the 16th. Healthy competition is one thing, but lean in to Libra's fair-minded ways, instead of crossing into cutthroat terrain, especially when Mars and Pluto make an exact connection on the 18th. When inspiring Venus and stable Saturn align on the 29th, we could lock down some exciting long-term plans. P.S.: They might involve applying for a work visa or university admission.

Kick off Halloween celebrations one day early. On the 30th, a new moon in Scorpio drifts in with haunting and mystical vibes. With this sultry sign in the ether, costumes could get extra-racy this year — or veer towards vintage goth, in a Tim Burton kind of way. Wear the mask, but be willing to drop it, too, should an intriguing vampire or werewolf step to you. This could be your "winter warmer," if you catch our drift (wink).

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Libra

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Scorpio

When is the last day to register to vote in your state? The answer to that question may just be the most important date of this year.

Many states let people register online, by mail, or in person. Sometimes the deadlines for the three options are the same, like in California. But, as in Illinois, sometimes the dates can vary. Some states do not allow online registration at all.

In places such as Mississippi and South Carolina, potential voters must register as early as October 8. In other states, such as Colorado, New Hampshire, and Montana, you can register in person as late as Election Day. (Though it's probably better not to leave it to the absolute last minute!)

If you're in North Dakota, you're luckier than most: This is the only state where residents can vote without registering!

Ahead, check out your state's deadline so you don't leave your civic duty to the very end!

Refinery29 has partnered with more than 50 of the country's biggest women's media brands and political nonprofit Rock The Vote to register 100,000 women to vote. Become a voter today by signing up with #OurVoteCounts at this link.

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There are a lot of water bottles out there: The ones that keep your liquids cold for 24 hours, the ones that come with filtration systems, the ones that measure how hydrated you are. Frankly, it's hard to get excited about new water bottles. But even we have to admit this latest one is pretty dang cool: SKLZ's new Hydro-Roller is a water bottle that doubles as a foam roller. I mean, genius.

On the one hand, it's a durable, stainless-steel bottle that keeps your water nice and cool. On the other, you can also use it to relieve aches and pains and warm up your muscles while you're at the gym.

Talk about killing two birds with one stone. The bottle's high-density foam cushions your muscles as well as protecting the bottle from any unsightly scratches. And just in case you needed any further convincing, take a look at the Hydro-Roller in action.

The Hydro-Roller is available on the SKLZ website for $39.99.

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Try as we may to separate the man from his work, it feels disingenuous to write about a Woody Allen project without so much as mentioning the personal scandal that’s plagued him for years. So, here I am, acknowledging that it happened; redirecting you to an excellent piece about the fraught issue; disclosing that I personally think he’s a creep; and promising to do my best to leave all that out of these recaps of Allen’s new TV show, Crisis In Six Scenes. Onward.

Now, Allen, for his part, has been straightforward about the fact that he A) Knows nothing about making TV, B) Has no desire to make TV, and C) Only made this particular TV show because he was offered a shit-ton of money to do so. “Amazon kept coming to me and saying, please do this, whatever you want,” he told Deadline back in May. “I kept saying I have no ideas for it, that I never watch television.” He continued, “Finally they said look, we’ll do anything that you want, just give us six half hours… And they offered a lot of money.” Allen said yes, and that was a Donald Trump- yuge mistake. “I have regretted every second since I said okay.” You’ve got to at least give the guy credit for his honesty.

So, is Miley Cyrus enough to save this six-episode comedy from its uninspired beginnings? Time to find out. Onto the Crisis at hand.

Episode 1

Welcome to the '60s. The premiere opens with your standard black-and-white montage of civil unrest in the decade. There's also a funny barbershop-set scene in which we learn that Allen’s character, Sidney P. Munsinger, is trying his hand at penning a TV script instead of the novels he usually writes. “Probably an easier medium for you,” his barber says. “It’s very lucrative,” Sidney, a one-time ad man, argues. Not a bad way to ironically address Allen’s aforementioned struggle.

Sidney is essentially Allen’s usual role, plopped into the '60s — neurotic, comically pessimistic, and averse to the sociopolitical upheaval of American life (the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, shifting gender roles). His more liberal wife, Kay, is a marriage counselor. The lifelong couple live together in a beautiful home in a New York City suburb, cushioned from the chaos they hear about on the nightly news — college protest riots, civilian massacres in Vietnam, activist bombings in San Francisco. He hates talking about the war — avoids demonstrations because he’s “allergic to tear gas.”

The son of socially conservative family friends is coming to stay with them while he studies business at NYU. He’s aptly named Alan, because he’s basically a lot like the filmmaker: A bespectacled, insecure worry-wart who’s quite fond of chunky knits. He’s engaged to the lovely Ellie, played charmingly by House of Cards ’ Rachel Brosnahan, whom he was introduced to by Sidney.

At the very end of the episode, Sid and Kay are in bed when an armed stranger quietly breaks in — on the one night in 26 years that Sid forgot to turn on the burglar alarm. Cliffhanger! *Play Next*

Episode 2

The noise downstairs wakes Kay, who wakes Sid, who has no idea what he’s going to do if he goes downstairs and actually encounters an intruder. They try to call the police, but an electric storm left the phone lines dead. They sneak downstairs armed with fireplace-pokers, bickering about whether Sid actually ever bought Kay any jewelry worth burglarizing.

The stranger in their kitchen turns out to be Lenny (Miley Cyrus), the grandchild of the people that took Kay in is a girl. She’s not looking for jewels but food and a place to hideout from the police and the FBI (or “fascist gestapo government mercenaries,” as she describes them) because her face is plastered all over the news (a.k.a. the “fascist propaganda machine”). Lenny is a leader of the Constitutional Liberation Army, an activist movement, and supposedly the culprit in a prison break, bombing, and guard-shooting that has everyone talking. Sid recalls how when he read the news, he said the cops shouldn’t even bother to put whoever the perp was on trial, “they should just shoot her” — her being the young woman sitting at his kitchen table, scarfing down the chicken he was saving for lunch tomorrow and asking for shelter. Awkward.

Lenny is vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War and outraged on behalf of its innocent victims. Her activism philosophy: “Policy is made in the streets; the government is the one that’s doing the criminal act.” Kay admires Lenny’s dedication to the cause, while Sid is unsympathetic, to put it lightly; he wants to turn this fugitive in and use the reward money to take a Caribbean cruise. Naturally, Kay draws her a bath.

Knock, knock, knock. “It’s the police! Open up.” Fortunately, they don’t know anything about Lenny; they just want to investigate the burglar alarm that went off. But Sid, of course, babbles on like a guilty person does. To ease the cops’ suspicions, Kay invites them in for coffee, an offer they accept. Lenny sleepwalks into the dining room, murmuring about fascist pigs. Oops! She looks familiar to the cops and tensions run high, but they manage to shoo the cops out of the house before they realize anything. Sid is officially an accessory to a crime, and he’s not happy about it. “I like it when my adrenaline remains at sea level.”

Episode 3

The next morning, Alan is stunned at the sight of Lenny. Not just because she’s a wanted woman, but because she’s even more beautiful and sexy in person than on TV. (Within five minutes of meeting Alan, she gifts him his first joint.) Lenny continues to ravage the kitchen of its Fig Newtons and Sturgeon fillets, much to Sid’s dismay. In between mouthfuls, she excoriates Sid’s ignoble career. Basically, he feeds the capitalist machine by convincing people to buy things they don’t need while kids are starving in his own country. She also criticizes his abundance of stuff, like his treasured hot-fudge machine. “You’re politically against my waffle iron?” he asks incredulously. When he tells her to get out of his house, Lenny counters, rather accurately, that “Kay makes the rules around here.”

Alan is totally high, and totally enamored with Lenny — her looks, her political convictions, her independent spirit. But Lenny’s not impressed by Alan’s passive approach to affecting change — donating, voting, writing irate letters to the Times. “Real change comes at the barrel of a gun,” Lenny explains. “If Washington and Jefferson just voted and donated, you wouldn’t even be here!” She talks about how she got radicalized by dating guys at Berkeley who wrote beautiful sonnets about blowing up the White House. “I used to sleep with the Black in an effort to kind of absorb some of his political rage, and then the Jew to help me get some of that anxiety and guilt over being middle class.”

It feels like this is the point at which we’re supposed to start not taking Lenny seriously — and see her advocacy as voyeuristic, misplaced, or insincere. Is she a phony, a psycho, or just so caught up in her political passions that she’s become a sort of caricature of the young, naive social justice warrior of the '60s? Or are we just supposed to be chuckling? That’s still unclear.

Sid and his colleague go to pitch his TV show, about a sitcom-kooky family set in Neanderthalian times (sound familiar?) to a network. They grab lunch at a diner, where Sid gets flustered trying to cover up his impromptu houseguest… and coincidentally, the subject of that pretty, crazy girl on TV comes up. Sid and his buddy rant against “that girl,” writing her off as a punk whose activism is really just evidence of her personal baggage. One problem: Sid’s friend says the FBI thinks the girl is in New York — and they’re looking into every person she’s ever been connected with. Paranoid Sid panics; he can’t help himself. He sees two guys in suits at the bar and thinks they could be FBI — and that there could be a microphone in the napkin holder. He overpays and gets the hell out of there.

Meanwhile, Lenny is giving Kay a list of radical political literature — i.e. the communist writings of Mao Zedong — to share with the ladies in her book club. Just some light reading for the gals. And Kay has made up a bedroom for Lenny, who promptly hangs a poster of Che Guevara.

Episode 4

“Violence is man recreating itself” — Franz Fanon

Lenny really digs this quote, she tells Alan, who is falling fast for Lenny and her “inner fire,” as he puts it. “It’s almost like you’re a total psychopath, but exciting,” he tells her in what is supposed to be a compliment. Sid is worried about Alan’s obvious crush, and his susceptibility to Lenny’s radical ideas — he and Kay told Alan’s parents they’d help keep their son on the straight-and-narrow.

Then, Sid and Lenny get into another blowout prompted by the fact that Lenny has, once again, eaten all the food he likes. “I don’t dislike you, it’s just everything that you stand for,” Lenny tries to explain, to no avail. Sid goes on the defensive. He doesn’t get it why he and his comfy lifestyle are so offensive to Lenny; he’s not an actively bad guy. “Did I exploit any Blacks to buy my blender? Did I bomb any Vietnamese kids?” Kay explains it to her husband succinctly: “You represent consumer capitalism to her. To her, you’re a stooge of the oligarchy that runs this country.”

Meanwhile, Kay’s book club meets again, and the buttoned-up ladies — one played hilariously by Joy Behar — are not exactly getting Mao Zedong. A conversation about Chinese foot-binding turns into chit-chat about shopping for too-small shoes at Bergdorf Goodman. It’s clear that Kay, however, like Alan, is warming up to Lenny’s ideas. Of the Vietnamese War, for example, she asks the women, “Why should we send our grandsons and sons to Asia to kill Asian men and women, just to satisfy the economic desires of some plutocrat?” Damn, Kay. She proposes that they all stage a sit-in at the local army draft board to protest the war. The women are easily convinced — or maybe just bored of sitting around being housewives and talking about classic novels. They decide they’ll do it — naked — and plan to bring oatmeal cookies along with a quart of pig’s blood to smear on the draft records.

Alan is now at the point where he’s questioning everything — living safe and easy while people are starving and America is broken. “Are we resigning ourselves to this middle class life?” Alan asks Ellie over dinner. He starts quoting Mao to her, she gets freaked out, and they get into a fight. He goes home, where he and Lenny make out under the full moon. And guess who’s watching?! “He’s going to marry a lovely girl, why is he kissing a convict?!”

Sid is outraged that Alan and Kay are both falling for Lenny and what she stands for. “You shouldn’t be thinking radical politics, you should be thinking hip replacement!” he tells Kay, who quotes Mao back to him. (This is becoming a theme.) Lenny trots in and another fight erupts; Then Alan tells Sid he’s thinking of making a life in Cuba. While all of these tensions are bubbling, Lenny and Sid are both quietly using the phone an awful lot. Lenny is plotting something with her co-conspirator on the run. Oh, and Sid? He’s pretty convinced that J. Edgar Hoover is tapping their phone line.

Episode 5

The FBI is closing in on Lenny; they just apprehended her accomplice in New Jersey. Kay has agreed to help Lenny with something, but she’s keeping it a secret from Sid, obviously. They head to Manhattan to see Sid’s heart doctor. Afterwards, Kay drags him to Brooklyn to pick up a briefcase for Lenny — the favor she roped Kay into. All goes well until the cops show; they followed Lenny’s accomplice from New Jersey. They make away with the briefcase — which turns out to be full of Cuban money — by hopping between roofs. Next, they have to drop it off at a phone booth nearby, where another man is supposed to pick it up. Lenny is escaping to Cuba tomorrow, Kay explains. Naturally, Sid is losing his shit over all of this, while his wife is clearly enjoying this welcome change to their boring routine — an exciting undercover mission.

Problem: A woman walks into the phone booth, but the pickup is supposed to be by a man. Sid tries to get the briefcase back, but the woman thinks he’s trying to claim a stranger’s bag. She calls an officer over, Sid says he was just joking, and the cop leaves with the briefcase full of Cuban money that is supposed to be Lenny’s ticket out of America. Oops! When they get home, they fess up to Lenny, who’s predictably pissed.

Meanwhile, Alan visits his fiancée Ellie’s office to tell her he wants to postpone the wedding. “I’m not sure if I want to spend my life using money to make more money,” he says. “You sound like Karl Marx,” says Ellie. “What are you suggesting, the violent overthrow of the American government?!” Ellie doesn’t recognize this man, and thinks all of Alan’s radical talk is just his way of telling her he doesn’t want to marry her. She’s right: Alan wants to go with Lenny to Cuba, where they can live a life of social justice crusading “under the Caribbean moonlight.” Cute, Alan.

Episode 6

Alan comes home from the hospital in bandages. Oh, did I not mention? Alan had a little accident making a bomb in his bedroom. (He was supposed to wait for Lenny to help him but he just got really excited, evidently.) Alan’s parents arrive, and they’re not happy. Kay and Sid try to cover for him by saying it was caused by a gas leak, but Alan confesses — before launching into a diatribe against his father, comparing his banker dad’s low-wage workers to slaves and accusing him of racism.

Meanwhile, Kay is fending off few desperate patients who showed up at her house unannounced: a couple on the cusp of divorce and a suicidal man whose wife just left him for a life of prostitution, an indirect consequence of Kay’s counseling method. Ding-dong: The now fully-radicalized book club women show up. They’re all fired up by the Karl Marx biography and guerilla warfare tactics they just read. They sprightly discuss the merits of Joseph Lenin, stealth kill-tactics and the need to suspend civil liberties for a short period between overthrowing the government and installing a new one. The doorbell rings again: It’s Ellie and her parents.

It’s frenzied and chaotic as plotlines are converging, and everything begins to feel a bit like a madcap farce that would be depressing if it weren’t comical. In other words, it feels like the final act of most Woody Allen movies, where the audience wonders how everything is going to be resolved so quickly while knowing that it’s not. “Can I offer anyone an aperitif?” Sid asks brightly.

Alan’s parents think their son is having a mental breakdown. Ellie announces she’s pregnant. She offers to go to Cuba with Alan, sparking an argument about communism with her parents. The doorbell rings again.“I’m expecting the Mormon tabernacle choir,” Sid jokes drily. It’s not the Mormons, it’s two Black guys who are with Lenny. “Girls, Real Black Panthers!” one of the book club ladies shrieks joyfully. Alan’s dad derides the men as criminals, and squabbles break out. And, yet again, the doorbell rings. “We should appear like a normal group!” Sid says to the 25 or so people in his entryway. It’s the gas company guys, here to check out the leak. Lenny finally appears, and the ladies cheer the heroic fugitive. Lenny assures Alan he’s not in love with her but just awakened to his own inner radical. (Don’t worry, Alan and Ellie make up soon enough.)

Lenny has a flight to Havana to catch, and she needs a ride to the plane. Sid volunteers to do it, simply because he can’t bear the thought of having to live with Lenny for however many weeks it takes to set up another escape. He secures her in the trunk of his car, and off they go. Sid gets pulled over for speeding, and when he can’t produce his license or registration the cop tells him to get out and pop the trunk. Shit. Wait! Good news. It turns out the (rather dim) cop is a big fan of Sidney’s novels… except he has Sidney (penname: S.J. Mudsinger) confused with J.D. Salinger. While Sid signs him an autograph, Lenny makes her great escape.

The final shot of the show is of Sid and Kay laying together in bed, reeling from the earlier events. Being mistaken for Salinger has got Sid thinking about the man he could be. “Do you think that it’s in me to write a novel as good as The Catcher in the Rye?” he asks Kay. Sid makes maybe the most radical decision of his comfortable little life: He decides he’s going to drop the TV show idea and take one more shot at writing his great novel.

Sid deciding not to do a TV show and instead return to his true passion ends the show on the same playfully ironic note it began on. Crisis isn’t brilliant, provocative or very original — but it’s funny and enjoyable and smart enough. I was prepared to write the show off as a crappy cash-grab, but was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. The effect of binge-watching Crisis In Six Scenes is that it feels exactly like watching an extra long Woody Allen film. Now Allen can go back to making movies and counting his cash from that hefty Amazon paycheck. Crisis averted.

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Is it just me, or is it very easy to lose track of time when scrolling through the enviable makeup looks on Gigi Hadid's Instagram page? It makes sense, since the supermodel-of-the-moment always sports the newest techniques and products — thanks in large part to a bevy of famous makeup artists on speed dial (Patrick Ta, Hung Vanngo, and Erin Parsons, to name just a few).

Unfortunately, most of the makeup that adorns the faces of the stars like her tend to be a little pricey — to say the least. Which makes copying Hadid's looks all the more alluring. To wit: Since she's a face of Maybelline, she's regularly wearing a full face of drugstore makeup from the brand. We took a cue from the star and challenged ourselves to recreate a killer look she wore in L.A. this summer.

Now, you may notice that drugstore makeup has been getting increasingly more expensive, so we gave ourselves some perimeters: Maria and I decided to find products to mimic the look that wouldn't set us back more than $30 each. In the video above, we set out to mimic Hadid's bronze smoky eye, luminous skin, and plum lip. Did we measure up on our budgets? You decide.

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If Jon Snow was — is? — the guardian of the North this winter, then consider us the guardians of your hair color. Okay fine, we admit we're a little late with our TV references, but hey, we've been busy. Specifically, tracking all the gorgeous hair looks walking out of L.A.'s top salons just in time for autumn. What's new in L.A. hair-color trends? Get ready, because this fall is all about tone.

While the top seasonal trends tend to be heavily reliant upon technique — sombré to single process, babylights to balayage —this fall is all about finding a modern, well-blended tone. Think: golden, strawberry blond with just enough cool-girl grit; perfectly-rooted, golden highlights that look like the result of a summer in Venice Beach; and smooth blends of warm espresso spiked with rich caramel just at the ends.

Inspiring? Surely. But the best part: Most of these L.A. color trends (with the exception of the platinum epidemic) are very easy to copy without making a huge change.

Now all you have left to do is finalize your fall cut — tip: always get your chop before color for the best results — then click ahead to find the color that's right for you.

This story was originally published on September 15, 2016.

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Summer isn't over quite yet, but L.A.'s fall hair trends have already fully arrived. Some seasons, our city's most trendsetting looks are as varied as they are cool, while other years have been dominated by one single style. This time, it's a mix of both — a range of styles all anchored by one idea: The shag has taken L.A.

Sure, you'll find back-grazing blunt cuts, choppy bobs, short pixies, and soft mid-length chops ahead, but the bulk of what we're seeing from L.A.'s top stylists has been heavily influenced by the shag. But don't be nervous: There are tons of options to choose from that work just as well on models and rock stars as they do on people who, well, aren't models or rock stars. From fringe-free options, to classic renditions, to those accentuated with baby bangs, there are styles to suit every hair texture and type.

Ahead, find 15 of the coolest fall cuts to come out of L.A.'s raddest salons. Plus, check out the tips and tricks for styling, and exactly what to ask for, all from the five stylists that created the chops. (And all of whom just so happen to be the ones to watch right now.) Bookmark this page, schedule your next haircut, and welcome fall with one of L.A.'s freshest new looks.

This story was originally published on September 1, 2016.

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Everything about Luke Cage communicates strength. The burly Harlem resident seems patient and unfeeling. Bullets can’t wound Luke Cage, and knives can’t cut his Black skin. In 2016, this feels like a touching political and artistic statement. But what to make of this man, who has been asked to be Harlem’s champion?

Netflix's latest Marvel series is stunning. Luke is powerful but vulnerable. He moves concrete like it’s cardboard, but wants to retreat into obscurity. He’s happy sweeping a broom. But Harlem is undergoing a “New Black Renaissance” by a shady political family, and the neighborhood begs Luke to intervene and put a stop to the tyranny.

There are a lot of names and histories to introduce in the first episode, so keep track of the primary antagonists and be sure to groove to the funk music. Here we go: Ernie and the Top Notes are playing, Harlem is warm. The battle to save the neighborhood has begun.

Episode 1

Something special goes on in Black barbershops as the afternoon drags on. It’s a steamy day in present-day Harlem and Pop’s barbershop is home to that mix of trash talk and Black machismo that comes from cutting hair all day with the fellas. New Orleans funk band Ernie & The Top Notes play as we overhear boss man Pop hold court about the latest NBA draft.

Luke Cage is the shop’s handyman. He’s burly and mysterious. He schools the young bloods about Pat Riley, the NBA coach who led the Lakers to five NBA titles. When a woman picking her son up from the shop flirts with him, he politely declines her offer to get coffee. Pop teases him about it and we learn that these two men have something in common beyond just working together: “I shook everything else after I got out. Cigarettes, paranoia...but the pacing,” Pop says, “I do it, too.” Both men have spent time behind bars.

Pop has a lot of nicknames for Luke: Power man, Mr. Bulletproof. It’s during this conversation that we figure out why. Luke picks up a washing machine like it’s an empty cardboard box. “You should be out there helping people. Like them other fellas downtown,” Pop says, referencing the crop of superheroes that have sprung up. Luke says that his ex — Pop’s daughter — used to say the same thing. “You think I asked for any of this?” Luke asks. “I was framed, beaten, and put in a tank like some exotic fish.” Another clue to Luke’s mysterious past: his powers weren’t acquired by choice. His only ambition is to be left alone.

As Luke leaves the shop later that night, he runs into Chico, one of the younger barbers who talked smack in the shop. Chico’s in a hurry and drops a gun on his way out the door. Luke looks at him cautiously, but Chico says something about the sweeper not being his father and then jumps in the passenger seat of a car driven by Shameek, the other loudmouth youngster from the barbershop.

Harlem’s hottest spot is a nightclub owned by Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes. Don’t let him catch you using his nickname, though: “Cottonmouth” is his street name, from his former life as a full-time thug. His Harlem club makes good on the Black Renaissance's American Dream, a place for Black people to gather and spend their money at a Black-owned business. While Luke tries to be anonymous, the Stokes family is infamous in the neighborhood. Cottonmouth’s cousin is Black Mariah, a local city councilwoman who likes to look past her cousin’s dirty dealings and believe their family is completely legitimate.

“Politics is where the power is, Cornell,” Mariah says. But who cares about politics when it’s Cottonmouth’s weapon dealing that’s helping her fund a costly revitalization project? “When the smoke clears, it’s n------ like me that let you hold on to what you’ve got,” Cottonmouth counters.

A dealer named Domingo arrives to Cottonmouth’s private balcony. The two shake on a wholesale deal for a cool million dollars. “UPS ain’t the only brown that delivers,” Cottonmouth says with a grin, not knowing that in a Harlem parking lot, his men are being robbed. Three gunmen roll up on the trade off between his guys and Domingo’s. A simple robbery escalates into a shoot-out. The shooters are Chico and Shameek, from Pop’s shop; and Dante, a bartender at Cottonmouth’s club who took the night off to pull off the heist. When he gets second thoughts about his involvement, Shameek shoots him.

Luke moonlights at the club as a dishwasher. When Dante calls in sick, Luke steps up in his place to earn the tips. He pours a Cosmo for a striking woman who seems, in a word, grown: She’s a few years older than the club’s typical millennial crowd and isn’t impressed by Cottonmouth’s flash. She and Luke flirt and sleep together that night. In the morning the woman gets a call from work — she’s an auditor, she says. But in reality, she heads to the junkyard, the scene of the previous night’s shoot-out. She’s Detective Misty Knight and the lot is a crime scene.

Cottonmouth is taking heat from everyone over the shoot-out. Domingo, the buyer, thinks it was an inside job. Diamondback, Cottonmouth’s disgruntled weapons supplier, is even more upset. He’s sent a man named Shades to oversee Cottonmouth’s attempts to recoup the money (from the thieves), and the weapons (from the police). Black Mariah’s pissed, too: She used federal election funds to renovate his club, money that she expected to be returned to her after the sale. If the money isn’t replaced soon, she could be facing an audit that could end with jail time for everyone.

Cottonmouth’s cronies eventually catch up with Shameek (Dante ratted him out before his death) and convince him to meet with Cottonmouth about the money he and Chico stole. Luke sees Shameek and Shades come through the back entrance. Luke has a flashback to his time in prison where it looks like he and Shades shared a cell. When Cottonmouth beats Shameek to death, it’s expected, but also a little sad. Pop was a mentor to Shameek, Chico, and Dante — he’s devastated that they’re twisted up in Cottonmouth’s thuggery.

When Misty and her partner, Scarfe, find Shameek’s body, Scarfe suggests Chico is the prime suspect. But Chico is hiding out with his half of the bounty, scared shitless. Instead, finding the bartender who took over for Dante is the next move (despite Misty’s protests). Looks like Misty and Luke Cage will be reunited in the daylight hours.

Episode 2

“Somebody got jacked, somebody got pissed, and somebody got dead.” That’s the conclusion that’s driving the police investigation of the shoot-out the other night. Luke Cage is doing his own asking, too. Chico is still missing, but Luke is onto something bigger: Cottonmouth’s thugs regularly shake down Harlem businesses to fund Mariah’s “New Harlem Renaissance” revitalization project. The cousins, raised by a matriarch evil enough to be the “devil’s ex-wife,” rule Harlem with a pair of iron fists. They both respect Pop, though. His shop is neutral territory.

Cottonmouth comes around for a shave and Shades is with him. This is a fact-finding mission — the men are fishing for information about Chico’s whereabouts. Pop gets nervous that they’re getting closer and asks Luke to find Chico before Cottonmouth or the police do.

It takes Luke four hours to find Chico. That’s how bad the kid is at hiding. Even though he’s terrified of what could happen, Chico tells Luke that he’s not interested in whatever plan Pop is trying to work out to secure his safety. Pop is upset at the news and gives Luke a little family history: Pop, Cottonmouth, and Chico's dad, Wilfredo, used to own the streets when they were young. The three of them were buckwild until fate finally caught up with them. That’s why Pop is so insistent on becoming a mentor to young kids on the street. “So those young knuckleheads have a place to get away,” he says.

After Luke and Pop finish talking, Chico comes in the shop through the back door. A grifter named Turk Barrett gets a good look at Chico and then bounces. On his way out, he runs into Misty and Scarfe, who are on their way to see Pop. Scarfe is curt, but Misty has an obvious rapport with Pop. She has an awkward moment with Luke, but ultimately the cops don’t get any info, either.

Pop guilts Luke into approaching Cottonmouth for a parley for Chico’s safety. Cottonmouth takes some convincing, but calls off the search party for Chico. He tells Tone (his right-hand man) and Shades to hold off on pursuing the thief. It can all be settled in the morning. History — his own and his culture’s — is important to Cottonmouth, but he doesn’t have time for wistful nostalgia. “You know what people remember over Black martyrdom?” he asks Mariah. “Black money.”

Cottonmouth’s reps, however, have ideas of their own. When Turk rats on Chico’s whereabouts, Shades and Tone do an impromptu drive-by shooting of Pop’s barbershop. Luke is inside and Pop is cutting a preteen client’s hair. Chico is wounded, but it’s Pop who is killed. Shades grabs the money before he and Tone jet.

When the cops get there, Misty sees that Luke protected the boy who could’ve died in the shooting. But how? Luke has bullet holes in his shirt, but seems fine. There’s no evidence at the scene that points to the perps.

Tone is cocky when he returns to the club and is eager to show off the money’s he recouped. Shades is hesitant. The pair meets with Cottonmouth and Mariah on the roof for a private talk. Cottonmouth isn’t thrilled about the shooting, but is happy it got the job done. Then, Shades breaks the news: Pop is dead. Tone killed him. Cottonmouth looks deeply hurt. Tone calls it a “casualty of war.” Then, Turk appears on the roof, asking for the money he’s owed for ratting on Chico (When Cottonmouth asks how the hell he got up there, his line is iconic: “I’m Turk Barrett, baby. The door ain’t been built yet that can hold me back.”) Cottonmouth looks at Tone and then pushes him from the roof onto the sidewalk. “You can collect your money from Tone downstairs,” he yells. Turk doesn’t need the drama. “Y’all Harlem n------ is crazy,” he says. “I’m going back to Hell’s Kitchen, where it’s safe.”

After the shoot-out, Luke spends the much of the night watching the Crispus Attucks Community Center. The structure is the bastion of Black Mariah’s political power. After scaring off a young crook (and, impressively, shooting himself in the gut and remaining unwounded) Luke sees Black Mariah go in the doors with Chico’s backpack full of money. As everyone else — Maria, Cottonmouth — mourns Pop, Luke is up to something.

Episode 3

The episode opens with a stunning shoot-out. A burly man in a hoodie walks calmly out of of the Crispus Attucks building with a duffel bag of money. Luke Cage? You got some ‘splaining to do. But we’ll get to that later.

It’s another day in Harlem. Luke is trying to scrounge up cash to pay for Pop’s burial, but Cottonmouth appears and offers to foot the bill. Luke agrees, but holds the smooth-talking criminal accountable for Pop’s murder. Meanwhile, a robbery over some guns Cottonmouth was running leads detectives Misty and Scarfe to Chino’s bedside.

Pop’s shop is in ruins and it turns out his finances were, too. The barbershop needs $80,000 to stay open, according to Bobby Fish (Pop’s friend and occasional chess opponent). Luke brainstorms ways to score the cash quick.

After the detectives press Chico for answers in the hospital, Misty runs into Luke outside Chico’s room. Her investigation and his personal life are colliding in ways that make her suspicious. Luke flirts with her a little and then goes inside to reason with Chico. Luke blames him for Pop’s death, but the headstrong kid is too stubborn to shoulder it all on his own. He just wants to get out of the game for good. He’s the first to pin down Luke’s secret: The barbershop broom man has some special abilities.

Remember how Luke needs money to keep Pop’s shop open? Cottonmouth has more than enough and the powerman wants to put a hit on the gangster’s funds. Chico spills everything he knows about Cottonmouth’s operation: He’s got fronts and stash houses all over the city, but most of the money is held inside Crispus Attucks. The building is like their own Fort Knox — there’s a vault in the center, one way in and one way out, and about a hundred defense weapons and guards in-between. Chico bets that the shooting the cops were asking him about was probably just Domingo clapping back at Cottonmouth. Luke comes up with a plan: hit the stash houses a few times to force Cottonmouth to move all his cash to Crispus Attucks, where Luke can collect all the assets at once.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happens. Domingo stops by the club to set the record straight — the drug dealer is not the one that’s been hitting Cottonmouth’s operation — but Harlem’s king is still scared. Domingo has declared war.

Luke wasn’t playing around, earlier. We’re back to that short sequence from the episode’s start. Bullets rains down on him, but Cage is unscathed. He makes it to the belly of the beast and strolls out of Crispus Attucks with a single duffel bag full of cash. He leaves the rest of the millions for the police to confiscate, sending the boldest message.

At the precinct, Scarfe and Misty bicker about the robbery. The conversation isn’t groundbreaking, but it does explain Misty’s skepticism about superheroes: they’re untrained vigilantes. On the other hand, she holds steadfast to regulations and order. Scarfe shrugs, happy to let a renegade do his work for him. Chico calls Scarfe, finally brave enough to be a witness against Cottomouth. Scarfe and Chico meet under a bridge to chat. Surprise! Scarfe is a dirty cop. Moments after Chico agrees to testify, Scarfe chokes him. RIP, Chico.

Cottonmouth is frantic when he realizes he’s been hit. After Luke’s stunt, 80% of the cash is gone. Scarfe — who is on Cottonmouth’s payroll — reports that Luke Cage is the source of Cottonmouth’s headaches, according to Chico. Scarfe has Cage’s address and passes it along. Later that night, Luke’s landlady makes him a late meal at Genghis Connie’s (the restaurant she owns below his apartment). But uh oh, there’s Cottonmouth on the roof of nearby building. The gangster shoots a rocket launcher, bringing the whole building down on top of Luke and his landlady.

Episode 4

The explosion of Genghis Connie’s rocks Harlem. The restaurant and the apartments above it (remember, this is where Luke lives) have collapsed and Luke and his landlady, Connie, are underneath. Misty and Scarfe are trying to put together the pieces.

But first, a flashback: Back in the day, Luke was a prisoner in a Georgia prison called Seagate. An icy officer oversees him (he’s like the warden from Cool Hand Luke, but without the sunglasses). He’s mean, manipulative, and bullies Luke early on. The prison guard mentions something about Luke being a former lawman. Luke grunts something about it being a past life. When the guard punches him, he stumbles, feeling the pain.

In prison, Luke wasn’t extraordinary. He was still a behemoth, but his name was Carl Lucas then. A pretty, bespectacled woman named Riva is the prison’s psychologist. She looks a little familiar — her photo was tucked away in Luke’s medicine cabinet in episode 1. In group therapy, Luke is silent. There are rumors that prisoners at Seagate are experimented on, but Reva denies them.

The prison guard offers Luke a shot at an easier time in prison. Fight for him in the facility’s underground boxing league and the guards will go easier on him and give him extra rations. “Slavery was always a good offer to a master,” Luke says. But he agrees when the guard threatens his deepening friendship with Reva. Luke’s BFF, Squabbles, begins training him.

Something starts to change in Luke when he fights. He becomes the most debased version of himself. He’s winning, but at the expense of his soul. You can see the weight of these battles on his face. Reva reminds him that there’s more to life than just surviving prison. When he makes it clear that he wants out of the ring, the prison guard sends Shades and another crony to give him a serious beating. Reva begs the prison’s medical doctor to save Luke’s life.

The doc places Luke in a weird high-tech bath of sorts. It’s supposed to speed up the healing process. Then, the prison guard, furious that Luke will expose his underground dealings if he lives, tries to shut the machine off. Instead, there’s an explosion. Whatever happened in that bath, Luke wakes up and can punch through walls. He reunites with Reva later on in the night. With these new abilities, Luke — Carl Douglas — needs a new name.

In the present day, Luke punches through the rubble to free himself and Connie from the wreckage. A news crew, the fire department, and Misty see it happen. A news reporter follows him as he walks home from the scene, peppering him with questions. “My name is Luke Cage,” he says.

Episode 5

The episode starts with Jidenna rehearsing a rap for a performance at Cottonmouth’s club. So really, this could go anywhere.

Cottonmouth is broke. And not just broke — very broke. He’s out 7 million dollars and the streets are whispering about his wavering status. He’s becoming unhinged, too. He sends his thugs to collect extra money from the local stores, calling it the “Luke Cage Stupidity Tax.” Zip — one of Cottonmouth’s thugs — robs a memorabilia store, snatching an heirloom MLB ring.

Elsewhere, Luke prepares for Pop’s funeral. Bobby Fish has become something of a mentor in Pop’s absence. Luke and Fish are still working on reopening the barbershop. He gives Luke the keys to the apartment above the shop.

The streets are talking about the busts that have been happening up and down Harlem. “Cottonmouth figures if he can’t drop you, he’ll get Harlem to push you out,” Fish predicts. It’s true — and it’s working. Luke tries to restore order in the streets. Cottonmouth starts to crack under the pressure of maintaining his name.

Soon enough, Luke lands at the club. Cottonmouth is snide. “It costs to be a savior,” he says. “Ask Jesus.” Cottonmouth can only think of people in terms of power. He thinks Luke wants to be at the top of a hierarchy that only he and Black Mariah really subscribe to. Luke just wants to be left alone and for Harlem’s residents to be free of this dictatorship. When Luke is leaving, Shades finally recognizes him as Carl Lucas from Seagate.

Now, Cottonmouth’s plan is to kill Luke in any way he can. Shades has a connection to a gun that doesn’t shoot straight-on so much as it blows the victim up from the inside. Cottonmouth wants to buy one to kill Luke, but the price is steep. He makes a promise to get Domingo his guns so Diamondback will be willing to loan him money for the weapon.

There’s a new player on the scene. Claire Temple, a nurse in Hell’s Kitchen, has come uptown to visit her mother, Soledad. Claire’s seen other people who have superpowers and wants to work with them more. She’s seen Luke on TV and wants to befriend him.

At police headquarters, the higher-ups start to suspect that Scarfe is dirty. Misty defends him.

Pop’s funeral turns into a cold war of eulogies. Cottonmouth talks about Pop as a reformed gangster. Luke paints him as a hardworking man who believed in Harlem’s future and wanted to protect its residents from the selfish (a.k.a. Cottonmouth). “Where some people saw hard-rock kids, Pop saw precious jewels,” Luke says. “Pop saw the shine of everyone that walked into his barbershop.” Cottonmouth frowns, consumed with rage.

Misty isn’t happy after Luke’s speech, either. “Your ass might be bulletproof,” she says, “but Harlem ain’t.” Luke has just started World War III and Misty is afraid he’s making things worse.

Episode 6

Harlem is split as to what to do about Luke Cage. Half of the ‘hood thinks Luke is a good person, the other prefers the law and order of the police department.

None of that really matters when it comes to Cottonmouth, who is going off the rails. When Scarfe tries to extort him for more money, Cottonmouth shoots him in broad daylight. It’s clear Cottonmouth isn’t playing around. Black Mariah isn’t, either. Her smile is saccharine, but she’s her own PR machine, trying to recover from being associated with the robbery of Crispus Attucks. She’s tired of Luke and his drama. “Does the n---- have gills? Drown him. Can he burn? Can you poison him? Find his weakness,” she instructs Cottonmouth. “And squeeze.”

After Scarfe’s shooting, the department’s higher-ups get even more anxious. Misty actually starts to suspect that Scarfe is dirty, but she defends him to the brass. No one knows that Cottonmouth has another rat in the department, the lieutenant “investigating” Scarfe.

It turns out Luke and Claire met once before. Claire says she was Luke’s nurse when his girlfriend brought him to the hospital one time. Luke and Claire are together when they find Scarfe, bloodied from the shooting, hiding out in the barbershop. He admits to being a dirty cop and to killing Chico. He says he’ll be a witness and sheds more light on how Cottonmouth operates. The gangster uses a mortuary to dispose of bodies and Scarfe has kept detailed notes of murder investigations he’s covered up.

Mariah is taking a beating from a local reporter on camera. She’s agreed to a lengthy interview, but the reporter twists the knife. “Which Harlem is you?” the reporter asks, pitting Mariah’s PR stunt of prosperity against her dirty dealings with Cottonmouth. The reporter recounts Luke’s attack on Crispus Attucks and details Black Mariah’s connection with criminal activity. Mariah is speechless and demands the interview end.

Luke and Claire are trying to transport Scarfe to safety, but his injuries make it difficult. Cottonmouth puts pressure on his dirty lieutenant to find Scarfe and kill him. With Cottonmouth’s goons on their tail, Scarfe is killed, but not before Misty realizes the truth about the lieutenant who is trying to skew the investigation.

Back at Mariah’s house, the reporter ambushes her. “Councilwoman Dillard, can you comment on the arrest of your cousin, Cornell Stokes, on charges of extortion, police corruption, and murder? Is it true that he’s responsible for the murder of decorated Harlem Police Detective Rafael Scarfe?” It’s true — Cottonmouth is escorted out of his club in handcuffs. Has his reign ended?

Claire and Luke walk home after the adventure. Luke kind of hits on her and she firmly says that it’ll never happen. Back at headquarters, Misty is caught up in the day’s news: Scarfe is dead and Cottonmouth is behind bars.

Episode 7

And just like that, Cottonmouth is out of jail. Nina Simone’s voice echoes through the streets. Misty and Cornell have a tense scene together, the meeting of two true rivals. Luke is really just an interloper who has has disrupted their war, but these two are the ones who want Harlem built in their image. Misty says she can’t throw Cottonmouth in prison. He smiles. “See, that’s the problem with a bitch,” he tells her. “Once they get their mouth on a bone, they don’t wanna let go.” Damn.

Cottonmouth has a reason to be gleeful: He shot a cop in broad daylight and got off the hook. He’s stolen the guns back to sell to Domingo, so that’s one less person breathing down his neck. Mariah won’t be pleased with the headlines, but she’ll fall in line. Shades snaps him back to reality when he asks for the pricey gun he wants from Diamondback. Cottonmouth asks for a one-on-one with the weapons dealer. Then, he has a flashback of his own, to him as a scared teenager holding a gun that looked like it belonged to Pistol Pete, the brother-in-law of Mama Mabel. Back in the day, Pete was one of Harlem’s power players.

At the police department, Misty is visited by Inspector Ridley, a snobby woman who Misty calls “Inspector Gadget.” Back at her brownstone, Black Mariah gets a visit from her own antagonist, a younger politician named Damon Boone. He gives her an exit strategy for her current troubles: he’ll take her seat. In a year, she might be able to re-emerge.

Cottonmouth wasn’t always the hardened gangster. In a flashback, we learn that his first love was music. Mama Mabel was the matriarch of the Harlem underworld and he was scarred by her brutality. Luke and Cottonmouth have a parley: Cottonmouth lays out everything he knows about Luke’s past. He was a sheriff in his life as Carl Lucas and Cottonmouth threatens to rat out his ex-con past to Seagate and Harlem. “I have a use for bulletproof n-----,” Cottonmouth says. “I own you now.”

Shades visits Black Mariah. The Stokes family name used to mean something, he says. It’s a random, weird conversation. Shades is suddenly the defender of the Stokes name? He must be playing at something bigger.

Luke is ready to run and start a new life somewhere else now that Cottonmouth knows his secret. Claire reasons with him: Half of the people uptown have brothers, cousins, fathers, in prison, she says. People will be drawn to the fact that Luke isn’t perfect. He agrees — begrudgingly — and goes to get the guns from Domingo.

Black Mariah is forced out of politics. The city needs her resignation. She’s furious and Cottonmouth isn’t having any of it. Their conflict is actually much bigger than any of us know. Cottonmouth wanted to be a musician and get out of Harlem’s underworld, but it was Black Mariah that Mama Mabel sent away to boarding school for a ritzy education. He was pushed into the gangster life and forced to run the streets for Mabel until she had him sign away his own soul. Uncle Pete, whom Cottonmouth favored, was running a drug scheme behind Mabel’s back. She made Cottonmouth shoot him when he was 14 and he never recovered.

Mariah doesn’t have any sympathy. Pete used to molest her and she says Mama Mabel sent her away for her own safety. “You wanted it,” Cottonmouth screams, saying that she used to walk around house “half-naked.” That pushes Black Mariah over the edge. She throws him from the window of his office, onto the club’s dancefloor. She kills him. They always said “family first.” Shades appears out of nowhere, proud of Mariah’s brutality. He suggests they blame Luke for Cottonmouth’s death.

Conveniently, Luke and Misty have a conversation about Cottonmouth on the sidewalk. They butt heads over the value of the system. Luke plainly admits that he has no interest in killing Cottonmouth, because he wants him to suffer behind bars. Misty’s pissed.

Then, in the last moment, a twist: Luke walks with Claire through a park. Diamondback, sitting in a parked car, has the powerful Judas gun that Cottonmouth was so eager to get his hands on. “Hey Carl,” he says. “One Judas for another.” He shoots and the bullet pierces Luke’s chest. Mr. Bullettproof bleeds.

Episode 8

Luke Cage has been shot! According to Claire, the bullet made a drilling sound as it burrowed into his flesh. The two of them on the run in an ambulance driven by one of her old friends, but they’re being chased by Hummer. That’s Diamondback, finally out to play.

“Carl, come out to play!” he shouts. These two have a long history, but it isn’t clear just yet.

Back at the club, Misty is skeptical: The way Black Mariah is framing Luke Cage is too perfect. A bottle girl named Candace is saying she saw Luke Cage, but everything isn’t adding up. How did Candace make it into the club that night? Why was she there? Misty think Mariah did it, but she doesn’t have the evidence.

At the club, Shades is in charge. He’s talked Mariah through covering up her tracks at the crime scene and he’s ready to hold court. He tells Cottonmouth’s goons that he’s their new boss.

Diamondback tries another hit on Luke as Claire tries to figure out what’s wrong with him. They’re hiding out in a women’s clinic. Misty arrives to see the action. She’s trying to get answers from Luke and figure out an alibi. When Diamondback tries to shoot Luke again with the Judas gun, the bullet blows a massive hole in a wall, but he’s out of bullets. The bullets from a regular gun are starting to wound Luke, as well. Diamondback snatches Missy away and thinks about kidnapping her, but ultimately leaves her behind and runs off into the night.

Luke follows Diamondback to an old theater. “Stryker!” he calls out. That seems to be Diamondback’s real name. He’s offscreen, calling to Luke and teasing him, mentioning something about them hearing the same sermons as kids. Could they have grown up in the same house? It seems likely. Luke calls Diamondback “Willis,” his given name, instead of his reptilian nickname. “I am a snake,” Diamondback tells him. “I shed my skin for something better, stronger. You left me to rot, Carl. In a gutter. But I changed that sewer into a garden.”

Diamondback has been the cause of chaos in Luke’s life. He’s the one who framed Luke and had him thrown in Seagate. He’s pissed that Luke survived: “I sent you to hell. And you came back with superpowers!” Luke and Diamondback fight. Slowly, Luke regains a little of his skin’s resilience, but still he’s bleeding.

Misty and Claire spar in an interrogation room. “You’re either too weak to stand up to pressure, or too stupid to see that Luke is innocent,” Claire says. Misty looks wounded, like she’s losing her ground. She snaps, pushing Claire against the room’s walls. Inspector Gadget comes in, furious, breaking up their fight.

There’s something weird going on between Shades and Mariah. He’s hitting on her, but also bringing out the worst in her. They pay off the bottle girl for lying to the police — they plan to kill her and all her roommates if she decides to snitch and play all it off as a home invasion.

“Pity,” Mariah says. “It would bring down the property value.” Shades gives a weird grin. “That’s my girl.” Does anyone really need a romance between these two?

Dimaondback catches up with Luke outside the theater, shooting him with the Judas bullet once again. Luke looks sad and says he loved Diamondback like a brother. Diamondback rolls his eyes. “N----, I am your brother,” he says.

Episode 9

Shades likes sitting behind the big desk and being the club’s boss. But there’s something missing from his leadership — and it’s not just because Mahershala Ali is so charismatic on camera. The club is called Harlem’s Paradise because it’s supposed to be the realization of a Black American dream. Shades has had Mariah do his dirty work, but Diamondback interrupts the new king holding court. Diamondback loved Cottonmouth and is mad that Shades was arrogant enough to think he could replace the overlord. “Luke Cage isn’t dead until you find his goddamn body,” Diamondback says, instructing everyone to figure out where Luke disappeared to.

Luke fell into a garbage truck after being shot by the Judas gun, and is on the run. The police want him in for questioning. It’s not Misty who’s looking for him, though: She’s in a mandated therapy session. Assaulting Claire in the interrogation room was not a good look.

Luke finally catches up with Claire, who has been busy analyzing his cells and trying to figure out how to heal him. He had to steal a police car to do it, but Claire’s been busy, too. “I’m looking up seashells to better understand the structure of your skin,” she says. She wants to visit Dr. Burstein, the prison doctor that created the bath chamber that gave Luke these powers. He might be the only person alive with a clue as to how Luke can recover.

As the new queenpin, Black Mariah demands a meeting with the rest of the head gangsters. Shades tells her she needs to assure Cottonmouth’s old buyers that they’re still in good hands.

Through all this, Misty is still in therapy. She’s paranoid, but it reveals a deeper fear. Luke’s ascendance, Cottonmouth’s death, the truth about Scarfe — she’s terrified that she’s a bad judge of character and that she’s really amounted to nothing.

On the way to the prison doctor’s house, Luke is delirious with pain and talking out of his head. “Willis thinks he’s my brother...the things he said about my father...he can’t be my brother,” he says.

By the time Luke makes it to Dr. Burstein’s couch, he’s in bad shape. Claire thinks that whatever makes him stronger is also making the shrapnel hurt him more internally. Before her death, Reva (Luke’s ex) stole a USB drive full of the doctor’s medical experiment data. Now, the three of them are using that information to figure out how to save Luke.

Hennessey is poured and all the gangster heads are sitting around the table. Black Mariah calls the meeting to order. “I’m out,” she says. But then, Diamondback shows up uninvited. He kills all the heads, save for Domingo and Black Mariah. Domingo lives because he has friends south of the border. Diamondback also needs a witness to let people know how serious he is. Diamondback and Mariah have a common enemy: Luke Cage. They join forces to peddle more of the Judas guns.

Because of Luke’s cells and the chemical reactions in his body, he needs to be dipped in hot acid to get the shrapnel out. They all go to Burstein’s lab in his barn. It’s a dangerous experiment. Luke tells Claire to make sure to get Reva’s data back, no matter what happens to him. He’s dipped into the chemical bath and immediately starts screaming. It’s not working — his skin is still impenetrable. Then, he flatlines.

Episode 10

The bath didn’t work and Claire is desperate. She electrocutes Luke and it works, his heart keeps beating. They decide to boil him to mimic what happened the night he got his powers. FInally, Claire picks the shrapnel out and it looks like Luke might finally heal.

Diamondback and Black Mariah have a meeting. He’s trying to mass produce the Judas gun and he needs her business acumen to help him do it. The single bullets will be less powerful, but he can sell them for cheaper. “[Buyers] need to look at dashcam footage and ask themselves if the world is ready for bulletproof n----- that eat cops for breakfast,” he said. “Black fear.” They’ve found a sales pitch.

Diamondback starts wearing hoodies and kills a cop, posing as Luke Cage. He’s created a device that can let him pack a punch nearly as strong as Luke’s, so he has most of Harlem fooled.

Back in the country at Dr. Burstein’s, Luke has a revelation. Dr. Burstein unencrypted Reva’s files and Luke see her video diary entries discussing their therapy. The Reva on camera is different from the one in Luke’s memory. She was playing him, prodding him as a potential test subject. Seagate’s prisoners were subjects in an experiment to provide lasting youth.

Misty is slow to point the finger at Luke. Street cops rough up local teens for info about Cage. When an officer beats up the teen from Pop’s barbershop in episode 1, Mariah attaches herself to the media circus. She turns a story about police brutality into a witch hunt for Luke Cage. Misty sees through it and presses the inspector to do the same. Using facial-recognition software, she sees that Willis Stryker was actually the person whose face was hiding in the hoodie when the cop was killed. Stryker is Diamondback’s true identity and she’s convinced he’s wrapped up in all of it. However, she hasn’t yet realized that he was the one who held her at gunpoint before he shot Luke Cage for the second time.

Meanwhile, Luke is in the South with Claire. He destroyed Burnstein’s bar when it was clear the scientist wanted to mass produce Luke’s abilities. He’s still sad about Reva. “I don’t love her anymore,” he tells Claire. “I just loved the idea of her.”

He’s still trying to piece together his personal history with Diamondback. He takes Claire to his grandfather’s church and has a flashback. When Luke’s dad was pastor, he had an affair with his secretary. The woman got pregnant and had Willis. The signs were there for all of Luke’s life, but he’s only just now putting them together. He and Willis/Diamondback are half brothers. “I am my brother’s keeper. It’s on me,” Luke says.

Luke makes it back to Harlem just in time for Mariah’s phony rally against him at the club. She’s effective on camera, painting him as the real villain, telling the people that police need to be properly armed to fight superpowered vigilantes. Boone, her nemesis, congratulates her on expertly changing the media narrative around the Stokes family.

Misty is at the rally, too, keeping an eye on Diamondback. He’s watching from above, in Cottonmouth’s old office. Misty tries to sneak up on him, but Diamondback shoots her. Luke springs into action, rescuing her from the gunfire, but they’re still stuck behind the club’s bar waiting out Diamondback’s goons.

Episode 11

Luke’s shielding Misty from the barrage of gunfire from Diamondback’s crew. Civilians are running out of the club, terrified of what they’ve seen. Misty’s been hit by gunfire and Luke carries her to the kitchen in the back. All of the possible exits are secured, so it seems like the pair are sitting ducks. Then, Luke opens a trapdoor in the kitchen’s floor. Lucky Luciano used to own the building, he explains, and there are still a few prohibition tunnels left.

Diamondback doesn’t really have a plan, but is banking on the confusion to help him come out unscathed. “One hundred people just saw you open fire on a female cop,” Shades says. Diamondback doesn’t care. If he can kill Luke and make it seem like he’s saved Harlem from the menace, he’ll be fine. Everyone not in his crew — including Claire, who didn’t flee from the club — are being held hostage now. Mariah’s city council nemesis, Boone, is a hostage, too. So is Candace. When Claire helps her with a sprained ankle, the bottle girl tells her Black Mariah paid her to say she saw Luke kill Cottonmouth. Since Candice spent time on the waitstaff, she also knows about the kitchen’s secret basement and tells Claire about it. Claire sneaks downstairs to find Luke and Misty.

Outside, the police have gathered to negotiate the hostage situation. Diamondback is posing as Luke and has Boone on and off the phone with police, talking demands. An aide to the mayor arrives in the police setup to advise Inspector Ridley, who is handling the situation. The mayor is in a special secret meeting with Mariah Dillard about the Judas weapons Diamondback is mass producing. Both the inspector and the aide are cautious about using it, but it’s being pushed by the top brass. Neither of them trust anything being repped by Black Mariah.

Misty’s health weakens. Diamondback confides in Boone about his troubled childhood. He just wanted his father’s approval and he thinks that Luke hogged the spotlight. They release a few hostages and the escapees tell the police the truth: the goons were firing on Luke, not the other way around. Inspector Ridley starts to think she has the truth backwards.

Shades and Diamondback spar over what to do. The hostages need to die and they need to find Luke Cage. They’ve realized Claire is missing, so Shades goes looking for her. Meanwhile, Diamondback goes into more detail about his childhood with Luke, this time over the club’s PA system. When he and Luke were teens, they were arrested for grand theft auto. Their dad, the respected pastor, argued for Luke to join the Marines. Diamondback, meanwhile, was sent to juvie and, eventually, to prison. He tells Luke to come out of hiding and meet him in Cottonmouth’s old office or he’ll kill a hostage every 10 minutes. Luke is on his way up, but Diamondback kills Boone.

Luke frees the rest of the hostages and finds Diamondback dangling Candace to her death. Luke rushes to save her, but it’s just as the police storm in, armed with the Judas guns. Luke surrenders and is arrested. Diamondback runs. Shades, who stumbled upon the kitchen’s trapdoor, is captured by Misty and Claire.

Episode 12

Luke is put in three sets of handcuffs and thrown in the back of an armored police car. Child's play. At his first opportunity, he escapes.

With Shades in custody, Diamondback is officially the only one in control. In a funny moment, Zip tries to don a pair of sunglasses and act like he knows what’s up. Diamondback calls him out for his foolishness. Turk Barrett returns! Diamondback has liquidated many of his assets to make an easy run after he kills Luke. The weapons dealer is also hilariously annoyed with all of his goons. They keep questioning him and he doesn’t like to be trifled with.

Some other developments in Harlem: Domingo’s crew has convinced him to go after Diamondback. He wants the drugs, money, and guns. Back at the police station, Misty is desperate to prove Luke’s innocence. The inspector sees that Diamondback should be a person of interest, but she’s still interested in talking to Luke and wants him brought in. Mariah goes back to the club after the shootout. It’s sad — the club was Mama Mabel’s legacy and was Cottonmouth’s dream, too. Her ambitious aide tells her that she can rebuild the club and her family’s legacy.

Candace calls Misty and tells her the truth about Cottonmouth’s death: She was secretly in the club and saw Mariah kill her cousin. Then, she saw Shades telling Mariah how to cover it up. She’s more afraid of Black Mariah than Cottonmouth. Mariah’s aide secretly watches their meeting from a car parked nearby.

Luke beats up some goons trying to rob a bodega. Who’s inside? Method Man! He goes on Sway’s radio show later, singing Luke’s praises. “There’s something powerful about seeing a Black man bulletproof and unafraid,” Method Man says on-air. The rapper’s words improve Luke’s rep on the streets. It becomes a trend for Black men to wear hoodies with bullet holes.

Diamondback has Zip bail Shades out of jail. Zip tries to strangle Shades, but at the last second, he grabs a gun and turns the tables. “Who gave you the order to kill me?” he asks. It was Diamondback, who’s at Mariah’s house. He needs her loyalty. He says her new effort to rebuild Harlem’s Paradise is smart and gives her a duffel bag of cash as seed money. It’s about rebuilding Harlem in her image, he says. But he’s forgotten — Harlem has always been made in Mariah’s image.

Later that night, Shades meets up with Mariah and makes his case for them to be in cahoots again. They think the same way, he says, and he’s always been the ally of the Stokes family. She agrees and they come up with a plan: pit Luke against Diamondback. If they both die in their fight, Shades and Mariah can retake control of Harlem. They share a brief moment as they’re staking out the barbershop. If Mariah hadn’t killed Cottonmouth that night, Shades would have.

Luke threatens Turk and gets him to admit where Diamondback is hiding out. Meanwhile, Diamondback is handling a shootout at the warehouse where he’s moved his operation. Domingo tried to hit him, but he gets away. Domingo tells Luke that Diamondback had a weapon that’s more powerful than he imagines.

Mariah and Shades go to Pop’s to parley with Luke. Shades stole documents from Diamondback that can prove that Luke was innocent of the crime he went to Seagate for all those years ago. Mariah says she’ll pin Cottonmouth’s murder to Diamondback. In exchange, they want him killed. Misty shows up and interferes. She was hiding in the back and wants to arrest the odd couple. Then, another uninvited guest arrives: Diamondback, dressed in costume. “What the hell? What type of Jean Paul Gaultier shit is this?” Bobby Fish says. “What are you, a pimp stormtrooper?” I’m laughing.

Diamondback makes him bulletproof, too. He and Luke start to fight. Misty chases after Shades and Black Mariah. Bobby Fish is pissed that Pop’s shop is in ruins again over all this nonsense.

Episode 13

Luke and Diamondback battle. It’s just like the fights they had when they were teens, when Willis taught Carl how to box. Luke tries to make amends — their father was disappointed in him, too — but Diamondback is still full of wrath. Luke’s getting his butt kicked until the crowd starts cheering for him. He lays out Diamondback. Misty arrests Mariah.

Claire and Misty have become twisted sisters in Luke’s drama. He slept with Misty all those days ago, but he and Claire have feelings for each other, too. It’s awkward at the precinct, when Misty gets Luke’s full story. He explains that he wasn’t in town when Diamondback killed that cop and he was shot when Mariah killed Cottonmouth. Luke’s name is finally cleared and the NYPD isn't after him anymore.

Shades stole Misty’s phone back at the barbershop and lures Candace to a bodega. He shoots her in the head. The cops find her body and Misty is heartbroken. Mariah gets out on bail, since they don’t really have a case against her. Shades is waiting in the car.

U.S. marshals come to the NYPD precinct. They’ve come to pick up Luke Cage. Mariah told the media about his other life as Carl Lucas and they take him away to Georgia to finish his sentence at Seagate. He and Claire kiss.

Back at the barbershop, Bobby Fish is looking through the rubble. He finds the Diamondback's file, which can clear Luke of his Carl Lucas charge.

Harlem’s Paradise is back in action. Mariah has Cottonmouth’s portrait of Biggie Smalls replaced with a Basquiat. Heavy lies the crown, that sort of thing. She and Shades kiss. Misty’s down below on the dance floor, watching them. She’s not finished with Mariah Dillard yet.

Diamondback is in the hospital and we get one peek at his doctor. In a shocking twist, it's Dr. Burstein.

As for Luke? Power man is in the back seat of the marshals’ car. He’s headed back to Seagate, it seems. “Sometimes backwards to move forward. Always forward,” he says, adapting Pop’s old mantra. Harlem has settled, but Mr. Bulletproof has business to settle in Georgia.

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Halloween is almost here! You're probably still debating your costume — should you be Eleven from Stranger Things or one of the badass women from Ghostbusters? While you think on that, don't forget about dressing up your home. After all, adorning your porch (or apartment foyer) with cobwebs, jack-o'-lanterns, and all things spooky is half the fun of Halloween.

But when it comes to holiday home decor, which stores are best? Halloween decorations can hedge a little close to tacky and cost a pretty penny. Lucky for you, there's one place where you can find Halloween decorations both cheap and chic. Yep, you guessed it: Target. From skeletal figurines to etched wine glasses, Target's Halloween decorations are the best. Click through to see some of our favorites.

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Bachelor nation, are you tired of seeing the same ol' casting cycle, with runners-up moving from The Bachelor over to The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise and back again, season after beloved season? Take heart! Chris Harrison has a revolutionary idea to reignite the franchise: cast Taylor Swift as The Bachelorette.

When People asked the longtime reality-show host to choose a potential new Bachelorette from currently single celebs Taylor Swift, Kendall Jenner, and Khloé Kardashian, he didn't hesitate for a second before declaring himself unabashedly Team T. Swift.

Why did the singer so quickly surpass the single Kardashian/Jenner sisters in his mind? "Because here's the thing," Harrison explained. "We're going to have her fall in love, because she falls in love easily." And if, like Swift's short-lived but much-discussed summer romance with Tom Hiddleston, said union does not last, well, as far as Harrison is concerned, that's all the better.

"Then, she's going to break up. Then, we're going to have an entire album of songs written about The Bachelor," Harrison joked. "It's all about promotion."

Assuming the rumors of Swift and former DJ flame Calvin Harris patching things up aren't true, of course, why not? It could be a win-win for everyone involved. No one can get mad at Swift for potentially manufacturing a relationship for PR potential: it's reality television. It's all manufactured. A devoted Bachelor nation will help Swift reclaim her Instagram throne from bestie Selena Gomez. Kim Kardashian will comment on not commenting about it. And in the end, we'll all get a new album full of breakup anthems.

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Now, we're not normally ones to play favorites, but there's something about fall — and the style that comes with it — that really gets us excited about clothes again. Sure, each change of season brings that feeling of newness and the anticipation of breaking out pieces you only get to wear for a few dedicated months of the year (think: a jacket, for winter, or a bathing suit, for summer). But autumn is one of those rare times where you can borrow items from both warmer and cooler temperatures and, well, get creative.

That's why October, smack dab in the middle of the season, is all about juxtapositions — pairing your thin, floral frock with a thicker jacket and boots, wearing your jeans and blouse with open-toed shoes, taking a slip and turning it into a tunic. Click through for 31 outfits that take layering, pattern-mixing, and alternative shirting to the next-level. Reminder: If you're going to take a fashion risk, now's the time (winter is coming, after all).

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