Marvel's Runaways S03E07-08 Review: Guest Stars

Marvel's Runaways, Season 3, Episode 7: Left-Hand Path; Episode 8: Devil's Torture Chamber

Episode 7: Left-Hand Path
A bit more of a setup episode that basically ended with a genuinely surprising cliffhanger, but we'll talk about it when we get there. It's basically a fair bit of follow up from episode 6 as we learn just a bit more what Morgan's real plans are. The two cliffhangers from episode 5 are dealt with relatively quickly, with the obligatory mind-controlled Molly fight not being particularly long, and Nico waking up in a coven of women after what I can only assume a very good night for her. Morgan's plan to corrupt Nico or whatever the hell she's planning seems to be a bit more long-term instead of just turning Nico into Darth Nico which was honestly what I was kind of expecting.

Again, Nico is still on center stage here, and the family drama between Nico, Tina, Robert and Morgan continue on with their little drama, and we basically learn that Morgan has Robert literally under her spell. Nico and Tina sort of bond with each other, and Brittany Ishibashi is undoubtedly the MVP actor among the adults, playing sinister detached emotionally-abusive mother to amazement in the first two seasons, a crazy woman-child alien possessing a body in a culture she doesn't understand in early season three, and now as a pretty awesome woman who just wants to bring her family back and maybe atone for some of her sins.

To that end, Nico and Tina basically root around in Morgan's estate behind her back, and it's honestly kind of a case of supervillain passiveness that Morgan's not even aware of this until it's a bit too late... particularly during the first act, where Nico quite literally breaks Tina out of an asylum ran by Morgan. They break Robert out of the charm that Morgan cast around her, and it's Robert that ends up realizing that Morgan's Darkhold spellbook is hidden as a book about Arthurian legends. Clearly, Morgan le Fay never played D&D before. If you're a wizard, carry your spellbook at all times! Morgan is savvy enough to know that Robert's stolen it, and apparently that bizarre scene in the hospital is indeed Morgan using her magic to heal Robert, and now... well, she took the gift that was given, killing poor Robert Minoru. He does leave one last bit of clue, though, using his Wizard glasses to record the important spell pages that Nico needs. Speaking of which, there is a neat little parallel between Tina and Nico, both of whom are atoning for something. Tina for failing her family (and most likely Amy, too, although it goes unspoken) while Nico for failing Alex.

The rest of the Runaways are... trying their best. I dunno, though, between being de-powered in the Dark Dimension and both Chase and Gert being regular kids most of the time (because Fistigon and Old Lace SFX are expensive to animate) it does sort of kill some of the whole 'small team of young super-heroes' vibe. Their big plan is to... warn people with a Youtube video, which predictably gets wiped off the internet pretty quickly. That sort of plan wouldn't work with a mortal organization like PRIDE, let alone a coven of sorceresses who are clearly at least well-versed in technology.

It's Molly that ends up being the one that gets a fair bit of screentime, with her still struggling over the revelatoins regarding her parents that she learned in episode 5. Molly gets a pretty great, short conversation with Leslie, but I kind of feel like this is all we're going to get from Molly's character arc of trying to accept that her long-dead parents are also PRIDE members. Molly's built up less of a character with her own Big Story like the rest of the cast, anyway, and more of the interpersonal glue that holds the rest together, so, eh, I suppose I'll take her story arc basically being quickly resolved. Speaking of Molly plot threads... she reveals her power to her new crush, Bodhi, and turns out that Bodhi's a mole for the Morgan coven, whoops.

Speaking of the Morgan coven, a grief-struck Geoffrey ends up basically being duped into wearing a raven skull necklace and gets manipulated by Morgan to become her newest thrall. I would call Geoffrey a complete moron considering what he's been through in the series, but he is desperate for any news about Alex, so. Oh, meanwhile, Janet Stein is back as a living computer software, making her a pretty interesting superhero on the good guys's side. Janet, Victor and Stacey are sort of just... there in the sidelines, though. Thanks to Bodhi and Geoffrey's betrayals, Morgan's witch henchwomen basically overpower the Runaways' powers (again, Chase and Gert are basically civilians and it seems like Karolina only ever fires one beam at a time now) and everyone that's not Nico or brainwashed are under the mercy of the witches.

It's mostly just moving pieces on the board, really, and I feel like episode 7 was a lot less impactful as a singular episode compared to the past two episodes or the next one. It's still a pretty neat puzzle piece in my binge-watch, though... and god damn I actually made a huge squeeing sound when the genuinely unexpected crossover cliffhanger happened, with Nico's attempt to do magic stuff interrupted when a bunch of black smoke start roiling in the Hostel... and Cloak and Dagger show up! This is genuinely unexpected -- I didn't hear of this, and while it's pretty logical for the two MCU-Hulu shows to do so, it's so rare outside of the Netflix Marvel shows and CW-DC for any two superhero TV shows to acknowledge each other, so-called shared MCU universe or no, that it was genuinely exciting. And I'm not even the biggest fans of Cloak and Dagger per se, but man, when done right, these crossovers are hype, yeah?
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Episode 8: Devil's Torture Chamber
And... y'know, I really shouldn't be suckered in with just the promises of a crossover. But I am, because, well, Cloak and Dagger just easily work with the premise of Runaways, yeah? A bunch of young heroes? And as a huge fan of the actual original Runaways miniseries, I'm genuinely happy to see that this is a neat little callback to Cloak and Dagger being quasi-mentors to these kids in their first outing. As with these crossovers, a lot of the confusion and interrogation that comes with these sort of encounters are quickly brushed aside because no one wants to watch 20 minutes of our main characters just argue about each other's backstory and stuff. Nico, Cloak and Dagger basically trade barbs about the very basics of their backstory and powers -- and it's very clumsy and honestly not very convincing, but that's how superhero crossovers go. There's only so much screentime and we want to get to the good part.

With Ty's bamf-ing powers, the three magic superheroes show up to rescue the rest of the Runaways and the good PRIDE parents from the witch cult, although since there are just a bit too many characters running around, Tyrone drops the parents off at the Hollywood sign. Man, Cloak's teleportation powers are extremely convenient for set-up purposes, huh? With a bit of exposition on both sides of the team, Cloak brings everyone back into the Dark Dimension from episode five once more.

I kinda simultaneously love and hate the fact that Tandy quickly lampshades how utterly useless half of the Runaways team are sometimes, a fact that's particularly prominent in parts of this season. Sure, the Nico focus does mean that Nico ends up basically being the main focus most of the time, and the CGI budget means that the show's constantly coming up with more and more random justifications why Old Lace always hangs out in the Hostel, but... yeah, let's make Chase, Molly and Karolina effectively powerless too. And I kinda like that the show's self-aware enough to poke fun at itself, but it also kinda sucks when you tune in for a superhero show and only maybe three or four of the ensemble cast have their powers, y'know?

And the walk through the Dark Dimension definitely feels repetitive. There's only so many times you can do the 'dimension of personal fears' in a season, and that was definitely one of the weaker parts of Cloak and Dagger's home season, but the interactions between Tyrone, Tandy and the Runaways definitely more than makes up for it compared to the vague, generic inhabitants of the Dark Dimension who talk about sacrifice this or tower that or the generic goons working for AWOL that holds Alex captive and is out for the blood of the other interlopers. Also, turns out the wacky racist wizard that they meet last time is... happy to help out just a bit, and doles out some exposition about how Morgan wants to weaken the walls between dimensions. Or something.

There's a bit of splitting up the team, with the typical "okay, maybe I don't trust you guys fully" sequence between the members, most notably between Tandy and Karolina discussing Nico's rather bull-headed recklessness. Ty and Chase also get a bit of a good rapport going on. There's also the rather eye-rolling but very natural bit of both superhero teams to prioritize their own 'family' over the other superheroes there, which is slightly selfish but considering they just met each other, it's definitely in-character for both C&D and the Runaways. The action scene isn't particularly super innovative or novel, and while we do get to see both Ty and Tandy's "greatest fear/greatest hope" powers sort of come to light with Gert and Nico respectively, it doesn't really amount to a whole ton? Which is just as well, because the episode is moving at a pretty fast pace and having the two teams get up into hijinks is the far more entertaining option than to have everything screech to a halt just for everyone to get personalized dreams and nightmares given to them. We did that twice already this season alone. The big takeaway, I guess, is that Tandy declares that Karolina and Nico are the OTP and how their light and dark balance each other out and stuff. Neat-o. Ty tries to somewhat analyze Gert and Chase a bit, but he's always been the more reserved of the duo so he doesn't get all love guru on them.

The action scenes are fun, and with Cloak and Dagger being a bit more refined in terms of their power-using (the Runaways, true to their name, do spend most of their screentime investigating or, well, running) and there's a neat sense of the two of them being a wee bit more experienced and a wee bit more willing to use their action hero instincts without making them feel too over-the-top. It does help too that, well, like I mentioned before, a good chunk of the Runaways are kind of powerless.

We meanwhile cut back and forth to Alex being menaced by AWOL, and it turns out that in the Dark Dimension, he's spending time in a cell locked up with his dead mom Catherine, who's alive and well in the Dark Dimension, so she's just some sort of projection or something because I'm pretty sure just being shivved in a prison doesn't net you a trip to this hellscape. Alex resists doing what 'they' want him to do, until the sounds of his friends in danger caused him to murder this image of Catherine... and as Tandy's dream-seeking abilities reveal, apparently Alex has some... disturbing ambitions of grandeur. (Also, I actually recognize that from the comics, which is cool) It ends up being handwaved by Alex as just the side effects of the Dark Dimension, but... is it? I'm not sure if two more episodes and the whole Nico/Morgan stuff is going to be enough to fit in a potential Alex betrayal story, but maybe this is the extra oomph to make the finale more than just defeating the supervillain of the month.

Tandy and Tyrone peace out after the little adventure, because all they're here for is basically just to help get Alex back. It's typical crossover logic, the less you think about why they don't gang up together with Cloak and Dagger to fight Morgan le Fay, the better. But Molly, who skipped out the crossover goodness... and up apparently being mind-controlled again by the witches, and is seemingly being inducted to Morgan's coven as her newest herald. Overall, not a particularly Big Event, but it is a very delightful and wholesome crossover, and it's amazing how seamless Cloak and Dagger ended up being in terms of being guest stars for the Runaways. Of course, with only two episodes left in the pipeline, it's clear that we're going to just do the climax in the next two episodes. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Cloak and Dagger return! From the TV show! Their dialogue confirms that this crossover takes place after the events of season two, where they do enter the Dark Dimension and encounter the Loa there. The original run of the Runaways comic book did have them get a crossover with Cloak and Dagger, who are a fair bit older than them and more established in the comics. 
• The whole "Alex with all the powers of the Runaways combined" dream that Tandy detects within Alex is actually a plot twist that happens in the comics, when at the climax of the very first Runaways storyline it's revealed that Alex has been the PRIDE mole all the while, and ended up briefly taking over all of the powers of the other Runaways. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S02E09-10 Review: An Audience

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 2, Episode 9: Blue Note; Episode 10: Level Up

The final two episodes of Cloak and Dagger are... they work in some ways, but kind of fail in others, and I feel a good chunk of what makes the finale feel genuinely underwhelming is the handling of Andre Deschaine, our main villain. And to make it clear, none of the fault really lies with the actor, because frankly it's Brooklyn McLinn's performance that really salvages the otherwise pretty forgettable villain. Between a very inconsistent portrayal of his motivations, and how much the show sort of just jumps around from "he runs a sex trade by fooling girls" to "he's actually a sad boy inside who gets migraines when playing his trumpet" to "he wants to ascend into a Loa", his character sort of bounces around multiple different portrayals before settling into the admittedly not very interesting "he just wants people to feel despair because he feeds on those." Episode 9 tries to recontextualize this by jumping back and forth between Andre's past as a struggling musician beset by migraines so much that he even considered suicide, but, again, the execution of said scenes are so lukewarm that I really didn't feel much emotion watching them and I do kind of feel like perhaps they came a bit too late in the story for me to really care. Like, I get it, he feels a hell lot of despair from being unable to perform the job of his dreams. And I kind of understand the transition from being in such despair that he was about to kill himself to using his newfound power to stop his headaches by draining the despair from many other young women. The leap from that to being a sex trafficker cult leader and wanting to be a loa is still kind of out of nowhere, though. 

And episode 9 sort of just wibble-wobbles around plotlines that, well, I don't really care about? It's a necessary episode to get from point A to point B, to set up the chain of events that lead to the finale, but... I dunno. It just feels so damn procedural, y'know? It just feels like we're hurriedly rushing through plot lines to get to the finale. Tyrone meets with that one kid, Solomon, from earlier in the season, to get clues or whatever and bonds with him. Oh, and we also wrap up the drug dealer leader subplot, and as cool as it is to see Tyrone abuse his teleportation powers to strike the fear of god into the drug dealers, that whole subplot was wrapped up way too neatly and quickly for my liking after all the buildup it got. 

Tandy and Mayhem delve into Lia's mind and sees that she kind of has a sad backstory of wanting to be a musician before life happened, and get into a brief argument with each other about whether it's right to execute Lia or not. It's a neat, if pretty generic, "who has the right to execute a criminal?" discussion, and the words are well-done, but it just feels so underwhelming when contextualized as a mere speech in an otherwise underwhelming episode. 

Eventually, though, we sort of just bounce around through flashbacks and mind-walking and ethics arguments to the end of the ninth episode, which is Tyrone and Tandy confronting Andre, who's using his trumpet to mind control and enthrall a bunch of citizens (including Tandy's mom, because you have to have an emotional hook), and Cloak and Dagger's attempt to do anything it takes to stop Andre ends up with Andre and the citizens disappearing as Andre presumably ascends into godhood (Loa-hood?) because who knows how these wacky Darkforce powers work, really. I did like the neat symbolic scene of Andre walking through his mental records collection store into a new stage, but overall I kind of felt like episode nine was kind of a miss. 

The season finale is a wee bit better, and at least I do appreciate that after all of the meandering we had throughout the season in having weird flashbacks and alternate what-if worlds in the Darkforce Crossroads dimension, a significant portion of the finale ends up taking place with Tyrone and Tandy quite literally fighting their personal demons. 

Andre uses his D'Spayre powers to trap Tyrone and Tandy in yet another creepy dream dimension where they have to face off against their worst nightmares. In Tandy's case, she faces off against her abusive father and basically has to confront what that means to her. In Tyrone's case, he faces off against... "Perfect Tyrone"? The policeman Tyrone from Tandy's flashback of a perfect world? Okay, then. 

And as much as I give Cloak and Dagger shit for self-indulgent padding, I must admit that this particular Elseworlds fighting sequence? That's pretty damn well written. Sappy and cheesy as all hell, and a lot of the dialogue is expected, but it's pretty damn well written. It has everything that the previous couple of episodes' worth of lukewarm confrontations didn't, which was the fact that Tandy and Tyrone telling off their personal darker demons -- and their best friends' personal darker demons -- is something that's caused by the two getting closer and becoming better friends over the course of two seasons, building up their love and trust, is organic and something I genuinely understand about these characters, as opposed to the honestly pretty abrupt subplots we've been covering this season, is told in a far better and cohesive way. 

In contrast, Mayhem and Evita are embroiled in a frankly bland and shitty subplot of fighting "those that the gods send to stop Evita" as Evita protects the candle-portal or whatever. Which, uh... specters that take the form of Fuchs? Which Mayhem just fucking blows straight to hell with a grenade? I dunno. At least they tried to give them something to do, but man, after all the buildup Mayhem got earlier this season she is just sort of there as the obligatory Punisher-mentality friend, huh. 

And while Tandy and Tyrone's confrontation with their personal demons were pretty well done... the stakes and just what the fuck Andre's trying to do is never explained quite as well. Sure, people are trapped and forced to listen to Andre's trumpet performance, but other than vague lines of "he's becoming a Loa!" or "this is going to spread all over the world!" we never really quite get a good grasp at what exactly Andre is trying to do. Eventually, after Tyrone and Tandy quite literally become stronger people after confronting their personal demons, they do a neat little combo trick where Tyrone teleports Tandy and her big-ass light sword and stabs Andre. And they win, huzzah. It's... it's cathartic more than climactic, but it's all right.

And then we get a series of epilogue scenes, where a lot of the plot lines that seemed so important earlier in the season are just brushed away off-screen. Tyrone's name is cleared, Evita's still a Loa bride or priestess or whatever, Connors' corpse is hung by Mayhem in the police department building, Connors' uncle is arrested, the drug dealers aren't selling to pimps... and Tyrone and Tandy, seemingly growing into something more romantic, head off on a bus to a destination outside of New Orleans. 

Anyway... this has been a neat ride. Cloak and Dagger's second season is definitely a far, far weaker season than its predecessor. It tries to do too much, setting up so much subplot and characters and end up doing nearly nothing with them (Tyrone's mom is the biggest contender for this) or just handwaving their stories in the most boring manner, instead focusing way too much screentime on the weird Loa and Darkforce stuff that certainly isn't the most interesting stuff. Likewise, I think I've ranted enough about D'Spayre not being handled well. Tyrone and Tandy themselves are written and acted quite well, but the season surrounding them certainly isn't. It's not the best superhero show out there, but it's definitely been a neat ride. 

What's next for me, I wonder? I do like this two-episode-per-review format, which is a lot less stressful for me to write, and tackling superhero seasons one at a time, which was what I was doing with the sophomore seasons of The Gifted and Cloak and Dagger, has been pretty slow-paced and fun. I'm not sure what I'm going to watch next... Agents of SHIELD will still run as I watch its episodes intermittently, but I'm not sure if I'm going to tackle one of the Netflix seasons (Punisher S2 and Jessica Jones S3) because those tend to just be so draining to watch and talk about. Runaways has its whole second season out too, and I might just tackle that to get it out of the way? Or maybe I'll finally take a look and slowly go through DC's Doom Patrol series, another one I always sort of felt was kinda heavy. We'll see. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• In episode 9, Tyrone and that one gangster boy ends up bonding over Luke Cage, the bulletproof man, after seeing an article about him written by Karen Page. Nice to see the Netflix characters are apparently up to their antics even after their shows are cancelled!

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S02E07-08 Review: Creepy Cult Sex Motel

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.

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. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S02E05-06 Review: Dream Multi-Layer

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 2, Episode 5: Alignment Chart; Episode 6: B-Sides

Some episodes in TV shows are just sort of obvious "get from point A to point B" sequences, and the fifth episode of this season of Cloak and Dagger, "Alignment Chart", is one of those. Sure, it's got a fun gimmick of Tandy narrating the parable of the Farmer and the Viper, in what's perhaps the show's more interesting choices. The narration of the parable takes up a significant part of the episode's runtime, but it does work in making you really wonder if Connors is actually trying to redeem himself. Because, on one hand, he was trapped in a hellish, shadowy dimension and the actor's performance does seem genuine, but on the other hand... it's Connors. And he did admittedly run away after escaping Tyrone's cloak dimension, if ostensibly to try and make it right by digging up the offending gun that he used to kill Tyrone's brother.

I'm not quite sure just why Tyrone and Tandy ended up splitting up after the whole revelation other than just to inject drama, and in these sort of partner-up shows it's a tired obligation for the two partners to split up at some point in each season. But it does allow both Tyrone and Tandy to sort of develop on their own over the episode, which is... neat? Tyrone, with the aid of his father and uncle, ends up believing Connors and I do like how Tyrone explicitly tells us that he's bringing Connors to his family because he's not convinced that he'll be able to restrain all the ugly impulses telling him to chuck Connors off the roof of the church. All of this is neat, showing a neat maturity in Connors' side of things.

I'm... I'm just not convinced how this ended up translating to an honestly pretty long sequence of Tyrone going around and trying to steal even more evidence from Connors' super-rich-illuminati-man uncle with the aid of explosive distraction courtesy of Brigid. The evidence turns out to not be there, and Tyrone... nearly kills Connors in rage, but then decides to bring the man to his mother? I dunno, the whole bit seems confused, which I guess fits with Tyrone's mindset at this point.

Meanwhile, Tandy continues on her one-woman quest to find out and take down the woman trafficking ring, ending up befriending Lia, the leader of the abuse support group. And... in an attempt to trick Lia into thinking they have a common ground, Tandy sort of manipulates Ty into meeting her in a public place to make it seem like he's her abusive boyfriend. And... and for some reason Tandy doesn't actually tell Ty this part of the plan until it's underway, which is... kinda dumb, and Tyrone walks off in a huff because of the whole "so you picked me because I'm your black friend" bit. And also because Tandy didn't answer his calls when he went to get Connors earlier in the episode. I dunno, it's sort of convoluted, and not a conflict I particularly care about.

Tandy ends up befriending Lia herself, and we get an action scene where Tandy uses her Dagger powers to attack Lia's ex-boyfriend to try and get information on the human trafficking ring... but after beating them up and being all "yeah, we're cool" bit with Lia, turns out Lia's working with the main villain all along and zaps Tandy with a taser. Turns out the Viper in Tandy's story isn't Connors, and the Farmer isn't Tyrone. It's Lia and Tandy, respectively. There is a bit of a weird fake-out where hallucination-Tandy seems to be giving an eulogy for Tyrone, which I felt wasn't done particularly effectively.

And Tandy's lack of backup -- no Tyrone, no Brigid -- ends up with Tandy being taken inside an ambulance, which is where she's hallucinating (or is it just her hope-granting powers or whatever?) her giving a long, long speech... and not as an eulogy, but because their two families are all alive and they're celebrating Tyrone being accepted as a police officer.

Episode 6 ends up being in another hallucination/dream sequence that lasts through what's mostly the entire episode, with the twist that Andre Deschaine, who got a very, very long introduction sequence earlier in the season, is actually a supervillain with mind-manipulation powers called Despair! Or, well, D'Spayre, because this is a character conceived of in the 80's. I know him from old issues of Uncanny X-Men! Considering Mayhem has basically been all but forgotten by the cast since the Darkforce dimension episode, it's neat to have an unambiguously evil Big Bad Villain like D'Spayre, who's enhanced by the same explosion that created Cloak and Dagger, and seems to feed on bad emotion and, well, drive people to despair in the exact opposite that Tandy and Tyrone do. He gets a big bad villain monologue, including a hilarious bit where D'Spayre notes that it's not too long ago that Tandy goes around abusing her power to feed off people's hopes.

"B-Sides" itself is a fun, interesting episode, and it's neat to watch these once-off episodes of putting the characters in this weird, imaginary and clearly wrong world. It's always something that in my opinion works a lot better on television than on page, and I do like how it's a neat exploration of Tandy's psyche. The first 'level' of the hallucination is Tandy in this super-ideal world where neither Tyrone's brother is alive, Tandy's dad is alive and not abusive, Tyrone is accepted as a police officer, and Tandy herself is a super-genius ballerina. And through this super-duper idealistic world... Tandy is driven to despair (or, well, d'spayre) sort of when they get attacked by a bunch of racist rednecks and Tyrone gets shot.

And then the second 'level' of the hallucination is a neat callback to the first season's own hallucination of the oil rig exploding, except this time around Tandy is like an inspector working for Scarborough or something, Mina shows up as an irate rig manager, and Tyrone... is still there, having inherited the position from his brother, and the only person on the rig that respects Tandy as someone that's more than just "Bowen's daughter". The third 'level' of the hallucination is Tandy being a con artist (featuring a neat cameo from Tandy's ex-squeeze Liam, who's dating Mikayla in this hallucination), and while escaping, ends up meeting a car-jacking Tyrone.

I guess the whole point of this sequence really is to showcase just how much Tyrone is a constant rock in Tandy's life or something? And as Tandy starts realizing that this is all just a hallucination (inter-cut with D'Spayre dicking around that weird records store in the Darkforce dimension) we get a sequence where Tandy seems to have broken free from all these dreams and hallucinations, and Tandy ends up recruiting and apologizing to Tyrone and go full-on superhero to confront D'Spayre... only for Tyrone to get shot to death in the process. This ends up being the straw that broke the camel's back, completely breaking Tandy and turning her comatose.

The final shot of the episode is a chilling bit where D'Spayre coldly notes how "she's ready", as the unconscious Tandy ends up being wheeled from the ambulance to one of the seedy motels where the woman kidnapping/trafficking ring is going on. Obviously the show's not going to go that dark, and that she'll escape before anything too horrible happens to her, but it's an interesting showcase of D'Spayre's ability.

The episode does sort of cut away the entire cast, technically, other than Tandy and D'spayre, since everyone else is just a hallucination, but I think the episode would be far, far too muddled and confusing without this bottle episode focus on them. It's still not a particularly huge fan of the episode, I think, but it's a neat enough, if indulgent, revelation of the main villain's true power. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S02E04 Review: Tyrone's Psyche

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 2, Episode 4: Rabbit Hold

Another solo episode review, becuase I'm feeling like it. This episode also works as a quasi-bottle episode, so I feel this one's somewhat appropriate? It's an interesting little concept that after spending a majority of the first season not really exploring too much of Cloak's Darkforce powers other than teleportation and emotion reading, this season basically jumps straight into exploring the fact that Tyrone can straight-up turn into a portal into another dimension, and one that's pretty... trippy. It's not quite as awesome as the exploding factory with the time loop from the first season, but it's definitely pretty fun to see. 

Tandy ends up taking a trip into the Darkforce world, and ends up meeting "Papa Legba", taking the form of a younger Tyrone, who sort of acts as the enigmatic guardian of the place, who tellsTandy to relinquish her powers while in the world, symbolized interestingly in a coin that she slots into one of those observatory binoculars. Unfortunately, in the real world, this ends up shutting down Cloak's powers as well. It's pretty neat that the show is so readily embracing the more magical, spiritual side of Cloak and Dagger's powers. 

Tyrone ends up being trapped while meeting his mother in an attempt to tell her to ru away from the gangsters that want payback aganist Tyrone, but doesn't have access to his teleporting powers. This forces him to essentially actually talk to her pretty awesome mother, something that's proven to be a wee bit more complicated than just survival when more and more hints of Adina being involved -- willingly or otherwise -- with Roxxon. Throw in the ongoing subplot of the police on the manhunt for "copkiller" Tyrone, and things get even more clomplex. 

In the Darkforce world, Tandy ends up meeting Mayhem, essentially ends up naming her, and they go through a bunch of weird records that detail the lives of the kidnapped girls... and Tandy finds records corresponding to her own past, which, when played, shows off all of the suppressed memories of her childhood being aware but ignoring her parents fighting, something that's actually pretty dang well-executed. 

Oh, and Connors have been living in the dark world all this time, growing a beard and a lot of remorse, and hanging effigies of Cloak. While Tandy is dealing with her repressed memories, Mayhem very damn well almost kills Connors via hanging, and Tandy is forced to use her light daggers to stop this from happening... and the world forcibly ejects out at least Tandy and Connors, while also allowing Tyrone to teleport in the nick of time. 

The events that happen are relatively simple, and I really did feel that some of the monologues in this episode were just a bit too long and repetitive particularly Tyrone's storytime with the vampires, which was nice but didn't have much to do with what's going on. But the episode itself is pretty solid, and I'm honetly a pretty huge fan of how a huge chunk of the episode essentially is "facing what you've avoided". Tandy is forced to face her repressed memories, and Tyrone's forced to face both the fact that his powers can 'consume' people, as well as his own mother. I'm not the biggest fan of the honestly pretty bland gang war storyline or that random gangster kid that Tyrone befriended, but the rest of the episode is a pretty solid outing. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S02E03 Review: Mayhem

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 2, Episode 3: Shadow Selves

I am undecided on whether I will do all of Cloak and Dagger as two-episodes-in-one-review or one-episode-in-one-review. It depends on my personal speed of watching the show, I suppose.

And this episode is... part of it is sort of explaining what the fuck Mayhem is. Essentially, she's sort of like Reign or Red Daughter from Supergirl -- an evil clone borne out of comic book handwave plot magic, in this case the spooky dark energy that was unleashed at the end of the first season. We helpfully meet up with the scientist lady who is experimenting with mice exposed to the same energy, and apparently the violent mice tends to hunt down and consume the docile mice. 

In Mayhem's case, as we learn via a series of random flashbacks peppered throughout the episode, we learn that Mayhem very nearly killed the real Brigid O'Reilly, but decide to pave her own crusade to hunt down both officer Connors as well as, thanks to a consultation with that priest from the first season, go and sate her desire to murder and kill people by killing those that deserve it -- i.e. the sex traffickers and kidnappers. And it's an interesting moral question that I can definitely see split the trio of Tyrone, Tandy and Original!Brigid. Everyone agrees that the sex traffickers are scum and deserve to be taken down, but Tyrone in particular is the most horrified at just how brutal Mayhem!Brigid is. Tandy, meanwhile, is the most receptive to her, to a point. She doesn't argue with her allies (yet) or try and help Mayhem, but she is definitely unable to bring herself to actually stop Mayhem from gunning down the mobsters in the final action scene. 

The little emotional powers that Cloak and Dagger show off at the end also throw in a wrinkle into the ethics of killing sex traffickers. Sure, Mayhem kills a bunch of assholes who, let's be honest, pretty much deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth... but the fact that Tandy and Tyrone detect, respectively, "no hope" and a fuck-ton of fear within the girls that they rescue really throws an additional wrinkle. Yes, Mayhem's tactics might be the most brutal and direct, but it's an extra layer of trauma for the hostages. And I do like this topic, where we explore the murky grey area of "how far should vigilantes go in fighting reprehensible criminals?"

And I do like how this mindset translates to the two's tactics in the final fight of the episode. Sure, Dagger throwing light bomb hadokens is impressive, but as soon as Ty's teleported all the kidnapped girls to safety, Tandy doesn't really care all that much that Mayhem shows up and is about to murderize everyone there. Meanwhile, Tyrone ends up rescuing one of the young men that reminds himself too much of how his brother was killed due to the same kill-them-all-let-god-sort-it-out attitude. And I really do love the decision to make Mayhem such an interesting antagonist. It would've been too easy to just boil her down into another angry terrorist killing innocents and gangsters, a la Davos from Iron Fist's second season. 

And in that vein, in crafting a relatively intriguing antagonist and how it relates to our main characters' growth, this episode succeeds a lot. I'm not sure if the flashbacks work quite as well, but they do enough to frame Mayhem's mindset and motivations for us to understand. What the conversations seem to imply is that Mayhem is not quite as whole, with the inability to feel guilt or empathy? The fact that the whole "soul" exchange comes from a drunk Father Delgado means this might not be exactly the case, but it's interesting that it seems to be what Mayhem is looking for. 

There's also an... interesting scene where Tyrone's mother is voting 'nay' at some sort of meeting or whatever to decide about police force against a certain young woman or other? I don't quite understand that scene, but Tyrone's mother seems to be in slight distress, constantly glancing at some dude in a suit at the back of the courtroom, so she might be in some bad guys' pocket or something? I'm not sure. 

The end of the episode is kind of interesting. With Tyrone unleashing his Cloak powers to rescue the random kid from being killed by Mayhem, he sends Mayhem to... another dimension? Teleports her somewhere? I'm not sure how much we know about Tyrone's power in this show, because between season 1 and 2 I ended up being reading a bunch of comics that co-starred Cloak & Dagger and I'm not sure how much of the Darkforce stuff is information from the comics or from the first season of the show. Regardless, though, zombie pancake boyfriend!

Overall, this show's definitely sucked me in more than I thought it would. Cloak and Dagger is honestly the best when it forces the main characters to actually stop and self-introspect about what is right, instead of floundering about in a half-baked doomsday conspiracy plot. I'm sure that since this is television, we'll still be getting some Darkforce Roxxon sci-fi plot in the second half, but this whole Mayhem stuff definitely interests me a fair bit. There are definitely scenes that didn't work as well, and some of the flashbacks feel either redundant or just there as foreshadowing, but ultimately, it's a relatively solid hour of Cloak and Dagger. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S02E01-02 Review: Oh Right This Show

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 2, Episode 1: Restless Energy; Episode 2: White Lines

Well, I wasn't the biggest fan of the first season of Cloak and Dagger. I don't have much of a connection to the characters before watching the show, only briefly seeing them as minor characters in Civil War comics, and the first season was... it wasn't perfect, it had some pacing issues and plot-juggling issues, but what superhero show doesn't, right? But while it was never bad, I didn't really find myself all that interested in the heavily drama-oriented storyline, and the plotline wasn't anything particularly special. But it did leave enough of a good impression for me to at least try and check out the second season. I make no promises on whether I'll completely watch the second season or not, but I did at least watch the premiere episode. Maybe if I do continue on with this season, I'll do a two-episode-in-one-review format? I did remember finding it hard to really talk about Cloak and Dagger episodes due to how slowly paced they can be.

Episode 1 is... it's more of a "set the scene" episode, which is definitely needed since it's been a while since I watched the original season. Tyrone's still on the run and using his Cloak powers to follow around drug dealers and sneak-stealing their drugs and money out. Tandy's attending this group therapy session with her mom to talk about her abusive dad. And while the surly officer Brigid O'Reilly is pissed that Tyrone's basically using Cloak powers without thinking about the oh-so-fragile gangland balance (this is the MCU, give Luke Cage or Daredevil or someone a call), they're a lot more... well-adjusted, I guess, after the hectic "figure out this conspiracy" mentality of the first season. That's not all there is to the first episode, of course, but it definitely is slow, with a lot of scenes that are just quiet dancing or brooding set to music.

Of course, being superhero material, they end up helping people again, with Tandy going after the abusive boyfriend of Mikaela, one of the ladies from her group therapy who is clearly being abused heavily. And Tyrone ends up biting off more than he could chew and ends up going up against a particularly large gang, and only poor note-keeping and Tandy's timely arrival manages to save him. Both their efforts sort of end up in a mess. Tyrone fucking around with gang dynamics put a kibosh on Brigid's police operations, while Tandy ends up instead scaring the abusive boyfriend so bad that Mikaela ends up taking pity on him and moving back to his side. Oh, and the two have a brief fight, but it really only lasts about 5 minutes.

The episode's final scene is Tyrone and Tandy having some superhero fun as they decide to go into full-on super-spy mode as they hang out at a club, with Tyrone planting a recording device with his teleporting powers to help save Brigid's operation... but while it's cute to see them just have some fun, Cloak and Dagger end up walking into the remains of a bloodbath as within minutes, all the gangsters in the room have apparently been massacred.

Episode 2 follows up on this as Tyrone and Tandy call in their only ally, officer Brigid, for help, and the episode's framed in a "what did our main characters do afterwards", which involves frankly unnecessary cuts to the scene of Brigid opening the door that blows away the Voodoo sign.

And we basically follow the three characters as they sort of go on their own personal crusade to get answers and do stuff. Tyrone basically just gets a long speech about Loa from Evita's aunt, and... and I genuinely don't know enough about the Vodun/Voodoo religion to know if this is actually a decent representation of a real-world belief, or if it's just another instance of television shows completely missing the mark on real-life exotic religions. From what it's presented, it's... it's nice enough and ties into Tyrone trying to find peace by breathing and drawing signs with chalk. Oh, Evita's back too. She's... she's nice and supportive, but does give Tyrone one hell of a mouthful for not seeing her. Particularly after she finds out about the teleportation powers. While all of this is going on, Tyrone ends up teleporting to Mikaela's ambulance a couple of times, sort of tying this in to the other two stories even if Tyrone doesn't fully understand.

Meanwhile, as she deals with her own PTSD and hallucinations of evil dad, Tandy ends up speaking her mind -- albeit in a pretty harsh manner -- to Mikaela on the therapy session. It's essentially approaching a delicate situation with a flamethrower, leading Mikaela to (off-screen) leave her abusive boyfriend... and we later on find her overdosed with heroin in a hospital. Tandy's emotion-reading powers quickly tell her that this was thanks to someone forcing the heroin into her arm in an ambulance, causing her to go on a bit of a personal crusade to hunt down the ambulance responsible, leading to her team-up with "Brigid" later on.

Also, we get a couple of scenes with her re-experiencing PTSD, and interacting with the social therapy workers or whatever. It's well-acted, even if I do think that they end up being more padding than anything else.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Brigid is at a low point after initially promising the two kids to handle dealing with the gangster bloodbath, eventually completely giving in, calling in the massacre and just getting herself drunk and wasted at a bar... and when she looks at a nearby puddle, a reflection of her seems to mock her and tell her that she's going to "take over". And... and we've got a lot of characters recently in superhero material with Fictional-DID, because alternate identities are like a cool trope even though it is never really portrayed properly. Gotham's Riddler, Iron Fist's Typhoid Mary, Doom Patrol's Crazy Jane, Supergirl's Reign, The Flash's Killer Frost, Legion's titular main character... and that's the ones I can think up on the fly.

But, of course, the twist this time is that instead of another split persona taking over, there's apparently a second Brigid O'Reilly running around, and the episode is at least pretty clever at keeping this twist bottled up. The real Brigid is tied up in her apartment, but the audience doesn't see that until the last series of scenes. The second Brigid (apparently called "Mayhem") is the one we see for the most part, being this very, very confident -- if brusque -- super police officer. She quickly calls in ever single part of the crime scene, breaks an expensive painting to get one of the gangster's family to talk, and later on teams up with Tandy to arrest one of the ambulance-using kidnappers. And then slits the fucker's throat. The second episode ends with Tyrone and the real Brigid BAMF-ing into the scene, meeting Tandy, and later coming face-to-face with "Mayhem".

Overall... it's a neatly done two-parter, I suppose. Again, a lot of people like this thing so it's a matter of personal taste more than anything, but I really do think that these episodes really could've had a lot of their more redundant "look at this nice moment" scenes trimmed down or cut out a little. I am a big fan of some of them, like Tandy and Tyrone enjoying themselves in the club, or the "movie night", but I do feel a fair bit of the scenes could've done with a bit of trimming. We'll see if this mystery of Mayhem and the main characters' main problems will be enough to keep me around. Not the strongest opening to a sequel season, but not a bad one. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E10 Review: Underwhelming

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 10: Colony Collapse

I don't think I've ever been quite as underwhelmed by a Marvel TV series' season finale as much as I was with this one. Well, I mean, Inhumans exists, I suppose. But other than that... this finale accomplishes the rather impressive job of feeling like it rushes through plot points without giving them time to breathe while at the same time also feeling like nothing significant is happening. Perhaps Cloak and Dagger's biggest problem is that it wants to bring together several major plot points into one cohesive whole -- the ongoing struggle against Officer Connors; the whole Roxxon/Terrors conspiracy and the whole vague voodoo "Divine Pairing" backstory.

The problem is, nothing about the Divine Pairing stuff even really feels relevant at all to Tandy Bowen and Tyrone Johnson as characters. Evita has been vaguely learning about this mysterious reincarnated pair throughout the history of New Orleans, but it's all given in such bland, tepid vagueness throughout the past nine episodes, and its attempt to suddenly introduce a huge backstory with random cutaways to how the Divine Pairing had saved New Orleans in the past is honestly laughable. And other than giving Tandy and Tyrone an injection of tired "if one of us must die, it should be me" drama. Hell, Evita just quite literally shows up with no explanation, delivers some exposition, and walks of. Tandy makes a crack about how great Tyrone and Evita are together... but honestly, Evita's more of an exposition tool than an actual character. And not even good exposition either.

Likewise, the resolution of Connors really feels abrupt and sudden, with the buildup in this episode to a confrontation with Connors... and then nothing. Makes me really wish Connors was just out of the story in that Scooby Dooby Doo episode, because all he is in this episode is just a distraction, and then he shoots O'Reilly in a scene that genuinely feels like it's added last-minute with minimal effort due to how abrupt it is, and then Tyrone scares him a little... and then his Cloak powers eats Connors. What? Tyrone's speech to the one good cop (a great scene that has absolutely no payoff beyond establishing what a nice guy Tyrone is) feels more of an epic climax-worthy moment than this genuinely bland one. 

Tandy's confrontation with her own big bad, Scarborough, feels a bit more satisfying. After saving her mother from the assassin and recruiting Mina Hess (where's Ivan?) to go to Roxxon, she ends up in a face-to-face with Scarborough, gets to deck him in the face, and apparently trap him in the same nightmare Ivan was trapped in. Hopefully she goes back and fixes all of the dreams of the people  she 'stole' them from, though.

Still, the vague and utterly unexplained "I want to control power" conspiracy from Scarborough is also as under-developed as the voodoo reincarnation storyline, and I'm genuinely not sure why they felt like the need to have a zombie outbreak with the Terrors when it genuinely doesn't tie in any sort of  meaningful way to the whole Divine Pairing stuff. I had let it slide in the past because I thought that these ominous foreshadowing of vagueness throughout the season will maybe build up into something more, but nope -- the Terror-zombies are just a random magical threat. Or if they're supposed to be connected to the reincarnation of the Pairing or to the source of the Cloak'n'Dagger powers, the show doesn't really explain it much. 

Oh, and we get scant little explanation to what the Terrors turned people into, yeah? I mean, some of them get killed, and we know O'Reilly goes all Solomon Grundy when she falls into the swamp presumably to be a cheap Winter Soldier knockoff villain in the next season, but what about Mina? 

The only real things that save this episode from utterly bombing is the genuinely great scenes that Tyrone and Tandy takes place in. Tyrone's speech to the policeman, his talk with O'Reilly about being the one good cop, Tandy's brief moment with her mom in the beginning, Tandy shaking Tyrone out of his flunk, the jacket moment and the two refusing to abandon each other to save the day... the chemistry between the two actors are strong enough that I'm genuinely entertained anytime they show up, even if quite literally the rest of the story told in this season is a gigantic mess. 

The way the episode ends feels more like checking off a box of things they have to do. Show a zombie apocalypse, yep, show a vague mystical origin, yep, Scarborough encounter, yep, Connors encounter, yep, set up a tragic villain, yep, vague threat of one of them dying, yep, hold hands and have vague all yours powers combined moment, yep. 

Yeah, this is a pretty weak season, honestly. I'm at least a fan of the pretty strong performances delivered by the actors, but the utterly confused storytelling and pretty horrid pacing in the first half of the season honestly makes me feel like this is easily one of my least favourite entries in Marvel TV. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E09 Review: Climax

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 9: Back Breaker

Yeah, these last couple of episodes are moving at pretty much a breakneck speed, huh? Insert an obligatory speech about how the first half of the season dragged on insanely slowly. 

This episode isn't exactly perfect. I felt some moments felt genuinely rushed, and some -- like the bit with Evita's aunt's scenes and the whole bit with the speech about the hero's journey -- to be awkwardly paced. I do appreciate the hero's speech thing trying to show just what Tandy, Tyrone and O'Reilly find themselves in -- the part of a hero's journey where they are tried and they can either choose to be a hero or regress and give in to all their demons. In Tyrone and O'Reilly's case, this means throwing away all their principles and unleashing their frustrations in physical violence. In Tandy's case, it means stealing people's hopes in a literal fashion. I really like that fact, but the actual speech about the hero's quest is dragged on for so long that I genuinely rolled  my eyes when it took forever to get to the point that the episode wanted to tell.

Tandy is just kind of all over the place, first delving back to her life of seducing rich people and then using her powers to steal their dreams (and get off on them, apparently) as well as their money. She then goes to Mina Hess and gets into a bit of a piss-off contest with her and her dad, and then springs Liam out of jail because she wants to go back to her life before all of this. Her dreams, it seems, is to get married with Liam and have a happy life... something that is shattered because, guess what? When you leave your boyfriend in jail without any sort of explanation for however long it took between episode 2 and 9, he's not going to be very pleased. 

Meanwhile, Tyrone's big victory from the previous episode is negated with bureaucracy and "we'll look into it", as well as apathetic parents (while we learn the reason why, there really is no excuse for them to not at least go "yeah, sorry, we were wrong in not trusting you" in the car), causing Tyrone to go into this spiral of anger and frustration about how his whole crusade, his whole fight, all his struggles, amounted to jack shit, and he ends up beating up some random kid in school and getting into a lot of trouble. 

The scene with Tyrone's priest-mentor really made me wish that the priest had actually more scenes in the slower-paced parts of the season, because apparently he showed up before, but I genuinely don't remember him at all. Tyrone's speech to the priest is decently written as he lets out all of his anger and frustrations, but ends up seeing the priest's fear of... crashing onto some kid while drunk-driving or something? Oh, and Tyrone also ends up popping into Tandy's hope-stealing bit with Liam.  

And just like the whole talk about the low point of the hero's journey where they are faced with the fact that they can't ever go back, we get an actually powerful moment as Tandy chases down Tyrone in his school, and bombards him with statements that put down both herself as well as Tyrone, chiding him for being a naive little shit, and claiming that she's nothing but a sadistic bitch. Not... not exactly wrong, honestly. Tyrone, for his part, still refuses to give up on Tandy, while Tandy is trying to bring him down? Yeah, Tyrone, you're a good man. 

Both Tyrone and Tandy return to their respective families, and after an honest heart-to-heart (Tyrone and his mom talk about the responsibilities of staying safe and standing up for society. Tandy... just sort of speaks to a wall) are both thrown into chaos. A hit-woman from Roxxon has thrashed Tandy's house and is holding her mom at gunpoint, while Tyrone is being framed for the death of officer Fuchs, with the police coming into his house. Both of them are faced with a huge, climactic cliffhanger at the end of this episode, and that's pretty cool. 

The side characters are a bit more... iffy, I think. Evita's a cool character and I do like how she's able to snap out of Tandy's hope-stealing bit, but she's trapped by being the only one who kinda-sorta gets this whole "Divine Pairing" thing (Ty and Tandy certainly don't) but it's all so vague and mysterious that I genuinely don't think I would even care if they end up explaining it in the final episode. O'Reilly's story is pretty basic, too. All her optimism is dashed, she attacks an instantly-free Connors at the police bar and gets a bloody nose out of it. 

Meanwhile, Mina and Ivan are being a happy family, but then because Tandy zapped her with her hope-stealing powers out of nothing but spite (it's really hard to root for Tandy right now) it apparently burnt out Mina's idealism and she goes and kills a bee. And then at the end of the episode, Mina finds out that, hey, Roxxon really should've listened to her as the vague mumbo-jumbo hate plague gets unleashed again. 

Overall, there's way too much going on, the pacing is inconsistent, and I'm genuinely not quite sure why I'm rooting for Tandy with how the episode portrays her as a pretty self-centered, hateful bitch. I mean, I get that she's not in the best shape due to the revelations that her father is an abuser in the previous episode, but I kinda felt that the transition really could've been handled a lot better. I dunno. It's still a solid episode, I think, my own hang-ups with the pacing aside. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E08 Review: Scooby Dooby Doo

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 8: Ghost Stories

We're in the home stretch now and I am genuinely astounded at how little we've really progressed. The past seven episodes really should've been compressed into, like, three episodes at most, and that's accounting for the fact that episode 7 probably needed to be an episode of its own. I dunno... this episode helps to amp up the tension again, and things finally happen, but that doesn't really excuse the utter blandness of the first half of this series. 

Anyway, in this episode, we finally get our two characters go through with their plans to bring down their respective nemeses, with Tandy going after Scarborough, and Tyrone working with officers O'Reilly and Fuchs to take down Connors. Pretty obvious Fuchs is going to die, by the way, considering how he barely had screentime before but suddenly gets a whole lot in this episode. And I'm not going to lie -- it's equal parts hilarious and awesome to see Tyrone use his Cloak powers and the finished Billy-Cloak to pose as Billy's ghost and scare the balls out of Connors by teleporting around and pretending to be a ghost. And the fear powers are there, too, but mostly just teleporting around and being a ghost and demanding a confession almost laughably.

It's hideously silly, of course, like something out of Scooby Dooby Doo, but you know what? I actually do like it. It's portrayed pretty straight, and I just kinda wished we had just a wee bit more foreshadowing as to Connors being tormented or being superstitious or something. It's a pretty neat little sequence, and I'm definitely a big fan to see that. It's pretty emotional, too, and a pretty damn cathartic and emotional scene that played out. 

Meanwhile, Tandy going after Scarborough isn't quite as interesting, due to how relatively silent the scene was. There was a degree of her lying and being a thief again, this time stealing Tyrone's mom's Roxxon pass or something to get into the building, but her going assassin's creed and easily slicing through the building electricity cables and then holding her light dagger to Scarborough's neck... it's impressive, sure, but it lacks the huge emotional punch that Tyrone posing as Billy to torment Connors has. And while Tandy doesn't quite get the same utter victory and a confession the way Tyrone did, she did at least scare the shit out of Scarborough, slicing up the building's foundations and making him think that he's going to die in that collapsing building.

The other theme of this episode, other than going after their respective marks, is that they're celebrating the anniversary of their respective loved ones' death, and it's interesting to see the broken, dysfunctional family of Tandy and her mom actually gathering and letting go of a lantern to mourn Nathan, whereas the seemingly-functional Johnson family clearly doesn't know how to mourn and acts very awkwardly around each other. Tyrone's mom is distant, Tyrone himself is aching for action and vengeance, while Tyrone's dad just wants to be around friends. 

This seems to lead to a pretty beautiful scene as Tyrone joins Tandy and her mom in the lantern-lighting ritual... only for them holding hands ended up revealing Melissa's simultaneous hopes and fears, which reveals that apparently Nathan Bowen was a pretty abusive husband. And for someone like Tandy who has been putting his father up as this pedestal of ultimate goodness and the perfect man, this utterly shattered her. Pretty effective usage of the fake theater-of-the-mind thing, too, as well as the black and white images of Tandy and Tyrone walking into the abuse memories. 

Of course, I don't really buy that Tandy would instantly renege and take Scarborough's money thanks to it, but both Tandy and Tyrone have been shown to be as emotionally stable as any hormone-addled teenager out there, so I guess it's a believable plot twist? 

Meanwhile, while I haven't really cared much for O'Reilly and the fact that Fuchs was involved in all this and had increased screentime, especially of the 'oh ho, we'll totally live happily ever after' but ultimately was pretty forgettable, it's no surprise that Fuchs ends  up being killed... in a pretty grisly way, too, falling into the "fridged love interest" trope. Literally! 

Ultimately, though, it's still a pretty competently shot and scripted episode, even if some of the plot and story progressions might be questionable. I am a huge fan of the scenes in Melissa's mind with that theater setup and the blinking projector lights, as well as Cloak's takedown of Fuchs. I'd take this sort of unstable episode over the dull humdrum of the first six episodes any day, though

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. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E06 Review: Swampwalking

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 6: Funhouse Mirrors

An okay episode, even if it still reeks of just throwing in a bunch of random encounters and steps to get to the final goal without really telling much of a story. It's like side-quests in a video game -- it's a great sense of accomplishment when you do it, and it is a great feeling to experience it. But for everyone not involved, it's pretty dang boring. And this episode basically tries to set up a similar concept. Both Tandy and Tyrone become interns in two different places -- Tandy interns for the daughter of one of her father's friends, while Tyrone interns as a drug-dealer courier for Duane. Both trying to find information or 'get close' to their respective targets. 

The actual performances done by the actors involved are great, and I'm not so emotionless that I can't appreciate Tandy bonding and geeking out with fellow geek girl Mina Hess, especially when they got to talking about their father, but the only real thing that happens there is just "Tandy gets slightly closer to the Roxxon higher-ups". It's certainly miles more interesting than merely interviewing to be an intern like we saw last episode, for sure, even if some of the speech that hammers in "New Orleans is a survivor" is pretty eyeroll-inducing.

Also, I guess the oil rig that Mina is trying to build safely and the cartoonishly jackass and misogynistic superior with the Rolls Royce is trying to stop it? Not a bad villain plotline, but not one that I think is interesting enough to dragged on for more than a single episode. 

Tyrone's whole deal about trying to infiltrate Duane's drug-dealing business honestly felt convoluted, though, and I really thinks that it kind of lacks the better moments of the Tandy/Mina bonding moments. I guess a huge chunk of why Duane's attempts at being brotherly to Tyrone is kind of spoiled by the knowledge that Duane is involved in causing Billy's death, and Tyrone knows this. That leasds to a genuinely slow story that kinda-sorta intersects with Connors and O'Reilly's story, which is a genuinely dull, by-the-books cop story. At least the confrontation between Tyrone and Duane about how Duane genuinely doesn't trust the corrupt police system to do anything, hence keeping quiet, is something?

The episode ends with Tyrone warning O'Reilly about the ambush that Connors has forced Duane to do, and in the proceeding shootout, Duane gets shot and killed just as he starts becoming sympathetic to Tyrone. Tyrone ends up teleporting into their shared church-base, utterly broken as Tandy comes back in with hopes that she has finally found a lead to the Roxxon conspiracy. That ending scene definitely salvaged what's an otherwise pretty snail-paced episode.

I do like the usage of Cloak and Dagger's emotional powers, if nothing else. Tyrone touching that one random drug runner and trapping him in a vague scary room with the lighting that goes on and off is pretty scary without going too overboard, and Tandy's very peaceful look into Ivan Hess's vine-grown mess of a mind is a pretty great visual, and both are far, far better usages of their powers than the convenient mind-reading they've been in the previous couple of episode. Also love how Tandy decided to wordlessly not violate Ivan's mind's privacy presumably out of respect to Mina, which I do like. 

Also, we've got the framing story of Tyrone's girlfriend Evita and her voodoo-practicing aunt talking about a magical pair that keeps showing up in times of distress and destruction and stuff, and that most of the times, one of this mystical magical pairing dies, which... which kinda-sorta-but-not-really adds an air of tension to this whole thing? Okay? I don't mind mysticism since this is still the MCU, but this one is genuinely off compared to the tone of the rest of the series, like a draft for a video game's information-dump sequence. Not a big fan of this particular episode, honestly. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E05 Review: Take Me Out To A Ball Game

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 5: Princeton Quest

And sadly we're back in another blasé episode of Cloak and Dagger. The previous episode was actually pretty great at exploring the emotional problems gripping the titular characters, as well as their own struggles, guilt and whatnot. This episode, though? It just runs around in circles, honestly. The huge fight between Tandy and Tyrone are swept under the rug with an awkward apology and the two are weird frenemies again, and for a significant amount of the episode it's just Tyrone playing basketball... and my god, I know this is technically the teen school drama version of a superhero show, but damn it, moreso than any of the cheesy relationship drama, I really, really dislike and don't understand why teen dramas seem to think that anyone would want to watch a fake basketball game for nearly half of this episode's screentime. I get it, it's a huge moment in Tyrone's life because of all the Billy angst, but the bit where Tyrone teleports to the garage now run by Billy's old basketball friend is so much more emotional than "oh no is he going to play in the game, tension wah wah."

And yeah, there's the slight bit of classism bit going on where Tyrone realizes that the referee prefers his more prestigious school compared to the one that he's fighting against (a school from the neighbourhood he used to grow up in), and I'm not sure if Tyrone flubs the final shot or not, or if Tyrone is even conflicted at all, because the basketball scenes are so freaking boring that I genuinely cannot be bothered to pay much attention. At least he gets Evita's respect and love? Eh. 

Oh, and thanks to plot-convenience dreams, Tyrone learns that apparently Duane is one of the players in the whole drug story in New Orleans, and is working with Officer Connors, and knows that Connors is the one that shot Billy. Dun dun dunnn drama! Oh, and Tyrone is working alongside Officer O'Reilly to bust Connors, and O'Reilly has taken to sniffing drugs to get closer to Connors? S'cool. I don't mind these storylines, as haphazardly as they are showcased here.

Tandy, meanwhile, continues to go on her little investigation mission to get to the bottom of Roxxon, and while it's nowhere as mind-numbingly boring as whether Tyrone will make the shot that will make St. Petersburg win, it's still pretty much just a single step in bringing down Roxxon. She has basically appropriated the abandoned cathedral as her own gigantic little conspiracy board playmat, which I thought is kinda ridiculous, but fun. 

And then, in a subplot that makes me roll my eyes as much as the length of the basketball game, Tandy impersonates a fake identity in a short while, gets a job at a fancy Roxxon party in order to find out the Roxxon Head Honcho, Peter Scarborough, and then pretends to break down and very nearly stabs him in the back all Assassin's Creed style before she touches him and sees that he's super evil, like "wants to drown his own employees and profit" evil. She then... decides to let him go (???), and return back to her huge conspiracy map and, oh, apparently she missed a couple of names? I seriously don't get this part of the episode. I mean, I kinda do, but the way it's told is genuinely baffling. 

There's also the unfortunate implication that Tandy did really awaken her powers with a suicide or a life-defying attempt, which causes her to push Tyrone off of a ledge into a water when Tyrone accidentally teleports to her. Just to get him back to a goddamn high school ball game. And nobody noticed that Tandy threw another person off from a second story? Yeah, overall, I kinda understand what they were trying to go for in this episode, but the way it was delivered was pretty dang boring. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E04 Review: They Finally Talk

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. 

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E03 Review: Vision Quest

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 3: Stained Glass

Well, we're back with Cloak and Dagger. I feel that I still don't have that much of an attachment to the very bogged-down pacing of this particular TV series, but I guess I can finish up the eight or so episodes I have left for this season. 

But watching this episode, again, I'm just really confused just why they're taking their time to move things so slowly. Yes, I get the idea and the concept of what they're trying to do in this episode. Tandy and Tyrone are connected by their powers, and they have something to do with their... emotions? Dreams? Mental states? You don't have to take all that long to drag it out, though, and there were segments of this episode that repeated the post-car-crash scene that I genuinely don't think was necessary. Basically, Tandy tells Dream!Tyrone to stop using violence to try and kill the cop that killed his brother, and Tyrone tells Dream!Tandy to stop running from her problems. Both of them also see that the other is full of self-loathing, which I thought was kinda clever -- Tyrone believes he deserves to be punished and persecuted for his attempted murder of the evil officer, while Tandy 'poisons' everyone around her, because that's what she views herself as. That bit was kinda cool, I'll admit. 

Oh, and there's a Vodun ritual thrown in there and a huge, huge drawn-out sequence of Tyrone and his new girlfriend Evita making a long exposition about that. Did we... did we really need that long of an exposition scene? I dunno. I'm not a particularly big fan of that. More bizarrely, while Tyrone accesses the weird dreamscape with Voodoo, Tandy accesses it with... um... dozing to sleep while nursing a concussion on a bus? What? 

Speaking of Vodun, Evita's aunt apparently makes a 3D printing of Tyrone? Um... okay? I kinda want to think that this implies that she's the villain (other than officer Conners, the show doesn't really have a traditional Big Bad yet) but I'm not sure that the show would bend backwards to establish that, no, media depiction of voodoo is grossly inaccurate and it's as benign as any religion out there, and then have a Vodun practitioner be the villain. Eh. 

The thing is, I'm just not that big of a fan of every episode so far ending with Tyrone and Tandy meeting each other, only to exchange a few words and then bugger off. I get why they did it the first couple of times, but this is the end of the third episode and the two have only really interacted via ephemeral dreams and going around their own problems and stuff. I dunno -- I really felt that everything that happened in the first three episodes could've very easily been trimmed down to an episode and a half, tops, and would've had the same, if not a greater, impact.

We also get the introduction of a brief subplot with Detective O'Reilly (played by Emma "Yellow Dino Ranger" Lahana) trying to investigate the possible assault done by the Rich Douchebag and... while it's not uninteresting, the whole episode feels so slow that adding another slow B-plot to it all just feels like a huge "why is this important" moment to me. O'Reilly is at least brought into both Tandy and Tyrone's spheres, with her having a conversation with Tandy, and Tyrone's cop nemesis Connors telling her to back off of the case while also being casually an asshole. 

Overall, though, the episode at least is a pretty huge improvement compared to the previous two. While the dream sequence might be self-indulgent, it does show a whole lot more into Tandy and Tyrone's psyches than all the floundering and meandering of the previous episodes. I'm still unconvinced that it's worth the pacing of this show being reduced to a snail's pace, though.