If you’ve been struggling with anxiety this November, the new five-part French Netflix series about the shadowy world of Mixed Martial Arts fighting, The Cage, may not be for you. By the fourth episode, I had resorted to sitting in a warm bath, rather like Jean Paul Marat, in order to calm my nerves.
If this already sounds like a dealbreaker, hang on: What kept me watching was the multi-faceted, break-out performance by the breakdancer and actor Melvin Boomer. Boomer, with a face reminiscent of a young Muhammad Ali, brings nuance and depth to what could have, otherwise, been a borderline meathead role: a young, hungry, out-of-options mec named Taylor whose only life option is fighting. But Boomer is such a moving and present actor, he carries the entire series.
Some viewers might remember Boomer from the 2022 Netflix show Reign Supreme, about the birth of French hip hop in the 80s. These days, the actor is older and bigger, and his presence looms much larger. He strikes a note-perfect duality between his confidence as an actor while portraying a character who, at times, is self-doubting and conflicted about fighting. We also see him deeply vulnerable in his personal life, in response to the toxic demands of his mother (Camille de Sablat), and her awful boyfriend, played beautifully by Vivi Vivarelli, who gives the character an oily sheen of menace spread over his pretty boy face. Boomer also takes on the subtle notes of Taylor’s struggles with reading and writing, both of which make him feel aspirationally void. Boomer’s Taylor tells actor Franck Gastambide, who plays Boss, the gym owner and MMA coach, “I don’t have a Plan B. I’ll never get a good degree, a good job, or a good salary. I can’t even put two fucking words together without a spelling mistake.” Gastambide, who is the co-creator, writer, and director of The Cage, has openly discussed his own struggles with dyslexia and dyspraxia (a developmental coordination disorder), and it is clear how his experience translates to Taylor’s.
MMA Fighting in France
For those of you who might be, as I was, unfamiliar with the world of MMA, you might be pretty shocked by the gruesome violence of it. A combination of boxing, kicking, wrestling, and various choke holds, the goal is to KO (knock out) someone inside “the cage,” an actual metal cage into which the fighters are locked for the duration of the match. It can get intense. Add to that the fact that most of the fighters we see in the show’s fictitious Paris are from immigrant communities, or, like Taylor, difficult family situations. Many of them live outside the périphérique of Paris–the ring road which separates the city proper from its less desirable banlieues–a sort of cage in and of itself.
Once you are fighting in the MMA world, it’s hard to get out, the show seems to indicate. Indeed, the more you get beat up, the more trauma you endure, and the fewer options you seem to have in the regular world. This creates another cage, in a way, as you become more and more willing to hazard everything, even your life, to succeed at fighting. In Mexico, Taylor is told that the fighters who succeed have “the eye of the tiger” (unfortunately the show missed the truly perfect opportunity to get that ‘80s Survivor song in there, written originally for the Rocky III soundtrack), and that they not only have an “obligation to fight,” but “an obligation to win.” Suddenly, seeing fighters take the on-ramp to the cage, and hearing the clink of the lock, it’s hard not to think these young men aren’t walking to their own gallows each time they go fight.
Real World Fighters Meet Fiction
The show takes us on a multinational tour of the MMA world, starting in a clean, well-lit home gym in Paris, run by Boss. As we proceed to Warsaw, Mexico City, the woods of Quebec, and Sweden, we encounter a whole other cast of actual real-world MMA fighters who are making cameos as themselves: Cyril Gane, Jon Jones, and George St. Pierre (GSP), a Canadian who is considered the best MMA fighter in history, and speaks with a wonderful Quebecois drawl. (In the show, GSP trains Taylor at his outdoor Quebec gym, right on the edge of a lake, surrounded by trees.)
Although these athletes are a bit stiff on their acting-feet, each imparts some important wisdom to a lost Taylor, and they bring a level of believability to a world which blends fact and fiction. It seems no mistake that Netflix chose to release this show around the time that Mike Tyson, at 58 years old, entered the boxing ring to fight (and lose to) Jake Paul in a widely-watched stream on the same platform. Tyson, who has recently had serious health problems, was paid 20 million dollars to get in the rink with someone thirty years his junior, and rumors have been flying around that the fight was rigged. All this considered, it’s hard not to be pretty cynical when we watch a fictional Taylor get pressured by his own mother to throw a big fight in the second round so that she can make some money in a scheme orchestrated by her boyfriend. Taylor, desperate to be loved by her and to help her, takes on a series of guys who are at least two weight classes bigger than he is, hoping to make her the money. (Gastambide, obviously a fan of Tyson’s, recently made a movie, Medellin, with the fighter-turned-actor, and has delved deep into the boxing and MMA worlds.)
Trauma In and Outside the Ring
As if this all weren’t enough to chew on, the show takes an even darker turn when Taylor, who has been, up until now, struggling with the garden-variety mental challenges of the sport, starts to suffer from serious PTSD after a KO, leaving him with flashbacks, tremors, and tinnitus. Boss says to him, “I’m not a shrink so I can’t guarantee anything, but I have an idea. It’s very risky though.” Taylor says he’ll try it and Boss takes him to Stockholm, Sweden to fight in an underground and un-officiated “Dog Fight” against Neo Nazis. The sheer violence of this situation, and the way the camera jumps around, could make even the most stable of us paranoid; in the end, Taylor appears to overcome his PTSD in this extremely harrowing situation, but at the cost of Boss getting injured.
Honestly, once the neo-Nazis are introduced into this series, the show starts to enter such darkness, you worry it’s never coming back up. Set against a backdrop of current global politics, with its real-world cast of thugs and bullies, these fictional bullies roaming social media channels and the MMA octagons of the series begin to feel suffocating. Boomer saves the show, though, along with the actor Yanisse Kebbab, who plays Taylor’s friend, Bilal, adding some comic relief. There’s also the smart and irreverent writing, like when the real-life MMA fighter Jon Jones, who is considered “sage” at the ripe age of 37, says to Taylor “‘Did you ever watch those Rocky movies?’ ‘No. Just Creed.’ ‘Just Creed.’ (Jones chuckles). ‘You’re a youngster.’”
And he is. A youngster. That is part of what makes the show so impossible to stop watching: Boomer’s Taylor is so green, being formed in real time, it’s as if we’ve walked into Boss’s gym in Paris ourselves, about to witness the next big thing in MMA.
In the end, season one of The Cage exits the small screen with such an enormous cliffhanger, it’s hard to believe it won’t be signed for a second season. Next time, with CBD on hand and a hot bath running, I’ll be ready to tune in for season two.
Caitlin Shetterly is Frenchly’s Editor-at-Large. She is the author of the novel, Pete and Alice in Maine (published by Harper Books in 2023).
