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!
The Mandalorian – “The Return” (S3E8, Disney+)
Read our full review of the season finale by Brian Salvatore.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur – “Like Mother, Like Moon Girl” (S1E11, Disney Channel)
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur returns to tackle gentrification in an episode that asks a) what if your mom was your biggest fan and b) what if Reed and Sue Richards were insufferable gentrifiers? In this installment, Lunella and Devil are named Lower East Side Community Captains by Borough Council President Diego Peña (Luis Guzman!), and is introduced to Marcy and Marty Muzzler (June Diane Raphael and Paul Scheer), who’ve made a fortune developing noise killers, and now want to “invest” in the LES. Unfortunately, this basically amounts to telling people they don’t have permission to sell food, play music, or throw parties, and remaking the neighborhood in their generic, lifeless image. Lunella’s mom, Adria, scolds Moon Girl for working with the Muzzlers, telling her she’s disappointed in her.
Lunella later asks for advice using a cover story, and her mom reminds her she has a voice, and that she should always use it. With Moon Girl’s blessing, Adria throws the block party she was banned from holding, and the Muzzlers respond by using a giant noise canceller to silence everyone in the neighborhood except them. Moon Girl and Adria respond by tapping a container, before driving a sign saying “take back the block” into the machine to break it – it’s an absolutely stunning, near silent piece of Fight the Power imagery. After Moon Girl takes the Muzzlers to S.H.I.E.L.D., Adria tells her daughter what happened, and that’s she proud of their neighborhood hero again – although she must admit, she thinks Moon Girl’s mom must be pretty irresponsible. Adria, I hate to break it to you but… – Christopher Chiu-Tabet
Riverdale – “Love & Marriage” (S7E4, The CW)
Read our full review by Elias Rosner
Star Trek: Picard – “The Last Generation” (S3E10, Paramount+)
Read our full review of the series finale by Christopher Chiu-Tabet.
Titans – “Dick & Carol & Ted & Kory” (S4E8, HBOMAX)
The start of Titans final half season was a two-part arc, which meant this episode was pretty good television. Without the need to do all the exposition and plotting oft he first half, this episode is able to explore the characters and effects the environment have upon them. Brenton Thwaites has a good action sequence. The writers use the Pleasantville nature of the town to explore the characters of Dick and Kory. The series’ penchant for light-dark horror elements gets a moment as Dick smashes the infernal radio station. It had all the elements one would hope for in Titans
After being implanted with radio receivers that will slowly overwrite their personalities Dick and Kory are on a race against time to find Rachel and get out of town before they become Ted and Carol. Titans wrapping their version of Brother Blood in contemporary-ish Anti-Christ conspiracy theories and fears is an effective choice to ground the character. I also didn’t expect Titans and Boruto to have basically the same memory-wiping plot device within a week of one another. OK, it’s closer to Don’t Worry Darling, but the less said about that film, the better.
I have really come around to the experimental nature of Titans. Calling an IP show experimental sounds like an oxymoron. Still, the various twists and plays on audience understanding of the property in an attempt to make a coherent Titans history (especially compared to the bifurcated nature in the comics) is the kind of stuff I want out of these shows. Let me see the writer’s room spin on things. Central in this reimagining of the Titans property has been the will-they-won’t-they relationship between Dick Grayson and Koriand’r. That dynamic has been at play in the series, but it’s also been a bit thornier an issue and denied by the characters. Throughout the series, they’ve been thrust into these situations where the cosmos, it seems, is showing them that they will have a daughter, and neither of them wants to talk about it. It would be a strange conversation, to be fair. Faced with the possibility of losing themselves Kory and Dick make recordings to themselves about their histories, and it forces an accounting of their time together. This is all realized through montage and a poetic mode with light textual narration, and it’s an effective push to get them to a new place. The series shows us for a change instead of telling us. Looking back on all the stuff they’ve been through, which really has been a lot, both seem to realize they mean more to one another and in different ways than they want to admit.
Our trio on the inside discovers the radio station and Titans goes back to its grim dark horror roots with a magical radio station POWERED BY BLOOD! It lacked the arch gothic and fascist aesthetic of Warhammer 40k’s Imperium, but it wasn’t that far off. The DJ is a living husk strapped to a gurney whose body is a conduit for the magical blood powering the barrier and mind control. Of note, the cinematography of Tim and Bernard on the other side of the barrier is also fantastic. The contrast between “realities” stark lighting choices vs the soft overall coverage of Caul’s Folly draws out the unreality between the two spaces. The image of Dick covering his nice pink polo in blood is also quite the sight.
When viewed as two episodes back-to-back, “Caul’s Folly” and “Dick & Carol & Ted & Kory” are an effective little duo. The latter’s basic competency in television drama doesn’t make up for the structural weaknesses of the former. It is a good example, however, of how old-school programming decisions can work in the streaming era. With Caul’s Folly behind them the Titans are on a course to stop Brother Blood and save the world or die trying in the process. – Michael Mazzacane
