Red Stewart reviews the fourth episode of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger…
Back in the day, we used to jokingly describe Smallville as “Dawson’s Creek with superpowers.” This was because that show, at least in the earlier seasons, followed tropes that various other young adult soap operas at the time like 90210, Summerland, One Tree Hill, and Melrose Palace were utilizing. Watching the fourth episode of Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, though, I couldn’t help but feel that perhaps we had jumped the gun with that nickname. Yes, it is true that Smallville was reminiscent of other dramas set in high schools, but at the end of the day it never strayed from its superhero roots: there was always a clear-cut antagonist, a super-powered fight, and an ending that made you feel good about yourself.
In the seven years since Smallville ended, we have seen the superhero genre grow exponentially, thanks in large part to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which proved that you could make money without having to rely on just Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. In this era that is projected to last a long time, Cloak & Dagger emerges as (at the time of this article’s publication) the latest investment in the genre, and I say investment for a good reason: creator Joe Pokaski evidently isn’t interested in creating yet another popcorn superhero series. He wants to expand the genre into the realm of serious teenager drama that was once considered too risky to explore.
In doing so, he has crafted a series that can safely be called a neo-soap opera. Yes, Cloak & Dagger is only going to run 10 episodes for its first season, but in just four episodes we have already seen multiple relationships depicted on the small screen that are not only realistic, but decently fleshed out to the point where you can at least understand where the melodrama is coming from: there is of course Tandy and Tyler’s blooming partnership, Tandy and Liam, Tandy and her mother, Tandy and her father, Tyrone and his mother, Tyrone and Evita, Tyrone and his brother, and Tyrone and the corrupt cop Connors. It seems like a lot, but the surprising thing about Cloak & Dagger is how little this affects the pacing. Yes, I complained about the last episode “Stained Glass” dragging in parts, but that was more because of the editing and surreal filmic nature of the plot than the concept itself, which was bringing Tandy and Tyrone closer together.
Soap operas are, obviously, famous for doing this: weaving such an intricate spiderweb of relations that someone is bound to get tangled up and cause a mess later on. The neo-soap opera, on the other hand, is more interested in delving deeper into the hopes and fears that an actual intimate connection between two people breeds, and how these create long-lasting effects that are both good and bad.
With Cloak & Dagger, it helps that Tandy and Tyrone have literal powers that enable them to view a person’s internal thoughts, thereby preventing any unnecessary drama from unfolding later on (once they master it of course). “Call/Response” proved to be the best way to explore this notion as we see the two interact for the first time as cautious friends, aware that they not only have abilities but also a cognitive connection to one another. Like with “Stained Glass,” “Call/Response” is structured in a nonlinear way, intermixing Tandy and Tyrone’s conversation in the church (as seen at the end of “Stained Glass”) with their subsequent activities after that event.
It’s a tactic that, on the one hand, works much better than the surreal nonsense they were going for with “Stained Glass,” thanks in large part to the writers matching the church dialogue with the events that play out. For example, Tandy advises Tyrone to adopt a good cover story if he ever wants to get into the local police department and find out information about Connors: this is played against scenes of Tyrone deliberately vandalizing his bicycle to use as the basis for filing a police report.
On the other hand, though, it can’t help but mess with the narrative flow of the episode. Since the church scenes are supposed to take place, chronologically, before everything else, it doesn’t make sense for some of the things to unfold. For instance, the church dialogues end with Tyrone and Tandy fighting over whether or not it’s worth living, with Tyrone berating Tandy for considering suicide when she has a lot of things going for her. This in turn, presumably, leads Tandy to try and kill herself by jumping off a pier. However, the way the episode is framed, that climactic argument comes at the end, meaning Tandy went through the next few days with suicidal thoughts before ultimately deciding to carry out this tragic act. As a result, it just loses its tension, which is not something you want to do with a serious topic like that. In fact, the entire end scene tags on several heavy issues like race relations, white privilege, and depression without devoting anything more than a couple of seconds to them, which does a great disservice to a series that has done a consistently good job at exploring these things up to that point.
But ignoring the narrative scheme for now, “Call/Response” is ultimately a good episode because, to bring things full circle, it expands upon that melodrama by going into two more relationships: Tandy and her mother’s boyfriend Greg and Tyrone and his father Otis. Both have been seen beforehand, but were not fleshed out until now and I really have to hand it to writers Christine Boylan and Marcus J. Guillory: they make the smart move of not taking the easy way out. It would have been a cliche cop-out to turn Greg into the typical asshole boyfriend and Otis into the typical strict father, but they are instead depicted as three-dimensional characters through new dialogue and some damn good acting on the parts of Gary Weeks and Miles Mussenden respectively.
To start with, Greg is a married man, but he is in a marriage that is evidently toxic. What’s more is that he actually wants to help Tandy’s mother (and by extension Tandy) find out the truth behind the Roxxon disaster years ago. With Otis, Tyrone’s perception of him as a white collar father focused purely on grades is shaken up when Otis takes Tyrone to his upbringing: a ghetto with a thriving art and culture community.
There are some good twists that come from both of these developments that not only make the characters more likable, but also progress the plot further in an organic way. And at the end of the day, that is what a good television show does successfully. I just wish that mashed ending with all the sociopolitical topics hadn’t happened.
Rating: 7/10
Red Stewart
