Friday, 27 July 2018

Cloak & Dagger, 'Back Breaker' - July 27


And so, with 1x09 ep done and gone, “C&D’ are at their S1 finale. In their penultimate S1 episode – ‘Back Breaker’ – aka this one, things are looking ambiguous for our duo: Ty is feeling down and empty as Hell… and so’s Dy, only she has figured out that she can do an energy vampire sort of thing and get high on the hopes of others. This is not very heroic…which is why Ty straightens her out during this episode – sort of.

Let us try again, with less rambling. Firstly, 1x09 gave father Delgado something to do – he talked about heroes in literature at length, about their narratives and what will you. This is very impressive, very expositional, but we already went through this sort of thing with Hank Pym in the first ‘Ant-Man’ movie, where Hank became an expositional machine to be justified to be staying in the movie at all, period. It is sad, and father Delgado’s situation is just as sad. His role is to be a spiritual guide to Ty (and maybe to Dy, if he ever meets her), but this is probably the second episode that he has been in so far. Regardless, good luck to him – he needs it.

Secondly, aunt Voodoo and her niece are back. Aunt Voodoo appeared mainly in the episode’s prologue, where she apparently had laid a hex on Roxxon’s pipe network and it worked, as two new Roxxon minions, (male, of course), got contaminated by something that came through the pipework and now they are after Mina – that girl just cannot get a break: first Dy has apparently eaten her happiness, and now this.

Yes, Dy can now eat the hopes (and happiness?) of other people; Ty, maybe, can eat their fear (and despair?) – something like that. This is bad, of course, but the voodoo niece now knows that Dy is the other half of the Divine Pairing or something like that – bring on the fan-shipping. The fact that the two lead actors got amazing chemistry with each other does not hurt this show development at all either. More importantly, the two heroes of ‘C&D’ are down in different ways for different reasons and need to get back up, because more corrupt cops are coming after Ty, while Roxxon’s CEO sent an assassin against Dy’s mom…because he’s a heartless, brainless, greedy sod, who just cannot let it go…and the assassin isn’t much better off – here’s to her getting skewered by Dy’s daggers in the S1 finale next week. Of course, to make things worse for Dy her Roxxon hush money is missing, as is her semi-boyfriend, Liam, who both stole the money and got out of New Orleans ASAP, or the assassin has already captured/killed him and secured the money – ‘Back Breaker’ is not clear on this point. It does not matter to Dy, nor to Ty, who needs to make his great escape. Since he is the night, he’s cloak, he will make it.

…So, ‘C&D’ are playing a tight ship – much more like AC than AoS, for comparison – and are not afraid of a little fourth wall breaking. The catch is that that tightness makes the wall breaking unnecessary – unlike AoS, there are no unexpected twists in the narrative, and everything is quite predictable and enjoyable. So was AC, for that matter, so kudos for ‘C&D’ for imitating it in this way.

Meanwhile, detective Mayhem is having her problems – her boyfriend is dead, and the Corrupt Cop is out and has already beaten her badly, with no one else stopping him. Of course, since she is a ‘hero’, she will still do the right thing, (in the next episode/S1 finale) and become Mayhem proper, as it was implied in the Comic-Con promo. Odds are, she will go full vigilante as well, since her stint in the police did not work out – not in New Orleans, and not in NYC, (from which she had transferred down to New Orleans). In addition, there may be claws. The original Mayhem didn’t really have claws, but the TV version is different, so why not claws?

Anything else? Well, apparently, there is yet another teen Netflix movie going down, ‘To All the Boys that I Loved’ or something like that. Considering that Disney is airing its’ own teen movie – yet another version of ‘Freaky Friday’ later this summer, I am guessing that there may be some sort of a competition going on, but who knows? And more importantly – does anyone care?

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

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