Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E07 Review: Emotional Phone Calls

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 7: Lotus-Eaters

Holy shit, a genuinely good episode of Cloak and Dagger! This is, I think, the first episode that I can genuinely say "this is good" instead of "it's okay". Maybe that's because I'm just such a sucker for weird alternate-universe mind-screw episodes, but this is a genuinely fun usage of Tandy and Tyrone's powers compared to the previous times we've seen it used, which is just variations of them peeking into people's heads.

And, sure, the time loop plot (albeit this one takes place within Ivan Hess's shattered mind) isn't the most original plotline, what they actually do with it is pretty interesting. Ivan's played by the very entertaining Tim Kang, and his completely insane ramblings are definitely pretty fun. Helping Ivan Hess recover from his shattered mind by reminding him of his daughter's cookies and making him realize through the fog of living through the Roxxon rig explosion thousands of times is a pretty basic way to get him out of it... but the episode's huge emotional plot twist happens when Tandy ends up being trapped in the same time loop, because the phone call which connects to Nathan Bowen is also there in the time loop.

There's also a less-emotional and more literal plot twist when it's revealed that the Roxxon oil company drilled into some magical/quasi-scientific fault line that turns everyone touching it into angry shambling zombies... which I genuinely did not catch at all until watching the next episode, and I thought that they were just in Ivan's head.

The actual argument between Tyrone and Tandy happens when Tandy lets Tyrone leave Ivan's mind alone, and in the brief couple of seconds that Tyrone punches out, he ends up returning to see that Tandy's been trapped in the same phone call for a hundred times. The two end up shouting at each other in yet another pretty emotional scene. Tyrone tries to get Tandy out of this mess, while Tandy refuses to get one, citing just how utterly miserable her old life is, and how she had manipulated Tyrone as a damsel in distress to come along... and then as the scene resets again and again, Tandy tells Tyrone that if the situation was reversed, he would definitely want to stay behind to talk to "Bobby",  then noting that the same anger that drove Tyrone when she forgot Billy's name is the same anger she feels every day... then it's Tyrone that ends up being nasty, noting just how Tandy has been lying to everyone, including the facsimile of her dad in Ivan's head... and challenges her to actually ask something that Ivan Hess wouldn't know. 

It's a pretty dang well-written confrontation between the two, and easily the highlight of the episode. It really boggles my mind how a series titled after "Cloak and Dagger" tries to keep its two leads separate for a good chunk of the episode. I'm seven episodes in, and Tandy and Tyrone hang out for,  what, two entire episodes at best? And those two are clearly the strongest episodes compared to all the others, which just has the two of them flounder around in their uninteresting plotlines.

When Tandy and Tyrone finally got their shit together, breaking Ivan Hess out is honestly a cinch as the two just utilize their powers to montage their way through 'closing the pipelines' bit, restore Ivan Hess's mind... and later on, Tyrone calls Tandy when he finds out a little tape recording of Billy from before, to which Tandy ends up telling Tyrone to listen to it. The two of them share their grief and their loss, and as Tyrone notes during their argument, they're definitely friends.

Overall, a pretty dang powerful episode, for sure. Cloak and Dagger works best when they try to actually explore the way its two titular characters interact about their common losses, not when they have their character separated and fumble around basketball games and being fake interns.