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!
Avatar: The Last Airbender – “Aang” (S1E1, Netflix)
Read our full review of the series premiere by Ramon Piña.
Masters of the Universe: Revolution – “The Scepter and the Sword” (S2E5, Netflix)
Tune in later today to read our full review of the series finale by Ramon Piña.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur – “Make It, Don’t Break It!” (S2E7, Disney Channel)
Holy cow, Big Wheel was a villain in this episode and he was actually intimidating! But more importantly, this was another poignant entry for the show, which saw Lunella battling depression and anxiety again after finding herself pressured to be perfect by her new science teacher, Dr. Akonam Ojo (Cynthia Erivo). Lu needed Dr. Ojo’s sponsorship to enter the annual RoboWarz event, however, she finds herself sinking into darkness because the Wakandan scientist is not big on positive reinforcement, and begins to neglect being Moon Girl to make her “Robob” the best fighter it needs to be. However, when a stressed screw causes Lu to lose out on going to the finals, she is left devastated, and unable to fight when Big Wheel crashes the festivities.
Devil manages to defeat Big Wheel with the help of the school STEM team, encouraged by the kindly if scientifically untrained Coach Hrbek (also voiced by Fred Tatasciore), while Casey manages to coax Lu out of her panic attack with her mixtape. Ojo returns and apologizes, admitting this strict manner of teaching was how she was taught, and should’ve realized someone else would not enjoy it. She then discloses she hasn’t been honest with Lu, revealing she’s working as a recruiter for the Wakandan science spies. Lu’s ecstatic to learn she’s on Wakanda’s radar, but asks to take a rain check, something Ojo is happy to oblige with. This was a beautiful episode, and the message of Lunella being a diamond regardless of whether she’s being pressured or not was pretty sly too, since she’s voiced by Diamond White. – Christopher Chiu-Tabet
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur – “The Devil You Know” (S2E8, Disney Channel)
The Lafayettes are going on a road trip, but Devil has grown tired with being left out of family activities to keep Lunella’s secret, and he and Lu part on bad terms. While she’s away, Devil learns of Action Buddies Confidential, a group consisting of other ex-animal sidekicks, namely Pebble (Alex Newell), Aragorn (Cree Summer; who’s usually Valkyrie’s horse), Redwing (Bumper Robinson; who’s Falcon’s bird in the comics, but belongs here to another Black flying superhero named Rodney), and Toothgnasher (Fred Stoller; one of Thor’s goats.) Devil soon realizes this group of friends are pretty fake and obnoxious, but is enticed into sticking with them for a road trip.
Unfortunately, it turns out all they were interested in was destroying the man cave belonging to Pebble’s former owner, Granite the Crusher (Giancarlo Esposito). Forced to admit he is still Lunella’s pet, Devil battles the ABC until Granite shows up, and reveals Pebble, Aragorn and Redwing only left their owners over a misunderstanding (Toothgnasher is still being sued by his unnamed owner for undisclosed reasons though.) Every other member of the ABC reconciles with their owners, including Devil, who receives a name keyring Lu bought on the road for him. This was a OK but still fun episode: I was familiar enough with old sitcoms like Good Times and Diff’rent Strokes to find the retro theme song the ABC received particularly hilarious, and it was nice to hear Esposito in a more wholesome role for once, however briefly. – Christopher Chiu-Tabet
Quantum Leap – “As the World Burns” (S2E12, NBC)
While there’s been no official announcement, it seems like Quantum Leap is not returning for a third season, and so “As the World Burns” is setting up the endgame for the series in as elegant a way as it can. Which is to say, it’s not doing so elegantly at all, but rather in a way that attempts to give fans the closure they desire, even if the pathway there is incredibly uneven.
Continued belowThe worst part of the episode is the emotional undoing of the Magic resignation. Yes, he’s still resigned at the end of the episode, but he resigned to save the program, and the program gets taken over anyway. It makes his sacrifice meaningless, and gave us less Ernie Hudson than we deserve in this penultimate episode.
The best part of the episode is the dovetailing of the Hannah and HQ stories together and, specifically, the intimation that Hannah’s son is somehow going to be involved in the future. It seems too simplistic and obvious for Jeffrey, Hannah’s son, to one day change is name to Gideon Ridge and become evil because he discovers a letter than Ben wrote Hannah. But having Hannah write the code that, potentially, brings Ben home was an inspired, if a bit cheesy, choice.
The actual leap, aside from the stuff with Hannah and Jeffrey, was pretty standard, and the conversations at HQ were expected as well. It’s odd to have a show that, at this late point, is half really fast-paced plot machinations and half boiler-plate TV procedural. It’s like no matter how fast they have to run to make their ending, they can’t forget that this is a procedural going out to old people who can’t handle too much sci-fi at once. – Brian Salvatore
Resident Alien – “The Upper Hand” (S3E2, Syfy)
Read our full review of by Christopher Chiu-Tabet.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch – “Confined” (S3E1, Disney+)
Read our full review of the season premiere by Brian Salvatore.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch – “Paths Unknown ” (S3E2, Disney+)
After an episode focused on Omega and Crosshair, The Bad Batch checks in on Hunter and Wrecker, giving us a status update on their search for Omega. They’re doing what they’ve always done, which is use their skills to make money and gain information, and they’ve getting some decent, but not great, intel in exchange for hunting down a Pike. This leads them to an abandoned Imperial base where they encounter some young clones whose enhanced aging appears to be disabled.
These three represent the only hope we’ve really encountered in the first two episodes. Yes, they’re shithead teenagers, but they represent a different path for a clone that what we see at this point in the overarching Star Wars story. They’re not being decommissioned because they’re not needed as soldiers, they’re not dealing with PTSD and injuries from the Clone Wars. These clones are trying to find a way to start a life, and due to the uncertain nature of their lives, there’s a silver lining of hope. The fact that they are getting to live on the island that the Wrecker, Hunter, Omega, and Tech almost settled on shows that their path doesn’t have to end in the ways that older clones’ stories did. They can find something resembling normalcy.
The “slither vines” that are experienced throughout the episode appear to be some sort of genetically mutated version of a Sarlac. Here is a classic example of Star Wars continuing to ‘rhyme:’ we’ve seen a Sarlac pit as the vehicle of rebirth for Boba Fett, another clone that didn’t age up in the ‘standard’ way. It isn’t the Sarlac that gives the three young clones a rebirth, but rather its defeat. – Brian Salvatore
Star Wars: The Bad Batch – “Shadows of Tantiss” (S3E3, Disney+)
After “Paths Unknown” ended with some hopefulness bathed in the unknown, “Shadows of Tantiss” ends with hopefulness bathed in anxiety. Yes, Crosshair and Omega (and Batcher) manage to escape with their lives, but they’ve gone from captives to fugitives, and in the short term, their experience may actually get worse.
This episode fully confirms Omega’s Force sensitivity and sets that as the primary reason for Doctor Hemlock’s interest in her. Hemlock and Nala Se make an interesting pair of characters whose voice actors are the most chill in the whole galaxy, and those whose pursuit of science is pursued from such terribly different places. Nala Se does the work of the Empire, but wants to protect Omega from the worst of it. Hemlock does the work of the Empire, but doesn’t care who or what is destroyed for it.
Continued belowIt is interesting to see how the loyalties break down in this episode. Emerie is protective of Omega to a certain degree, but is not willing to risk herself or her position to save her, unlike Nala Se. Despite Omega having to know that on some level, Omega still thinks of Emerie as her sister and wants to save her. Is this Omega being more empathetic because of her Force sensitivity, or more naïve because she’s still a child? That’s unknown.
Emperor Palpatine shows up this week in another allusion to The Rise of Skywalker, and while this does good work seeding ideas earlier in the timeline, there’s not much The Bad Batch can do to rehabilitate the end of the sequel trilogy, no matter how much talk of ‘Project Necromancer’ they can squeeze in here. – Brian Salvatore
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live – “Years” (S1E1, AMC)
Tune in tomorrow to read our full review of the series premiere by Alexander Manzo.
