Boomb Tube, The Week in Comic Book Television: 10/16-10/22/2022

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!

Oh, and check out our still ongoing, for a couple more weeks at least, 2022 Summer TV binges, where Multiversity staffers reach back in time to review comics/comics-adjacent/nerdy shows all summer (and the first half of fall) long. (Here’s a handy list of what’s being covered too.) Thanks y’all.

Andor – “Announcement” (S1E7, Disney+)

Read our full review by Brian Salvatore.

Dead End: Paranormal Park – “Take the Angels Bowling” (S2E1, Netflix)

In case you missed it, read our full review of the season 2 premiere by Elias Rosner

Dead End: Paranormal Park – “Evil Twins Are People Too” (S2E2, NETFLIX)

I have so many more questions after “Evil Twins Are People Too” and I’m vibrating with excitement and the thought of discovering their answers later in the season. Is it only Pusgly who can do Angelic magic? What does Five Fingers want? How evil were the evil twins really? Can there even be an evil version of Pugsly or is Pugsly just too good a boy? Is Courtney an Angel? If so, what’s with her memories? How will Logs cope with a low thread-count uniform?! And, finally, does Gord’s presence in Norma’s podcast mean he’s here for longer and longer scenes?

Whew. I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch, like when is Logs & Barney’s wedding and how many episodes until Norma asks Deathslide out on a real date? (I say one, maybe two.) That’s fine though because I’m having a rocking time with season 2 and I don’t need any answers yet. The characters are really coming into their own and developing independently, which is nice after a mostly Barney-centric season.

I loved this episode and I also hated it. Why? Simple: I do not like the “magic evil clone teaching a lesson by existing” trope. Never have, even when it’s done really well like here. It’s just not fun to me seeing versions of these characters be absolute jerkwads. I get the appeal and the utility of an evil clone/twin/whatever; I’m just not into it and check out pretty fast.

The outfits are great though. A+ design work.

Putting my personal dislike aside, this was a great follow-up to the premiere, hitting that perfect sweet spot of ongoing narrative development and single episode stories; of horror and comedy; of subtle emotional development and clear, hammer hitting that’s done so well, I don’t even mind it. At least until it was lampshaded. Not their strongest joke.

I did laugh so hard at the horde of Pugsly’s chasing Courtney after she bit Barney’s arm though. Oh and the demon support group. Oh and the classical music montage at the start. Oh and- – Elias Rosner

Pennyworth – “Rhyme ‘n’ Reason” (S3E5, HBO Max)

Pennyworth gives us a plot we’ve come to expect from the show, but sprinkles in some character moments to keep it from feeling too paint-by-numbers.

Picking up a month after last episode, Alfred has been hired by Aziz to protect/spy on Zarha Kin. She is the leader of a separatist movement from Kalpur. She’s in London for the Commonwealth Summit mentioned last week to talk peace with her president. The president hires her bodyguard to assassinate her in the second most obvious plot point of the episode. The most obvious being Alfred is going to end up in bed with her by the end. Post-coitus she admits that the real reason she’s in London is to find her father who has been presumed dead for the last ten years. In the closest thing to a twist, Alfred tells Daveboy that he thinks they are the ones who were hired to kidnap her father a decade ago.

Alfred’s mum gets a little screen time this week on a nice date with the guy she met the last episode. I like how the show has given her agency over her life, she’s not a retired old widow just there to advance someone else’s plot. She has her own story going and her own needs.

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Thomas and Martha aren’t having a good time of it after he tried to kill her. So when his sister Patricia shows up the timing couldn’t be worse. She appears to be in better shape than the last time we saw her, but she’s about to get mixed up into something bad.

Daveboy’s date with Sally turns weird when it is revealed her artist friend is the guy who has taken Glubb hostage. Not V with the Guy Fawkes mask. He’s using Glubb’s lullaby drug on the crowd including Daveboy and Patricia Wayne, but not with the intent to make them kill. It remains to be seen what his true intentions are.

Bet returns after being missing the last few episodes. She finds Frances Gaunt who is able to give her the location of John Salt. She’s finally able to get her revenge for the death of Lord Harcourt last season. But Gault is a changed man. He’s now a PWE, more machine than man. Bulletproof and with his own posse, he survives Bet’s attack and takes her and the baby hostage. – Matthew Vincenty

Quantum Leap – “Salvation or Bust” (S1E5, NBC)

In some ways, it is a relief to see an episode set in the Wild West that doesn’t even make the slightest attempt to remove anachronistic language and attitudes. “Salvation or Bust” has the story it wants to tell and it appears that the producers wanted to tell that story without having to waste even a half hour’s worth of script doctoring to avoid the tone being a very strange mix of 2022 and 1892. I can respect that kind of drive and vision, even if most of me gets annoyed that the shoe can’t do even the bare minimum in that regard.

An especially lazy piece of this episode, but really of the entire series thus far, has been the attempts to hide Ben speaking with Addison in plain sight. We’ve barely seen him trying to find a secluded, isolated spot in which to talk openly with his holographic tour guide. Instead, Ben just starts chatting up Addison anywhere, with no regard to how anyone else will handle this very, very weird visual.

Because there is an urgency to this episode that hasn’t really been present thus far, a lot of the episode felt like it was waiting, with bated breath, for a big revelation. At first, it appeared that Magic decided to blackmail a sitting Congressperson for manslaughter (!) was going to be the episode’s prestige moment, but nope, that was just the first course. The end of the episode reveals a second Leaper, one who believes that Ben is following him, leap to leap.

This is a fun idea, even if it seems like this is maybe happening a season or two too quickly. We barely know Ben, and now we’re adding a whole other layer to the show. That said, it adds another element to the overarching narrative for the show, which is both a good and a bad thing. The leaps are feeling less and less important to the series, which begs the question, did these producers really want to do a Quantum Leap reboot, or something different? Either answer is valid, but it changes how the show is considered. Until that question is answered, the series will always feel a little muddled. – Brian Salvatore

Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles – “The Chizu Stands Alone” (S2E8, NETFLIX)

Welp. I knew Chizu being the head of the Neko Ninja wouldn’t last but I didn’t expect it to be over in, like, four episodes. I’m kinda bummed! I was hoping we’d explore more of her attempts to lead this unruly bunch of former assassins. That could’ve been great fun and let her develop, or fail, as a leader, instead of what we got which is a set-up episode, a couple check-ins, and then the big downfall here so that she could go back to being fully with Team Usagi for the finale episodes.

It also gives them an excuse to use the Voltrotto, the Warbotto Tetsujin has been talking about building all season, to cheat after Fuwa cheats to threaten Fuwa into not kidnapping kids anymore. As the adage goes: “Cheating is fun when you have a lightning gun.”

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Oh, did I forget to mention the Voltrotto? Yeah, it’s finally finished but there’s no pilot because of the power of hijinks during the search. I actually enjoyed the heck out of the Voltrotto’s testing plot, probably because Tetsujin gets to be silly without being cast as obnoxious and it’s inherently funny for everyone to fail to control this giant robot because OF COURSE IT’S SUPER DANG DIFFICULT. Well, everyone except Kitsune.

That’s right! Kitsune’s puppetry skills, the thing that hasn’t been mentioned or used since maybe the series premiere, comes in handy in a clever way that fits the world. You love to see it.

Oh! I almost forgot. The writers needed some inane reason to not stop the invasion before it could happen in order to pad the season so they have Yuichi convince everyone to do the most baffling 180 on cutting the Clavis off the Ki-Stone because something something Kagehito’s magic orb of soul planktons can’t be cured otherwise. It’s flimsy and sudden and par for the course with this show’s plotting.

You know what isn’t though? The appearance of Miyamoto Usagi during a really cool meditation scene! He absolutely stole the show for me, which makes it all the more baffling that we didn’t get a straight adaptation of the original characters. You can’t tease a better show and not expect me to gripe about it y’all. Here’s hoping he sticks around to dunk on Yuichi during the final two episodes.

Maybe he can make a space squid omelet out of Kyoko. Mmmmm. Space eggs. Ikuzo! – Elias Rosner

Stargirl – “Frenemies – Chapter Seven: Infinity Inc, Part 1” (S3E7, The CW)

One of the nice things about the third season of Stargirl is that each episode seemingly pushes the plot forward in ways that are additive to the overarching plot of the series, the narrative of the season, and also for the individual episode’s functions. This episode is interested in both disarming the video equipment that is planted all over Blue Valley (season 3 specific), rescuing Todd Rice (the series’ narrative of forming a new JSA), moving Yolanda into a place where she is forced to deal with her parents (a series long development), how to better use the Thunderbolt (a season 2+3 theme), showing the dangers of Rick’s unlimited Miraclo (this season), and still making the episode feel like it has a beginning, middle, and ending. It’s a lot to juggle, and the episode, more or less, nails it.

A big help for this specific week’s narrative was the re-emergence of the Shade, who can move the plot along nicely with his powers. The pairing of Courtney, Pat, Shade, and Jenny is one we haven’t really seen before, and it works pretty well. Jenny has been missed this season, and her search for Todd is a real boon to a series that can sometimes feel like it’s a little too myopic in its Blue Valley centrism. This also allows Mr. Bones to return, and further that story from last season.

There are two points in the episode that feel especially important to focus on. The first is the title of Infinity, Inc. This is the name of a team made up of JSA children that were a big part of the mid-80s DC lineup. Mr. Bones, Jade, Obsidian, Star Spangled Kid…well, basically everyone on this show but Stripsey and Stargirl were a part of the team. In so many ways, the show has already been an Infinity, Inc. series, but the name coming out now is interesting.

The episode ends with a return trip to the Shadowlands, giving us both a Pat and Shade buddy adventure and a trip to black and white cinematography. This detour will slow the season’s plot down a bit, but will hopefully provide the show with a little focus going into the back half of the season.