Marvel’s Cloak And Dagger (Freeform) (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

Is this series any good?

 

[NeilO]

Is this series any good?

We can find out tonight.

 

[Robert Crawford]

We can find out tonight.

Is this the first or second season? I was under the impression it was the second season.

 

[NeilO]

Is this the first or second season? I was under the impression it was the second season.

This is the first season. It just has been a long time coming.

 

[Robert Crawford]

This is the first season. It just has been a long time coming.

Cool, that clears it up for me as I'll try that first season.

 

[NeilO]

USA Today review

Cloak and Dagger isn't a joyful series — it's an often somber coming-of-age story of two kids deeply traumatized but trying to heal — but it's joyful to watch it unfold. And isn't that how a superhero should make you feel?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The pilot was directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, and it owes a large debt to her directorial debut, Love & Basketball. Like that film, it's a genre story that opens in the past at a crucial moment in the lives of its protagonists, and then jumps forward to the present to see how things developed. And, most crucially, like that film it's a genre story that's more concerned with the inner lives and motivating forces of its characters than meeting the requirements of its genre. Roger Ebert once wrote of that movie that it was "not as taut as it could have been, but I prefer its emotional perception to the pumped-up sports cliches I was sort of expecting." Substitute sports for super heroics and the same applies here.

The decision to relocate the characters to New Orleans was a smart one. Between the Marvel/Netflix series, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange, New York City is overstuffed with Marvel superheroes. Setting the series along the Gulf Coast creates some distance that allows the show to exist in the same universe without tripping over what the movies and other shows are doing. The pilot was primarily shot on location, and the city permeates its way through the whole show. It's got the same acute sense of place that the Marvel Netflix shows do, but whereas those need to invent a Hell's Kitchen that hasn't existed for a long time, that MCU New Orleans is basically the real New Orleans.

The Marvel shows on ABC all share a certain tone and brightly lit look. The Marvel shows on Netflix all share a certain, very different ambience and shadowy look. "Cloak & Dagger" has its own feel and tone. It might be the most naturalistic MCU outing yet. The was a bit of stiff acting at the beginning, but as soon as the kids found themselves under the water, the show had me under its sway.

I loved the way the inciting event that granted them powers is intertwined in two very separate tragedies with one source: When the oil rig explodes, it distracts the cars on the road, triggering an accident that sends Tandy and her father plunging into Lake Borgne. When the oil rig explodes, it startles the cop pointing a gun at Tyrone's older brother, with the result that two bullets cut through his chest. The two young children end up in the water. Something radiates out from the site of destroyed oil rig. The two children find themselves safely and mysteriously ashore, Tandy without a father and Tyrone without a brother.

And it was interesting to see how the two families responded to tragedy. Tandy and her mother, from an upper middle class background at the time of the accident, plunge into addiction and homelessness and despair. The loss of father and husband triggers a collapse of the family unit. Tyrone's family, living in the ghetto at the time of the accident, have pulled themselves up into tenuous middle class status, with Tyrone's talent on the basketball court gaining him entry into private school.

Tandy and Tyrone spend very little time together in the pilot, but the show is constantly comparing and contrasting their experiences. Their stories feel connected, because they speak to each other, help us understand both better. And on the rare occasions that Tyrone and Tandy are together, it's electric -- all the more so for the scarcity.

Olivia Holt and Aubrey Joseph were brilliantly cast as the leads. They were, at the time the first season was shot, teenagers playing teenagers. So there's a verisimilitude that you don't get with late twentysomethings playing high school students. There are long stretches without dialog, where the actors have to tell the story purely through facial expression and body language. They're up to the task. Some of the supporting performances are a bit flat, but the leads shine the whole way through. Gloria Reuben is also brilliant as Tyrone's mother. There is a conversation in the doorway to Tyrone's bedroom that will break your heart. Andrea Roth is also solid as Tandy's mom, drained empty and all hollowed out.

Gonna go watch episode two now. But the pilot was a very strong start.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The second episode wasn't as good, with the characters kept apart the entire time and some hackneyed choices on the directing side. but I'm still really enjoying the ride.

 

[Robert Crawford]

The second episode wasn't as good, with the characters kept apart the entire time and some hackneyed choices on the directing side. but I'm still really enjoying the ride.

What channel or service are you watching this series?

 

[Robert Crawford]

I'd watched the first episode and into the second one on Hulu.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

What channel or service are you watching this series?

It's on Freeform (formerly ABC Family).

 

[Hanson]

This is just as good as Runaways and The Gifted which is to say it's kind of terrible. Two episodes in and it's already spinning wheels. Too much self important dialog and zero sense of humor.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I loved the third episode. The ambience of this series is wonderful, the leads are terrific, and the nonliteral storytelling is really intriguing. Even though they've barely shared the same space so far, Tandy and Tyrone are already altering each other's trajectories.

I appreciated that, rather than spend most of the season with the detective chasing Tandy, she deduced right off of the bat that Tandy was actually the victim in this instance.

The relationship between Tandy and her mother is so fraught, yet not completely destroyed. Last week, the mother steals from her daughter to buy drugs. This week, she protects her from the cops.

Lots of shows and movies have done takes on New Orleans voodoo, and this one fares better than most. Noëlle Renée Bercy was a local hire for the pilot as Tyrone's love interest, Evita. I completely believed her as tour guide, and her relationship to the "family business". When we do meet her voodoo priestess auntie, she's absorbed in one of those addictive time suck games people play on their phones. While there, Tyrone takes notice of all the voodoo dolls of the various divine pairings throughout the city's history. And when she creates the first doll for the latest divine pairing, it's not stitched or tied or woven, it's printed on a 3D printer.

But the best part of the episode was the time Tandy and Tyrone spent in the realm of the loa, getting glimpses of the defining tragedies and motivations since the accident that first brought them into each other's lives. The thing each finds inescapable is obvious to the other, and by the end they've begun to balance each other out.

 

[Jason_V]

I decided to start the series last night on Hulu. This was not at all what I was expecting...but it is completely enjoyable. Dark, socially conscious, family drama with the comic book trappings. I do hope there are rays of light in the series because this can get hard to watch over the course of a season.

The other thing about this series is our two main characters are seriously flawed unlike almost anyone else we've seen in Marvel movies or non-Netflix shows. They both have the standard childhood trauma which dictates who they are today without that trauma being schmaltzy or tired. I admired the way the first episode got right into the story and didn't mince words/waste time introducing Tandy and Tyrone. Many of the scenes and editing reminded me of a feature-length movie; the cross cutting, the huge swaths without dialogue.

I would stress this isn't light and breezy and joke-y like the Marvel movies. This is more in the vein of the Netflix shows: our world devoid of humor and light (right now, anyway). Hopefully, as the season continues, those other elements can be introduced here and there. I am willing to go on this trip with Cloak and Dagger for a while, but if it turns into a gut punch every week (like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, etc.), then I can't do it.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Tonight's episode really felt like the starting gun of the series.

After circling each other for three episodes, this was the first time we got Tyrone and Tandy sharing the same space for an extended period of time. I love the dynamic the show's established between them; the obvious choice would have been to throw them right into a romance out of the gate. But both of them having much, much bigger things going on in their lives than just puppy love. The show is instead interested in a more basic kind of human connection: these two teenagers find themselves in that church deeply alienated by their pasts and circumstances. You see the relief that comes from finally having another person to open up to. At the same time, they're very different people from very different backgrounds leading very different lives. So the conflicts and barbs between them feel organic and real. Tyrone has no idea what it's like to be a young woman living homeless on the streets. And Tandy has no idea what it's like to be a black man in America. But they deeply understand and relate to things about each other in a way they do with nobody else. I can't wait to see how that relationship develops.

I loved the subplot with the Tandy's mother's boyfriend. We've seen many, many variations on the single mother with bad taste in men and the latest sleazeball to walk through the door. This subverted that wonderfully; when Tandy brushes her hand against his, she expects to see selfishness, maybe duplicity, but instead is forced to grapple with the fact that this man has pure intentions. He's a drug addict, but he wants to do right by her mother and he's serious about pursuing her mother's case. Over the course of the episode, he validates Tandy and starts to draw her out of her defensive posture.

And then, just when there finally seems to be a chance at real happiness, he's brutally murdered in front of her, and the paper trail he was building to exonerate her father seemingly went up in flames.

I also loved the unexpected turn with Tyrone's father, Otis, as he introduces Tyrone to the culture of Mardi Gras Indians. There's a wonderful specificity to those scenes; I don't know how accurate a reflection of the real culture it is, but I believed it in the context of the show. And the reveal that the unfinished Mardi Gras Indian suit that Tyrone's brother was working on when he was killed is the cloak landed with unexpected power.

Tandy's suicide attempt served as a kind of crucible; in bringing herself to the brink of death, she found a way to harness her gifts. And that newly found control gave her motivation to keep on going. Seeing her use the light to cut through the door of the safe and retrieve the hidden paperwork was definitely her first solid step toward becoming Dagger.

Tyrone going to the police station and asking for Detective O'Reilly: is he taking Tandy's advice, or is he punishing her?

 

[Robert Crawford]

Yes, a strong episode.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'm slowly making my way through the second season of "Luke Cage", but the new episodes of this are priority viewing for me every Thursday night.

I love how the walls between Tyrone and Tandy's previously very separate lives are crumbling, with their lives becoming increasingly intertwined in interesting and unexpected ways. The basketball (and later Tyrone himself) appearing at the Roxxon gala, for instance.

The show continues to utilize their powers in new and unforeseen ways. The expectation is that Tyrone's experience with touching people will be uniformly negative, while Tandy's experience touching people will be uniformly positive. But in tonight's episode, Tyrone's contact with ref and the players on the opposing team allowed him to build understanding and develop empathy. He sees that the referee is racist, and prejudiced against Hancock High because he'd either gotten mugged in that neighborhood or was terrified of getting mugged in that neighborhood. And he sees all the many things that the Hancock players have had to overcome to make it to the big game, things the pampered students at St. Sebastian's couldn't comprehend. So, in the final shot, he throws the game.

Meanwhile, Tandy's brushes with the top executives of Roxxon's gulf subsidiary reveal hopes that are more disturbing than many of the fears we've seen thus far: superiority, domination, violence. And all centered around one man: Peter Scarborough, the person who took everything from Tandy and her mother when her father died. She stages a scenario to trap him and kill him, but when the moment comes, she can't go through with it. Instead, she touches him and see the hopes of a complete psychopath: in the waters of the Gulf, he's stripping wads of cash from the corpses floating in the water and stuffing them in coolers. Horrifying.

Speaking of Tandy: the special effects of her light daggers, and how they manifest and then disappear, is simple but really effective.

The storyline with Detective O'Reilly is smarter than most storylines like that I've seen, but still the weakest part of the show.

When Tyrone learns the truth about his brother's friend -- that he's a drug dealer working with his brother's killer -- I like that he sticks around long enough to hear that it's complicated. Duane may be working with Connors, but he hasn't forgiven him.

 

[Robert Crawford]

A really good episode. Man, I wish I could binge watch this series.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This show just continues delivering for me, week after week. For a show on a network preoccupied with teenage romance, centered around two teenagers who are among Marvel's more well-known superhero romantic pairings, this is a show that isn't at all focused on pushing them into a relationship prematurely. Instead, it's concerned with who they are as people.

They're separate journeys continue to parallel one another, this week with each of them spending the episode with someone tied directly to the traumatic event that defined them both.

Tandy has Mina Hess, a prominent environmental engineer for Roxxon, in her sights. Mina represents a crucial opening into Roxxon management, so Tandy's strategy is tactically sound. The first half of the episode shows Tandy being far more competent than characters on shows like this are usually allowed to be, as she inserts herself into Mina's life and ever-so-carefully plies her for information.

But Mina Hess isn't just a high profile figure in the Roxxon hierarchy. She's also the daughter of Ivan Hess, the engineering partner of Tandy's dad at the time of the rig explosion. And as she spends more and more time with Mina, she finds herself admiring this other woman, and her guard starts to slip, her carefully calibrated circumspection starts to give way to reckless overeagerness. After this exchange:

TANDY: I read this article back in the day, said that Nathan Bowen was the one who caused the explosion, some sort of miscalculation?

MINA: My dad once said that Nathan Bowen never made a miscalculation in his life.​

...Mina walks off camera, so that Tandy's the only one left in the shot. The expression on her face, hearing her father's reputation validated by someone whose opinion mattered to her, was just a wonderful moment of grace.

Tyrone has Duane Porter, one of his brother Billy's two closest friends. This is an even more fraught relationship. Duane is good to Tyrone, does all of the right things to keep him safe and keep him clean. But he's also in a business partnership with the man who killed Billy. Tyrone, to his credit, sees all of it -- the good and the bad. And when everybody's cards are laid down on the table, Tyrone's not interested in condemning Duane; instead his desperate plea is to be better, do better, change into someone Billy would be proud of.

Instead, Conner's quickly established ambush goes instead astray, with Detective O'Reilly putting a bullet through Duane's chest before he could even get a shot off. What quickly becomes clear to the survivors is that there's a witness, someone known to both of them, and he can vanish into thin air.

Tandy's progress with Mina similarly run into upheaval, as Mina carefully catalogues Tandy's missteps, inexpedient questions, and quickly pieces together her true identity. But the scenes that follow showcase how she's beginning to change: Instead of running once she's exposed, she wades in deeper, trying to use gift to step inside the mind of Mina's comatose father, only to discover that it's fear that unlocks the key to that mind.

The scenes between Tandy and Mina reveal new sides to Tandy, starting with the fact that she's is academically inclined like her father despite years of disrupted formal education. She investigated Mina's high level research and deciphered it comprehensively enough to summarize concisely on demand. Perhaps a glimpse of the person she would have been had life and Roxxon not intervened. And then, at the hospital, she displays a sort of unguarded kindness with Ivan Hess that we haven't seen from her before.

When the two of them get back to the church, Tyrone is a complete mess. Another person from his childhood, another link to his brother Billy, is dead. Tandy tries to draw him into a tough, but their powers still don't permit physical contact. It is heartbreaking.

 

[Robert Crawford]

One will live and one will die.