Welcome back to 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!
Echo – “Tuklo” (E3, Disney+)
Read our full review by Christopher Chiu-Tabet.
Echo – “Taloa” (E4, Disney+)
Tune in tomorrow to read our full review by Christopher Chiu-Tabet.
Hilda – “The Forgotten Lake” (S3E6, Netflix)
“The Forgotten Lake” does so well with so many elements, the points where it stumbles feel all the more critical. Desperate to prove she’s not as overprotective and unfun as Hilda’s father, Johanna buys a car and arranges for an impromptu camping trip. The car, it turns out, is a clunker, and breaks down next to a shrouded lake which Johanna feels a strange familiarity toward. “Maybe you didn’t hold onto a memory of this place, but it held on to you,” Hilda says. (As has been true with much of this season, Hilda and Johanna forget everything they’ve learned about each other for the sake of the plot.)
The atmosphere, the unsettling tension at the lake, the mood are well delivered, but that’s not unexpected from Hilda. There’s an eerie quality over everything and Johanna realizes she’s painted that tree a lot without having seen it, and why not? it’s a dope-ass tree. The creature they encounter is a imaginative design of eldritch terror, a being from “before it was necessary to name things,” and the chase that takes up the back half of the episode goes hard, moving from the caves into the water, through the woods and onto the road, each new location providing its own source of obstacles and boons.
However, “The Forgotten Lake” drops off at the end, as if the production team realized they pushed themselves into a corner and elected to go for a sillier denouement. And maybe that was necessary to assure Hilda’s younger audience, but the closing moments are weighed down with a long monologue to fill out some Johanna lore. It comes off as inauthentic. This whole episode, this whole season, the production team has wrestled with telling a self-contained story while developing a larger, overarching narrative they do not have much confidence in.
“The Forgotten Lake” is messy and uneven, but it also boasts some wonderful set pieces, clever creature designs, and outstanding animation. “I have no word for what I am, I just am,” the creature says, and that might be the best way to contextualize this third season. – Matthew Garcia
Masters of the Universe: Revolution – “Even For Kings” (S1E1, Netflix)
Read our full review of the series premiere by Ramon Piña.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off – “2 Scott 2 Pilgrim” (E7, Netflix)
In case you missed it, read our full review by James Dowling.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off – “The World vs. Scott Pilgrim” (E8, Netflix)
Read our full review by James Dowling.
