This week on Boomb Tube, Hulk and The Agents of S.M.A.S.H. premieres while Robin fights Beast Boy for the title of worst Teen Titans Go! character. Read more after the cut.
Beware The Batman’s only four episodes in, and we’re already dealing with Humpty Dumpty. I love this show so much, you guys. Here, Humphrey Dumpler had to testify against crime boss Tobias Whale but Whale tried to bomb Humphrey for having the stupidest name in the world. Years later, Dumpty is back in Gotham and, now driven mad(der?) due to the attack he suffered at the courthouse, is going to murder everyone involved with the trial, kidnapping Whale and Lieutenant Gordon. It’s like if Two-Face was a man in the shape of an oval who trapped people in ceramic statues that doubled as bombs. Why isn’t the forthcoming “Batman and Two-Face” series just five issues of that? Anyway, Batman tracks down Humpty to, I swear to God, an actual frikkin castle just there on the outskirts of Gotham. Batman saves Tobias and Gordon, and it’s at this point, where Dumpty is constantly yelling, that someone who has been marathoning Breaking Bad in preparation for Sunday’s premiere might notice something. Humpty is totally voiced by Matt L. Jones, AKA Badger. Friggin’ awesome. Anyway, Batman rushes up to Humpty’s awesome castle where Dumpty pulls off a Seto Kaiba and vaguely threatens to jump off the castle if Batman comes further. He does. However, the Dumpty now falling towards the ground turns out to be another doll and the real Humpty Dumpty has escaped, to plague Gotham another day.
Review Score: 8.4 – I can’t believe they made an episode about Humpty Dumpty that I liked. Only thing that’d make it better is a three minute scene about Dumpty’s idea for a Star Trek film.
On Teen Titans Go!, Robin hits the team with his stick and then cries when they break it out of retaliation. Then, he goes to a mystical tree, takes off a talking branch from it, and hits his teammates with that stick instead. I genuinely don’t know what this show is about.
Review Score: 4.0 – This show’s just weird. I don’t even get it anymore.
This week’s Avengers Assemble episode, “Molecule Kid.” had Hawkeye and Black Widow chilling at the amusement park, when all of a sudden, Molecule Man showed up! Except it wasn’t Molecule Man, it was a kid. Molecule Kid. Man, speaking of Breaking Bad, I love it when shows have confusing titles that you figure out the meaning of right at the end. Molecule Kid’s found his dad, Molecule Man’s, wand and is now trying to escape from AIM. Black Widow and Hawkeye, under orders from Nick Fury to not let Tony know the Molecule Wand is around, try and help him but are almost defeated by the Kid’s reality altering powers as well as the return of the Super-Adaptoid who has now bonded with MODOK. Like him as a head in a floating chair? GREAT! Here’s him in a humanoid robot body. The Avengers eventually show up to help defeat MODOK in a pretty neat sequence where everyone is seeing New York made up of molecules or something(???) Molecule Kid then peacefully surrenders, and joins Nick Fury’s team of teenage heroes in training. Boy, I can’t wait to watch this same episode again with Drake Bell Spider-Man.
Review Score: 6.3 – A fairly mediocre episode, though the idea of Molecule Kid is pretty neat.
And finally, Hulk: Agents of S.M.A.S.H. premiered and I’ll die before I put the periods in between the letters every time I type SMASH. The premise of the series is that Rick Jones, a seventeen-ish year old played here by Seth Green, is trying to help The Hulk with his PR image by starting a webseries about how he’s actually a total sweetheart. Hulk, who’s out-of-nowhere doing really well here in terms of intelligence and resources compared to his past appearances in Avengers Assemble and Ultimate Spider-Man, acts all grumpy to Rick’s newfangled Youtubin technology. Then Annihilus shows up. Just out of nowhere. Annihilus. Then Annihilus throws Skaar, Son of Hulk, at Rick and Hulk. Then Red Hulk shows up and acts like best bros with Hulk despite it being established that General Ross wanted Hulk dead a couple minutes ago. There’s no ambiguity about Red Hulk’s identity by the way, he just straight up says it to the camera. The colored Hulks beat up Skaar and take him back to Green Hulk’s HQ (I swear, dude was homeless two episodes of Ultimate Spider-Man ago) where they try and make a plan about how to defeat Annihilus. They don’t, and go back to punching him once Skaar breaks out of his prison. Unfortunately, Red Hulk gets taken back to the Negative Zone and Seth Green survives one of Annihilus’s blasts and is mutated into A-Bomb.
Continued belowHulk immediately calls up his cousin, She-Hulk, who’s lamenting about how hard it is to find a job as anything other than a stunt-woman when you’re a giant green woman. You know, other than being a successful lawyer. Which is kind of her thing in the comics. Hulk picks her up in his Hulkmobile(?!) so she can fly them in his jet (?!?!?!)and fart jokes are made with A-Bomb. The trio head off to the Negative Zone and fight Annihilus’s army as well as a mind controlled Red Hulk and Skaar. Eventually, Hulk and A-Bomb deactivate RH and Skaar’s mind control chips while She-Hulk parks the jet or something. The five then fly off in separate spaceships(?!?!?!?!) and Hulk almost sacrifices himself to stop Annihilus. At home, all five Hulks decide to stick together as a team. “No, a family.” Hulk says to his cousin, general who tried to kill him a couple months ago, warrior who tried to kill him hours ago, and Seth Green. Mysteriously, Skaar receives a communication from The Leader telling him to spy on The Hulk. Oh what danger Hulk will be in, now that he has a traitor in his own mids- Oh what’s that? He was spying in on this conversation to? Why is The Hulk super-competent at everything now as well as the owner of an underground base with several awesome vehicles? Why is he Batman?
Hulk and others takes the time inbetween his friends being mutated or kidnapped and punching Negative Zone creatures to do some video testimonials about what’s going on and here’s where a show that already lost me after introducing “Seth Green: Spunky Sidekick” loses me even more. Hulk “Real Worlding” it up just doesn’t sound authentic at all. Hulk doesn’t care about the PR and wouldn’t live in his awesome mountain fortress with his rocket ships and four Hulkish best friends, all available now at Toys-R-Us. If the creators want to make a Batman cartoon, then make a Batman cartoon don’t just make some weird version of The Hulk. Make a Moon Knight cartoon actually, with this show’s premise and everything. Fittingly enough, with Seth Green’s involvement and the whole toyetic atmosphere, this show feels like a Robot Chicken skit that was stretched to a 26 episode season and forgot to include jokes. Of this really is a long-form prank by Seth Green, good for him. Either way, all this means is that three fifths of the shows I cover now are based in part on Ultimate Spider-Man.
Oh what fresh hell have I wandered into.
Review Score: 4.3 – Fresh hell.
