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 Flash – “It’s My Party and I’ll Die If I Want To” (S9E09, The CW)
It dawned on me during this episode, Barry Allen is my age…
It’s Barry’s birthday and they all pretend that he’s celebrating 30 again just because his body is younger (folks, that’s not how it works), well, this serves as a “do-over” for his thirties but he’s not comfortable in his own surprise party.
Wally came back from the Himalayas and Diggle makes a visit, but Barry is still under the weather, suddenly, Ramsey Rosso comes back for his vengeance, he still wants the same: to pull everyone into his hive and make an unified mind that will be immortal, but he has a new focus. Wally has been exploring what he thought were alternate timelines, but it turns out that they really were nascent universes within a new multiverse, and Bloodwork wants to bring himself to them all.
To reach enlightenment, Wally has been exploring “outwards” instead of facing his own self, and Rosso takes vantage of that to manipulate and control the speedster, who ends up killing the Flash. Suddenly, Barry wakes up in the next life, where he meets his old friend Oliver Queen.
The former Green Arrow and current Spectre offers Barry to go back, but he can’t do it unless Barry fully wants to return; that is because Bloodwork put some doubts in his mind, why is The Flash alive but many of his friends aren’t? How is that fair to Frost or Caitlin? Ollie puts some Sense in Barry’s mind, and they go back to earth to stop the bad guy, the Arrow even got to say his old phrase again: “you’ve failed this city,” oof! I got chills!
This episode was important in many senses, it was the last “one-shot” standalone chapter before one last story arc; we got to say goodbye to Wally, Diggle and Oliver Queen, this was also the last episode directed by Danielle Panabaker who, as always, did it great. And finally we were introduced to a new Multiverse (which coincides with last week’s episode of Titans, “Dude, Where’s My Gar?”) and I can only speculate that they will end the Arrowverse on a high note before the beginning of the new DCU.
See you next week for the beginning of the last arc: “A New World.” – Ramon Piña
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur – “Today, I Am a Woman” (S1E12, Disney Channel)
It’s a lovely show of Jewish inclusion on this installment of MGADD: Casey Goldberg-Calderon is having her Bat Mitzvah, but is anxious about not impressing her snooty cousins, the triplets Lara, Laura, and Laurel (Gideon Adlon, whose mother, Pamela, also voices Rabbi Ryda in this episode.) Lunella decides to loudly proclaim Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur will attend, and that their whole class is invited, driving up hype for the ceremony, and attracting the interest of influencer Odessa Drake (Anna Akana). However, Casey gets carried away with all the online likes she receives, ignoring Moon Girl when she asks for permission to leave and get changed before the ceremony, upsetting her, and prompting Lu to leave.
A guilty Casey dolefully recites the Torah without her best friend in attendance, while Lunella gets into a fight with Odessa after discovering she’s a thief who trades in stolen superhero tech. The two duke it out while Casey’s inner narration bitterly sings “Altz iz gut” (“all is good”), “Hava Nagila” (“let us rejoice”), and “Mazel tov” (“good fortune”). They crash into the synagogue’s main hall, where Casey tears her shawl to help restrain the villain. Odessa threatens to leave a bad review, but Casey responds she doesn’t care anymore, while her cousins grab and break her phone before she can do anything.
Continued belowCasey apologizes to her best friend, and does her reading wholeheartedly this time. As it emerges Devil spent the whole time snacking on the dining, everyone goes to the Lafayettes’ skating rink to celebrate instead. Casey asks Lunella what she did with Odessa, and she replies she made a few calls: cut to Captain America/Sam Wilson (complete with Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme) collecting Odessa as she tries to wiggle her way out of the synagogue’s clothes room. Wow: the kids really are growing up with Sam as their Cap now! – Christopher Chiu-Tabet
Riverdale – “Tales in a Jugular Vein” (S7E5, The CW)
Read our full review by Elias Rosner
Superman & Lois – “Of Sound Mind” (S3E6, CW)
The first couple of acts in this episode, which is effectively the mid-season finale if the show were to take one, “Of Sound Mind,” felt a little scattershot. It wasn’t that individual plot threads from Clark’s teaching Jonathan a lesson and him dealing with Lois’ cancer treatment, the Lang-Kushing’s, and Bruno Manheim’s mad science were not by themselves dramatically sound. It just wasn’t apparent how these were all going to be tied together. As is often the case, the thread that unites this episode is found in the title of the episode, “Of Sound Mind”, as the episode eventually gives us three different characters working through or attempting to justify actions taken in the name of the family are of “sound mind.”
Superman is not a very good teacher; his overall point is sound. It is the same one Oliver made to Barry all those years ago about being prepared. How he goes about teaching that to Jonathan … is also pretty much how Oliver taught it to Barry. But Oliver was a toxic person at the time, so maybe sucker punching your son in the name of constant vigilance isn’t a good idea. How this, his time at the cancer support group, and his run in with Onomatopoeia forces the Man of Steel to open up about his vulnerability to his wife is one of the better moments of the series.
We get two action sequences in this episode, Jordan’s training and the run-in with Onomatopoeia. These two sequences highlight the way sequences usually work and which ones are interesting. Onomatopoeia and Manheim’s goons blast Superman with sonic weaponry and kryptonite beams. While the VFX is active, the staging and blocking itself is very static. It’s just kind of boring. Meanwhile, Jordan’s 90-second training sequence has movement and depth to it, even as VFX lasers are blasted about. Doing that kind of movement-heavy work is hard on a TV schedule but sometimes this Superman cuts a figure closer to the one in Superman Returns and that’s not entertaining.
Jonathan talking to Sophie about being passed over or forgotten in the family was very metatextual. This has to be the first time Sophie was a going concern as a character. Jonathan’s arc has always been about not turning into Al Bundy. It was a sweet moment that gave space to all the Lang-Kushing family during this divorce for a change instead of focusing on the ones that “matter”. Michael Bishop is starting to grow on me. He can access empathy better than the previous actor.
Meanwhile, audiences finally understand the thing that is driving Bruno Manheim. In a nice bit of antagonist-protagonist mirroring, Manheim’s wife Peia (Daya Vaidya) is also battling cancer and this Earth’s Onomatopoeia! It was an effective revelation and helps to give everything the necessary personal stakes in this back half of the season. – Michael Mazzacane
Sweet Tooth – “In Captivity” (S2E1, The CW)
Tune in tomorrow to read our full review of the season 2 premiere by Alexander Manzo.
Titans – “Dude, Where’s My Gar?” (S4E9, HBOMAX)
I wish I liked this episode more, which feels weird to say since it gives audiences a supremely meta cameo by Grant Morrison DRAWING THE MAP OF MULTIVERSITY! The core point of the episode, to finally give Ryan Potter and the character of Gar a showcase episode, is very effective. Potter also shares story credit with teleplay writer Geoff Johns as well. And this is a very Johnsisan episode. It breaks the character down to find their thematic core, which can then be literalized like a fractal, remaking the character in the process. Garfield’s greatest strength is his relationships with other people. As Beast Boy he can turn into any Animal (later expanded in Johnsisan fashion to include the virus), which gives him a connection to every animal and thus the Red. So why not extend that out to the Multiverse and make him some uber protector the same way Oliver Queen is as the Spectre of the Arrowverse? The way the episode is able to drill down and expand out in a surprisingly efficient manner is a testament to how well the writer’s room was able to articulate this core point. They even use this episode to turn B’wana Beast away from the colonialist mighty whitey trope into something better. The writing and structure of this episode is very well done. And yet I’m still left wanting.
The small hole this episode left comes down to the visual storytelling of the episode, primarily the soft rock pop fused trip across the multiverse. I have to look up and see if they used Volume-like tech to film it, but it was just very static. Sure, the camera swoops in and around as Gar sees across the Multiverse and into the Arrowverse Earth-1, Teen Titans Go! and eventually into Stargirl’s Earth-2. But this montage of other DC stuff isn’t actually all that engaging or dynamic. Potter is waving about and reacting but isn’t really moving. It was like the idealized version of something you’d find on a genre show in the late 90s or early 2000s. Visual storytelling in television at large, and this show in particular, are better than that, and I have been trained to expect better.
Still, this is a fantastic episode that leans into the things DC does well when their corporate owners aren’t being resold (again) or otherwise stopping and starting plans. – Michael Mazzacane
