Boomb Tube, The Week in Comic Book Television: 11/20-11/26/2022

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!

Andor – “Rix Road” (S1E12, Disney+)

Read our full review of the season finale by Brian Salvatore.

Dead End: Paranormal Park – “All Dolled Up” (S2E7, NETFLIX)

I’ve struggled to start this review for a while. Not because the episode is particularly difficult; I just have no idea where to begin. “All Dolled Up” is a big of a coda for the ghost of Polly (or at least it appears to be) with a send-up to the Puppet Master and Chucky horror franchises and also a look into Norma’s emotional state at the moment, her relationship with her mother, and a bunch of lovely conversations with Logs.

I know the big plot stuff is probably the most important to discuss. Polly possessing a doll is big news and her trying to kill Norma & possess her mom is a LOT. So is Norma’s processing of her feelings around being rejected, which manifests my favorite line of the episode as she practices what she’s gonna say to Badiyah: “Badiyah, I’m sorry you’re straight.” But I was most invested in Norma’s mom, Swati, actually.

This is the first real episode we’ve gotten with her. We learn she’s a single mom and we see that she’s not just the overly doting parent implied by said premiere. Her doting nature is a defense mechanism, a cover for her fear for her daughter who struggles to make friends and a manifestation of her attempts to connect with her daughter and compensate for a distance she doesn’t know how to close. It’s a dilemma every parent faces compounded by Norma’s sudden abandonment of her previous special interest and retreat into herself.

Every trick she’s learned over the years to raise Norma’s spirits, every conversation topic, every point of connection has been torn asunder and she doesn’t even know why because Norma won’t/can’t/thinks she can’t tell her. So she’s grasping, hoping, begging for something. Norma’s worry about coming out as bi exacerbates their temporary estrangement to the point where she ends up throwing her father’s absence back in her mom’s face in a devastating scene. Absolutely wrecked me.

I’m really glad Swati is given this kind of depth and that the crew took the time to layer her unsaid feelings into the quiet shots of just her. Natasha Chandel knocks it out of the park in her performance, hiding the fear and worry beneath the “mom optimism” but letting it out more and more as the episode progresses. With all the wackiness and more tween/teen focused emotional arcs, it’s easy to overlook the complicated inner lives of the adults but Dead End chooses not to.

I wish I could tell you why this struck me as hard as it did. I guess you never know what aspects of a work will connect until you experience them. I hope we see more of Swati Kahn going forward in season 2 and, if Netflix is benevolent, beyond. If not, that’s OK. We’ve got a possessed Barney to deal with.

Oh did I forget to mention that? Whoops. – Elias Rosner

Pennyworth – “Highland Wedding” (S3E10, HBO Max)

Tune in on Tuesday for our full review of the season 3 finale by Matthew Vincenty.

Star Trek: Prodigy – “Masquerade” (S1E15, Paramount+)

Traveling through neutral space has had its advantages, mainly keeping the secret weapon away from the Federation, and allowing for the crew to truly come into their own while hiding. Captain Okona is still aboard and while he is clearly still his cocky self, he is doing his best to assist each crew member in their tasks to the best of his ability. His clever and smooth demeaner does bring some jealousy into Dal’s heart, which will play a big part in his story this week.

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While this is occurring, Janeway is contemplating how to ensure the Prodigy can be disabled without destroying it and the crew all while keeping it out of the hands of the Romulans. She must do this without the Romulans realizing they are at the edge of the Neutral Zone attempting to effect events within it. The Romulans, of course, eventually realize that the Prodigy is a Starfleet vessel, and send in a crew of the Tal Shiar to take it down and murder everyone on board. Of course, because this is a kids’s show, their attempts are thwarted through brains, and some brawn(?), and the crew lives to fight another day, most notably Murf.

The big reveal of the episode is that Dal finally learns who he is and where he comes from, but it isn’t what he or anyone else would expect. It brings only the smallest bit of closure and comfort, while opening countless other doors and questions up. I won’t spoil it here just in case readers have not seen the episode yet. Not only is a surprise, but what it does for the rest of the episode, while not wholly successful, does make up for quite few key moments. Dal goes through some real, er, growth here, physically and emotionally and it gives viewers moments that are both cathartic and true body horror.

I won’t spoil the big cliffhanger moment of the episode either, but let’s just say that someone on the Dauntless crew isn’t who we have believed and the Diviner’s amnesia, and change of character seem to have been revealed as completely true. While not the strongest episode in terms of narrative, as it does tend to jump from one scene and thought to the next with reckless abandon, being given the answers we have wanted for so long made “Masquerade” quite an enjoyable action episode.

This episode is packed full of the reveals and earned payoffs that many have been waiting for this entire season. It also brings some shocking new elements into this wild mix. While this could have actually stood in for one hell of a cliffhanger season finale, we must remember this is a show mainly aimed at a young audience and most kids probably would not have found these dangling threads all that satisfying. With five episodes remaining (though the two-part finale has a good chance of being dropped as a single extended episode), this is clearly setting up all of the conflict to come in the remainder of season one. – Chris Egan

Titans – “Inside Man” (S4E5, HBOMAX)

Penultimate episodes can often feel very perfunctory, often used to set up the pay off in the finale rather than provide some cathartic realization. Those are the sort of emotions the finale is supposed to bring. After last week’s episode I was not all that enthused by the prospects of “Inside Man”, in a surprising turn “Inside Man” manages to pull it off providing enough moments of actualization and still leaving the big issues on the table for the finale of Titans Season 4 part 1, “Brother Blood” for next week. The streaming landscape has been in a state of flux since the great Netflix correction; one of those outcomes has been splitting seasons as a ploy to retain subscribers across multiple quarters. This mirrors the sort of bifurcation seen in broadcast television (and to a lesser degree cable) and it has given this season a sense of structure that previous ones did not have.

Mostly I’m just happy the whole episode wasn’t building up to Chekhov’s Magic Snake going off in the last 5 minutes and everything going to hell. They take care of that in the first act with the rest of the episode split between saving Conner and a surreal adventure with Sebastian. With all the magic weaving it way through the season it’s nice to see the show employ some of its own magic thinking as it justifies Garfield turning into a virus to save Conner. It’s the kind of reframing of a powerset that works in the moment and probably won’t be used again because it’s too powerful, but also provides this earned sense of joy as it all works out. The episode doesn’t become less tense just because Garfield as a virus is absurd, if anything it made it more intense.

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Sebastian Blood begins to become something less meek and more interesting by the end of this episode as he joins the Church of Blood equivalent. Is he still a macguffin made of flesh? Yes, but at least they’re using the character to talk about agency and fate via his relationship with Raven. Joseph Morgan changes his body language in those final moments, and it works.

Tim Drake also begins to step into his own, finally using his staff correctly and kissing Bernard! Consider me impressed.

The writing team used this penultimate episode to set up actual stakes for the coming finale. Which I guess won’t go well for our team, but now that we know what they have to fight for there’s actual interest in them winning besides generic reasons about saving the world etc. – Michael Mazzacane