Cloak & Dagger, 'Colony Collapses' - Aug 3

‘Colony Collapses’, ‘C&D’s’ S1 finale, aired this week. What can be said about it?

Firstly…either a disclaimer or a side-note. Jedi master Que-Gon Jinn had been a bloody genius; his statement that ‘there’s always a bigger fish’ might be said in passing and sounding trite, in a Captain Obvious way, but it was still correct. I thought that my reviews can be bitter in a sarcastic sort of way, and then IGN released its’ review of “Christopher Robin” the movie on YouTube. Man, this is potent stuff; I could never get close to it!..

Back to our topic. In CC, ‘C&D’ delivered as always, especially when it came to acting. The titular leads rocked, as they always do, but the rest of the supporting cast did as well, even though… even though their material was limited. Last week, father Delgado was little more than an exposition machine, and in this episode, the season’s finale, he was shown…in a cameo, as a friend of Ty’s family, (never mind that we have seen little indication of that in the seasons past), and a silent one at that. The role of the exposition machine passed onto aunt Voodoo, as she narrated…to the audience, but officially – to her niece, Evita, who then passed it onto Ty and Dy as they hanged in their semi-secret hideout of a church.

Let us pause for a second – before CC was aired on the screen, there were several clips-‘sneak peeks’ – circulating on YouTube and etc. Well, one of them showed Evita confronting Ty and Dy in the church…and it covered most of their interaction in the season finale, period. As a result, we got an imbalance – the aunt herself had waxed poetic, (and taking-up a large portion of the episode), about the various disasters in the New Orleans’ history, and how various heroic couples somehow resolved them, with one of them dying. And then, on the other hand, we’ve Evita passing the info onto Ty and Dy, and it took about a minute or two – “Hey, it’s my job to tell you that it is your job to save the city from the terrors, one of you is going to die though, bye!” Smooch to Ty and she is gone. Worst sidekick ever – Mina’s actually useful here.

As an aside, by now at least some viewers realized that Raina influenced Evita’s character – yes, AoS’ Raina, who had been…maybe not evil, but certainly selfish, and from time to time even crazy. At AoS’ S2 finale she did the right thing…for whatever reasons…and because AoS was experiencing a major character purge, one of the factors why the show began to go downwards from S3 on – the character/actor loss caused their scripts and plots to be seriously restructured, and it showed. And ‘C&D’?

Also yes, just to a lesser extent. Detective Mayhem’s plotline was resolved…in an unsatisfactory way. Yes, she became Mayhem proper, but the way it was handled? Clumsy. In the first half of CC, the corrupt cop, Detective Connors, was built up to be a force to reckoned, maybe even more so than your average corrupt cop was – and then it promptly collapsed, as the terrors began to invade and kill everyone, including the police. That was the beginning of the end – not only did Ty lose his upgraded superhero cloak and had to deal with his older, more basic and plain-looking one, but the corrupt cop’s demise was absolutely unexpected, as Ty’s cloak of shadows ate him.

Yeah, while Dy can drain people’s hopes, like some sort of an energy vampire, Ty apparently can just consume them, rather like Nyarlathotep, Hastur the King in Yellow, and the rest of the Old Ones can. Howard Lovecraft would have been so proud of him!.. However, before the corrupt cop became consumed, (and seriously, you are fighting some dude that can teleport from place to place, and you are not scared? He really was more than what he looked like), he did shoot and kill Mayhem so that she could return to life as…well, Mayhem. In the original stories, Mayhem became an ally of C&D, but here, apparently, she is being set up as a more Killmonger-like figure.

Another pause. When Killmonger appeared in February (or March?) of 2018, he was set-up by media as a new type of Marvel villain, as some sort of an anti-hero, (kind of how Venom is being set up in his own 2019 film). Yeah, no – Killmonger was a typical Marvel-MCU villain, and he died as one; he may have found some sort of peace at the end of the movie, but that is not enough. If ‘C&D’ team are setting up Mayhem to be like Killmonger, they are setting her up to be a villain, period, so they are deriving from her canon character in the comics. Fair enough, but there is nothing else.

Or rather – there is Mister Jip, who was another ‘C&D’ villain of a character, who was rumored to appear on the show ever since episode 1x06 – but he never did. What gives with that?

Well, probably, the ‘C&D’ cast and crew had to do some restructuring back in the real life, in the manner of AoS (from S2 onwards, in their case). Regardless, they still did a tight job, maybe not as good as AC did, (and these days the titular heroine is Mrs. Christopher Robin instead, cough), but still better than AoS was. Kudos to them, and especially – to their special effects team, who did a bang-up job with the special effects, especially everything Ty and Dy related. It balances-out the choppy time frame – in one scene it’s day, in another – night, in the third – morning, depending on what time of the day/night was needed to dramatize every scene further. Ah well, even Homer sometimes nods and all that.

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

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!

Cloak & Dagger, Comic-Con - July 21

So, about the Comic-Con of July 2017… It has a lot of information, but what interests us now are, well, ‘Cloak & Dagger’. Make no mistake, Comic-Con provided a wealth of information period – about the ‘Arrowverse’ series, (including ‘Black Lightning’), about the upcoming DCEU movies (such as ‘Shazam’ and ‘Aquaman’), about other movies, (such as ‘Godzilla: King of Monsters’, which is going to also feature Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah – no sign of Kong for now), but ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are of a particular interest to me, because, well, I tend to review them, as you’ve seen, if you follow my blog.

What has Comic-Con ‘C&D’ clips showed us? A few things. One is that detective Mayhem and the Corrupt Cop aren’t done with each other yet, and detective Mayhem will certainly become that – Mayhem – in ‘C&D’ S2, because yes, ‘C&D’ themselves got renewed for S2. Good for them, but so far aside from ‘InHumans’ and AC, MCU does not tend to cancel its’ shows – AoS is returning for a S6 next year, the Netflix crowd is going strong, and even ‘Runaways’ were renewed for a S2 back in January (2018). Go team Marvel!

Back to ‘C&D’ proper? The teaser video showed us Ty and Dy growing into a dynamic duo that is dependent on each other, for better or for worse. So far, team Roxxon still appears to be the ultimate bad guy for this season, but it is worth noting that their leader has mentioned both Stark (as in the Iron Man) and Rand (as in the Iron Fist) in the promo video, which is good, because so far all of the entire MCU is a mess; people in particular have pointed out in the past how CA: CW film had ignored the fledgling ‘Defenders’ series, all of them. (No mention of Daredevil or Hell’s Kitchen for example). ‘C&D’ is clearly amending this, which is good.

On the other hand, we see Ty and Dy fighting a crowd of crazed zombies, which is bad. That said, ‘C&D’ has clearly resolved the issue of villains by making them into almost faceless others – like the zombies of TWD and related fandoms, for example, or the wights from GoT. They are inhumane; they have no personality, no rationality or reason, no motivation; just good old-fashioned destruction. The ‘C&D’ version, however, are capable of using tools, such as chains or shovels, which most zombies usually can’t, but this doesn’t really matter in the long run – they can overrun Ty and Dy and their friends through sheer numbers, if nothing else succeeds.

…And Roxxon and its’ quest for power may be behind them; as far as villains go, Roxxon is not so much soulless as brainless and heartless, which is sad. When will master Jip make his move? Maybe he is the promised power for Roxxon, (or had promised power for Roxxon and they were stupid enough to believe him)? If so, it will be interesting to see how that will turn out; master Jip used to work for the Ancient One, (re: the ‘Dr. Strange’ film – remember it back in 2016?), so it will be interesting to see how his partnership with Roxxon will work out, (if there is a partnership, that is).

Anything else? Comic-Con has also showed first footage of the upcoming ‘Titans’ live action reboot, (we’re talking about ‘Teen Titans Go’ series, 2003-2006, I believe). So far this is already a very different show from its’ previous animated incarnations. This already is drawing some criticism, but so what? We ought to first wait and see as to how it will go on the TV screens first before criticising.

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

Cloak & Dagger, 'Ghost Stories' - July 20

…With only episodes left in S1, ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are stepping up their game and most of their cast is back – only father Delgado is absent. And the Voodoo priestess. And her niece, but – with master Jip lurking in the wings, it probably is only a matter of time until they reappear, because ‘Cloak & Dagger’ might be going into the more supernatural side of Marvel, due to the fact that in this universe the titular characters’ powers’ origin is more mystical – in the original comics they became, well, Cloak and Dagger by being experimented upon by a mad scientist type – kind of how it went down with Luke Cage, for example too – and here, on TV, we have a bunch of underwater scenes, and some black-and-white oily powers, and who knows what else – very different. Go, Ty & Dy!

Speaking of Luke Cage, or rather – ‘Luke Cage’ S2, Danny Rand, or rather – Iron Fist, will be airing his S2 soonish as well. So far, we know that this time the villain is someone called the Steel Serpent, but-

But there are at least two canon characters who are named that, so…it’s going to be rather how ‘Luke Cage’ S2 went, with one its’ main villains being the Bushmaster, (are ‘Luke Cage’ crew and co. will be putting the titular hero against snake-themed villains from now on?), the only thing is that it was the ‘other’ Bushmaster, in comics this name is usually used for one Quincy McIvor, while John McIvor is more of a runner-up. With ‘Iron Fist’, though, the situation is reversed – the Steel Serpent who is going to appear is the regular, a bloke named Davos, while the runner-up – the master of the death touch – will appear at a different time, if ever. We will have to wait and see just how MCU’s version of Davos is different from the comics’ version…

Back to ‘Cloak & Dagger’? This episode – ‘Ghost Stories’ – marked a milestone for the characters. On one hand, they have succeeded: Ty the Cloak got the Corrupt Cop put away, while Dy the Dagger confronted the chief of Roxxon over her dad’s death. On the other, they failed: Dy discovered that her late father wasn’t as good as she assumed in her idealism; in particular, he’d seen nothing wrong in some good old fashioned domestic abuse with her mom on the receiving end of it…so she’s going to take Roxxon’s hush money, and-

And nothing. So far Dy is back to hiding her cash in remote places, saving it for later. Mind you, saving money for later is a good thing, but in that case, Dy should have figured out a scheme to legitimize this cash in put in the bank under percentage or bonds or whatever, because just hiding the money does not work, the last time her mom discovered it and spent it all on a drug binge. Wonder what will happen to this cache of Dy’s cash?

Onto Ty? His main big scene will happen next week, and this week’s episode ended when Detective Mayhem comes home and discovers that her obligatory love interest – another cop, who appeared about once per scene every few episodes or so – is dead and stuffed in the fridge, with everything else in it pulled out beforehand to make space for him. This is ‘Godfather’ done in an obsessive-compulsive way; maybe it is master Jip finally making his own move?

Otherwise…no, this is it. ‘Ghost Stories’ was another good episode, masterfully done and with plenty of action and drama that was so lacking in the first few S1 episodes. Sadly, the numbers for the show still remain low, and with AoS’ remaining Disney/MCU’s obligatory supplement canon TV show, while the Netflix crowd is still more successful than ‘C&D’ are, the future of ‘C&D’ is still up in the air.

…Well, this is it for ‘Ghost Stories’; see you all next time!

Cloak & Dagger, 'Lotus-Eaters' - July 13

Now, what about ‘C&D’? In this week’s episode, ‘Lotus-Eaters’, they actually get to do heroic deeds…to an unusual extent, but let us tone down the excitement a bit and try to go about it slowly.

Firstly, the episode’s title. Initially, the lotus-eaters were featured in…the ‘Odyssey’, yes Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, though in modern adaptations of this classic they tend to be overlooked in favor of bigger, showier encounters – the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, etc. (And James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ is something else – maybe the lotus-eaters are featured there…if you want to sieve through all of these words to encounter whether or not the lotus-eaters are there…good luck. Also, you will be wasting your life. Where were we?)

Right, Homer’s lotus-eaters. Odysseus encountered them very early in his odyssey: a bunch of people who just spent their time eating sweet lotus and nothing else. This is a throw-back/reference to Hesiod’s golden age, when humanity had nothing to worry about but just lived peacefully and placidly, with about as much personality as an average modern pencil or a bookmark have. 

Eventually, they faded away and the silver age began – Hesiod’s version, but this is not important right now. What is important is that just like Hesiod’s golden age humans; the lotus-eaters were devoid of personalities, (while even the Sirens had some sort of a character in the initial novel) and cared only about eating their lotus.

Another note: in the modern times, ‘lotus’ is referred to a relative of the water lilies, but in Homer’s epic? It was a magical, mythical plant that appears to be more similar to real life jujube and its’ cousins instead. So what about ‘C&D’?

Both Dy and Ivan Hess succumbed to their version of lotus, which, in the ‘Odyssey’ gave its’ consumers perfect memory in exchange for a complete memory loss and energy drain – the lotus-eaters didn’t do anything but ate their lotus, and when Odysseus’ crewmembers did the same thing, they joined the lotus-eaters in their sloth. (Inactivity, not animal). Odysseus, for his part, usually wasn’t slothful, (especially if given a choice), nor was he particularly mild, meek, or politically correct – he had the rest of his crewmen capture their afflicted fellows, tie them onto their benches and to their oars, and set sail to his next adventure. Harsh, but so’s Odysseus.

And so’s Ty, when he got Dy to snap out of it, from getting her lotus – listening to her father’s voice. He used some tough love to achieve that, and then Dy used the same technique on Ivan Hess, nevermind that he does not look anything like an Ivan. As it was discussed at other times, for a presumably politically correct and progressive show, ‘C&D’s’ approach to racial issues is certainly clichéd, and not in an astute way. However, it works, at least to a point – Dy and Ty have reunited the good doctor with his daughter, so one superhero mission accomplished, and that is speaking literally. ‘The Lotus-Eaters’ were all about Ty and Dy being super-heroic, traipsing around an exploding rig while fighting insane oil rig workers, so there!

…The other side is that ‘The Lotus-Eaters’ featured only Ty and Dy from the main cast and only the Hesses from the recurring cast. Considering that earlier in the summer 2018, when ‘C&D’ were just getting started, there was an online featurette that featured many more people, including father Delgado of whom almost nothing was seen in the entire ‘C&D’ series so far, this is kind of sad. Also worrisome, as AoS also began to play ‘musical chairs’ with its cast as its’ seasons wore on, its’ popularity has fallen, as had its’ numbers, including the number of the viewers. Considering that ‘C&D’ already very low numbers, (lower than those of ‘Reverie’), this is not good. And yes, in part it might be because the first half of ‘C&D’ was more of a prequel as the titular characters settled into their world and began to grow as people; Dy in particular, as she realized that before she’d met Ty, she was a very bad person herself, but now she’s genuinely changing, so good luck to her!

…Anything else? Well, now the action is speeding up in ‘C&D’ – Ty is up to confronting the Corrupt Cop in the next episode. Good for him. Now, obviously, ‘C&D’ are compensating for the initial episodes of inactivity, but it is still debatable, if this strategy, from slow to fast, well, fast, is a good one, especially when you got just 10 episodes in your initial season to work around in. Oh well, you have to deal the hand you have been given, with ‘C&D’ or otherwise.

That is it for this week’s episode of ‘C&D’; I will see you all soon!

Reverie, 'Pas De Deux' - July 12

‘Reverie’ is back this week. Yay!

Well, it is ‘yay’ because otherwise, there is not too much left to talk about. Well, we can talk about the ants in the Marvel™ franchise, more specifically – in the Ant-Man and Wasp movies, (there are two now), how they can fly. The twist is in the ants themselves.

…As far as insects go, ants’ closest relatives are bees, wasps, and the like. In many of those insects, there are three adult morphs: the worker, which is technically female, but is actually sexless, the male, more usually known as the drone, and the queen – the fertile female. The ants have all of these morphs, but only the drones and queens retain their wings…for the mating flight. After that, the males die, and the fertile female queens go underground and start new ant colonies – sir David Attenborough showed all of this in one or another of his specials. (The termites are something else, not very closely related to the ants, and so we will discuss them another time). What interests us now, if we have no life, is does the Ant-Man fly an ant drone into battle, or an ant queen?

…And now that we have acknowledged that, we have no social life, back to ‘Reverie’? In this week’s episode, ‘Pas De Deux’, we encounter an ex-ballerina, who has lost everything in a bicycle accident, (including her unborn baby)…and then regained it all in the reverie, with the usual twist: she is dying in the real life, and has to be brought back, or else.

In a secondary twist, Alexis seems to have changed her attitude towards other people a lot, and now does not take their attempts at impromptu suicide by the reverie lying down: if Mara doesn’t get them out of there nicely, she will pull them out of it manually, by physically unplugging their machine parts. That course of action is fraught with its’ own risks, but since it was allocated only a single scene, we cannot really talk about it very much – not right now.

The other plotlines include Mara’s ex-fiancé, (and it’s a man, not a woman – there aren’t too many same-sex plotlines going in ‘Reverie’ yet, but this is just their first season, this may change in the future), who is also the doctor, (psychiatrist) of the ex-ballerina, so there’s some tension as well. In addition, Mara is continuing to confront her inner demons, but, presumably, the main point of PDD is that the ex-ballerina has accepted her fate and will continue teaching her sister’s children’s ballet school, while the latter is quietly dying from multiple sclerosis. Have I mentioned that PDD was especially dark even for a ‘Reverie’ episode? No? Then did I mention that PDD was based on the AoS plotline where Mack refused to leave the framework because he had his daughter in there, (she died a long time in real life before the AoS S1 events began)? Also no? Well, now I have, and I will say it again: ‘Reverie’ has taken that plot line and dealt with it much better than AoS had done, so there.

Anything else? Before ‘Reverie’ had taken their week off last week, their numbers have actually gone up slightly, so that’s good news…provided that their week off didn’t bit them in the proverbial foot this time – so far it is too early to tell about the numbers. ‘C&D’ are… still doing worse than ‘Reverie’ does, even though they are really trying to do something about it…but that is a talk for another time…

However, for now, this is it. See you all soon instead!

Ant-Man and the Wasp - July 8

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ movie premiered this month. Wow! It was great.

It was very clever, too. Whenever you talk about MCU and its’ problems regarding the various TV series, (and also online/streaming/torrent series), you may forget that its’ movies are something else, very masterful. This does not mean that they are flawless – when the ‘Black Panther’ came out in February 2018, it was revealed to have its’ own issues, and so does ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’: already there are critics who complain about this or that problem – usually an ‘ableist problem’ – in the movie. Fair enough.

However, what we are paying attention to is that the ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ are separate from the A:IW film; in fact, the movie takes place chronologically before the A:IW film and remains separate from the rest of MCU; in the initial ‘Ant-Man’ movie there was a scene where the titular character fought the Falcon (Sam Wilson) as something of a prequel to CA:CW film, (in which the Ant-Man fought on the side of Cap, rather than Tony), as well as a tie-in. Nothing like that here; yes the Ant family gets affected very severely by Thanos’ titanic finger snap, yet because the Ant-Man ends up trapped in the Quantum realm, (or the Quantum zone, whatever the proper canon name is), it is unlikely that he will be a part of the fourth Avengers’ movie either, because now he has to escape it on his own, and that will take time.

In the previous film, mind, Yellowjacket (Darren Cross) was trapped in the Quantum realm already, so maybe in the next film Scott will encounter Yellowjacket there…just to escape the Quantum realm; right now, Scott just isn’t experienced and powerful enough to do it on his own. It is just as possible, of course, that Ghost and Goliath and the remainder of his friends will do it from ‘this side’, so we’ll have to wait and see as to what the next Ant-Man film will deliver, but!

But the fact that Ghost did not die during the duration of the film, (and neither did Sonny, FYI), marks another notable break from the MCU movie traditions, where villains died, (even Loki did, sob), at the end of each movie. Thanos did not die, but he is Thanos, and besides – the fourth Avengers movie is coming forth eventually, so he will probably die then instead. The Red Skull is back, but so far, he remained below the radar, so there is no indication of the role he will play in the future MCU installments. Killmonger was sang accolades to by the various critics, but he still died, so he is off the table, for now. But Ghost is alive, and unlike Sonny, she has her own ideas and knowledge about the Quantum realm, so now maybe she will play a role in the next, future movie, and that is a notable deviation from the pre-established MCU canon – in the movies, AoS, Netflix series and so forth. (Cough Black Mariah Cough). Go, MCU – you have made several breakthroughs here without anyone apparently realizing it!

Pause. Ghost’s fate was the first breakthrough, and the second-?

Back to the Ant-Man and the Quantum realm. By staying in the Quantum realm, the Ant-Man will avoid being drafted, (or re-drafted) by the Avengers to go onto their Happy Thanos Hunt, and as such his adventures will continue to present a separate plot line that regardless follows the main plot of MCU, all of its’ phases, so to speak. MCU tried to do so in AoS, by making it the supplement show to its’ movies, but it didn’t work – from the second half of S2 onwards, (or maybe even from the very beginning, the very first season), AoS went all over the place in regards to its’ own plot and script, so now, this second attempt, via movies, is much better! Anything else?

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ is a fun movie. Maybe it is not very deep, the ‘Black Panther’ film got a different reception from it, but this is okay. People are enjoying it, and this is still miles better than ‘Solo’, the Disney hybrid with SW rather than Marvel. Go team Marvel/Disney!

Oh, and one another thing. There’s no particular political correctness in it, (though the ‘Screen Junkies’ on YouTube claimed that Luis, introduced in the first ‘Ant-Man’ movie was the first Latino-American character in MCU, and now he’s also back), unlike, well, ‘C&D’, which recently aired a clip where Ty is getting beat-up by several of his Anglo-American classmates…

Another pause. Here is the thing. Ever since the Donald became the president, the various media-related companies, organizations, etc., grew increasingly stringent because ever since his election as such, they were shown the actual limits of their power over the American society – and they do not like it. They do not like it, and ever since the 45^th presidential election, they have done their best to prove that this is not so, they are the top power in the U.S. society – but they are not. All of their attempts to prove otherwise ultimately fail, but in the process of these failures they are making the American society ever worse – and ‘C&D’, (remember how Marvel™ has distinctively distanced itself from this duo now?), is one of their attempts. Fine, yes, ‘C&D’ is trying to reveal the ulcers of the modern society, both gender and racial inequality. Fine. How do C & D, Ty & Dy, fix it? ‘C&D’ has already spent about half of its first season just setting them up – setting all of the characters up, and by now many of them are still cardboard clichés, in one way or another; they may make most of their villains heterosexual Anglo-American men, but how does that make real life America a better place? Rather, ‘C&D’ and similar TV shows are provoking further conflicts, all the way up to potential pogroms, (regardless of color of both sides)… ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ movie avoids all of that, so congratulations to them for it too. The movie does have people of color in it, including Ghost herself, but while they are not in the main roles – not yet – neither are they diminished, not really. Go, team Marvel™, again! No wonder it seems to disassociate itself from ‘C&D’… Good for Marvel™, it seems…

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

PS: Here is a choral angel with a broken soul template, from Pathfinder Bestiaries. How does it look?

BROKEN SOUL CHORAL CR 8

XP 2,400

NE Small outsider (angel, evil, extraplanar)

Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect evil; Perception +16

Aura protective aura

DEFENSE

AC 19, touch 14, flat-footed 16 (+3 Dex, +9 natural, +1 size)

hp 116 (8d10+72)

Fort +6, Ref +9, Will +9; +4 vs. poison, +4 resistance vs. evil

DR 5/-; Immune acid, cold, petrification; Resist electricity 10, fire 10, sonic 5; SR 17

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft., fly 50 ft. (good)

Melee slam +10 (1d3+1)

Ranged piercing hymn +12 touch (4d6 sonic plus deafened)

Special Attacks agonized wail (DC 19), baleful gaze (DC 19), countersong, harmonize, torturous touch (DC 19)

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 8th; concentration +11)

Constant—detect evil

At will—aid, ghost sound (DC 13), dispel evil (DC 18), dispel magic, invisibility (self only), plane shift (self only), remove curse, remove disease, remove fear

3/day—cure moderate wounds, sculpt sound (DC 16), sound burst (DC 15)

STATISTICS

Str 13, Dex 16, Con 21, Int 16, Wis 14, Cha 17

Base Atk +8; CMB +8; CMD 21

Feats Alertness, Diehard (B), Endurance (B), Great Fortitude, Improved Initiative, Toughness

Skills Acrobatics +14, Diplomacy +14, Escape Artist +11, Fly +20, Knowledge (planes) +14, Knowledge (religion) +14, Perception +16, Perform (sing) +14, Sense Motive +16

Languages Celestial, Draconic, Infernal; truespeech

ECOLOGY

Environment any good-aligned planes

Organization solo, duet, or Ensemble (3-8)

Treasure standard

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Countersong (Su) A choral can attempt a Perform (sing) check to counter magic effects that depend on sound. This ability functions as the bard ability of the same name.

Harmonize (Sp) When chorals work together, they can use their complementary voices to create mystical harmonies. Two or more chorals within 60 feet of one another can use calm emotions or heroism as a spell-like ability, four or more chorals can use shout, and six or more chorals can use greater heroism or holy word. Only the choral that actually casts the spell-like ability in question must take a standard action to achieve this effect—the other chorals need only take swift actions during the same round.

Piercing Hymn (Su) As a standard action, a choral can launch a concentrated blast of sonic energy from its mouth as a ranged touch attack. This attack has a range of 90 feet with no range increment and deals 4d6 points of sonic damage. Any creature struck by a piercing hymn must succeed at a DC 17 Fortitude save or be deafened for 1d4 minutes. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Cloak & Dagger, 'Mirrors' - July 6

‘C&D’ continues with its’ regularly scheduled programming. ‘Reverie’ did not. No, seriously – this week it took time off, and it is coming back next week. Considering that its’ numbers are still low, this might not be the best strategic choice for ‘Reverie’, but who knows? Maybe it is.

As for ‘C&D’, this time around, in ‘Funhouse Mirrors’, Ty and Dy met some new people, or – not so new ones. Firstly, Dy the Dagger met the scientist that was introduced to us in the previous week’s episode, Nina Hess, and she is a racial stereotype. She is also a social stereotype – the idealistic, tough, self-sufficient, independent, intelligent, modern scientist who is only loosely associated with Roxxon, and who doesn’t fit in with them. No, really – ‘Mirrors’ also showed Nina’s Roxxon boyfriend, and they have nothing in common, not at all. This might be ‘C&D’s’ point – one of them – and the main reason as to why Nina and her father are P.O.C’s from China, rather than WASPs, as of Roxxon’s employees seem to be. Can you go even more cliché?

Yes, as Ty reconnects, or tries to reconnect, with one of his late brother’s friends, who is now a drug runner minion of the Corrupt Cop. The latter sets up Detective Mayhem to shoot him, which she does, while the Corrupt Cop goes chasing after Ty, who oversaw it all, and escaped only via his teleportation powers. This is wonderful, yet, oddly, the Corrupt Cop seemed to be only shaken after seeing a teen disappear into thin air in mid-stride. Yes, this is the New Orleans and all, but so far only Ty and Dy showed to have any over powers; yes, there’s Ty’s girlfriend and her auntie the voodooists, but-

On one hand, they were in this episode too, as they did a Tarot card reading regarding the past, present and future. Having done them – Tarot readings – myself, I’m not sure just how they relate to the voodoo culture, but let us be honest: this version of ‘C&D’ seems to be mostly about original content, while ‘Runaways’ were more balanced, (but they are better established than ‘C&D’ is also), while AoS and AC never had any canon content, not initially, (and apparently not now either). ‘C&D’ seems to be caught in the middle, and it has problems with the cast.

No, let us not talk about how a Sino-American family seemed to have acquired a last name of Hess. (It sounds European, not Asian, so maybe there is some backstory that would be helpful if it ever came out?) The point is that both Dy’s mom and father Delgado have vanished from the show at the point, and Ty’s girlfriend and her auntie have minimal roles, especially in this episode. We have seen this before, especially in AoS, when the show’s crew could not keep a full cast full on and had to juggle plot lines and cast characters from one episode to another. The fact that AoS began to hemorrhage cast members from the second half of S2 onwards did not help, while the fact that ‘C&D’ currently are not experiencing this is a good thing, yet they are beginning to juggle characters too all the same. Considering that this attitude cost AoS numbers in the long run, it is doubtful that ‘C&D’ will handle it any better, since they are nowhere as well-off as AoS had been in its’ first season. Where were we?

Detective Mayhem killed the ex-friend of Ty’s late brother, as the Corrupt Cop might have expected her to. He is not a supervillain, but he is a competent villain all the same, and the two of them are currently equally matched to decide the winner right now.

Back to Dy? If Ty’s revelation with straightforward – this could have been him, if his parents, (and especially his mother), did not get him a better life, (and these characters are absent for this episode too, incidentally), then Dy’s is not exactly so. Her father might have been the boss of Mr. Hess, (now comatose to a point that not even cookies with cardamom can snap him out of it), but Dy herself never wanted to be a scientist; she wanted to be a ballerina, a point that was clearly told to the audience especially at the series’ premiere. If things have gone right, with the rig and all, then Dy and Nina would still be two very different people, and-

And Dy’s father did not die in the explosion: rather, due to a collision, their car fell from a bridge in an accident, where Dy met Ty when he dived after his shot brother will into the water himself. Dy and her family are not tied to the rig and its’ explosion directly, which raises the possibility that team Roxxon are just cheap assholes who looked for an easy scapegoat, and Dy and her mom were just that – easy and convenient, only now this karma is coming back to bite team Roxxon in the ass, for if Dy and her mom hadn’t been reduced to being white trash, Dy would never go on her crusade against Roxxon as soon as she had anything, (and someone), in her corner. Rather, she would have been a ballerina, the end. Thus, she and Nina do not really match up – not as each other’s ‘reflection’, not as anything. It seems that somewhere – and we are in the mid-point of ‘C&D’ S1 – ‘C&D’ had to reset its’ script and backstories on some level at least. AoS did it repeatedly, and it harmed, rather than helped that show. We will just have to wait and see how ‘C&D’ handles it.

Well, this is it for now; see you all in the future instead!

Cloak & Dagger, 'Offensive' - June 29

As summer of 2018 continues to pick up momentum, Marvel’s™ ‘Cloak & Dagger’ continue…to just continue. By now, they are in their fifth episode, which is a midway point, and so far, things are only beginning to get started. The first four episodes were more of an origin story than anything else, and most reviewers are not particularly impressed with the show. Am I impressed with the show? No, and I told you the reason why before – there is no Marvel™.

I.e., in this particular episode – ‘Princeton Offensive’ – Tandy tried to use her good looks…and also her powers, but, nevertheless, she still looks good here; for a semi-hobo, a criminal, and a semi-drug addict this girl certainly looks posh and healthy; anyhow, she infiltrated Roxxon to discover its’ secrets. From what we have seen on screen, Roxxon is a typical Wolfram & Hart client, whose members would screw each other in a heartbeat; Angel and co from ‘Angel the Series’ (AtS) are sorely missed here, but sadly, so far ‘C&D’ fandom is a small one, and there’re no signs of a crossover yet, so Tandy will have to do it on her own…with some help from Tyrone, perhaps. ‘Course, now that Tyrone has a girlfriend of his own now, so this can become complex, but who knows?..

Pause. Let us take a deeper breath and start again. Tandy has infiltrated the ‘Evil Inc.’ aka Roxxon, whose members behave just as evil corporate… villains are expected to behave. They are also, well, Anglo-Americans… with one exception. Secondly, Tyrone himself is behaving as a… ‘typical’, or perhaps even – a ‘stereotypical Afro-American’ teenager, complete with screwing his girlfriend, who is also an Afro-American. As a contrast, last week’s episode of ‘Reverie’ – ‘Blue’ – had an interracial semi-couple; there was no sexual content or anything like that; actually, there’s very little sexual content in ‘Reverie’ at all, which might be another reason as to why this show is still not very popular among the viewers, but at least two of the characters – Charlie and Monica – are ‘black-and-white’ themselves and are in a relationship. For a show that is supposed to be ‘edgy’ ‘C&D’ got none of that; instead, there is some sort of an official unofficial segregation, a tangible ‘us vs. them’ mentality in both the Anglo- and the Afro-American populations of the New Orleans, and that raises a question: what year is this supposed to be? 1978, maybe? Or the creative team behind ‘C&D’ is trying to create some sort of an American dystopia, here? Idiots, just look at the real life USA – the dystopia that is rising here has nothing to do with racial segregation, at least…not entirely.

Another pause. What is the ‘C&D’ finale game, here, for right now, there is no indication of it; in fact, T&T are still doing their best to stay apart from each other. This can certainly work, but… pre-story – throughout their incarnations in MCU, C&D needed each other to function, as much as they needed anything, or anyone, else. Here this does not appear to be so; in fact, T&T tend to use their other powers – seeing the hopes and fears of the other people – instead. Okay, but, that is not ‘C&D’.

Yes, it is childish and immature to exclaim that the Marvel™/Freeform™ creative team here is in the wrong, and if Marvel™ hadn’t been associated with this show, (so instead of ‘C&D’ we had something more generic ala ‘Tru Blood’), then there wouldn’t be half as many issues: it’d be ‘just a show’, like how ‘Reverie’ is, whose own numbers may be low, but still twice as high than those of ‘C&D’. Again, considering that ‘C&D’ is a Marvel™ show, and ‘Reverie’ isn’t, this is surprising, and not exactly in a good way – just what is the relationship between Marvel™ and Freeform™ here, how their cooperation works?..

Stepping away from such lofty heights, there is still the fact that the world of ‘C&D’ seems to be populated with clichés; Anglo-American clichés, Afro-American, and the episode’s finale introduced a Chinese-American character, who is extremely intelligent, very nerdy, and works for a big company, becoming a success. Maybe this new character is intended to be a foil for Tandy, but so far? She is also yet another cultural cliché. For a supposedly edgy show, ‘C&D’ appears to be too invested into a bad version of cultural appreciation, and that just is not good. In real life, if you are resorting to villainy to become successful, you have to be skillful about it, because otherwise? You will fail. In the past, DW tried to become a propaganda piece for the US – its’ government, (pre-Donald), its’ military might – and it backfired. Maybe ‘C&D’s’ own secret agenda will backfire on them too – and it will suck…

Well, this is it for now; thank you and see you in the future!

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!

Cloak & Dagger, 'Stained Glass' - June 15

The third episode of ‘Cloak & Dagger’, ‘Stained Glass’, was aired earlier this week. And-?

And judging by the numbers from the first two episodes, the series’ – and the season’s – premiere, the response was underwhelming. Why?

Again, let us talk about what ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are doing – they are tackling those pesky social issues; for example, Tyrone the Cloak is an angry young Afro-American man who’s got the weight on his shoulders – wait. Did we hear this before?

More precisely, we might have read it before – in ‘The Kane Chronicles’ by Rick Riordan, who has already appeared in our previous discussions. There, one of the main protagonists is Carter Kane, who is also a ‘young black man’, who always needs to be at his best because the world will always be ready to judge him, as it does Tyrone. Carter may be younger than Tyrone is, at the beginning of the chronicles he is just about 12 years of age or so, while Tyrone is closer to 17 or 18, but there is another difference too: Carter’s mother, the late Ms. Kane, was white. British too, but that makes Carter half-and-half, (or whatever politically correct term there is), and he has a sister, Sadie, who does not look like him, (or their father, Julius), but more like their mother – i.e., a true daughter of England. Thus, ‘the Kane Chronicles’ don’t tackle interracial relationships right away, or in the manner of ‘Cloak & Dagger’, but tackle them it does, or rather – it did, since ‘The Burning Maze’, Riordan appears to have toned down the politically progressive elements in his novels by a lot, and this brings us back to ‘Cloak & Dagger’ and its issues.

Or rather – America’s issues. In RF, the Kremlin government’s treatment of the Mausoleum mummy is something of a running joke these days: they should rather put up and bury him, or shut up and leave him be forever. The previous president, Boris Yeltsin, did attempt to bury him, but failed, and got buried instead, becoming, perhaps, Russia’s first leader to literally drink himself to death. These days, he’s mostly forgotten, but many of Russia’s current problems, including its’ leader, stem from Yeltsin’s reign – but he did attempt to bury the past, while his successor, Vladimir Putin, does not. Neither he does attempt to properly resurrect it, especially officially, but that is okay, that is all a part of his plan to turn RF into some sort of a variant banana republic, because of ideology – or rather, the lack of it. U.S.S.R. had ideology, the Old Russian Empire had ideology – sort of, but still, and the current RF – not so much. These days, the mummy embodies it, this confusion and lack of direction as to where to go – to the past, to U.S.S.R. and the old glory, or to future, to the West and the new glories. Until this is decided, until a statement is made one way or another, RF is stuck in a sociopolitical limbo, at the metaphorical crossroads, and is going nowhere, which is the worst choice of all.

Back in U.S.A., something similar is going with the issues of ‘slavery’ (mostly in the past) and ‘racism’, (which is much more current). Let us be honest here – slavery was one of the worst social inventions of humanity, it belongs in history’s refuse and whoever tries to reanimate it must be lynched. But-?

But on the other hand, slavery is firmly in the American past, as is the American Confederacy: nobody is trying to resurrect it either; none of the states are trying to get themselves out of the Union – at least not yet. Whatever issues are going on in the U.S. right now, slavery isn’t one of them; and racial inequality?

Racial inequality rises from slavery, that is true. Only…if the American society buries the slavery for good, (just as the Russian society should bury Lenin), then the issue of racial inequality also diminishes and the American society can solve it finally, though with rather radical measures, such as corporal punishment for those who use it, the racial slurs, etc. Some problems do not need a carrot to fix it, only a stick.

Only…that would be an intrusion into the private lives of the American citizens and would go against the American philosophy of the rights of the individual trumping the rights of the state, (pun intended). In the past, in the 1970s, when the racial integration only began, the American government in D.C. had to use the military to ensure that the individual states would obey them…which they did, but with reluctance, and plenty of it. The Americans have long memories, odds are that if D.C. tried something like this now, it would backfire badly upon them instead – things have changed that much from the 1970s, it seems…

So where does it put ‘Cloak & Dagger’? Why, nowhere, it seems. Not unlike how Kremlin avoids the issue of Lenin’s post-mortem existence, so does D.C. not interfere directly in the matters of race and racism – free will and free speech are wonderful, but this means that any sort of federal propaganda, official and especially unofficial, is inefficient. The audience members either are already pro- and don’t need such shows as ‘Cloak & Dagger’ to drive the point home, or are contra- and won’t be convinced by such shows; in fact, they are more likely to be annoyed, and as ‘Solo’ and related issues showed, the backlash can be bad. In the case of ‘Cloak & Dagger’ though, this just resulted in some bad numbers, the end. Hopefully, things will get better in the future, but let us not get too optimistic at the moment…

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

For Honor: new characters - June 9

Warnings, spoilers ahead. Turn back, or go forth – we begin.

Firstly. FH has made a new declaration/promo – we see some Knights, (and maybe Vikings), in some Middle East land, complete with palm trees, and one of the Knights is about to be hit in the face with – a falchion. Not a nodachi, which is a sabre-like blade itself, but a genuine falchion, and the hand that holds it, seems to be dressed in some sort of Middle East fashion too. Neat!

…Or maybe it is a pirate – you know, XVII century pirate, armed with a cutlass. In DW, the pirate was the knight’s opponent, and the knight was armed with the weapons used by the team Knight of FH – the sword, the Morningstar, (in FH, it is called the flail instead), the halberd, (the poleaxe in FH, but the principle is the same). Ergo, it is possible that we are going to get pirates out of the PotC franchise, but that would mean official firearms – black powder weapons, but so far, FH did not have even those, so most people think that FH is introducing Saracens, or maybe Mamluks, next instead.

That makes more sense than PotC-like pirates do. Not only we are talking no firearms, (no more so than the Knights, who are out of the Crusade/pre-Crusade era than from a later time), but it would take care of the South neatly too. The Knights are the West, (Europe, that is), Vikings are the North, (just ask Thor from MCU), and the Samurais are the East, (duh). This leaves the South, and whom can you choose?

Africans, (not Afro-Americans, BTW)? In DW, in S2, the Zande warrior defeated the Aztec jaguar knight, even though the Jaguar knight had the deadliest weapon in that episode – the maquahuitl. Bet that you cannot say that word three times fast, but it was a greatclub, studded with razor-sharp flakes of obsidian, and it could decapitate a horse, yet the Zande warrior prevailed still – his other weapons carried him through, especially the kpinga, (one wonders what the Black Panther would think of that), points-wise. As it was written before, DW had a problem with its numbers/experts in some of its’ episodes, but in this one? Everything was fair, the experts were detached and reasonable, and the Zande warrior won. Only… he had no armor, and in S1, when Shaka Zulu went against William Wallace, he lost.

True, Shaka Zulu lost because he used a spit of poison against William Wallace’s spiked buckler and dagger combo, but the lack of armor did not help either, (DW S1 had been weird like this). FH has its characters all armored… the Gladiator has no armor, but as we’ve discussed it in the past, a gladiator was no knight, he was a pit fighter from the Roman Republic & Empire, which was located in southern Europe… right. Southern Europe is still Europe, and strictly speaking, south is either Africa, and the using of its’ native people by Westerners can become a PR nightmare very quickly, or the Mesoamerica, which brings us back to the Aztec jaguar knight – it was this guy and his friends. They were armored, but their armor was padded cotton mostly, so it just is not up to the standards of the armors used in FH, and they are important – just look at all the weekly FH updates and their pretty colors, would you?..

Nope, neither Africans nor Mesoamericans really function in the FH world, so we are probably stuck with Saracens, Mamluks, or whatever FH will call them. Maybe they will be Pirates instead, but it is too much of a stretch, actually. Anything else?

Couple of other points. One is that ‘Solo’ shows that Disney has maneuvered the SW universe, (at least its’ movies) into an area not unlike the one inhabited by such TV shows as ‘Roseanne’, ‘Gilmore Girls’, even ‘Fuller House’ and ‘Girl Meets World’ – they tried to coast into new glory on the back of the old, and it backfired on them; ‘Fuller House’ seems to have gotten over it somewhat, ‘Girl Meets World’ has ended on a higher note, ‘Roseanne’ – let us just not go there, and ‘Gilmore Girls’… not so much. ASP, who invented them in the first place, may not be a supporter of the Donald, but she clearly had ideas of how GG should end, and it showed in their four-part reboot, which did not quite mesh with the series’ initial finale, and it hurt the GG franchise. Not as much as Roseanne’s twit (or whatever) hurt the ‘Roseanne’ franchise, but it still rankled to a point where no next sequel is in plan for them. Will SW end up like this? We have discussed this already and will have to see what happens after ‘Solo’…

And secondly, in ‘Cloak & Dagger’ we’ve got the detective Brigid O’Reilly, and it matters not that she’s yet another stereotype, (even ‘Blindspot’ got over them in S3, regardless of its own problems), but she seems to be destined to become a vigilante from ‘Cloak & Dagger’ comic series named Mayhem. Considering that for now Marvel™ is downplaying the comic side of the ‘Cloak &Dagger’ equation, this statement might be somewhat premature to tell, we will have to wait and see what the future episodes of this series will bring us…

This is it for now…see you all soon!

PS: And ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ movie will be discussed some other time.

Cloak & Dagger, series premiere - June 8

‘Cloak & Dagger’ premiered this week. How can it be described?

As – a bagel. A very well done, nicely toasted, cream-cheese-augmented bagel, but still a bagel. Just a bagel, or a great bagel, but still a bagel. There is no surprise about it, no twist – and that already sets it apart from AoS and possibly from AC.

What ‘Cloak & Dagger’ – this version of them, anyhow – is about? On one hand, there’s Tandy the Dagger, who was a princess and an aspiring ballerina, but now that her father is gone, and her mother is a drunken ho, Tandy herself is a semi-drug addict and a thief and is about as anti-heroic as you can get, especially that now she can manifest potentially deadly daggers made from solid light. Her archnemesis is the Roxxon Corp., and she will do anything to bring it down and avenge her father’s death and mother’s humiliation. And Cloak is Tyrone, a young Afro-American man, who raised himself from poor roots alongside his surviving family but cannot rest easily while his brother’s killers – corrupt police officers of NOPD – are alive and free. His powers are his trademark cloak of shadows that can teleport him away from danger, among other things.

Sounds cheesy? But that is what 2018’s version of ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are about. Tandy & Tyrone are living parallel lives that are only beginning to touch each other, (in a non-sexual way, here), but both of them are already ‘little people’ whose lives were ruined by ‘the man’ in bad ways. Frankly, the only TV show that has this depicted in a more blatantly obvious manner is ‘Killjoys’, who are, themselves, an imitation of AoS, but done in such a manner that they come across as a fairly original TV series, very politically correct and progressive too, whereas ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are not. Politically correct and progressive, that is. Yes, ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are crossing the racial lines in their relationship, (we’re talking about the titular heroes, here), but so far there’s none of that on one hand, and on the other…as we’ve talked before, Marvel™ seems to be downplaying ‘Cloak & Dagger’, as opposed to ‘Runaways’ – no new comic books about these heroes seem to be appearing on shelves.

Let us get back to real life USA – for them, apparently, interracial relationships are a big deal…or at least this is how their mass media presents them. In Canada, interracial relationships are a regular deal instead, and no one is making a whoop about them, or a fuss, or anything else – including a TV show. (Unless we are talking ‘Bachelor’, ‘Bachelorette’, or something similar, which is something else entirely). But that’s Canada, and ‘Cloak & Dagger’ is an American TV show, set in New Orleans…but so far we had nothing that made their home city specifically New Orleans: it is actually quite generic, and could as well be called L.A., Chicago, Boston, or Mexico City.

Well, maybe not Mexico City – ‘Cloak & Dagger’ so far was a dichotomous, black-and-white world, anyone else almost didn’t exist there, (though there were one or two secondary characters that were neither Anglo- nor Afro-American, but of different nationalities), and this isn’t real life America – just look up the Aaron Hernandez incident, as an example. Whatever ‘Cloak & Dagger’ are doing, it is an idealized America, a fictional one, regardless of whether or not it is a utopia or a dystopia, and this brings us to Marvel™. It is absent.

No, there is the logo before the episodes begin to fly, but that is it. There is no sign that connects ‘Cloak & Dagger’ to the greater Marvel™ universe, save for…the Roxxon corp that featured in AC and the first two seasons of AoS, (the last sightings that is). Sadly, so far we still have no idea just what does Roxxon do in ‘Cloak & Dagger’, is it an energy corporation as it is in the basic canon or what. It will be revealed, probably, as Tandy’s story develops further, hopefully, but for now – it could just as well be called ‘The Company’, as its’ counterpart is called in ‘Killjoys’, and nothing would change in ‘Cloak & Dagger’ plot-wise, at least for now.

Anything else? Firstly, it would be nice to know more about father Delgado’s own backstory – he has lot of tattoos beyond those priestly robes of his in this universe – is he an ex-Yakuza or something? That would actually make ‘Cloak & Dagger’ more interesting, at this point.

Secondly, the Biblical quote that we saw in the church scene of the opening episodes? It is from the second chapter of Daniel. In it, king Nebuchadnezzar has a dream, and one of his courtly magicians, diviners, oracles, and whoever can explain it to him. Along comes Daniel, and promptly explains it… but first, he says, (we are quoting the King James Bible here):

“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
    wisdom and power are his.
²¹ He changes times and seasons;
    he deposes kings and raises up others.
He gives wisdom to the wise
    and knowledge to the discerning.
²² He reveals deep and hidden things;
    he knows what lies in darkness,
    and light dwells with him.
²³ I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors:
    You have given me wisdom and power,
you have made known to me what we asked of you,
    you have made known to us the dream of the king.”

That line – number 22 – is the one used in the opening episodes of ‘Cloak & Dagger’, and this is important because it raises the issue of the divine/mystical/supernatural in that show. What we knew before the premiere of the show is that this version of ‘Cloak & Dagger’ will have their powers rooted in the mystical/etc. But again, so far we have no evidence of that, the audience might as well assume that their powers came from the explosion of the truck that’d also fallen into the water alongside Tandy, (who was in the car with her father), and Tyrone, (who jumped after his brother, who’d been shot by the ‘corrupt cops’) – and that is the only real problem with ‘Cloak & Dagger’, though it is a big one: it is generic. It is built from clichés and while it utilizes them with a great efficiency and the acting skills of, well, actors, helps the show greatly too, it doesn’t nullify the fact, that just like the ‘Black Panther’ movie, ‘Cloak & Dagger’ is yet another mouthpiece for yet another American perception, this time of itself, set in a fictional universe that is affiliated with Marvel™, however loosely. And is that a problem?

No, but it is a sufficient motivation to keep a careful, watchful eye on the show and the direction in which it goes. Until then – see you all soon.