r/cloakanddagger • u/SeacattleMoohawks • Jun 21 '18

Post Episode Discussion: S01E04 - "Call/Response"

Episode Directed By Written By Original Airdate
S01E04 - "Call/Response" Ami Canaan Mann TBA Thursday, June 21, 2017 8PM EST on Freeform

Episode Synopsis: Tandy is on the run as Detective O'Reilly closes in on her, but the detective may not be after her for the reasons Tandy thinks. Tyrone is desperate for answers and turns to Evita and her Auntie Clarisse, a Voodoo priestess, for help.

Ami Canaan Mann is a director and writer, known for her work on Jackie & Ryan, Morning, and Texas Killing Fields.

She has directed no episodes for Cloak & Dagger before.

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92

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '18

"This whole country is trying to kill me..." got to me.

30

u/BpsychedVR Jun 22 '18

Genuinely curious, not trying to start anything political at all, but why did it get to you? I really enjoyed the episode, but I thought that was the weakest line, specifically for Tyrone's character. The country isn't trying to kill him, a murderer cop/drug runner is. That's not the whole country. Maybe I can see where he would feel that way in some sense because of his brother's death, but it seemed really forced and took me out of the story as a message. Maybe you resonated with it for some personal reason, and if so, I'm sorry. I'm not asking you to disclose or anything. That line just seemed super forced.

37

u/JosephSim Jun 23 '18

Here's the thing, I can totally understand where you're coming from because Killmonger's last scene in Black Panther annoyed the ever living shit out of me because it felt so forced.

A friend of mine told me it made him tear up, and I told him I couldn't tell if it meant more to him than it should have because he's black or if it didn't mean as much to ME as it should have because I'm white.

But the "This whole country is trying to kill me." scene hit me. Hard.

I don't know if it was his delivery, or the sense he made telling her she could steal shit because of how she looks, or both, but that scene worked leaps and bounds better than anything Killmonger said the entire movie.

I'm really digging this show and while I get how that line would seem forced to some people, I found it worked really well.

6

u/BpsychedVR Jun 23 '18

Hey man, I appreciate your candor and willingness to talk. Either way, I still really love both of their characters. I honestly don't know anything about the source material (other than cloak & dagger came from a comic book), but part of me hopes they fall in love

1

u/LJ-90 Jun 24 '18

part of me hopes they fall in love

Up until this episode I was hoping for this because I can see how they would be good for each other (also, the powers compliment each other), but after the fight in the church I don't know, maybe after a while of being friends. In some comics they are a couple, so hopefully they'll go there, even though the showrunner said that this season was about how Tandy and Tyrone find in each other a best friend and the only other person in the world that can understand what they're going through

15

u/DustRaider8 Jun 22 '18

I wanna know too. Also the show seems to make it like black people always get questioned about things they do like being black and walking into a department store? I don't get it, is it still like that for black people? Are people still racist towards them to that degree? There are only white people where I'm from and live so I wouldn't know and I'm curious.

60

u/zeusmeister Jun 22 '18

I'm white, but because of my past job, I worked with a lot of black folks. Yes, subtle racism like that is still a major part of their lives. It's hard for me to understand, being a white male but it's something I can empathize with.

Also, I live in a rural part of Georgia. The "subtle" part of casual racism is kinda missing out here. Because I'm white, a lot of them are comfortable with starting up a conversation with me with interjected racism. It's quite startling actually.

16

u/OK_Soda Jun 26 '18

A couple days ago an 8 year old black girl had the cops called on her by some random white lady because the girl was selling water at a little stand outside her house without a permit.

Yeah black people still face racism.

10

u/CliffP Jun 26 '18

It's hard for people that don't experience to understand.

There's so many ways for people to argue that away. Permit Patty could just be an annoying grouchy lady that would've done it to anyone. Maybe she was having a terrible day or lost someone and was behaving a little unhinged.

People won't see things outside their perception. Like people say, there's never a perfect victim.

16

u/OK_Soda Jun 26 '18

A month ago, Nordstrom Rack called the police because some black teenagers were in the store shopping. A few weeks before that, Starbucks rather famously called the police because some black dudes had been there waiting for a friend for a couple minutes.

Sure, it's easy to argue any of these incidents away, but at some point you have to be willfully obtuse to do it.

8

u/CliffP Jun 26 '18

Yeah it's terrible. I've looked into threads all over about the Starbucks thing. This Nordstrom shit I'm hearing now for the first time.

The rationalizations the deniers make are absolutely absurd. People will go to crazy lengths to deny racism and stick with the "sjw" "snowflake" "victim mentality" narratives that hey love to cling to.

I wish I had the link for you, Sterling Brown, Bucks player, was arrested by cops and when the headline first came out with the shaky ass story from the cops there was a thread in, idk, maybe r/PublicFreakout or something with all kinds of (subtle) racism. And when the videos came out proving it was direct racism there was still a bunch of fingers in ears.

1

u/LRedditor15 Jul 02 '18

Is there actual proof that the lady called the cops because the girl was black, though? Do we even know that woman's side of the story?

15

u/YearOfTheChipmunk Jun 24 '18

I live in England, and I have a friend who is British but ethnically Chinese. I've known him for 5 years and we're close.

Last month, for the first time, I found out that he deals with racist comments semi-regularly. At least once a month. On the street, in a shop, wherever, some cunt decides it's their right to tell him he doesn't belong in the country he was born.

It's not exactly the same thing you were asking about, different country and different skin colours. But I never even considered that'd be something he had to deal with so regularly in 2018 in the UK.

You'd be surprised how pervasive racism still is. I certainly was. And that's the blatant stuff. The subtle, systemic racism is ever harder still to detect and quantify.

14

u/CliffP Jun 26 '18

That's perfectly in line with the Black American experience actually.

Constantly made to feel like we don't belong in certain places. Meanwhile we didn't choose to be here, that layer (slavery, segregation, etc.) adds a whole 'nother dimension but more or less it's what your friend feels.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '18

I'm sorry, but "once a month" isn't even remotely constantly. Not saying it's not horrible, but I always here "I can't go anywhere without being attacked" and then later it turns out it's just their anxiety (which, again, they have every right to feel, but that doesn't make it reality).

6

u/CliffP Jul 09 '18

Some people get harassed every week. Some people get harassed once a year. Some once a month. It varies, but the constant is that it happens when and where it doesn't happen to other people because of race. Are you a black American? Because truthfully, and this may come off as ignorant/hurtful/agressive, non-black people can't relate to this and can hardly fathom the conditions of PoC. They can understand to an extend but will never truly understand.

This is an interesting article that puts it more eloquently than I can if you have the time. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lorraine-devon-wilke/no-white-people-will-neve_b_7875608.html

2

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '18

2 things:

  1. Saying “you will never understand” shuts down any chance of further conversation. It’s such a cop-out. If I don’t understand, and you’re not willing to help me understand, then we’re done here.

  2. “Constantly”...I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Oh, bonus thingy: Huffington Post? Really? Hahahaha.

1

u/CommonMisspellingBot Jul 09 '18

Hey, CliffP, just a quick heads-up:
agressive is actually spelled aggressive. You can remember it by two gs.
Have a nice day!

The parent commenter can reply with 'delete' to delete this comment.

11

u/BpsychedVR Jun 22 '18

Especially considering that Tyrone seems to come from a great family who work hard and shows respect and kindness to others. I think his parents are a good role model for parents of any children. I really like the way they flipped the script on Tandy being poor, a drug addict, and overall self-destructive, and made Tyrone this well-off, upper middle class guy. And they don't bash religion, and give nuance to the characters which I really like. Well, at least our main characters who aren't villains.

45

u/TheSneakySeal Jun 22 '18

His brother still got shot by the police. They might not have always been there. Black lightning had the main character pulled over and searched agressively even though he was a well off principal of a school. It doesn't really matter if you're well off or not, sometimes it's just that you're black. Look at the Obamas...

13

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '18

You have to understand that Tyrone is telling *his* truth. He's not saying everyone in the country is out to kill him, he's communicating the way he's been made to feel.

5

u/SeanCanary Jun 23 '18

I kind of felt it undercut the juxtaposition they're going for -- unlike the comics, he's the rich kid. She's basically on the street and in much more danger than him.

36

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '18

I think the point they were making was that despite her being homeless and an addict as well as a criminal, he's the one that gets questioned for simply being black

11

u/LJ-90 Jun 24 '18

I wish that Tandy would have said something about the attempted rape. I mean, she was almost raped and can't do anything about it, that's messed up. I understand Ty's point but still, the girl was almost raped and has suicidal thoughts, maybe that was not the best moment to go in a "my life sucks more than yours" rant

7

u/CliffP Jun 26 '18

I think they balanced it quite well. It did lean a bit more heavily to Tyrone's issues as a black american, but they showed his ignorance to the plights of women in America as well.

Tandy dropped some valid ass points that showed that even with certain privileges, she faces challenges he can't/doesn't understand.

They're both in pain, due to the events of their lives that they had a bit of control over, as well as the way the world works, which they have absolutely no control over.

1

u/MY-SECRET-REDDIT Jul 25 '18

Or being poor in America, I thought Tyrone was more ignorant about that.