'Cloak & Dagger' Throws A Lot Of New Names At Us In "Princeton Offense"

This week's Cloak & Dagger episode, "Princeton Offense," threw a lot at us. And by "a lot," I mean, A TON OF NAMES! And that's not all that we were expected to catch at breakneck speed as if we were Tyrone trying to catch the basketball to shoot the winning shot. Let's break it all down.

I guess with a subtitle like that, I'm showing my age – young people today don't even know what a phone book is, let alone what it used to be used for. But enough knocking the youth, since, as Whitney Houston said, the children are our future. Instead, let me get into how ridiculous it was to have so many new names and characters shoved in our faces in the span of one hour.

I get the show needs to move story forward, since we've spent a bit of time setting up Tyrone and Tandy as characters, but to shove a good three episodes' worth of characters into one episode? That's a lot to ask of a regular viewer, let alone someone who's got to review the show. Yeah, I'm complaining about a completely minute problem even among the glut of first world problems there are in this country. But an issue's an issue, and there were just too many characters to keep up with.

Most of the new names came from Tandy's research into the Roxxon Corp., including Gideon Green, Louden Swift, Mina Hess (Ally Maki), her father Nathan Hess, and the man tying them all together, Peter Scarborough (Wayne Péré). What's wild is that I've missed several more names. I'm sure Mina and Peter are folks we'll see again, but are all of these people going to figure into this story at some point? Is it pertinent I remember who they are? We'll see, I guess.

Tandy and Tyrone's powers were in overdrive during this episode. First, thanks to her second near-death experience, Tandy has come into her own with her powers, and is intent on using them as much as she can to reach her goal of understanding who killed her father and why. However, she eventually realizes that comes at a cost – if the scales aren't even and she uses her powers excessively, she ends up causing Tyrone issues, such as transporting him from place to place or making his abilities go haywire, both of which happen during Tyrone's big basketball game.

But up until that point, she uses her power of touch and her power of grifting to peer into the minds of every big Roxxon guy she comes in contact with while posing as a hostess at a big Roxxon party. Everyone there wants to do something with Scarborough, whether that's to humiliate him, make him do something in retribution, or receive sexual services from him. Clearly, Scarborough is the guy that holds the most power.

Mina Hess also holds a lot of power as well. Tandy didn't read her mind, but she eventually learns that she's Nathan's daughter, and Nathan was apparently also a bigwig with immense power, allowing Mina to become one of Roxxon's chief scientists. Mina seems nice – she's trying to help save the Earth, after all – but O'Reilly also seemed nice. After what we've seen during this episode, we can't be too sure.

Tyrone, on the other hand, kept viewing his opponents deepest fears, which included parental abuse and getting sent to war, among other things. His sight drained his opponents, allowing him the big opportunity to make the winning shot and give his high school the finals trophy. But he missed on purpose in order to give the opposing team a victory since they have enough on their plates in real life.

Apparently, Tyrone wasn't alone in knowing his true motives behind missing the shot; apparently, Evita can also see his powers as well. How? Does it have something to do with her voodoo connection? It looks like we'll get an explanation for this during the next episode, but for right now, consider me intrigued.

Thanks to Tyrone's heads-up, O'Reilly is intent on getting to the bottom of the mystery behind Connors. Connors is supposed to be working for Vice, but, as is always the case on procedural shows, there's a dirty cop, and as we already know from seeing him sell a trunk full of cocaine, that Connors is that guy. However in order to prove it, O'Reilly needs to get proof. So...she actually does cocaine to lure him into her trap?

I don't do and never have done drugs, so maybe I'm missing something here, but is it possible to do two lines of cocaine and still act as if nothing happened? I mean, O'Reilly took some pretty hard stuff–even Connors called it something like "top of the line," which I figure must mean it's quite a stiff product. Is she that experienced at taking hard drugs? I mean, I get that she had to make herself look like a dirty cop in order to bag a dirty cop, but cocaine is still cocaine.

This isn't the only time we see O'Reilly act in an uncouth manner; before she even fully sets her teeth into the Connors case, she's having sex in the back of a cop car. But then she also shows she's good at her job by busting a high powered drug dealer for cocaine...the same cocaine O'Reilly ended up snorting. But whereas our allegiances about O'Reilly are slightly put into question, one thing remains constant – Connors is connected to someone big, possibly someone at Roxxon.

Could it even be that he's connected to Scarborough? And if that's the case, then why is Scarborough running a drug ring? How do the different factions connect? And how does Duane (Dalon J. Holland), Billy's former friend, figure into this? At first, when Tyrone mistakenly jumps via his powers to Duane's place of business, we're led to think  Duane is on the up-and-up, making good money fixing people's homes. But turns out his hands are just as dirty if not more so, since he's working with the man who killed his best friend.

There was a lot that got covered this week, so hopefully you took notes because we might have a test on this later in the season. Hopefully, we'll get a cheat sheet.