[Originally posted 6/22/20.]
Part 46 returns us to the Big Easy to check back in on the Divine Pairing….
Cloak & Dagger season 2:
#2.01 “Restless Energy”:
–Daw, Tandy is doing ballet again!
–Daw, Ty is being Batman!
–Daw, Melissa is going to therapy!
–Daw, O’Reilly is alive! Whoa, did Connors shoot her in the throat!?
–Golly, that chant is cheesy.
–Ty & Tandy have effectively switched positions from how they were at the start of the first season, but movie night is cute.
–Haha. Yes, very funny. VHS is outmoded. I get it.
–Ty is better at quarantine without a disease spreading than most folks are with one.
–A “dash” of salt is for if you’re using a shaker. A “pinch” is for if you’re using a small bowl.
–Not “daw”, Adina & Otis aren’t together anymore, & Evita is lonesome.
–In a perfect world, the peace negotiations O’Reilly is trying to broker would actually be what real police do.
–My dad ripped the sleeves off of one of my shirts once because he thought it was his. I was pissed.
–YO YO YO, CLOAK & DAGGER UP IN DA CLUB TONITE BOIIII!
#2.02 “White Lines”:
–A religious glyph made of cocaine by a dying man.
–Eight months have passed since Mardi Gras. It’s October 2017.
–I really appreciate the simplicity of Ty’s teleportation. No flashy visuals (beyond the puff of Darkforce when he reappears). No silly sound effects (just a subtle rush of air). He even thinks to pop back in a few inches above ground to avoid splinching his feet.
–Ty, Papa Legba wants you to help with Tandy’s thing.
–Mikayla seems to have no ability to form thoughts of her own.
–O’Reilly gives a traditional Irish drinking toast to her depression & self-hatred & schizophrenia.
–Tandy was forced to learn something about white privilege directly instead of just having Ty tell her.
–Mikayla seems to have no ability to form independent thoughts.
–Tandy’s freakouts only affect the light sources, not all the electronics. She’s powered by Lightforce, not electromagnetism.
–TANDY used ELECTRO BALL! It’s super effective!
—Ohh, there’s two of them! Well, Brigid. There’s one of me. A-deleted.
–I dig these multi-path episodes; C&D did one last season, & AoS had “TRACKS” back in season 1.
#2.03 “Shadow Selves”:
–Solid Rattatouille reference, Mina.
–Lake Pontchartrain is also saltwater, & directly connects to Lake Borgne.
–The implication here that every living thing is suicidal, which is kinda screwed up.
–Ok, so Cute O’Reilly shall henceforth be Brigid, & Hot O’Reilly shall henceforth be Mayhem.
–So, she learned policework from Misty Knight & the playing-card caseboard from Ben Urich.
–Father Delgado’s breakdown hits hard. He really tried, he wanted to help, but Ty still got screwed.
–Ok, so Mayhem has some kind of healing (hence why she didn’t need medical care while Brigid did), razor-sharp nails (like that one lady from AoS, but not silly), & quick motion (like Vijay Nadeer).
–Somebody’s threatening Adina, & I’m not happy.
–The same dead-record sound plays for this girl’s lack of hope as for Mikayla, & her worst fear is what already happened to her.
–Ty’s right. Mayhem is effective at taking out evil people, but she also mows down everyone around them too.
–Dat kamehameha tho.
–Don’t shoot at Cloak. Nom.
–Hi, Ghost Fuchs!
#2.04 “Rabbit Hold”:
–“Two people enter, one…also enters.” Welcome to Darkforcedome-nsion.
–Arresting victims, yet another day in the life of real-world policing.
–Cloak isn’t afraid of Dagger, but he is still afraid of Connors.
–“Down” moments were Aubrey Joseph’s weak points last season, but he’s greatly improved at them.
–Whoopsie, Divine Pairing, remember, Dagger? If you’re shut off, so is he.
–“There’s no way out.” Well, you’re only half a person.
–The “Not Today” shirt is the closest we will ever see to Dagger’s traditional comics costume, & that’s a good thing.
–Ty, come on, you gotta be more stealthy than that.
–Connors has been putting up scare-cloaks.
–I like the intercut between Mayhem & Ty telling their respective tales.
–Adina quizzing Ty about Evita is cute, but then Solomon ruins the moment.
–Mayhem has very protective instincts; they just tend to manifest violently. Seeing her stop Tandy from playing the next record suggests hope for her. (But Dagger really needs to finish the trip. Cloak’s surrounded.)
–Dangit, Tandy, you had ONE job.
#2.05 “Alignment Chart”:
–Tandy is being needlessly harsh to her mother.
–Is Connors repentent, or is he the viper in the narration?
–Andre, I get that people who’ve been through trauma don’t want to relive it, but we can’t do anything about it unless some of them *do*.
–Target is a “fancy store”, Choo Choo?
–Otis’s first impulse is to nearly stab Connors in the eye, & I can’t blame him.
–It hurts when Ty & Tandy fight, & it hurts more that Lia is interpreting this as Ty being one of the abusers that the other women are dealing with.
–Connors is sending Ty through a Sucker Punch mission. Everything he said was true except for the file being there.
–Tandy just got maced in the eyes.
–Connors’s new fear is that he won’t be held accountable.
–Oh snap, Lia was the viper.
–C&D does the slow moody covers of famous songs way better than Inhumans did.
#2.06 “B Sides”:
–What if Nathan & Billy had survived the night of the rig collapse?
—-Ty & Tandy actually become friends as children. Connors becomes Ty’s mentor as he heads toward a career as a cop. Tandy sticks with her ballet & goes pro in New York. Duane is still alive too. Nathan is still abusive. Even when it isn’t actually her, just Tandy’s dream of her, Evita knows this isn’t real.
—-Ty is still a young black man in a hoodie, & New Orleans is still full of racists. Cloak & Dagger still manifest thier powers in a moment of extreme stress.
–What if Melissa had kicked Nathan out & Billy survived?
—-Tandy becomes a Roxxon engineer. Ty & Billy become Roxxon mechanics. Mina becomes the rig supervisor & is a raging jerkwad. Tandy subconsciously knows THREE bad things will happen instead of just the two her father predicted.
—-The rig still melts down, just 8 years later. Cloak & Dagger still manifest thier powers in a moment of extreme stress.
–What if Tandy never met Liam & Connors hadn’t shot Billy?
—-Tandy still becomes a pickpocket. Liam is still on the show & dates Mikayla. Billy is arrested & jailed. Ty becomes a car thief.
—-You can’t outrun the police if they saw you steal a car. Cloak & Dagger still manifest their powers in a moment of extreme stress.
–What if a man who runs a center for abused women kidnaps them, drugs them, & drains all their hope with his magical powers, just to treat his own migraines, & then sells them into sex slavery?
–Andre figured out how to break Tandy, but it still shouldn’t have worked if Tandy had remembered that Ty can’t be shot.
#2.07 “Vikingtown Sound”:
–Andre is full-blown lying about how his powers work & Tandy knows it, but she does still think Ty’s gone. They also full-blown lied about the girls being allowed to leave.
–I do enjoy crabcake. I also enjoy justice. Adina is playing my tune right now.
–“What friends?” The ones she didn’t tell you about, Lia. There’s a cop looking for Tandy RIGHT NOW.
–Connors wants to go to prison, not be killed while tied to a chair.
–Manipulated despair doesn’t work as well on the guy with fear powers. The instant Mayhem takes off the record, Ty snaps out of his funk rather than staying locked in like the other victims.
–The little ballerinas marveling at Ty’s sudden disappearance are adorable, & their sudden appearance reminds me of the yo-yos flooding Radcliffe’s pockets in the Framework.
–Chantelle knows what’s up, & just like her niece, she has some resistance to the emotion powers. Her death here, signalling Mayhem to stay hidden, is every bit the heroic sacrifice that Ho Yinsen made 9 years prior to this.
–Mayhem trashing the record shop afterwards is great, too. Andre just lost a good chunk of his influence.
–Ty’s teleporting haymaker is a thing of beauty. I shouldn’t have wasted “now you’re thinking with portals” on Jane Foster earlier.
–Cloak & Dagger reuniting is also a thing of beauty, at least until Ty RRoDs.
#2.08 “Two Player”:
–How did Rando just assume Lia was a hooker? She was wearing a pretty normal business suit.
—Dagger & Brigid preparing to enter the Darkforce Dimension (2017, colorized).
–“It will be the last time, I promise.” That’s almost never true, & when it is, it’s usually because it’s the time you don’t walk away from, Lia.
–Welp, Mayhem found Brigid.
–The arcade being run by Baron Samedi is rather poetic.
–Evita is getting answers, but not to the questions she’s asking.
–“You’ve been injected with radioactive heroin” is basically Cloak & Dagger’s origin story in the comics.
–I don’t get why Evita can’t still go to medical school. Married folks are allowed to go to college. And she’ll probably be a better Mambo if she can blend formal medicine with her voudon knowledge. At least she gets her wedding in a church.
–Not to say that this episode ripped off my own work, buuuut….
–Delgado absolutely should be a priest, in part *because* he has these doubts. Besides, Adina needs a priest for more than one reason. Connors’s journey is over.
–At least Samedi tries to make his new bride happy. And he’s got style.
#2.09 “Blue Note”:
–I dig the flashback titles this season. “242 days ago,” “96 months ago,” it’s distinct.
–Andre had a god complex even before he started changing. I like jazz & all, but he is fanatical like Gosling in La La Land.
–The brainwashed humming is freaky.
–Very impressive that Ty’s burner phone can hold calls while he teleports.
–Lia is even more fried than most of Andre’s victims. They at least had *some* thoughts; she is just…absent.
–Solomon is looking at Luke fighting either Diamondback or Bushmaster, depending on how old that paper is. Karen was working for the Bulletin for both fights, but the first was very soon after her big Punisher headline & her abduction by the Hand.
–I appreciate that unlike a certain other teen show, we don’t see Andre actually jump. He’s gotta end up in the soup, but the explosion startles him & takes the choice away.
–Ty shaking down the gang leaders is pretty awesome.
–Tandy fighting Mayhem to a draw isn’t as awesome, but pretty impressive considering she couldn’t keep up with her at the start of the season.
–Cloak & Dagger with the combo attack FTW…almost.
–D’Spayre’s trumpet blasting over the city & the credits is thoroughly ominous.
#2.10 “Level Up”:
–D’Spayre is rapturing anyone with self-doubt to drain their thoughts for his own comfort.
–“The only alternative to doing nothing is doing something.” Amen, Mina.
–All of the power, none of the responsibility. He became a god just to cure his migraines, not caring how many others had to get hurt in the process.
–Legba is missing; this ain’t good. Of course, he’s probably pissed that his wife was murdered by the new guy.
–Mayhem bodyguarding Evita from Heartless is pretty freaking cool, especially when one of them plays dirty with Fuchs, so she plays dirty with grenades.
–Tandy facing Nathan is obvious, but the most negative influence in Ty’s life has always been his own expectations for himself.
–How does Shadow Ty know Adina killed Connors? That would require D’Spayre to know.
–Cloak & Dagger are symbiotic; they can’t go on without each other. Still gotta face your own fears at some point, though.
–Nice Zorro callback.
–Turnabout is fair play. Bye, Andre.
–“Come Sail Away” was a higher high, but this season’s music has overall been better than last season’s.
–Waffles.
Executive summary: I low-key (heh, Loki) love this show. It went places that Luke Cage was scared to go in terms of American racism (probably because NOLA didn’t require Marvel to portray its police positively for filming permits like NYC did) & handled moral gray areas better than basically everything else in the MCU. Some very outside-the-box creative choices continue to entertain; I can’t wait to see how the rest of Joe Pokaski’s 5-season plan plays out!
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