The Bingeworthy™ Breakdown is an occasional look at new TV shows in a more casual format. An estimated 500 scripted seasons of TV will air in 2018, and to help you sort the wheat from the chaff, we’re going to give you the lowdown to help you work out whether it’s worth tuning in every week for them or waiting to binge later.
It may be time for Marvel to throw in the towel when it comes to producing television shows, a domain, unlike the big screen, where they’ve consistently underwhelmed, beginning with the unbearably dull “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Season one of “Daredevil” was fine and season two might’ve come out relatively unscathed had they pulled the plug on the Karen and Foggy characters (the “Punisher” introduction and those episodes are solid, no doubt). “Jessica Jones” was on course to be genuinely fantastic if they hadn’t completely derailed around episode eight (whenever that mind-numbing Killgrave support group started up). The best series that Marvel has done was “Agent Carter” and they didn’t realize just how amazing it was before canceling it after only two seasons. They make consistently good films (sometimes even great) and it’s clear where their strengths lay and where they’ll continue to put all of their efforts into. The television shows will persist, but it’s where a lot of the burnout is starting to become most apparent.
All of that to say “Cloak & Dagger,” on the offset, was unnecessary at best and while the premiere is charming enough (meaning the type of show I’d have loved in high-school) it does little to justify its existence. With a music video lite aesthetic with aching moments queued to sugary beat pop songs, pretty leads and moments that are delivered better minus the dialogue, there’s a sheen to the series that keeps the viewers at an arm’s length. However, “Cloak & Dagger” does fare better than most of the other superhero shows out there (especially by Marvel) with its focus on real-world issues like drug use, sexual assault, and police brutality, as well as its small character moments.
While it’s hard to imagine it divulges too far from the typical superhero set up, what is the basic premise of “Clock & Dagger?”
The origin stories are all there, but what separates them somewhat is how genuinely tragic their introduction to superpowers came to be. Tandy (Olivia Holt), aka Dagger, and Tyrone (Aubrey Joseph), aka Cloak, met as children, but neither can remember who one another is due to the traumatic experiences they endured before encountering one another. Tandy and her father had just been driven off the road and into the ocean below them, Tandy trapped and her father dead, while Tyrone had just jumped into the same ocean to try and save his brother who’d just been wrongfully shot and killed by the police. Both children are trapped before a mysterious force hits them and they’re able to escape to land, both leaving with one memento of the other to remember their shared experience with.
That sounds unnecessarily dire.
That sense of tragedy is actually what manages to trick you into believing the entire episode is going to be stronger than the end result actually is. It’s tragic and a bit of a tired superhero trope that dead loved ones will help inspire any future heroics (and man, if Tandy’s father had just kept his eyes on the road like any normal and responsible human would while driving on a bridge maybe he wouldn’t have been totally shocked by a truck that sends him and his daughter careening into the water) but it’s undoubtedly effective. That sheen mentioned above is in full force too as Ellie Goulding’s “Dead in the Water” (right) plays and the light from above engulfs the two, bringing them together and, unknown to them, changing the course of their lives for good. It’s an example of the glassy aesthetic working in their favor as it pulls the desired effect of an engrossed audience, before sending it all to hell in the next scene.
What’s wrong with the next scene?
The scene is bad but it’s also indicative of the series as a whole. We’re introduced to an older Tandy and while viewers are often forced to forgive television writers for forgetting what it was like to be a teenagers (nevertheless what it’s like to speak like one) the lines that Holt was forced to deliver makes the case that perhaps the show should have just aged up the characters. Her dialogue is purposefully precocious as she’s playing older than herself when she’s in a club or interacting with an older man, but it’s hard to decipher whether we’re supposed to take it as a put-upon act or just the way she is. If it’s the latter, it’s an immediate strike against the writers, once again signifying that the show is at its best when it mutes the dialogue and allows the appealing atmospheric sense of wonder and magic to take over.
Tyrone fares better though he isn’t given as much to do in the premiere episode and he conveys the sense of trauma in his past with less clunky exposition, not forced to say lines about his brother “being at the bottom of the ocean” in casual conversation like Tandy is. Joseph is also called upon to do a lot without much dialogue and usually delivers. Holt and Joseph do share a sweet, innocent chemistry that’s understated compared the broad strokes of the rest of the proceedings but are given little to no time together to explore it. It makes sense that show might be holding the pairing close to their chest while they burrow through the necessary set up, but we’re left wanting more of it by the episode’s end.
It doesn’t sound like you out and out hated it.
It’s not a bad show, per se, and the elements that work are appealing. It will inspire light curiosity, enough so that if in three four or five episodes people start singing (or even lightly humming) its praises, it will be an easy enough ship to jump back on to. It’s simply too inoffensive to actually hate, not as boring as “The Runaways” (or nearly as wasteful of such a great premise) or as infuriating as “Iron Fist.” It’s just kind of there. Both Joseph and Holt have room to grow into their roles and the general idea behind their specific brand of superpowers – hers the ability to emit light daggers and his the ability to engulf others in darkness – are just off-kilter enough to muster up some natural intrigue. It might even offer up some songs to add to your cardio playlist.
It’s a proceed with caution type of show. Sure, it might manage to surprise you but more likely it’s yet another “this is fine” Marvel superhero show. [C]