Cloak and Dagger, Season 2, Episode 7: Vikingtown Sound; Episode 8: Two Player
"Vikingtown Sound" is kind of an episode that I'm sort of indifferent about. We go through a bit of a sequence with Tandy in the shady sex motel that was a bit too long for its own good... like, sure, she needed to re-discover her hope and everything, but I honestly felt like the whole sequence was pretty detached and I had minimal investment about what's going on. The writers are never going to let Tandy get actually raped, we're going to have a heroic rescue, and the arbitrary inability to use her dagger powers honestly felt like it was just dependent on whether it was the final five minutes of the episode or not. There was this whole subplot where Tandy befriends one of the girls in the creepy cult-like motel, but other than honestly being very blandly unsettling, it's just a matter of a pep talk, the girl deciding to steal a phone to do some googling, and that's about it for that plot point. Kinda wished that they had actually gone a bit further with the creepiness of a sex cult motel, because everything is kind of underwhelming.
Likewise, everything leading to Tyrone assaulting the Viking sex motel with his teleporting powers also felt bland and procedural. Sure, there was the meeting with Andre... but that honestly felt pretty anti-climactic, amounting to a "oooo stay away from her she will abandon you ooo" and at no point is it honestly convincing that Tyrone is even taking the man seriously. There was the whole bit with the voodoo symbol that honestly earns nothing much but a shrug from me, and the sequence with Mayhem smashing random records's to, uh... cause Tyrone to hallucinate... that was kinda weird, but a bit less silly than the other parts of the episode. Tyrone doing that momentum-teleporting punch to knock out the henchman was awesome, though.
There was definitely some highlights with the side characters, though. I admit I wasn't quite sure about Andre meeting Auntie Chantelle and revealing the hilariously D&D-esque plan of him ascending into godhood (or, well, loa-hood), but the actors do their parts well. It's an interesting encounter as Andre ends up apparently killing Chantelle while showing her the mercy of reliving a happy memory while he stops his heart with a recording, because that works, I guess. A Tyrone's mother Adina and her talking to Connors is also a scene I sort of went "why did we need more of this" but Adina's actress ends up delivering one of the strongest and most emotional performances in the hour, even if I still really find myself apathetic about the whole Connors subplot.
Anyway, episode 8 starts off with the cliffhanger of the previous episode, where Tyrone's powers go on the fritz... just because we needed a conflict and a way to bring Evita back in, I guess, because we need a voodoo ritual to bring him back? I never really know how to feel about the voodoo stuff, to be honest, and some of the rituals shown here like spitting liquor or presenting an offering of a chocolate bar really makes me wonder whether it's a cheap way to inject mysticism at the cost of a real-life belief out there, or if it's actually a respectful and semi-accurate one. As far as the episode is concerned, it's a neat plot device to facilitate the "journey into the mind" episode.
And, don't get me wrong, episode 8 is a far, far more entertaining hour than episode 7. The hallucinations in the realm of the Loa or the Darkforce dimension or whatever is a bit less intricate than the multiple Elseworlds of Tandy Bowen or whatever, but I am a sucker for them sneaking in some comic-accurate appearances as toys and as sprites in the arcade game ("Duel to D'Spayre", a sneaky way to get D'Spayre's stupid-ass comic book codename into the show) that Tandy has to co-op play with Tyrone in order to, uh, save Tyrone's soul or something from being trapped in the Darkforce dimension. Because yeah why not?
But when you come to it... this whole sequence, with Tandy going from Papa Legba to the pretty fun Baron Samedi, ends up being pretty dang pointless, and worst of all, sort of comes out of nowhere throughout this episode. The arcade game really is just an excuse to throw in action scenes... except not really, we keep cutting away to the 16-bit arcade game screen whenever action scenes happen. There was some weird, vague attempt to handwave this as what Tyrone wants the world to be, and I can appreciate that, to an extent. It's a neat way to extend the whole sentiment that Tyrone has earlier in this season, and in arcade game world (a.k.a. comic book world, because IIRC this is homaging Cloak and Dagger's comic book debut) it's very simple. Just beat up the irrevocably evil drug dealers. No gray areas, no casualties. Just superheroes using their powers to win.
But... I dunno. Tyrone relapsing into this weird half-coma is kind of half-assed by the writers, so I never really felt any tension. Likewise, Tandy's continued insistence that Tyrone return to real life is also delivered in a half-hearted way, and throughout the episode it's kind of murky what the stakes are. Will Tyrone straight-up die if he stays? Or is it just a weird coma like Mayhem/Brigid or something? Why isn't Tandy being a bit more aggressive when the stakes are that high? Ultimately, none of these matter, because the decision is made by Evita.
And... boy oh boy, poor Evita. She is quite literally a love interest turned into a deus ex machina, where apparently she's been groomed by her aunt to be the successor of their family's Loa-bride worshipers or whatever, something that has not been foreshadowed before this episode. The fact that auntie is apparently 'married' to a Loa, and now Evita must take her place to save Tyrone because a wedding bouquet is apparently enough price to get Tyrone out... I dunno. It's all so convoluted, and frankly I just don't care about Evita enough to even feel anything at the supposedly huge decision that Evita makes to marry Baron Samedi... and it's pretty sad, too, because the ghost of Auntie Chantelle basically blackmails and all but forces Evita to do this as opposed to chasing her dreams to be a doctor, because, uh... fuck your dreams I guess? Sacrifice everything for Tyrone's life, and you can't even be with him anymore? I dunno. Everything was kind of done haphazardly, and it feels like it's just shoehorned and rushed in order to get Tyrone and Tandy to trade wedding vows or some shit .
The B-plots aren't the most interesting either. I'm still not very clear just what Andre is doing... he basically ends up asking Lia for "one more time" to feed on her despair in a very abusive-boyfriend-way, but we don't really see a lot of this before Andre just drives away leaving Lia's maybe-dead body on the road. Adina goes off to find Father Delgado, a character I genuinely forgot about at this point, and goes through a whole rant about how it'd be a legal loophole or some shit, and one thing leads to another, and we get the confession and anticlimactic revelation that apparently Adina kills officer Connors. Ooookay? I'm not opposed against the themes that Adina and Connors' conversation and conflict are exploring. Did Connors deserve redemption? Did Adina have the right to judge Connors as the mother of the child he killed? Et cetera, et cetera... but the show just sort of brushes it over in this episode in favour of a bwaaaa surprise plot twist revelation and it just fell flat for me.
Oh, and while in the Darkforce dimension, Papa Legba sends Brigid off in the direction of Andre's weird records store, where she meets up with Mayhem, and over a nail-painting bonding session, we get the two of them talking about their strengths and weaknesses, before Brigid concedes that right now, Mayhem is the one that they need and she relinquishes control to Mayhem. And they... fuse together? At least the conversation between the two feels earned, I suppose, compared to everything that happens here, but I'm still so unclear about what the fuck Brigid/Mayhem's situation is supposed to be. It's just Mayhem in control now, I guess, burning motel rooms and shit.
I dunno. Episode 8 seems to want to present itself as this huge, huge episode where everyone makes difficult choices, but we haven't seen Mayhem in half a season, Evita is frankly a non-entity and all the loa conflict are sort of shoehorned in this episode, and as I mentioned before, Tyrone and Tandy's conflict in this episode felt half-baked and half-formed.
Anyway, episode 8 starts off with the cliffhanger of the previous episode, where Tyrone's powers go on the fritz... just because we needed a conflict and a way to bring Evita back in, I guess, because we need a voodoo ritual to bring him back? I never really know how to feel about the voodoo stuff, to be honest, and some of the rituals shown here like spitting liquor or presenting an offering of a chocolate bar really makes me wonder whether it's a cheap way to inject mysticism at the cost of a real-life belief out there, or if it's actually a respectful and semi-accurate one. As far as the episode is concerned, it's a neat plot device to facilitate the "journey into the mind" episode.And, don't get me wrong, episode 8 is a far, far more entertaining hour than episode 7. The hallucinations in the realm of the Loa or the Darkforce dimension or whatever is a bit less intricate than the multiple Elseworlds of Tandy Bowen or whatever, but I am a sucker for them sneaking in some comic-accurate appearances as toys and as sprites in the arcade game ("Duel to D'Spayre", a sneaky way to get D'Spayre's stupid-ass comic book codename into the show) that Tandy has to co-op play with Tyrone in order to, uh, save Tyrone's soul or something from being trapped in the Darkforce dimension. Because yeah why not?
But when you come to it... this whole sequence, with Tandy going from Papa Legba to the pretty fun Baron Samedi, ends up being pretty dang pointless, and worst of all, sort of comes out of nowhere throughout this episode. The arcade game really is just an excuse to throw in action scenes... except not really, we keep cutting away to the 16-bit arcade game screen whenever action scenes happen. There was some weird, vague attempt to handwave this as what Tyrone wants the world to be, and I can appreciate that, to an extent. It's a neat way to extend the whole sentiment that Tyrone has earlier in this season, and in arcade game world (a.k.a. comic book world, because IIRC this is homaging Cloak and Dagger's comic book debut) it's very simple. Just beat up the irrevocably evil drug dealers. No gray areas, no casualties. Just superheroes using their powers to win.
But... I dunno. Tyrone relapsing into this weird half-coma is kind of half-assed by the writers, so I never really felt any tension. Likewise, Tandy's continued insistence that Tyrone return to real life is also delivered in a half-hearted way, and throughout the episode it's kind of murky what the stakes are. Will Tyrone straight-up die if he stays? Or is it just a weird coma like Mayhem/Brigid or something? Why isn't Tandy being a bit more aggressive when the stakes are that high? Ultimately, none of these matter, because the decision is made by Evita.And... boy oh boy, poor Evita. She is quite literally a love interest turned into a deus ex machina, where apparently she's been groomed by her aunt to be the successor of their family's Loa-bride worshipers or whatever, something that has not been foreshadowed before this episode. The fact that auntie is apparently 'married' to a Loa, and now Evita must take her place to save Tyrone because a wedding bouquet is apparently enough price to get Tyrone out... I dunno. It's all so convoluted, and frankly I just don't care about Evita enough to even feel anything at the supposedly huge decision that Evita makes to marry Baron Samedi... and it's pretty sad, too, because the ghost of Auntie Chantelle basically blackmails and all but forces Evita to do this as opposed to chasing her dreams to be a doctor, because, uh... fuck your dreams I guess? Sacrifice everything for Tyrone's life, and you can't even be with him anymore? I dunno. Everything was kind of done haphazardly, and it feels like it's just shoehorned and rushed in order to get Tyrone and Tandy to trade wedding vows or some shit .
The B-plots aren't the most interesting either. I'm still not very clear just what Andre is doing... he basically ends up asking Lia for "one more time" to feed on her despair in a very abusive-boyfriend-way, but we don't really see a lot of this before Andre just drives away leaving Lia's maybe-dead body on the road. Adina goes off to find Father Delgado, a character I genuinely forgot about at this point, and goes through a whole rant about how it'd be a legal loophole or some shit, and one thing leads to another, and we get the confession and anticlimactic revelation that apparently Adina kills officer Connors. Ooookay? I'm not opposed against the themes that Adina and Connors' conversation and conflict are exploring. Did Connors deserve redemption? Did Adina have the right to judge Connors as the mother of the child he killed? Et cetera, et cetera... but the show just sort of brushes it over in this episode in favour of a bwaaaa surprise plot twist revelation and it just fell flat for me.
Oh, and while in the Darkforce dimension, Papa Legba sends Brigid off in the direction of Andre's weird records store, where she meets up with Mayhem, and over a nail-painting bonding session, we get the two of them talking about their strengths and weaknesses, before Brigid concedes that right now, Mayhem is the one that they need and she relinquishes control to Mayhem. And they... fuse together? At least the conversation between the two feels earned, I suppose, compared to everything that happens here, but I'm still so unclear about what the fuck Brigid/Mayhem's situation is supposed to be. It's just Mayhem in control now, I guess, burning motel rooms and shit.I dunno. Episode 8 seems to want to present itself as this huge, huge episode where everyone makes difficult choices, but we haven't seen Mayhem in half a season, Evita is frankly a non-entity and all the loa conflict are sort of shoehorned in this episode, and as I mentioned before, Tyrone and Tandy's conflict in this episode felt half-baked and half-formed.
Plus, throw in a fair bit of my frustration is probably due to how Andre is handled, because we're almost three-fourths done with the show, but thanks to the fake villain bit with Mayhem, we really don't have much to put Andre in context other than the DUN DUNN DUNNNN revelation a while back, and the little motive rant and character analysis between Chantelle and Andre in this episode about him feeding on misery and wanting to be a loa or whatever. Maybe. Or he just really likes to feed on despair. It's kind of ambiguous. I dunno... the episode was kind of all right, but I did kind of feel like the back half of the season was a lot weaker than anything this show's given us before. Really hard to find myself invested in the storylines when they jump around and sometimes skip the buildup required to make these emotional plotlines actually land their punch.
this was a nice rant
ReplyDeletenow i have a question in mind !
we saw that Tandy got her powers back, right before that guys in the motel manages to do anything to her
so why was she so afraid of the guys in the final room before the boss, that Tyrone had to say that now i'm here with you!
Cloak and Dagger tends to show their characters to be, well, like teenagers in that their main characters tended to have relatively volatile emotions. Just because her powers are back doesn't mean that the fear she felt a while back has vanished completely. A theme running through Cloak and Dagger in general is that the two main characters needed each other to essentially be each other's support system, and that's exactly what Tyrone was doing to Tandy in that scene.
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