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!
With the TV season coming to a close for the year, we’ll be taking a short break after next week’s edition. Don’t worry, we’ll be back in the new year to continue some shows, start up some more, and catch you up on the reviews that will continue in our five thoughts format throughout December. In the meantime, check out all our end of year coverage! There may even be some TV in there ;).
Dead End: Paranormal Park – “The Other Side” (S2E8, NETFLIX)
Coming off of “All Dolled Up’s” absolutely excellent cliffhanger, I was stoked to see what the other side of that episode was like. What we got was good but rather underwhelming. I guess I was expecting something a bit more introspective like “All Dolled Up,” focusing more on how Barney and the park is handling Norma being gone. Instead we kinda rehash Barney’s struggle with self-worth and anxious spiraling thoughts set against the backdrop of zombie Barney terrorizing the gang in Dead End.
Oh and there are some deeply suspicious ghosts that actively detracted from my enjoyment of the episode.
I guess what disappointed me the most was how inconsequential zombie!Barney actually was and how frustrating the ghosts were. These ding-dang ghosts took up so much screen time and they added nothing. They weren’t funny, they weren’t menacing, and their motivations were poorly communicated. Plot devices, the lot of em!
I was hoping that what we saw at the end of “All Dolled Up” was the final escalation of their attempts to revive Barney – which it kind of is but doesn’t feel like one – or, heck, even the first attempt after a day that went horribly wrong. That would have required more time to be spent pre-Chandelier or more time with a “dead” Barney.
There’s an attempt at having everything feel chaotic too, like it’s one wrong move away from all falling apart. I get the sense it feels it has to act as a counterpoint to the majority of “All Dolled Up” (pre-Polly’s attack) tonally and I really wish it didn’t. There’s a better episode in here somewhere but in the mad dash to get to the finale with plenty of time to spare, and deliver on the wackiness of the ending, some things were lost.
And the episode definitely should’ve been called “Possessions are 9/10ths of the Law.” Just saying. – Elias Rosner
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (Marvel Special Presentation, Disney+)
Read our full review by Henry Finn.
Pennyworth – “Highland Wedding” (S3E10, HBO Max)
In case you missed it, read our full review of the season 3 finale by Matthew Vincenty.
Star Trek: Prodigy – “Preludes” (S1E16, Paramount+)
As we near the end of the first season, the show and the characters are in a bit of a holding pattern to allow some set up time to fill out the season and build up to the eventual showdown and grand finale. The Diviner is getting a lesson in who he is, where he comes from, and why Starfleet is his enemy – through the eyes of Asencia and Drednok. Looking to jog his memory and initial purpose to help hunt down the Protostar, we get a slightly better understanding as to why the Diviner and his species hate Starfleet, and what they’ve done to weaponize the ship. At the same time, Janeway is trying to discover exactly who our hero crew is, and why they ended up on the Protostar. By the end of the episode she gets some of the answers she is looking for, but it also leads to true peril for her and her crew.
In an effort to make Dal feel better about not having much of a past that he can discover through others of his kind, the gang gets into how they ended up at the prison colony, and prove that while they all have a past, it hasn’t been all good times and that Dal shouldn’t feel that just because he hasn’t been alive as long.
Continued belowWhile we don’t get a complete A – Z as to why each character went from their past lives to the prison, we do get a fuller picture of their personalities and it’s quite the fulfilling clip show that doesn’t rely on existing episodes, but rather give us the insight into these character histories that we have been dying to get since the very first episode. It’s a good little, emotion-forward episode that feels like a proper info dump and breather before the big battle that is sure to come gets here. – Chris Egan
Stargirl – “Frenemies – Chapter Twelve: The Last Will and Testament of Sylvester Pemberton” (S3E12, The CW)
It took entirely too many turns to get there, but Stargirl has managed to find a satisfying conclusion to the Starman question it posed early on: how was Sylvester Pemberton back from the dead? The final answer is a complicated one, but it has a certain amount of internal logic: the cosmic energy from the staff preserved his body from the decay of death (at least temporarily) and his brain is that of the Ultra Humanite.
Now, you may be asking whose brain is in the Ultra Huamnite’s gorlla body now? Well, that would be Dragon King, Cindy’s dad. And Dragon King, Ultra Humanite, and Icicle are all working together to take out this band of teenage heroes in what looks like the final confrontation of the series. It certainly feels big enough for the finale, but there are some issues with this whole setup, which we can get into with the series finale write-up later this week.
But let’s get back to the Sylvester situation. It has always appeared that Sylvester wasn’t exactly ‘right,’ even though the series showing him to be a cocky asshole in the past certainly helped to ease that disbelief. The reveal actually works way better than it has any right to, because of all the nonsense it took to get to this point. But Pat’s belief in his friend never felt false, even when his friend was so clearly terrible to him. All of Sylvester’s motivations have been suspect, but now everything is clear, and the path to the finale is clear for almost every character.
Pat is the one wildcard, because we are supposed to believe that he was buried alive, but we’ve all read comics and seen TV before: he’s fine. The main reason for his disappearance is to allow Mike to pilot S.T.R.I.P.E. and finally take his place among the JSA. Will we see Jennie-Lynn and Todd? Will they be bringing Sandy with them? How big will this finale get? Let’s find out together in a few days. – Brian Salvatore
Titans – “Brother Blood” (S4E6, HBOMAX)
Read our full review of the mid-season finale for season 4 by Michael Mazzacane.
Wednesday – “Woe Is The Loneliest Number” (S1E2, Netflix)
Wednesday is immediately thrown into the fire in this episode as she makes her case to Principal Weems and Sheriff Galpin about Rowan’s death, but without a body, it’s tough to believe her. She tries to get a few minutes with the sheriff alone to talk shop, but Rowan is outside the office, and all her credibility is thrown out of the window. Then to throw another weird wrench in the mix, Rowan gets expelled with no explanation and isn’t supposed to talk to her on his way out of the school. Thing follows Rowan to the bus station but loses him after Rowan goes into a bathroom and walks out of a stall as an adult man.
Now the meat of this episode stems from Weems sending Wednesday on a mission to join a club or team for the school to become more social and involved, but it’s a clear ploy to try and distract her from the case at hand. After a few attempts with choir and beekeeping, she ends up joining her roommate Enid’s team for the Poe Cup. Think of the tri-wizard tournament from Harry Potter , but it’s more of a boat and foot race with no rules. When Wednesday’s team gets a decent lead in front of Bianca Barclay, the winner of the last two years, she gets a vision of an ancestor that is the spitting image of her. When she comes to, they pull out all the stops and get the win. The episode ends with a hook into the more prominent storyline, with Wednesday finding the secret meeting spot for The Nightshades, the “secret” society within the school. This episode continues to show light-hearted hooks for the new teenage audience with enough mystery for the old-school fans of the Addams family to stick around. – Alexander Manzo
