Boomb Tube, The Week in Comic Book Television: 11/19-11/25/2023

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!

Bodies – “Catch Me if You Can” (E7, Netflix)

Set primarily in 1889-1890, the penultimate episode shows how Elias Mannix became Sir Julian Harker, and how he seduced Polly Hillinghead into becoming his wife, deploying his working-class charm to persuade her into believing he wasn’t like other aristocrats. There’s a compelling moment of wordless storytelling, where they become closer as he repeatedly invites her to play piano for his mother, but it leaves us uneasy instead of enchanted, as if we’re watching a spider close in on its prey. He becomes the first person she turns to after her father’s arrest, and goes to meet Hillinghead as he’s being transported to prison. Alfred reacts angrily to the suggestion he will look after her, and Harker has him strangled to death; he tells Polly he ended his own life, unable to live with the shame of his actions.

Julian and Polly soon wed, and have their son Hayden, after which point he reveals his secret. Polly is initially shocked to learn her husband lied about who he is, although I was easily far more grossed out to receive confirmation Mannix is his own ancestor, and that he groomed his own great-great grandmother. The story eventually circles back to 1941; we see Polly was reluctant to kill Esther, but Harker convinced her it was no different from everything else going on during the war. We learn he once told her he doesn’t believe in death because of time travel, words that hang with a heavy irony once we see their murders at Whiteman’s hands again, and Whiteman’s own execution; his rabbi continues his last rites after the hangman’s noose drops, but it seems like no one’s listening.

2053 progresses too, with Maplewood suffering from cognitive dissonance over letting Mannix perpetuate the tragic loop. After finding Defoe’s notes in her flat, she remembers the Throat sends you into the future as well as the past, and goes to her brother, whom she discovers is helping Hasan hide and recover from her injuries. The two put aside their differences to rescue Defoe when he arrives in the future, and the four concoct a plan to go back in time and cultivate a seed of doubt in Mannix’s heart. Iris enters the Throat, and winds up naked, without her spinal implant, in Victorian London: I don’t know about you, but I don’t think they really thought this plan through. – Christopher Chiu-Tabet