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!
And since the summer is here, check out our 2022 Summer TV binges, where Multiversity staffers reach back in time to review comics/comics-adjacent/nerdy shows all summer long. (Here’s a handy list of what’s being covered too.)
Dead End: Paranormal Park – “The Phantom of the Theme Park” (S1E9, NETFLIX)
Read our full review of s1’s penultimate episode by Elias Rosner.
Harley Quinn – “It’s a Swamp Thing” (S3E5, HBO Max)
This week we visit New Orleans for a visit with the master of The Green, Swamp Thing. Ivy begins her search for Super Saiyan Frank, trapped within the clutches of SPOILERS, Bruce Wayne. Speaking of Wayne, his quick descent into pathetic relationship tendencies culminates in weird musical therapy with the aggressively apathetic Selene Kyle.
Every episode seems to teach Ivy a life lesson about being a good friend, which is wearing thin at an alarming rate. We have already seen Ivy be a normal ass lady, and a pretty faithful friend for the past two seasons, making these tiny personal journeys feel a little unearned. These weekly lessons are swerving into sappy 80’s sitcom territory, but not in the cool, retro way. More of a sincere, plodding way. Also, Harley remains the least interesting and most stagnant part of the Harley Quinn show. Her character seems to be jogging in place, stuck between the Harley we knew and whoever the show wants her to be. Still not sure what this is yet, either. – Carl Waldron
I Am Groot – (S1, Disney+)
What is there that one can say about I Am Groot other than the famous words: “I am Groot.”
This series of shorts follows the titular Groot in his Guardians of the Galaxy 2-stage Baby Groot form, where he’s found the right balance of cuteness, mobility, and childishness. Each one is about three minutes or so, give or take the amount of time it takes for credits to fill up their five-minute runtimes. In each short, we see Groot get up to some kind of adorable shenanigans, sometimes with moderately homicidal results. (In fact, he basically destroys an entire tiny civilization at least once.)
Plot-wise, there’s not much we can really say. Each episode has Groot doing something, like taking a bath in a mud puddle or following a strange noise he heard in the middle of the night, which leads to cute or humorous shenanigans. Occasionally another creature appears to either moderately antagonize Groot, which doesn’t end well for them. And sometimes Groot just causes mass destruction but with good intentions. They’re short, they’re cute, they left me slightly worried about Groot’s moral compass, and that’s really about all that can be said about the story.
Vin Diesel returns to his role as Groot, with Bradley Cooper making an appearance in one episode as Rocket. Given the overall runtime of I Am Groot, they still make sure to deliver as entertaining a performance as possible in the few lines they have, and it’s all fine performances. Bradley’s delivery of the line “How’d you get the wall wet and on fire?” probably drew the biggest laugh, but overall it’s clear that everyone is having fun recording it.
Now, given the characters, everything in the show is CGI. And it is impressive CGI indeed, with the designers and animators bringing just about the same level of detail to each episode as they do to the movies. There are some exceptionally creative designs for alien animals, showcasing the creativity and skill of the people behind them. Even in the short episodes we get, there are still some really well-done shots and scenes that stand out – Groot’s dance-off being a notable one. (Now let’s make sure that the people who create these effects get the respect and fair pay they deserve!)
Continued belowIs there an overarching story to I Am Groot? No, there is not. Does it provide any character development or deepen our understanding of the characters? Also no, unless you really wanted to know how Groot went from a potted plant to walking on two legs. Does it build on, or even connect to, the lore that’s been building more and more throughout each Marvel movie? Of course not.
But it’s approximately 30 minutes of Baby Groot doing cute and moderately destructive things, and it does it well. Sometimes that’s all you need. – Robbie Pleasant
Locke & Key – “The Snow Globe” (S3E1, Netflix)
Stay tuned later today for the full review of the season three premiere by Alexander Manzo.
Paper Girls – “Blue Tongues Don’t Lie” (S1E3, Amazon Prime)
After abandoning the other girls, Mac meets up with her brother Dylan (Cliff Chamberlain), now a successful doctor, who tells her that she died of lymphoma at the age of 16. He brings her home and vows to take care of her so that she never gets sick; meanwhile, the white suited agent from the future picks up Mac’s trail at Mac’s brother’s hospital. Breaking Mac away from the main group is a smart move that allows her to develop in a way that doesn’t feel saccharine or unearned. She’s found a version of her brother that is worlds away from the one she left, and her brother has to simultaneously process the insanity of the time travel at the story’s heart and reprocess the trauma of his sister’s death. He’s changed, and she never got the chance to – it’s a profound, cosmic unfairness that packs an enormous emotional wallop.
The rest of the girls (and Old Erin) attempt to find Mac, but are instead kidnapped by Larry (Nate Corddry), a farmer who is aligned with Heck and Naldo, the boys that brought them into the future. He briefs them on the conflict they find themselves mixed up in: a war between the Old Watch (an aristocratic group from the future attempting to preserve the timeline where they’re in power) and the rebellious STF Underground that attempts to change the past to make the world a better place. Having travelled from their own time – a capital offense according to the Old Watch – the girls learn they’re now targets. Larry tells them it’s time to prepare for what’s next, and shows them a giant robot he is keeping in his barn.
This episode’s lore dump provides Paper Girls with its true premise, which helps it to come alive. Last episode started to weave in the themes of identity and fate, but the war expands that theme out to a societal level; as the girls grapple with their own senses of self and decide what their role in the world is going to be, the STF is fighting for the ability to make those same choices. That parallel is a promising direction for the show to move in, as are this episode’s more prominent genre elements. Last episode proved Paper Girls was on the right track, but “Blue Tongues Don’t Lie” is the first to really sing. – Reid Carter
Resident Alien – “Autopsy” (S2E9, Syfy)
Read our full review of the mid-season premiere by Christopher Chiu-Tabet.
The Sandman – “Inconvenient Hosts” (S1E2, Netflix)
Read our full review of the series premiere by august (in the wake of) dawn.
The Umbrella Academy – “Wedding At The End of The World” (S3E8, Netflix)
As the title of this episode alludes to, Luther and Sloane decide to have a quickie wedding with the apocalypse as their background. It’s an episode that feels off the main road once again because their last plan to save the world backfired and they are seemingly giving up, at least for the day. Luther pulls a minor groomzilla while trying to stop Allison and Viktor from arguing and taking away the shine from his day, but for the most part, it goes off without a hitch. While it is cute and great for Luther to get a win finally, it feels like the wrong time for something like that. But with the world ending, it does make sense for the now or never scenario to pop up.
The little piece of the season’s arc that we did get is that Reginal Hargreeves built the Hotel Oblivion, where they’ve been staying, and is the one who had the mystery suite with the secret tunnel to the other world/hotel. That is his secret “Project Oblivion.” It’s still unknown what Reginald hopes to get out of it, but he still wants the kids to go over and kill whatever is on the other side. Klaus is the only one on his side since Reginald helped him harness his immortality power, but the others aren’t even pretending to help him out because of all the bad things he did in their original timeline. At the end of the episode, we see Reginald talking to someone in his suite, making a deal to get the children to help him, but this is through Five’s drunken vision, and he passes out immediately after. – Alexander Manzo
