Friday, 22 June 2018

Cloak & Dagger, 'Call' - June 22


Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks on so many levels. With that out of the way for now, ‘C&D’ adventures continue this week, and-?

And in this week’s episode, ‘Call’, T&T, the titular characters, spent getting to know one each other, while – in flashbacks – the audience could see just what their lives are are…normally. Without any supernatural cloak and dagger powers. Shall we discuss it?

Well, we certainly could, there are plenty of topics of discussion, from Tandy’s hypocrisy regarding her condition – yes, her assailant deserves to go to jail, but so’s she, he’s an aspiring rapist, she’s a practicing thief with a drug addiction problem, and detective Mayhem, (no, that’s not her name, but that is what I’m calling her until the show proves that she isn’t that comic character), is an idealist enough to demand that if Tandy wants her help, she’ll need to come clean too. As ‘Call’ showed, Tandy hates that idea, and if she doesn’t, her previous tentative relationship with the detective is over – astrology-wise, Mayhem looks like a Solar Leo, the sun lion, which means that on one hand, she loves helping people, for it feeds her inner ego, and on the other, if she ever suspects that anyone is taking advantage of her, she’ll turn on them immediately, for she hates being fooled more than anything else.  Where were we?

Another theme that rose in ‘Call’ is the role of mothers: Tandy’s mom is a more passive version of Tandy herself, complete with the drug addiction but minus the dagger powers; without her cleaning her act, Tandy will never succeed. …In fact, if it was not for the mom discovering her belongings and went on a binge with them, Tandy would have split and left New Orleans back at the series premiere, as soon as everything hit the fan at once. And, considering that Tandy did take to hide her belongings in the first place, means that her mom was, or is, actively looking for them too, which is a different level of wrongness entirely than just stumbling upon it; and once Tandy figures it out, she’ll…have to be the hero, here, take the moral high ground…or she will lose it, and go directly onto the dark side, Sith-style, (she already got the swords/daggers/whatever). Go team Tandy.

On the other hand, we got Ty and his mother, who pulled him and his father out of squalor and ensured that they are people to be respected and reckoned with, at least by material standards. Materialistically, Ty is better off than Tandy is, but this does not change the fact that he is still angry at the world for its unfairness… but then again – off topic – the world is unfair, it always is unfair, and all the attempts in real life to change it into a fairer one did not work, but rather backfired. The USSR was one of those events. The current version of USA is another…only now the backlash is beginning. You can rush headfirst into a utopia and think that everything will work as planning and that everyone will be happy, but the actual result? You can see it in contemporary real life America for yourself – just read the current news.

Back to ‘C&D’? Ty is trying to overcome his innate fears of cops as he goes to meet detective Mayhem in regards to Tandy’s case, (without knowing all of the details, mind). Judging by the promo ad at the end of ‘Call’, it will be a mixed success, at least initially. Considering that Ty is still cautious around cops, this can still go south, and considering that his arch nemesis the crooked cop will probably be around the precinct at just the right time to overhear him for plot progression, and…we’ll just have wait for the next week’s episode to see if it happens.

Anything else? ‘Luke Cage’ S2 is airing today on Netflix, and compared to ‘C&D’, it is the better Marvel show. Why? Because it is.

Facepalm. Phrasing. But! If ‘C&D’ was supposed to address the various ills of the contemporary American society, and show it in all of its’ glory, then the various Marvel Netflix shows did it too, and for much longer; all of them have at least one season under their belts, they have more experience than ‘C&D’ does, and it shows. Plus - Marvel.

It may sound like something uttered by Captain Obvious, but part of the reason why the viewers want to see all of these shows and movies is because MCU is building upon the well-established comic franchise. People already know Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, the Runaways and so on, and they want to see them live on TV too – and Marvel obliges, on its own, or in partnership with various other companies, including Netflix, and now, in case of ‘C&D’, Freeform. Only, in case of ‘C&D’ and Freeform, where is the Marvel?

Oh, it is there, to be sure, but so far? It is more of a salad dressing, as the ‘C&D’ cast and crew are concerned, apparently, but that is not what the viewers want…as the numbers show. They did get better after the previous episode, ‘Stained Glass’, but are still very low, lower than for AoS’ S5. Considering that we are talking about a seriously low bar here, the failure here sucks even more. Anything else?

Again, ‘Jessica Jones’, for all of its’ own problems, began to tackle the gender inequality problems in the U.S. society before ‘C&D’ did; ‘Luke Cage’ does the same for racial inequality, and as its’ S2 shows, the folks at the Netflix and Marvel tandem took notice of ‘Jessica Jones’ S2 problems – lack of a coherent villain, lack of ties with the general ‘Defenders’ universe – and fixed them. Good for them. And ‘C&D’? So far we got nothing specifically Marvel aside from the titular characters, (and maybe detective Mayhem, cough), and that is not what the viewers want. Not from a technically Marvel show, anyhow. If they wanted something else, there is plenty to choose from on TV, and that is what they do – they watch something else, which is not what ‘C&D’ needs, after all…

Well, this is it for now; see you all soon, hopefully!


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