Welcome to our newly revamped Boomb Tube! Here, we will be catching you up on the week in comics TV, both through micro-reviews, as well as links to our full-length TV reviews. We also tend to review series that are dropped all at once weekly, so there are a few ‘older’ shows mixed in for good measure. Are we missing your favorite show? Let us know in the comments!
Batwoman – “True Destiny” (S3E8, The CW)
After some serious shakeups in the mid-season finale, Batwoman is back! Mary has fully embraced her dark side, they’ve lost their access to Wayne Enterprises, and Gotham has a new threat, Ryan’s brother. While “True Destiny” perhaps balanced the playing field a little faster than you might expect, it was a fun reintroduction to the characters and did take some advantage of the new status quo.
This primarily comes from the team’s infiltration of Marcus Jet’s sadistic party/ job interview to access the Batcave. Because so many Bat stories have advanced suits, gadgets, and surveillance technology, it’s always fun to see the team find alternate ways to gain their information. “True Destiny” felt like a heist movie with secret identities, coy uses of technology, and a ticking clock through a well-secured building. It also has one of the better fight sequences on the show, which was well lit and didn’t feel overly cut up. Overall, one of the episode’s highlights was watching the team figure out ways to gain information about Pamela Isley’s true whereabouts. In a world where superheroes have seemingly unlimited resources, it’s always exciting to see how they handle having their toys taken away.
“True Destiny” also established an interesting central theme that will presumably carry through the rest of the season of Batwoman Ryan’s reluctance to make the tough call. Throughout the episode, Montoya admonishes Ryan for her compassion. By the end, though, it seems this admonishment is just part of her continued manipulation of the team to get back the thing she wants most, Pam Isley, the woman she loved and betrayed. So while “True Destiny” doesn’t fully put Ryan in control of her destiny, they do get some resources. That’s good, considering that things in Gotham seem to just be getting worse. – Joe Skonce
The Book of Boba Fett – “Chapter 3: The Streets of Mos Espa” (S1E3, Disney+)
Full review by Brian Salvatore.
Cowboy Bebop – “Blue Crow Waltz” (S1E9, Netflix)
Full review by Robbie Pleasant.
Hit Monkey – “The Long Goodbye” (S1E6, Hulu)
The title of this episode hints at Bryce’s storyline because he believes that after they kill the character, The Rooster, he’ll be out of limbo and on his way to heaven or hell. The main problem standing in their way is that The Rooster has hired an army of look-alikes to keep himself safe. Monkey and Bryce do some damage by even taking out a car filled with them, but it all seems to be going nowhere, that is until they find one who is so desperate to survive he gives up his insurance with a key leading to some secrets. They end up killing him too and just taking the key, which felt pretty obvious, but since he never told them what it opened, it meant they’d have to find another look-alike. Despite having the title of the show their storyline, this episode felt like a game of “Whack-A-Mole” and kept them busy instead of a critical moment. One of the takeaways from these two was that Bryce is continuously growing emotionally to share his emotions with Monkey. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the next wave of killing that comes for Monkey will be in the form of Lady Bullseye. While her introduction is brief, it’s easy to see how ruthless she is by brutally killing everyone who causes her even the slightest of annoyance. It will undoubtedly be fun to see how Monkey faces against her.
The real juicy details that came out of this story were detective Ito and officer Haruka visiting Akiko to let her know that Rooster will not be charged because of his ties to the Yakuza and influence on lawyers, judges, and any higher-ups. This decision further pushes Akiko’s idea of a vigilante and what “justice” really means if people who commit crimes keep getting away with them. Luckily for her, she has a borderline mercenary on her side to take out the bad guys. As for the police, the two partners disagree on how the interaction went, which leads to Ito sharing the truth about why he’s perceived as a pariah. Everyone back in the day was corrupt, but they got caught under an investigation, and he took the blame for it all so his partner could walk away scot-free. It’s helpful to know that he does have a good heart, but it does leave this question that Haruka asks too, who was his partner? – Alexander Manzo
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Legends of Tomorrow – “Paranoid Android” (S7E8, The CW)
Full review by Christopher Chiu-Tabet.
Naomi – “Pilot” (S1E1, The CW)
Full review by Brian Salvatore.
Peacemaker – “A Whole New Whirled” (S1E1, HBO Max)
Peacemaker – “Best Friends, For Never” and “Better Goff Dead” (S1E2-3, HBO Max)
After taking time in the pilot to lay out its characters and set the groundwork for grappling with some pretty heavy themes, Peacemaker is ready to get up to some antics in episode 2 and 3. By antics, of course, I mean fleeing from the cops, bribing witnesses, chucking dynamite across a field at some broken refrigerators, and assassinating a United States Senator. Meanwhile, the other members of Project Butterfly manage to cover up Peacemaker’s involvement in the explosion by framing his 60-something father Auggie for the crime. As Auggie walks into prison, a crowd of white supremacists give him a Nazi salute, hailing him as the White Dragon. Probably fine and definitely won’t have consequences down the line!
Peacemaker’s buffoonery compromises the mission multiple times, and his incompetence ramps up the more he has a crisis of conscience. It’s likely not a coincidence that his arc of self-discovery runs parallel to his difficulty performing the bidding of the US government, especially given that his homicidal best bro Vigilante is objectively far more helpful during their assassination mission. Beyond scoring most of the best jokes in the show – his monologue about not feeling bad about murdering someone who “murdered an innocent person, or sold somebody heroin, or did some graffiti” destroyed me – Vigilante is a delightful presence in that he and Peacemaker bring out the worst in each other, encouraging each other’s most toxic tendencies. Vigilante is also, paradoxically, the only person who seems to genuinely be invested in his best buddy’s well-being for non-selfish reasons. They’re quite the dynamic, co-dependent duo.
Their relationship, and the team at large, gets really put to the test during the assassination, where Peacemaker can’t bring himself to follow through on his usual catchphrase to kill Senator Goff’s wife and kids. Vigilante has no problem doing that, but he is stopped from killing Goff by the timely intervention of Judomaster, Senator Goff’s bodyguard. Goff tortures Vigilante to try to get the pair to talk, but when the rest of the team finally gets itself together Peacemaker uses the distraction to break free. He kills Goff, confirming that the name for Project Butterfly was as on the nose as Project Starfish: an alien butterfly-like insect flies out from Goff’s corpse, revealing the nature of the top secret mission. – Reid Carter
Star Trek: Prodigy – “First Con-tact” (S1E7, Paramount+)
Only briefly considering the major reveal of Chakotay being the original captain of the Protostar, the crew discovers (some of) the abilities of the transporter. Sending a slice of pie to various parts of the ship, and then Murf into space. He is indestructible after all.
After they bring Murf back inside, Holo-Janeway calls the crew over to check on an in-coming distress call. After only a few moments Dal realizes it’s a scam put on by his former guardian and captain, a Ferengi named Nandi. A profit hungry con artist (typical Ferengi, am-I-right?) who raised Dal on her old, cramped vessel. She seems to truly care for him, but has no problem pulling him and the rest of the Protostar crew into latest problems; leading them into an unnecessary and highly dangerous first contact situation on a planet unlike anything we’ve seen before. Dark and terrible secrets are revealed.
While the crew is planet-side Holo-Janeway goes to work trying to figure out what happened to the Protostar’s crew and makes a disturbing, but unclear discovery while going through the holo-recordings.
“First Con-tact” uses its story to propel the main narrative and what we know about Dal forward. As more details come to light, it’s becoming increasingly easier to like and sympathize with Dal as a character, even if Gwyn should really be the current captain. Introducing someone like Nandi as a parent figure makes so much sense as a sort of Rosetta stone for Dal.
Continued belowThis episode has a little bit for everyone. Solid all-ages humor that doesn’t rely on farts, classic adventuring, found family commentary, and plenty of Trek canon and lore to get fans of all ages caught up or feel at home.
Its main weak point would only be that in a window of approximately 20 minutes, the story feels rushed and as cramped as the Ferengi starship’s underbelly. But even within that constraint it does a commendable job with its storytelling. – Christopher Egan
Super Crooks – “The Heat” (S1E5, Netflix)
At its heart, Super Crooks is about a bunch of guys (and one token sexy gal) who want to pull off a heist so big they can retire with the spoils from it. Episode five is the part in a heist plot where the team is gathered and the wise old ringleader explains the plan. In an actual heist movie, this is usually a montage where you see the characters already setting the plot in motion, in between cuts that show the same characters being told their job. The whole thing lasts five minutes, tops. Since Super Crooks is both an anime and a comic book adaptation trying to use the heist movie formula, the explain-the-heist sequence gets expanded to an entire episode instead of a five-minute sequence. We learn about “The Heat,” the first supervillain from Chicago and a cranky old guy whose legend is that he was never caught, even though he absolutely was, many times. The old man, also known as Carmine, recruits a handful of random, forgettable villains, plus Kasey and Johnny to pull a heist so big that the supervillain Network doesn’t want any part of it. But first, in a standard heist plot move, the team has to rescue another team member from a prison transport plane.
Super Crooks struggles because it doesn’t know what it is, so it doesn’t commit to any one theme. In this episode, it sets up a heist that’ll be shown in the next one. And if the show was fully on board with the heist formula, that’d be fun! If it spent enough time really setting up a series of heists that were both believable and wacky, with characters you actually cared about, it could be a fun heist series. But it’s not. It’s trying to tell a story about lovable losers with powers who can’t catch a break. But it doesn’t make those losers lovable, at all. It tries to critique the superhero/villain dichotomy, but it doesn’t spend enough time with any character outside Johnny and Kasey to make the audience care or get the point it’s trying to make. And it’s trying to have a kind of shock factor that comes from using extreme violence and extreme weirdness, but it doesn’t seem to know what to do with the violence or weird stuff, so when something weird happens it’s more confusing than shocking. (For example, a dude gets his fingers cut off in this episode, which legitimately surprised me. Then they just never mentioned it again? So what was the point of doing it in the first place?)
This episode slows down the frenetic pace of the last few episodes but wastes the opportunity to make us care about existing characters or set up a future plot point by explaining things to the audience instead of showing them, and including anecdotes about characters we don’t have any reason to care about yet. It showcases some of the regrettably bad exposition-masquerading-as-dialogue tendencies of the show to date. (It also includes a line equating the environmentalist book Silent Spring and eco-terrorists who might have read it with violent white supremacists peddling Hitler’s manifesto, which, I just have to say, woof. The writers clearly think this is smart, snide commentary, and I just have to say, again, woof.) Perhaps when we return to action next week, as I assume we will once the actual heist is put in motion, this team of losers will become lovable through action sequences and, probably, losing. – Mel Lake
Superman and Lois – “What Lies Beneath” (S2E1, The CW)
Full review by august (in the wake of) dawn.
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The Wheel of Time – “The Flame of Tar Valon” (S1E6, Amazon Prime Video)
Full review by Gregory Ellner.
The Witcher – “Kaer Morhen” (S2E2, Netflix)
Yen and Fringilla have been taken prisoner by a group of militant Elves, including Geralt’s old acquaintance Filavandrel, and led by the pious and vengeful Francesca. Yen, Fringilla, and Francesca have each dreamed of a cloaked figure, and Francesca is convinced it’s Ithlinne, a legendary Elven oracle, who will lead the Elves to reconquer Cintra (or Xintrea). In their waking hours, the figure leads the three of them to a magical hut in the woods, and appears to each of them as a different person. Francesca sees Ithlinne, Fringilla sees Cahir, and Yen sees a mean teen girl, who might represent the tough mean girl she could be again if she had her powers, or the child Yen would like to have but can’t, or a younger version of Tissaia, or some combination of the three. This mysterious person turns out to really be The Deathless Mother, who is based on Baba Yaga, a witch from Slavic folklore who lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs. Francesca and Fringilla are convinced by the Deathless Mother that the Elves and Nilfgaard must unite against the North, so they travel to Cintra together, leaving Yen abandoned, powerless, and directionless.
Meanwhile, Geralt and Ciri have reached Kaer Morhen, home of the Witcher School of the Wolf. There, Geralt’s brother-in-arms Eskel has somehow been transformed into a leshen, a tree monster, and Geralt is forced to kill him to save the life of their father-figure, Vesemir. The episode ends with Geralt beginning Ciri’s combat training. So while Francesca and Fringilla (and maybe kind of Yen) are confronted by parent-figures in their hallucinations of The Deathless Mother, Geralt returns home to his father-figure, and begins the real work of parenting Ciri by teaching her how to defend herself, and how to fight with integrity. In the tried and true tradition of monster-of-the-week, the real monster was something deeper all along, and this week it was parenthood. Until next time, peasants, fight the monster within, and good luck on the path. – Laura Merrill
