Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 4: Call/Response
So I made a brief mistake in my review of the previous episode -- it appears that Tandy's emotional powers doesn't show you your greatest fears (that's exclusive to Tyrone), but apparently your greatest hope... and the fact that Tyrone's hope is, as described by this episode, 'suicide by cop', it adds a huge layer of disturbing bit into Tyrone's mental state.
The episode is framed somewhat weirdly, with the episode cutting back and forth between the conversation and exploration of Tandy and Tyrone's powers and backstories, as well as the 'morning after' where they decide to do something about their respective situations. For the sake of my sanity, I'll be reviewing the scenes respectively. The actual conversation between Tandy and Tyrone is easily my favourite scenes in this episode, showing really well how much the actors can act, and how they manage to find common ground thanks to their shared magic visions and weird super-powers. Having the other person know your deepest darkest fear is definitely something that brings the two together, and we get to explore the two characters more. Tandy notes how weird that Tyrone hasn't told his supposed girlfriend about his powers, and Tyrone basically tells Tandy to 'fight back' and stop running.
But the final scenes show an argument about Tandy's past attempt at suicide, and Tyrone being angry that Tandy is flaunting her privilege, while Tandy herself is pissed that Tyrone doesn't think having living parents and stable privilege is something to be thankful about. As with any discussion IRL about privilege and racism, it turns out to a shouting match of who's more pitiable. It basically leads to an argument where Tandy tells Tyrone that his greatest hope is to die. It's an ugly argument, but one that makes me actually care for these two characters. So good on the show-writers on that. Yes, it's another case of "they meet each other and push each other away", but at least this time it's because of an actual emotional conflict and feels important, unlike the previous couple of episodes.
The 'day after' stories feel a bit more perfunctory and feels like they're going through the motions. Tyrone learns to be a bit more sneaky and tries to build up this framed story where his bike was 'stolen' in order to get inside the police station... but ends up chickening out. He ends up being confronted by his dad, after a bizarrely long sequence of his disapproving dad bringing him to the community he grew up in, and Tyrone finding the cloak that Billy once made. I felt like the introduction of this Wild Redhawks community was shoehorned in pretty randomly, though, as I didn't really feel the connection between "Tyrone's dad suspects he's stealing stuff" to "Tyrone's dad wants to bring Tyrone to see his roots/community/people".
Meanwhile, Tandy's story is kinda more interesting, but at the same time it's very, very obvious. We learn that Tandy's mom's lawyer boyfriend is actually a decent guy and not just someone who wants to scam them out of their money... although Tandy wouldn't have given the dude a second chance if she hadn't used her dream-seeing powers to see that Greg is actually legit. Of course, Tandy befriends Greg as they dig into Roxxon's conspiracies and shit. It's actually a neat little story that's self-contained within this episode as the two befriend each other; Tandy's mom pushes Greg away... and then Tandy arrives at Greg's office just to see him get shot in the head and his office burnt. As an extra gut-punch, Tandy comes back to hear her mom desperately calling Greg and apologizing for breaking up with him, not realizing Greg is dead.
So we have actual 'big' villains now for Tandy beyond the hospitalized attempted rapist, I guess -- the huge, huge Roxxon company that's trying to keep everything hush-hush.
The final scenes of the episode is... it's kinda weird, but okay? Tandy tries to kill herself by jumping into the river, but her daggers of light manifests, and she then goes to re-investigate Greg's stuff. Meanwhile, Tyrone... goes back to the police station? Eh. Overall, this is easily the best episode of Cloak and Dagger so far, and the first to make me really care about these characters as actual characters and not just a bunch of plot devices. Not a bad episode at all.
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