Andrew Bloom

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[7.3/10 on a Selman era Simpsons scale] The two big things in “Cremains of the Day”’s favor are ambition and having something legitimate on its mind. The two big things against it are that it isn’t especially funny and gets too over-the-top at the end of the episode. I’m not entirely sure how to resolve those twin parts of its project.

On the ambition side, I like the show choosing to kill off Larry the Barfly. He’s never been more than a background character, but there’s a meta quality to that. He’s a background character in Homer’s life too, so Larry becomes an interesting vessel for the idea of processing your feelings about someone who’s always been there, but who you’re not close to. (Though I’ll admit, it’s a little odd that we never see Sam the Barfly here, who seemed to be the Rosencrantz to Larry’s Guildenstern.)

On the thematic side, I like the idea that the show is examining what the denizens of Moe’s relationship is when they’re not drinking at the bar. There too, there is an interesting concept of context-dependent friends, and wondering what sobriety and being outside of your usual setting means to your friendship. Mixed with the contemplation of the afterlife, and each member of the crew working through the death of their acquaintance, but not friend, in different ways, makes for a worthwhile subject for the episode.

The major problem for me is that it just doesn’t feel like a Simpsons episode featuring the characters as we know them. I’m all for the show taking big swings in its thirty-fifth season on the air. It’s one of the best things about the Selman era. But this feels ore like an interesting short story of film with Homer, Moe, Lenny, and Carl crammed into it than something that springs forth from the personalities we’ve known over the years.

To be charitable, you could argue that fits into the idea the show is going for, about only knowing those context-dependent friends on a surface level. But the characters feel off here, with personalities that aren’t bad or invalid, but just don’t necessarily track with who these players have been for the last three and a half decades, which detracts from the power of the story.

At the same time, there’s not a ton of laughs here. Maybe that's expected given the subject matter, but there’s attempts at jokes, and while none of them are cringe-worthy, few of them land. I did chuckle at the group staying at an “Adequate 8”, and there’s a certain charm to their different conceptions of what happens after death. On the whole though, this one felt more like a dramatic story with jokes awkwardly tacked on than a good comedic episode of the show.

It also gets way too out there for an installment that seems to want to be down-to-earth and personal. The guys getting mixed up with a crime syndicate, thrown into trucks, threatened with shotguns, and falling off cliffs is a bridge too far for an episode that wants us to take their situation seriously. You can sniff out the narrative purpose of the secret sapphires tearing them apart, and the metaphor of them having to leap together to avoid perishing in the car accident is a nice, if blunt metaphor. But even Larry’s urn stopping Homer from plummeting feels too cartoony and cute by half. There’s a way to tell this story without devolving into Scully-esque exaggerated escapades.

Still, at base, I appreciate the show trying for something here. A while back, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, of Bojack Horseman fame, wrote a little thread about a secret friendship between Marge and Maude Flanders, about being shuffled to the side and having someone who knows what that feels like. It was a heartstring-tugging deconstruction of how sitcom decisions of character focus would play out in real life, and critique of where the show often puts that focus. I like Larry as the fulcrum for a similar idea, with the story coming from inside the house. The final product isn’t perfect, and I have my criticisms, but I’ll take the show aiming high and falling a little short sometimes every week.

[7.5/10] So here’s the weird thing about “Flash Strike” -- it’s a good episode! The tripartite storytelling of the nucleus of Clone Force 99 working their way to Tantiss base with Rampart, Echo sneaking in and linking up with Emerie, and Omega forming a team of her own not only keeps the action lively, but shows the talents of all the members of our crew. The action is composed nicely and well-staged, and the pacing and developments are all good.

Somethough, though, it just doesn’t feel momentous enough for the penultimate episode of the series. Sure, the grown clones are making their way to the center of the action, and Omega has a plan to get out, and most notably, Echo and Emerie are now working together to help the “subjects”. But “Flash Strike” largely feels like a well done piece-moving episode rather than something with the kind of drama or intrigue or character to truly set up a series finale.

I don’t know how to judge it, because as a standalone episode, it does everything it sets out to do quite well. But as a piece of a larger story coming to its conclusion, it’s a little disappointing.

Still, I liked the individual pieces. The main Clone Force 99 crew is largely action, but it’s all good action. The crew getting shot at by Imperial fighters and dropping down into the forest via cables makes for a nice set piece, especially with Rampart’s reluctance. (My only regret with this series is that Rampart makes for a hell of an ingredient in the Bad Batch stew, and I wish we’d gotten more of him forced to be a member of the team before now.) The run-in with the big cat-like creature is a little standard, and the creature’s design isn’t very convincing, but the group trying not to be spotted as they make their way in, only to escape a creature that takes out the stormtroopers who were pursuing them, is some good stuff.

Most of all, I appreciate that Hemlock isn’t a dope here. He makes the right moves, shooting down our heroes’ shuttle and sending out patrols to look for them and wanting thorough checks for the troopers coming in on the science vessel. He’s a formidable opponent, which will make the moment when he’s inevitably defeated more satisfying.

Echo working his way into the base was good material as well. His putting on stormtrooper gear and borrowing a droid hand to get info on Omega gives him a good mission apart from the rest of the group. And I particularly appreciate the most character-focused part of this one, namely Emerie finally completing her face turn. They’ve been building to this for a while, and Emerie having heard about the Bad Batch from Omega, and Echo having heard about her, giving them a basis to connect as allies and fellow clones, is a nice note for her, even as I suspect we have more to come.

Omega’s part of this is good too. Her whipping these poor scared kids into a team that can use a little guile to help themselves and each other. While Omega skulking through the shafts has been done before (hello Jedi: Fallen Order fans), there’s good tension in the rest of the kids trying to cover for her during an emergency, stalling Dr. Scalder in the hopes that Omega will make it back in time. And once more, it’s nice to see Omega having become this savvy mini-commando, recognizing the sound of laser blasts and knowing how to use her skills to her advantage.

If this were a random episode of Bad Batch, I’d have no complaints. Everything it sets out to do, it does well. I just wish this felt more like a prelude to something thrilling rather than just another day at the office for the show.

[6.8/10] “Mirrors” does the exact sort of thing I ask for from Star Trek: Discovery. We have a focused story with an immediate goal. It centers on a handful of characters with meaningful tension and key connections to one another. It spends time with our antagonists, both in the present and in flashbacks, so that they feel more like people than cardboard villains. And it requires the right blend of working together and camaraderie to solve the problem du jour, in the proud Star Trek tradition.

And I didn’t really like it.

Which, I think, is another way of saying that even in its final season, I just don’t connect with Discovery’s style. For most of my reviews, I center on the writing -- big picture story choices in terms of plot or character or theme that can make or break an episode for me. And on all of those measures, “Mirrors” is resolutely sound.

The halfway mark of the season is a good point to have our two big couples, Michael and Book on the one hand, and Moll and L’ok on the other, confront one another. A clue that must be retrieved from a pocket of space that seems to wreck anything that comes in contact with it poses a suitable challenge. The fact that what they find there is the I.S.S. Enterprise is a neat twist. And I especially like Rayner and the rest of the squad doing the usual Starfleet problem solving routine to rescue their comrades.

On the character front, I’m also encouraged by the show’s attempt to add depth to L’ok and Moll. Thus far, they’ve had personality but not character. Giving us flashbacks to their experiences in the Breen Imperium follows the same laudable tack Discovery did with Ruon Tarka. Seeing that bond form in the past makes us more likely to care about how the baddies are motivated by it in the present. Writing in what their relationship cost them, and what they’re trying to achieve, is good block and tackle to turn your villains into people and not just obstacles to be leapt over.

And thematically...well, I don’t know...it’s fine. “Mirrors” gives us some closure to the events of Mirror Georgiou’s alt-timeline jaunt in season 3’s “Terra Firma”. It turns out the Action Saru that Georgiou spared went on to rescue many of his comrades and got them to the prime universe, which is nice enough, even if we’re told rather than shown. The vague lesson, about not giving up hope, is trite but fine, even if it comes in a writerly scene that practically paints the point on the screen in a way that gives me pause.

And that's the problem, really. The ideas here aren’t bad, but the execution is still just hard for me to warm too. When I think about what I would change in “Mirrors”, it’s hard to come up with something that isn’t already hard-baked into the series. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the show overuses its music, trying to inject emotion into scenes that can't earn that sentimental response on their own, and ironically exposing that fact. But that's been a longtime thing for the show.

The dialogue doesn’t do anybody any favors here, but it’s largely fine. Often, it’s too blunt or too didactic, with characters making statements that seem more intended for the audience than one another, with the viewer just happening to be an unseen observer. But again, that's nothing new and seems to be part of Discovery’s style.

The other problems I have are unavoidable. Discovery continues to look sterile, antiseptic, and unreal. It’s hard to feel Moll and L’ok’s coming together when the lone site of their rendezvous seems to be some odorless, CGI-sweetened soundstage. While it’s cool to finally see the face of a Breen, their frozen computer-generated visages look downright comical by 2024 standards. I guess, at least, the visit to the I.S.S. Enterprise is an excuse to use Strange New Worlds’ practical sets, but still, everything about how the show is shot and visualized comes off cold and removed, which is something far too late to fix now.

And once again, the performances are solid, but don’t elevate the material. Eve Harlow makes the biggest mark as Moll, with some strong emotional moments when the going gets tough, but even she’s reduced to playing a generic femme fatale much of the time. The rest of the cast in the episode does yeoman’s work, without any real faults in the acting, but they aren’t able to elevate the material either.

The result is an episode that is resoundingly solid but unspectacular. The episode is well-constructed, but ultimately still unengaging, to where it’s hard to criticize the thing too deeply, but it’s hard to praise much of it either.

At the end of the day, the idea behind giving us deeper insight into Moll and L’ok, and contrasting and comparing their connection and potential second chance with what we’ve seen of Michael and Book is a sound one. But the execution is so generic, clumsy, and flavorless that it leaves no impact. The show is doing and saying the right things, but the effort comes off plastic and desultory, to where you can barely connect wit the characters or materials.

“Mirrors” does feature some genuine high points and low points. Commander Rayner’s nervousness about stepping back into the captain’s chair, only to gingerly but resolutely finding his way into Discovery’s more open culture, and working with his crew to save his captain, is a nice little storyline. Tilly looking out for Dr. Culber’s emotional well-being the way he looks out for the crew’s is sweet, even if the listing toward “spirituality” sounds dicey for Star Trek. And hell, I even got a kick out of Book asking Burnham if they should “hit it” given the Enterprise environs, and her responding, “Let’s just fly.”

For the most part, though, “Mirrors” is an episode with a sound footing and a few good gimmicks, that nevertheless fails in its overall project to make us care about these new characters, their connection to the ones we already know, and the broader fetch quest the crew of Discovery is on. You can fix story problems; you can rehab characters; you can come up with good themes for your work. But things like tone, visual grammar, the style with which you present everything, is much harder to fix on an episode to episode basis After four and a half seasons, those things are pretty well set, and maybe, even when you shore up everything else, that's still enough to keep crusty old grumps like me from connecting with your show.

[7.1/10] Maybe it was a mistake to watch this adaptation so soon after reading the novel. The best parts of the book are things that are difficult to replicate on film: Thomas Hardy’s wonderful prose, and the depth of feeling that comes from being inside his characters’ heads, showing the layers of complexity within their thoughts and hopes, Tess especially. Film and television have their own advantages, the visuals and body language being chief among them, but they leave so much out of what makes a novel like Tess so singular.

I can't help but feel like so much in this first episode of the miniseries is softer and broader.

Softer because Alec seems much more pleasant, much less predatory, much more dashing in his interactions with Tess before he assaults her than in the book. Alec gets more focus writ large than Hardy gave him. That's a choice I can respect.

There have been plenty of adaptations of Tess over the years. The central question of doing a new one ought to be “What new take or angle can we bring to this material?” Exploring more of Alec’s backstory, his relationship with his mother, his interest in Tess from his perspective, is something different. It makes him more of a full-fledged character rather than an antagonist composed of a bundle of simple, if unctuous, impulses. That's unique, and I can appreciate the creative team taking a swing.

But I won’t lie, it makes me a bit uncomfortable how they portray Alec here. The producers already stack the deck a little by casting Hans Matheson, who cuts the figure of a hunk from a CW teen drama more than he does the rougher, more imposing persona from the book. Television has coasted for years on putting attractive people in the same frame and letting sparks fly. And with Matheson’s softer, more earnest portrayal, matched with the added exploration this adaptation gives him, it’s hard not to blanch a little at the miniseries seemingly cushioning a rapist, if not outright excusing him.

Part of the problem for me is in how they play Tess in response to all this. To me, she seems more charmed by Alec than affronted or disturbed by him before the assault. Sure, there’s her awkward kiss in the horse cart. But I don’t know, there’s a lot more long looks where both sides seem to make goo goo eyes at one another (including in the opening seen with Angel) than there are in the novel.This Tess is a bit flustered by Alec, certainly, but doesn’t seem as uncomfortable by his affections as her literary equivalent did.

Some of the problem is in how Gemma Arterton plays Tess for most of this first episode. When I say broader, that includes how her interpretation of the character feels even more naive and strangely affected than even the book lays out. She’s a twenty-two-year-old actress playing a sixteen-year-old character, and as a result, she has this Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man problem where her mannerisms and tics meant to create the effect of immaturity and youth come off as weird, artificial put-ons. This Tess feels huffy, even bratty, like an easily-upset ten-year-old more than the provincial but hard-lived young woman from the novel.

That's not the only thing made broader. Her parents feel more like cartoon characters, or even a mom and dad from a goofy sitcom, than they do real-if-flawed individuals. The other maids at the d’Urberville manor (composite characters from the book) are exaggerated mean girls. Even the moment where she gets into a fight before Alec “rescues” her, which is an incident of supreme desperation in the source material, feels like a weightless scuffle here.

That said, the rape, which Hardy elides in the novel, is depicted with the right blend of tastefulness and terror here. It isn’t lurid by any means (unlike the infamous strawberry scene), but it is appropriately impressionistic and horrifying in conveying what shocking abuses are inflicted on Tess in the process.

And suddenly, the adaptation makes a turn for the better. I want to give the miniseries the most charitable read possible. It’s possible we get a softer and broader take on the story at first to mark a contrast with how much harsher and realer things get from there.

I don’t love the softening of Alec, but there is a, if you’ll pardon my being a philistine, Buffy-esque quality to having a more charming, if liberty-taking suitor, who then turns out to be a monster. The miniseries doesn’t lean into the sense of predation as much as I might like, but maybe that makes his sexual assault that much more shocking, putting us in the shoes of Tess and not seeing it coming, rather than the tense dramatic irony in the novel where the reader can sense the danger even more than Tess can.

Likewise, I was ready to write off Arterton as a bad performer in the role, but what she does after Tess’ assault is stunning. The non-verbal acting in Tess’ shock and bewilderment after the event is outstanding. Her recriminations to Alec when he tries to make amends afterward come with the appropriate amount of fire and scorn. And her scene with her mother, where she laments that she wasn’t prepared to defend against such things by someone who should have known better and looked out for her, comes with the right blend of legitimate anger and pathos.

So I’m apt to chalk up Arterton’s unavailing childlike performance in the first part of the miniseries as a deliberate choice -- there to mark the contrast between the wide-eyed innocent girl who doesn’t suspect Alec’s lustful intentions, to the traumatized and disillusioned young woman who emerges in the wake of such abuse. I can't pretend to like the early part of the performance, but the later part is quite good, and I can appreciate the choice to let the tone of the performance signal the change in Tess’ disposition.

Overall, this is still a take on the material that I can appreciate intellectually more than I outright like it. But I also admire adaptations that take pains to put their own spin and leave their own mark on the source material, especially for long-adapted works, even if the exact choices don’t necessarily click with me or my take on the novel.

[5.5/10[ Remember when South Park’s social commentary was incisive and biting? Now the show’s reduced to parroting generic boomer criticism and repeating the same tired comments you can see in a million places on the internet. It’s a bitch getting older, let me tell you.

“People don’t know how to do things anymore.” “Trades are now more lucrative than college.” “Disney makes lazy movies.” “Everything is too ‘female, gay, and lame.’” “Multiverse storytelling sucks.”

There are not the comments of an expert, experienced group of cultural commentators. They are the same collection of comments you can find on a million articles, YouTube videos, and other online rabbit holes right about now.

Sure, South Park is slightly more clever about it, and there’s at least some satirization of these views. But I don’t know, for a show making fun of laziness and being out-of-touch from other studios, it’s pretty easy to accuse the show of doing the same thing.

You want to know the funny thing? I actually really got a kick out of Panderverse Cartman here. Maybe it was just Janeshia Adams-Ginyard’s performance, which did a good job of replicating Trey Parker’s rhythms without doing a straight imitation of the character. But I also think to drive the concept home, reverted her to more of Cartman’s classic characterization, which was honestly refreshing! Panderverse Cartman going to incredible lengths and cons and resources, just to play Baldur’s Gate is total golden era Cartman shtick, and is frankly better than some of the stuff we’ve been getting lately.

Otherwise, the big about Randy trying to find a handyman and getting a group whipped up and mad at them, college, and millionaires, was clumsy and not particularly funny. Most of the other multiverse gags and commentary were nothing to write home about either. Cartman’s dream sequences and the visits to other universes got tired fast.

There’s a few bright spots here and there. I appreciate the setup and payoff of Randy’s broken oven that caused all the trouble being the multiversal doorway. The “multiverse” just being him in different clothes was a decent laugh. And the observation that audiences didn’t mind formulaic films until they started getting more diverse is a solid one too.

But man, “both sides”-ing the issue at hand -- declaring that bigoted hate spurs pandering spurs bigoted hate spurs pandering, so both parties are to blame, is such a weak, mealy-mouthed take. Considering it’s how the show ends the special, it’s particular meh.

Overall, this is another instance of South Park having lost more than a step, instead devolving into generic online criticisms and “old man yells at cloud” style gripes, without the deftness of delivery, insight, or humor that used to elevate it. Watchable but not good.

[9.0/10] One of my favorites. Long before the show would attempt a bigger rift between them, “See Jane Run” drives a wedge between the show’s two closest characters in a way that is believable, understandable, and sad. All of that makes it extra heartening when they repair their friendship. And more than that, it’s believable, both for the characters as we’ve come to know them, and for those fumbling teenage interactions where you try something on for size and decide whether you like it, even if it pulls you away from your friends.

It’s also really funny! This one can be painful at times because the interactions between Daria and Jane are a little too real. But this one is still chock full of great laughs. The running gag of Brittany toppling over during her splits cracked me up every time. Kevin annoying Mack is a great comic gift. Jake taking Daria’s protestations of having a boyfriend named “Knuckles” seriously is a laugh, as is Helen fantasizing about male cheerleaders while trying to give a speech about equality.

Plus, this is a great Quinn episode in terms of comedy. The running gag about her wearing shoes that hurt her feet but make her legs look good is well-observed for mid-1990s priorities. And everything about her “baby-sitting” Daria is superb, from the financial negotiations to the fawning time at the library to the bill she drops off afterward. Quinn’s a great side character, especially in the comedy department, and it’s nice to see her used that way here.

The main event, though, is Daria and Jane. Them being at odds is tough, but also a part of friendship. What I especially appreciate is that they're both well-motivated here. You understand why Jane wants to join the track team. She wants to show her jerk gym teacher that not all members of the Lane family are “deadbeats”, and not for nothing, she also wants to get closer to a boy. You get it, and in many ways, it’s admirable for Jane to push outside of her comfort zone and try something new.

But you also get where Daria’s coming from. In many ways, she and Jane have defined themselves in contrast to the jocks and preps and fashionistas. So even if Jane’s doing something commendable in principle, it’s hard for Daria to be supportive when it seems like her best friend is turning to the dark side. And at the same time, Daria resents track if for no other reason than it means that she and Jane don’t get to spend as much time together. The running gag of Drai talking to herself, and eventually not being able to distinguish her inner monologue from her outer one, is a laugh and a half, but also a sign of how, despite seeming above it all, Jane is an immense part of Daria’s life.

Their conflict becomes extra thorny when it intersects with more general issues they have about the preferential treatment jocks get. The way that normal gym class is turned into an extra cheerleader practice sucks for Daria and Jane (who, admittedly, probably aren’t enthused about regular gym anyway, as the intro suggests.) Daria’s willing to go along when Jane’s new status as a sport superstar gets her out of the drudgery of gym, but takes offense when it gets Jane out of the same math quiz that Kevin was exempted from for his sports acumen. There’s principle mixed with the personal in their tiff, and that's what I appreciate about it most. Their sundering has layers.

It’s also not a straight line. The way Daria is quietly resentful, but outwardly supportive, until things come to a head after constant pizza shop interruptions has a true-to-life quality to it. Her apology and their reconciliation is no less winning, and it makes it hard when the jock-versus-misfit divide is cleaved anew, and Daria’s torn between her, as Jane puts it, sense of self-righteousness on the one hand, and her best friend on the other.

I’m heartened by the fact that ultimately, what brings them back together is that, despite everything, Jane still cares about Daria. The fact that all it takes for Jane to give this whole thing up is her track crush Evan badmouthing Daria makes it one of the most rousing moments in the show. These are two young women who care about their principles, but despite their flat affects and de rigueur ironic detachment, they care about one another more. We don’t always get that in Daria, which makes it extra special when we do.

Of course, there’s still a dose of cynicism and humiliation in the finish. With her usual caustic wit, Daria lays out how the system remains unchanged despite a personal protest, and so in a weird way, this experience really did prepare them for real life just like their gym teacher said. The show wouldn't be complete without the wry worldview that made it famous. But it also comes with Daria and Jane suffering through their mandated cheerleader lesson, half-heartedly but once again together.

[8.2/10] I don’t tend to think of the Exodus story as a tragedy. Sure, when you get to the wandering for forty years in the desert part, a portion of the tale The Prince of Egypt tastefully elides, things get bleak in places. But in large part, the story of slaves breaking free of their captors is one of triumph, of joy, and as the film reminds us, of deliverance.

What makes The Prince of Egypt so stunning is that it turns that story into one of tragedy -- not the liberation at the center of the Passover story, but what it took to gain it. The cost of that freedom, in lives and in families, means that even the beautiful moments of relief and catharsis come tinged with a certain sadness.

In short, it’s a tack that humanizes one of the oldest and most venerable stories ever told. Even if you didn’t read the Haggadah at Seder every year or, perish the thought, watched The Ten Commandments on an annual basis, chances are you knew the basic outline of the Exodus narrative. Most everyone in the western world does, which means it’s hard to have surprise or novelty in the retelling. The marvel of The Prince of Egypt is that it breathes new life into the story, not just with the incredible craft on display, but in the personal and pathos-ridden lens through which it presents a familiar, but ultimately no less moving tale.

Much of that force comes from the fact that the film leans into the brotherly bond between Moses and Ramses. In the confines of the story, they are not mere rivals, but genuine siblings and friends. They truly love one another, relate to one another, delight in their shared history, which makes it that much more melancholy when divine will and a clash of nations tear them apart.

It’s the best thing in the movie, which is saying something. Val Kilmer and Ralph Fiennes have an easy rapport between them that reads authentically as brotherly playfulness, layered with the complexity of different siblings laboring under different expectations. You buy their dynamic as the chosen older brother freighted with royal obligation, and the more mischievous but kind-hearted younger brother who causes trouble but cares deeply about his big bro. That adds a lived-in humanity to the film’s early scenes, and an earned sense of heartbreak when they’re torn asunder in its later ones.

Much of the heartbreak comes from the fact that this is the most sympathetic Ramses has ever been in the Exodus story. (Surpassing even the malevolent but strangely endearing version played by Yul Brynner.) This is a Pharaoh who genuinely loves his brother, who is warring against his own insecurity about being “the weak link in the chain”, who worries he won’t be able to live up to his father’s legacy and that his kingdom will suffer for his weakness, who is punished for his stubbornness but exudes a sense of great pain at the cost of his sins.

In short he’s more than a bitter antagonist; he’s a fellow human being, with his own understandable if flawed motivations, his own sympathetic attachments, and ultimately, his own recognizable pain when he loses everything. In the end, you feel for Ramses, which is an impressive feat for a character who presides over a slave empire and orders the systematic murder of children.

But you also feel for Moses. Much of the film’s narrative centers on the personal journey of Moses as much as it does the broader sweep of the Lord delivering the Hebrew people from bondage. This is, in many ways, a story as much about one man breaking free of his cultural programming and waking up to the moral ills of the system he took part in unreflectively as it is about his cause of freedom. In that, The Prince of Egypt oddly frames Moses as a Buddha-like figure, a spoiled prince who throws off the golden shackles of his old life when he learns a deeper truth, trading it for a simpler one.

The transformation still has power, in any guise. Moses’ reluctant acceptance of God’s command to lead his people out of bondage comes with the poetry and irony of his telling his own sister, “Be careful, slave!” with disdain when she dares to touch a royal prince. As with fellow cinematic champions no less august than Oskar Schindler from Schindler’s List and Sully from Monsters Inc., it is piercing when someone insulated and comfortable nonetheless realizes the cruelties they’re a part of, particularly when those harms are inflicted on innocent children, and devotes everything they have to rectifying it.

That mission is given scope and form by the tremendous craft on display in the film from beginning to end. The Prince of Egypt is an utterly gorgeous movie to look at. Directors Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wells, and their team cook up captivating image after captivating image. The movie is awash in light and color, from the dark shadows of the Pharaoh’s throne room to the bright hues of the path to freedom. The way hair and clothing billows in the wind is impressive. And while the character designs are a bit awkward in their angularness, particularly Moses, the players’ fluid expressions and movements more than carry the day.

In line with the film’s Cecile B. DeMille-helmed predecessor, The Prince of Egypt also isn’t afraid to go big when the moment calls for it. There are a raft of impressive effects and sequences here, from the impressionistic nightmare of Moses’ infant rescue told through hieroglyphics, to the towering dividing of the sea in front of a column of fire, to the harrowing set piece where the mist-like angel of death steals the breath away from the first born sons of Egypt. The visual panache matches the scope and scale of the story, conveying through imagery and song what must be felt rather than told in the tale.

That includes the Jews’ harrowing escape from Egypt. It would be easy for a development told and retold and retold through a dozen avenues to lose all impact on the umpteenth rendition. But something about the mass of parents and children, laborers and their animals, old and young, clambering their way across steps and sand and sea to reach their salvation, moves one anew.

Much of that owes to Stephen Schwartz’s lovely compositions and lyricism. The plaintive cries of “deliver us”, the call and response of “all I’ve ever wanted”, the grim tones that pervade bondage and the inspiring notes of liberation, the paeon to belief that seamlessly transitions into a children’s rendition of the (biblically canonical) song “Mi Chamocha”, all lend this story of freedom both an epic reach and an emotional weight that makes the Hebrew slaves’ deliverance as momentous and cathartic for the audience as it is for the characters.

And yet, it comes laced with a certain sadness, a certain sense of regret of all that it took to reach this divine salvation. Much of that centers on Moses himself. It is tough, to say the least, to make the harbinger of plagues into a sympathetic figure in modern cinema. The canny move from Philip LaZebnik is to cast Moses as an endlessly reluctant figure. Here, he does not only lament the burden of leading a people he fears won’t accept him, but he practically begs Ramses to acquiesce so that they can end all of this. He winces and almost weeps for the horrors inflicted on his Egyptian countrymen.

There is a sense of great regret that it’s come to this, that he can't get through to his brother, that this is what it takes to move the hardened heart of a king. And even when it’s time for the slaying of the first born, it only comes in self-defense, a response to Ramses threatening to finish the decimation his father started, a sense of generational inertia leading a dynasty, a people, and a brotherhood to ruin. Nobody wants this, and even in his moment of greatest glory, Moses looks on at the sibling he’s lost with pain and regret.

That is duly tragic. To gain your freedom is glorious. To gain it at the cost of countless hardships and lives that could have been spared but for one man’s obstinance is sorrowful. To lead your people to liberation is righteous. To do so as a bringer of death and pain to those you once looked upon as countrymen is devastating. To grow up with a sibling you love is wonderful. To see that love shattered on the altar of generational toxicity and divine justice is heartbreaking.

The Exodus story remains a rousing and triumphant one. But in hands like these, it is also one rife with pain on both an epochal and personal level. And somehow, that makes a venerated story all the more human, and beautiful.

[7.7/10 on a Selman-era Simpsons scale] It’s always nice when The SImpsons is socially relevant again. It’s been a long time since “Last Exit to Springfield”, but doing a story about Marge becoming a union leader after making a go of it in the modern gig economy is surprisingly salient. Between the lead time necessary for episodes and the average age of the writer’s room, it’s easy for the current era of the show to feel behind the times. But this is social commentary that's still relevant enough to have bite, which is something I don’t take for granted from the series anymore.

I appreciate both stories. The story of Marge working under tough conditions at a ghost condition to make ends meet is sympathetic. The “we need money to repay injuries to a bougie chicken” is a little much, but from there, the show’s interesting. THere’s some solid spoofing of modern labor practices in the gig economy, and some authenticity in Marge’s experiences despite the large-than-life nature of it. The show isn’t subtle here, by any stretch, but it’s full of strong, stinging observations, done with good gags and camaraderie that helps buoy the point.

The B-story is good too. Homer and the kids ordering from the same food service that Marge is working for, while she slaves away to rebuild their rainy day fund, adds tension to the plot and some observations on the receiving, not just the delivering side of the delivery app ecosystem. The fact that Marge’s marathon delivery session ends up at her own house is a deft way to bring the two storylines together in a way that feels dramatic but natural.

In truth, the episode goes a little off the rails from there. Homer becoming a spokesman for the delivery app company behind Marge’s back is a bridge too far, and her pummeling him with household objects is an uncomfortable response. Suddenly, the heightened but authentic tone of the episode is gone and we’re in Scully era-style loony land.

Even so, this one is still enjoyable. The show ably, if conspicuously sets up HOmer’s electromagnetic pulse solution to the delivery app CEO turning to automation to avoid union workers. And as outsized as Homer and Marge’s clash is, Homer ultimately understanding where he went wrong and siding with his wife is heartening enough to pass muster.

Beyond the strong story, the nuts and bolts of this one are good too. The animators do a superb job here, with a oner-style kitchen sequence that I assume is an homage to The Bear, and some neat imagery with the drone deliveries falling from the sky.

And not for nothing, this one is funny, by gum! The fake out gag with Disco Stu eating disco fries with a thumb in it cracked me the hell up and felt like a classic Simpsons swerve. And for once, the random utterances of the crowd from Marge’s coworkers felt like old school Simpsons one-liners. The humor was there in this one, which helps a lot.

Overall, this restored my faith in the season a bit. We’d had a bit of a string of middling-to-bad episodes, so I’m glad to get something like this which features a good plot, some nice character moments, and some genuine laughs to boot.

[7.8/10] That's more like it! I enjoyed both halves of this one. Rampart’s shtick elevated the Bad Batch’s mission to find their way to Tantiss. And Omega starting a miniature rebellion only makes me like the character more.

Here’s the funny thing. I complained about the last episode because it felt solid but formulaic. We’ve seen the “search and rescue” type mission in Bad Batch specifically, and Star Wars in general, lots of times. The same is true for situations where our heroes have to infiltrate some Imperial stronghold. (Something that goes all the way back to the frickin’ Droids cartoon, and even A New Hope.)

But here’s the thing -- I find the good guys having to pretend to be Imperials to pilfer some important crumb of information far more interesting than their just sneaking into some location and busting some asset out. There’s an inherent tension, and almost mischievous subversiveness, to our noble good guys having to pretend to be baddies for an afternoon, in order to achieve their goal.

Will they be found out? Can they successfully navigate the practical challenges of Imperial security systems and the personal challenges of fooling station personnel? And once they inevitably trip some alarm or alert some Imperial functionary, can they complete their task in time to sneak away unscathed?

Again, this is Star Wars, so you know that it’s going to work out. But it’s still fun to see the main characters spray paint their armor black to fit in with the bad guy patrol, or tell some mid-level Imperial manager that their mission is classified, or stun some low-level goon and probe for information on the same kind of station Luke and Han once interfaced with. The heist-type setup is far more entertaining and exciting than the standard “beat up a bunch of guys and action hero your way out of dodge” approach from “Juggernaut”.

Of course, “Into the Breach” has an ace in the hole -- Admiral Rampart. For those of you who’ve read the (mostly tepid) Aftermath trilogy, Rampart’s interactions with the Bad Batch have the same tone and tenor of what I imagine Sinjir’s interactions with the Rebellion would be like on the screen. (Hint hint, Mando-verse creative team!) The way he’s clearly resentful of his clone captors, while also carrying himself with a certain supercilious dignity given his former rank, and also clearly only looking out for his own skin makes Rampart an appropriately irksome but amusing fly-in-the-ointment for our heroes. Frankly, Rampart is more compelling as a stubborn and untrustworthy ally than he ever was as an antagonist.

His doubt and flustered quality, while Hunter, Crosshair, Wrecker, and Echo all remain steely in the face of impossible odds, proves a nice departure from the steady demeanor of our heroes. The way he fumbles through this plan like the rest of them, pulls rank on Imperial functionaries, and has to be subdued once again to go along with the adaring plan makes him a great ingredient in the stew.

Not for nothing, the big set piece of the episode -- featuring our heroes hitching a ride to Tantiss on a science shuttle with the secret coordinates at the last minute -- comes with just the right stakes and ticking clock to make it exciting, even as you just know the good guys are going to make it. Whatever “Juggernaut” lacked in terms of a perfunctory, standard Bad Batch episode, “Into the Breach” makes up for with much more flavor.

The Omega half of the episode is good as well. There’s been a lot of chatter in the fandom about Omega always getting captured, but what I appreciate about it is that she’s different in the scenario each time. Not to get sentimental, but our little girl is growing up. The way she’s not by any means helpless despite being sequestered by Hemlock, but rather resourceful and craft in finding a way out, shows you how far Omega has come since she was first all but stuck in a clone facility.

More to the point, in her time with the Bad Batch, she’s learned how to be a part of a team. Yes, it’s clever to see her using the games that Hemlock’s subordinates insist their child captives play to lay out a plan to escape. But more to the point, she’s become an expert, an authority, a helper, for the younger children trapped in this pristine white prison. She recognizes the value of a team, and is there for the poor younglings who’ve been cowed by their imperial captors, giving them hope to escape. The show plays Omega’s efforts to leave the facility for the appropriate amount of tension. More than that, though, it’s heartening to see her once again thinking of others, building a trust with her fellow imprisoned children, and reassuring them that they’re going to get out of here.

Overall, this is a big step up from the last episode, with a thrilling escapade from Clone Force 99, and another great illustration of how far Omega’s come, and how capable a young adult she is, in her half of the episode.

[7.0/10] It’s hard to delve into the Trill without raising the specter of Deep Space Nine. The latest clue in the Progenitor saga sees Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Book (David Ajala) sojourn to the Trill homeworld to uncover the next piece of the puzzle. To do so means summoning the spirit of Jinaal Bix, a Trill host who worked with Dr. Vellek and knows where the next piece of the three-dimensional map lies. But bringing him back means depositing him (temporarily of course), into the body of Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz).

This soul-to-soul transport calls to mind “Facets” from DS9 where Jadzia practiced the same sort of host-harboring ritual, and saw the Dax symbiont’s prior host possess Odo’s body. Just as it’s fun to see the normally stiff and stern Odo become a gregarious hedonist, there’s something fun about seeing the normally serene and steady Dr. Culber cut loose in similar terms and embody the spirit of someone much more sly and slippery. The way the revivified Jinaal plays coy with our heroes, and basks in the joys of experiencing the physical world anew, gives his eponymous episode a certain flair, even if it comes with a certain playacting vibe.

That said, as enjoyable as it is to see this normally hugboxing show deal with someone a little more tricktster-y and arch (see also: Q antagonizing the crew of the Enterprise-D or even Harry Mudd mucking things up on Lorca’s Discovery), the part of the plot Jinaal-as-Culber serves is trite. Jinaal reveals that he was part of the scientist collective from eight centuries ago that hid the Progenitor tech in the first place. Only, he won’t reveal its location to Book and Burnham, because the series of clues and riddles to get them there is not just a puzzle; it’s a test of character.

Maybe the writers will surprise us, but barring three more reanimated/reembodied spirits, it’s hard to tell how a series of cryptic hints leading to various Puzz 3D pieces are supposed to show that Burnham and the Federation are worthy of wielding this fantastical technology for good. But even Jinaal’s ploy -- to see if she and Book will treat predatory megafauna as foes or friends -- plays as cheap and kind of unfair given the life-or-death stakes, rather than some true measure of their moral upstandingness. And the cliched back-and-forth about whether the interstellar community has advanced enough in the future to support such benevolence does Jinaal’s scheme no favors.

Look, it’s not a good sign when you’re only three episodes into the season, and your extended plot arc/middling fetch quest is already tiresome. The canon tie-in gives Discovery’s season 5 mission some juice. But 90s Trek tie-in or no, the show’s done a mediocre job to date of making that quest interesting or worthwhile in its individual steps.

Thankfully, despite the title, “Jinaal” is something of a grab bag episode, touching on the different concerns and personal speed bumps of characters from across the show.

One of those is the rocky reunion between Adira (Blu del Barrio) and Gray (Ian Alexander). As is true elsewhere, Discovery isn’t shy about heavily underlining that sense that something is off between the couple, and once they’re back in the same place, their long distance relationship turns into a break-up. The idea that young love doesn’t always last, and that connections between people can change as their situations do is a solid one. There’s truth in the awkwardness of Gray and Adira’s big talk.

But given the collage nature of the episode’s plotting, the split feels a bit undercooked. More to the point, while Adira and Gray as a couple were a heartening element in the show, they were only part of the equation. The episode briefly nods toward Stamets (Anthony Rapp) as a surrogate dad, but he doesn’t so much as say hello to Gray, and neither does Dr. Culber, who’s obviously off on his own adventure. Maybe we’ll get more down the line, but this plays like Discovery dispensing with multiple worthwhile relationships in quick fashion in an already overcrowded episode.

We do get hints of Stamets’ path this season. After lamenting that he’s been reduced to being a “luminary” in the season premiere, and wondering if his greatest accomplishment is already behind him, Stamets gets starry-eyed over the Progenitor tech. While he waxes poetic about its potential to create life and even reanimate the dead (no risks there, certainly!) the subtext is that this boundary-pushing engineer is trying to top himself. It’s still early days, but the prospect of Stamets going too far in the name of securing his legacy, possibly setting him against his usual crew, potentially to revive someone he loves (presumably Adira, given the setup here) is intriguing.

His revelation comes during Commander Rayner’s (Callum Keith Rennie) curt run-through of the crew in the guise of a “getting to know you” exercise that would make Julie Andrews see red. Alongside Deep Space Nine’s plain influence on the Trill storyline, there’s a Worf-esque “This isn’t how we did things at my old posting” quality to Rayner’s resistance to the ship’s culture. The difference, of course, is that the audience already knew and liked Worf from scads of adventures on this previous show. With Rayner as a newcomer, his gruff, dismissive attitude about connecting with people or adapting to his new environment risks making him into more of a Jellico.

Even three episodes in, through, Rayner’s trajectory seems to be revealing that his prickly and down-to-business exterior does not reflect a lack of care or decency, and that with the right nudging from leading lights like Tilly (Mary Wiseman), he can grow, change, and adapt. His montage of brusque interactions with the crew gets a little cartoony, and Tilly’s speeches to him are on-the-nose, but the sentiment about the need for connection is a sound one, that ties into the season’s and the series’ themes.

That just leaves Saru’s (Doug Jones) first minor spat, if you can even call it that, with his new fiancee T’Rina. There too, the ideas about conflicts being a part of any relationship and partnership meaning respecting what your future spouse wants not assuming you know they need are both solid. But with everything out in the open between them, Saru and T’Rina’s exchanges now feel a bit flat. The couple is still enjoyable, and the attempt to draw out possible friction over the tension between their personal and professional lives is laudable, but their serene pairing has a little less charge when they’re no longer each stifling passions behind a staid exterior. Who knew handling situations like calm, mature adults wouldn’t be as exciting? Seems unfair somehow.

So does Jinaal’s treatment of Michael and Book. Look, I get it. The Progenitor tech is a big deal. Fine. But making them jump through these hoops, speaking in coy riddles, putting their lives at risk, under the pretense that all of this nonsense will demonstrate whether their worthy is more annoying than compelling. Discovery already has a big bill that's coming due by invoking one of the most wide-reaching revelations from The Next Generation. Draping it in giant bug battles as other credulity-straining feats does little to inspire confidence in the ultimate reveal and inevitable confrontation.

But the mystery remains afoot. The smugglers are putting trackers or some other mysterious devices on our heroes. And the fetch quest promises to extend to another planet, this one outside Federation territory. In the shadow of an unavailing season arc, “Jinaal”’s grab bag is a mixed bag. Let’s hope that next week’s installment can better live up to its influences’ legacy.

[7.1/10] Three seasons in, and I think I’ve just seen one too many Bad Batch search and rescue missions. This isn’t bad, and the show’s creative team knows how to put together some nice sequences. But we’ve just seen this sort of thing so many times that it starts to lose its impact.

Case in point -- I appreciate the blend between the immediate goal and the larger goal. Hunter, Crosshair, and Wrecker need to rescue Omega. To do that, they need to find Tantiss. To get a bead on Tantiss, they have to spring Admiral Rampart from an Imperial prison. There’s a plain cause and effect you can trace here, even if Crosshair’s excuses for not bringing up the lead earlier seem pretty thin and plot-convenient.

And the business at the Imperial prison is solid. (Am I crazy or do they use a very similar location in The Mandalorian?) I especially enjoyed our heroes commandeering a giant Imperial tank and barging their way across a bridge littered with Imperial defenses. The visual flair alone is enough to get the blood pumping.

But I don’t know. All of this seems like a fetch quest before the real business begins later in the season. Sassy Admiral Rampart and his quid pro quo adds a little bit of flavor to the proceedings. But more of this episode comes off like a box the show needs to check along the way to the Bad Batch storming Tantiss to find Omega, rather than something essential to the story or worthy on its own merits.

The glimpses we see of Omega back on Tantiss have a little more juice, but even they don’t tell us much that we don’t already know. I can appreciate the hesitation in Dr. Karr’s eyes with what she’s complicit in, and the mild shock of Omega going into The Vault. But even here, this is more of a tease for future events than anything important in the here and now.

Overall, this is not a bad episode by any stretch, but not one I think will stick in my memory for very long either.

[7.0/10] I’m real mixed on this one. Both stories have their merits, and their cool impressionistic sequences. But both also have a certain randomness, and some heavy signposting that leaves me cold.

Let’s start with Storm and Forge. I’ll say this much -- I appreciate that X-Men ‘97 remembered Storm’s claustrophobia! Even the original show seemed to just move past that pretty quickly, so having The Adversary taunt her with an enclosed coffin, or to have her face her fear by going into a cramped mineshaft to save Forge carries extra weight with what she’s braving to save her lover.

I’m also a fan of those impressionistic sequences between her and The Adversary. I don’t know; I’m just a sucker for that sort of thing. So much of the emotional experiences in our life defy being able to be captured in mundane scenes. Realizing Storm’s inner turmoil from a demon who makes Storm feel like the walls are closing in on her, literally, who drags her through a grand guignol theater of the mind to represent what she’s going through, compels me in a way simple wailing and gnashing of teeth doesn’t. I appreciate the show’s visual creativity and psychological maximalism with those set pieces.

I even like the point the show’s trying to make, about Storm secretly warning to hide who she is and feeling guilty for that. The notion of embracing yourself, of “coming out”, is a powerful metaphor that fits within the X-Men’s accepting ethos. There’s a fair amount of purple prose used to explain it, but it comes with a keen insight about self-shaming and self-acceptance.

My problems are both in how that idea is realized. For one, the fact that The Adversary is just some random demon who happened to be wandering through the desert or something is bizarre. More and more, it’s apparent that X-Men ‘97 wants to be a kind of anime, and this storyline in particular has more of that “weird magical thing happens for no particular reason” bit that often irks me in the (admittedly limited) anime I’ve seen.

They try to put a fig leaf on it, with Forge explaining that it feeds on misery and self-loathing, and so Storm and Forge made for “good chum.” But the whole thing feels so random and arbitrary. And science-focused Forge being able to use the occasional bit of Dr. Strange-esque magic comes out of nowhere as well.

But the biggest pathology,the one this storyline shares with Xavier’s, is that it all but announces the themes to the audience. I know there’s mixed feelings about subtlety among fans, but at too many points, it felt like The Adversary and Storm were just speaking an essay at viewers rather than debating one another in larger than life terms.

This isn’t “Lifedeath”’s fault, but I’m also just a bit tired of the “character has a personal breakthrough which allows them to have a superpowered breakthrough” routine. It’s still cool when Storm regains her powers, but between the hamfistedness of the messaging, and the sense of randomness in her overcoming an ostensibly medical problem by just believing in herself harder, the head-scratch qualities of it made it harder to enjoy the glory of the moment.

I feel the same way about the Professor X storyline. Again, I like the message “Lifedeath” is trying to send here. The warning about resorting to “good old days” nostalgia-baiting and baseless fear of and demeaning outsiders is a good thing in principle. Promoting the importance of education is outstanding. But eventually, the episode devolves into Charles literally lecturing on the topics. The dialogue is blunt as hell and overly florid, and the point could hardly be made in a more didactic fashion, which takes a lot of the oomph out of it.

That said, I do still appreciate the imagery. Another jaunt to the astral plane helps enhance with imagery what the show lacks in the written word. The classroom motif and chalk outlines give Xavier’s speech a distinctive character. And my goodness, the psychic impingement Professor X receives about what happened on Genosha -- with a Watchmen-esque sea of skeletons amid a horrible blast -- is almost as bracing as the original event.

I also appreciate that the show boils down Charles’ situation to a choice. He’s torn between his life with Lilandra on the one hand and his life with his children on the other. Being forced to not only stick around in space, but purge his memory of his old life brings home what he’d be giving up in a visceral way. I can appreciate that choice.

But I don’t know, I was never particularly compelled by the outer space interludes of the original X-Men series, and the connection between Xavier and Lilandra always felt like something that happened more by fiat than something the show had earned, so returning to those elements doesn’t do much for me from the jump. (Though hey, after the importance of the Kree to the MCU, it’s nice to see more than a passing glimpse of them in the X-Men ‘97 universe.)

The politics of the Shi'ar are, once again, very four-color and blunt in the point they’re trying to make. It’s something I could forgive when the original show was aimed at children. But this is clearly meant for those who grew up with the original show, so I think it’s fair to expect a bit more sophistication. (That said, our current political moment in the real world is, perhaps, no less caricatured and blunt, so maybe the joke’s on me.)

Also, on a purely superficial level, I’m not crazy about the new voice for Professor X. Ross Marquand is a talented voice actor, but his Xavier vocal tones are too different from Cedric Smith’s for my taste, and at times, he sounds kind of like Matt Berry, which I found distracting.

From a big picture plot perspective, I don’t really want Professor X to come back. He had such a moving farewell at the end of the original show. It felt like a television program that wasn’t technically allowed to kill main characters off doing everything but. I get the desire to return him to the fold, but undoing such a big choice like that takes away from the import and finality of the original show’s swan song. What’s more, I’m far more invested in the idea of the X-Men figuring out how to move forward without their old leaders than in rehashing the usual “Professor X guides his pupils” routine we’ve seen dozens of times before. Let shows evolve! Especially when it’s been thirty years!

Overall, though, I appreciate what the show’s trying to do in “Lifedeath”, and there’s plenty to like here, but the directness of the writing, and the randomness of the events stops this from being a firm “yes” for me.

[8.310] Holy hell! This episode took a sharp left turn and completely knocked my socks off.

In truth, I wasn’t on board with this one until the “Godzilla Sentinel” showed up, more or less. A lot of “Remember It” was some pretty tepid romantic melodrama that balled up into, if you can believe it, a love septagon.

So Magneto had a thing with Rogue and wants her to be his queen. Rogue is tempted given their past and the fact that they can make contact but still cares for Gambit. Gambit loves Rogue with the full force of his heart, but is flirting a bit with Madelyne Pryor. Madelyne Pryor is having psychic dalliance with Cyclops on the astral plane. Cyclops and Jean are still trying to work out what their relationship means after this big clone saga. And Jean is so mixed up that she plants one on Wolverine.

That's a lot! And it doesn’t even count Morph’s sublimated crush on Logan, which thankfully isn’t thrown into the multi-person knot that tangles up the first half of this episode. I don’t mind romance, or the friction that comes with it. Romance and love triangles were a significant part of the original X-Men series as well. But the execution here wasn’t particularly good.

Some of that is the love octagon that the show spins up in a short amount of time. The Magneto/Rogue/Gambit thing really should have been the priority given what takes place in the rest of the episode, and deserved as much real estate as X-Men ‘97 could afford. Everything about the Pryor/Cyclops/Jean/Wolverine side of the house feels rushed, and the business with the reporter doesn't help.

But some of that might be able to be overcome if the dialogue and performances were better. Much of the lovers’ quarrels here lack the ring of truth in the way the characters speak with one another. “Real people don’t talk that way” is a fool’s gold criticism, because of course television dialogue is stylized to meet the moment. But the way the various X-Men speak to one another is tin-eared and mannered in a way that detracts from the authenticity and rawness the show seems to want to convey in these interactions, which is a big drawback for them.

That said, whether it’s dialogue or performance or both, there’s also a stiltedness in how the lines are delivered. Going to these places with genuine emotion is hard, but across the board, the performers can't quite gin up the emotion necessary to feel true when so many of the X-Men are breaking one another’s hearts.

That said, I’m still a sucker for the Rogue-Gambit relationship, so parts of this one hit me like gangbusters. I’m sure you can guess which.

The Rogue/Magneto business still wigs me out a bit. The May-December romance is still a bit gross, and Magneto’s electromagnetism blocking Rogue’s powers is still a bit cheap. In truth, I assumed this whole thing was some kind of fake out, so seeing them pull the trigger on it was a little unexpected.

All that said, I can appreciate the idea of it, at least. Magneto would not be above abusing a mentor relationship to make it a romantic one. (Granted, I’m not sure that's the intended read.) I can also appreciate the idea of Rogue gravitating toward someone she can actually make contact with, no matter what problems there may be, given how hard having to avoid closeness with loved ones has been for her. And even if I’m icky on the relationship, their mid-air dance is the most sensual and passionate X-Men has ever been, which counts for something! The animation in this episode is a mixed bag, with the pre-action sequences being particularly questionable, so that's a particular achievement.

And while the tortured romance thing makes me roll my eyes a bit, there’s something true and tragic about Rogue and Gambit’s relationship. You can understand why Gambit would be hurt, why he’d protest that their love is more than just skin deep. You can understand why Rogue doesn’t want to be tortured by never being able to touch someone she loves, and the political practicality of becoming Magento’s queen. And you can understand Rogue giving it the old college try, with the passionate dance with Magnus in front of everyone, only to realize that no matter what she tells herself, that partnership isn’t the one she really wants. The volume is high and the emotional tone is overblown, but there’s truth at the core of this corner of the love octagon, and it works.

Until the villains destroy everything.

The contrast between the bliss and sanctuary Genosha offers for most of the episode, and the utter devastation that follows once the Godzilla Sentinel invades, is completely jarring, in the best way.

The attack has meaning because Genosha does seem like a mutant paradise. There are tributes to Xavier and Magneto. There is good ol’ Nightcrawler, a goodwill ambassador to guide our friends around. And there is a ruling council, filled with a nice sample familiar faces from X-Men’s past, including a human, suggesting that in the wake of Professor X’s death, the mutants really did come together.

Not for nothing, the show’s creative team also does a wonderful job of making the mutant nation feel distinctive. The visual designs of the buildings and shops and decor; the way they use their abilities to dance and play and move in a space meant for them; the way they float and flit seem uninhibited in a place just for them all sells Genosha as the sanctuary they’ve been waiting for.

So it means something when the sentinel, the original enemy of the X-Men in this series, returns to rend it asunder. The last gasps of Cable to his mother (a reveal I hope we have more time for later in the show) comes with an appropriate sense of desperation. Too many of us who grew up with the original show have lived through seemingly normal days and fun events destroyed by sudden tragedy. The sentinel attack has that tone, and it’s gut-wrenching in action.

It’s also, in a strange way, cool as hell. Again, I don’t know what to do with this show’s animation. Sometimes, it includes stiff movements and awkward character expressions that make it feel like a high class flash cartoon. Other times, in sequences like the X-Men defending their fellow mutants against the super-sentinel, the fluidity, epic scope, and attention to detail make it feel downright Akira-esque. Maybe the animators are just saving all their juice for the big sequences, but whatever the deal is, when they bring their A-game, they blow you away.

The blinding blast of cataclysmic green light raining down on fighter and bystander alike, the heroism of Kurt Wagner diving in front of the beam to protect our champions, the force of Magneto using his powers to smack this mechanical demon in the face, Rogue and Gambit racing into battle, the Cajun combatant bursting in to rescue to Morlocks, Rogue bursting through one of the automatons’ shoulders, Magneto saving Leech within an improvised shell and telling the poor child not to be afraid. They are all marvelous, momentous, jaw-dropping moments in a kinetic finale that trades the gentle peace of Genosha’s new dawn for terrifying panic and a wave of utter destruction. If you could watch without gripping the edge of your chair, you’re a stronger man than I.

And of course, there is the shock, glory, and tragedy of Gambit’s sacrifice. Whatever their hang-ups, Gambit still loves Rogue, and his willingness to put his life in harm’s way to preserve hers shows the depths of that affection, requited or not. The moment where he leaps up to take out the demon, and it impales him like nothing, Remy’s limp body drooping from a mechanized tentacle, takes your breath away with the sudden surprise of it. And there may be no more triumphant, if sad moment in the series than Gambit using the spearing of his own guts to harness his powers and destroy the bastion of mechanized death that unleashed hell upon his loved ones and countrymen.

Therein lies the greatest irony of “Remember It”. Gambit and Rogue debate whether their love is enough, but in the end, Remy will make the ultimate sacrifice if it will save the woman he cares so deeply for. And what drove them apart despite their feelings was that they couldn’t make contact, only for the moment when they can finally be close to one another only coming because Gambit is no longer alive to be hurt by his lover’s touch. The romances of “Remember It” stumble and fumble their way through much of this episode, but by god, they finish strong.

[5.8/10] So let’s start with the thing I did like. Maya sparing Fisk’s pain, rather than ending him, surprised me. I assumed Echo would do the standard superhero/supervillain throwdown thing, that flattens all the complicated morality and character of a season into one standard bout of fisticuffs. (Hello Daredevil season 1 fans!) I appreciate how “Maya” swerves instead.

It is, at a minimum, cheap to give a character powers that allows them to nigh-magically resolve someone else’s emotional pain. But for one thing, the most interesting thing you could do for Kingpin is take away the thing that he claims “made him”. For another, there is no stronger rebuke of Fisk’s value system than for Maya to choose to help him rather than kill him, breaking the cycle rather than perpetuating it. And finally, it ties into Maya’s mother’s flashback admonition about not hurting a living thing, showing that more than Chula or Kingpin, the legacy that Maya carries on is her mother’s.

In short, it’s plain that the writing team thought out how to make a thematically resonant ending that tied into Maya’s actions. The turn was surprising, but dovetailed neatly with what the show had set up to date, which is a tricky tightrope to pull off.

The problem is that this is about all I liked from the finale. (Give or take another rendition of Samantha Crain’s “When We Remain” and the coolness of the few glimpses we get of the Chocktaw celebration.)

All of the complexity from the last episode has evaporated. Chula is pure good. Kingpin is pure evil. All of the nuance is gone. And despite the fact that there’s thankfully not much of an action-heavy climax here, they spin up a contrived excuse for Biscuits to crush the bad guys with a Monster Truck, and for Henry to take out Fisk’s head goon. I appreciate wanting to involve your secondary characters in the action, but the involvement of both of them feels so shoehorned in.

Speaking of which, holy cow Chula and Bonnie’s powers come out of nowhere and are badly deployed. Maybe I’ve seen too much, but the “I’m infused by the powers of everyone, and I’m sharing them with my comrades!” ending has been done too many times to have force for me. Buffy did it, and most notably, Captain Marvel did it. So while I get the symbolism of Maya standing in front of the spirits of her ancestors, and sharing her powers with her grandmother and best friends, in practice it comes off hackneyed and silly.

Look, this is a fantastical superhero show. I can buy magic existing in the world. But Bonnie and Chula breaking away from their attackers just looks silly visually, which makes it hard to take seriously. And on a practical evel, it’s not clear why the goons don‘t shoot them or club them or whatever else even if they have some kind of mystical strength. I don’t need realism in my superhero shows by any stretch of the imaignation, but this one doesn't pass the smell test.

Likewise, I miss the more understated version of Maya’s connection to her family and to her ancestors. I get that, despite its Better Call Saul writer bona fides, Echo is a show aimed at general audiences, and so not everything is going to be as subtle. By god, Maya’s mom showing up, magically curing her emotional pain, and giving a speech that basically just spells out the themes of the show so bluntly is painful. The hard work of Maya’s emotional journey is all but hand-waved away through a deus ex machina who, to add insult to injury, announces the central ideas of the show rather than conveying them in a more artful fashion.

In other cliches, I’ve seen the “Hero self-actualizes by putting on their costume” thing too many times to count, so that has no force either. I can appreciate the gesture of Chla busting out her old sewing machine and using it to support her granddaughter. (And it’s nice to get one last appearance from Graham Greene.) But again, all the complexity is gone. Chula is now a force for good, and all is ostensibly forgiven.

I don’tg know. This finale is a real missed opportunity. There’s some interesting ideas here and there, mostly with Maya’s choice to spare and even save her tormentor. But everything else here is so facile, hackneyed, or cheap. Echo could never really decide whether it wanted to be a prestige drama or a generic superhero show, and unfortunately, its final statement leans much more into the latter.

On the whole, Echo is fine. The poor ending takes some of the bloom off the rose, and the shortcuts to Maya’s rekindling of her relationship with her family sap how meaningful the reunion can be. But there’s a few good action scenes and quality character moments to boast as well. I can't pretend I’d be in any hurry to rewatch it, but it’s better than at least half of the Netflix Defenders seasons it’s seemingly in continuity with, which is something for a mini-series aiming to play in the same corner of the Marvel sandbox.

[7.6/10] This is my favorite episode of the show to date because it gets to the heart of Echo. Maya Lopez is not just sundered between two worlds; she is pulled between two parental figures: Chula and Fisk. The hard truth is that she’s got deep anger for both, which makes it hard to find her footing in either realm, whether it’s Tamaha or New York. “Taloa” is a confrontation, hell even a reckoning, with both of them, which gives it a force that’s been intermittent at best in the mini-series to date.

I recently learned that Echo’s lead writers are a veteran from Better Call Saul and a veteran of various teen dramas, and I think that reflects in the show’s vacillating tone and tenor. Thankfully, despite some silliness, this episode leans into the former, and the Breaking Bad-style hard conversations between family members in both your real family and your crime family.

The main source of that silliness is Kingpin. Again, I get that this still a Marvel show, but his nigh-magical sign language translator device is goofy to the point of being distracting. In fairness to the creative team, the device serves a story purpose. Fisk would rather invest in advance technology than go to the personal trouble to learn how to sign. But it’s not the most elegant way to convey that idea, and it’s hard to take the (pretty important!) scenes where the device is used seriously.

Likewise, the scene of his “final lesson” left me rolling my eyes a bit. Fisk having his ASL translator killed to demonstrate the idea that “we are the only ones we can trust” to Maya is too cartoony for my tastes. It’s churlish for me to complain about such things while complimenting Breaking Bad, since Gus Fring pulled similar tricks in that storytelling universe. And again, it serves a purpose, with Maya realizing the way that Fisk manipulated her as much as he showed genuine care for her. But the over-the-top, “mature” comic book-style plot point felt like too much to me.

All of that said, I still liked Maya’s confrontations with Fisk. I still read him as an abuser, but one who thinks he’s doing right, who at least believes that he loves Maya, even if his means of showing her love is as twisted as he is. There’s a palpable tension when they sit down together, a venomous magnamity in Fisk who’s ostensibly come to make Maya his successor, and the bitter recriminations of a young woman who’s waking up to the way her surrogate father may have treated her like a tool rather than a loved one. The dialogue is a little on-the-nose, but the performance are good, and the interpersonal-dynamics between the characters are sharp, which counts for a lot.

Their closing confrontation in Kingpin’s hotel room compelled me just as much, if not more. In truth, I’d forgotten all about the backstory of Fisk’s hammer and his father’s murder that was depicted in Daredevil. It’s been a long time since that show’s first season, and yet, while the dialogue isn’t seamless, the script does a good job of providing context for audiences who understandably missed an only semi-canonical television series from nearly a decade ago.

But for those of us who did watch it, there is power in Kingpin handing Maya the implement he used to slay his own abusive and asking her to complete the cycle with him. There is an Emperor Palpatine-esque quality to his invitation: seeking a successor, wanting someone worthy, and wanting a resistant protégé to accept that role by taking them down. And in an episode that makes generational patterns repeating themselves, there is power in Maya refusing to perpetuate that cycle. She won’t become Fisk; she won’t inherit his personal pathologies and moral deficiencies. And that refusal comes with extra force given how much she’s like to wreak vengeance upon him for all that he’s done to her.

The confrontation with Chula is much more grounded, naturally. She’s a local grandmother, not a mob boss, after all. But it’s no less potent. Through her, Maya comes to understand the mystical experiences that have been affecting her of late. Therein comes the idea of generations echoing (hey! that’s like the name of the show!) off one another. We see it manifested in the women of Maya’s Chocktaw ancestry finding special strength in one another across time and space. We see it manifested in Maya reminding Chula so much of Maya’s mother. And we see it in Chula herself having the same sort of mystical experience in childbirth.

Here's where I’ll admit that I have major problems with the whole “I rejected Western medicine and just went into the woods so magic could help me with my serious medical condition instead” idea the show represents here. But taking it as a heightened reflection of strength and connection to a culture and community, I can’t deny the power of the imagery, or the meaning that comes from Chula bringing someone into this world who seemed to lift everyone around her, or the tragedy of ultimately losing her.

That’s what makes their confrontation the right kind of unsatisfying, in the way that tough conversations with family members reckoning through unresolvable issues should be. I wouldn’t necessarily call her sympathetic, but Chula is comprehensible in her fierce anger at Maya’s father for his “business” getting Maya’s mother killed, and she’s understandable in the pain she feels at seeing Maya and witnessing that reflection of a lost child.

But Maya is just as sympathetic in asking Chula, “How could you? Where were you when I needed you?” Maya did nothing wrong. And while Fisk takes the lion’s share of the blame in the way he indoctrinated Maya over the years, Chula bears some blame for severing her ties with a granddaughter who needed her, for not being a counterweight Maya could rely on at the expense of the poison Kingpin was dripping in the young girl’s ear, of expelling a small child who’d done nothing wrong along with the father Chula blamed for everything. The ways that Chula failed Maya still echo as much as the guidance she offers now.

That’s the kind of thing I love in my television shows. It’s the most interesting part of Echo -- the substance behind the high-octane battles that will no doubt be in heavy rotation in the season finale. And it gives the show it’s high water mark as Echo rolls into its final frame.

[6.7/10] So for my last write-up, I mentioned that Echo seemed to be influenced by True Detective in terms of the style and vibe it was aiming for. Well, this episode seemed to prove me wrong! Instead it felt closer to something like Burn Notice or other cable drama procedurals with an action bent.

I don’t know what to say. The confrontation with Kane at the skating rink felt alternatively ludicrous and generic. The small town goons who run-into the big city mob is a cliche. The whole “I’ll intimidate you,” “No I’ll intimidate you!” routine over and over again is even more so. The hostage situation and friends getting wrapped up in it is a hoary trope as well. And the characters themselves mostly felt like generic archetypes, even if the guy who played Kane at least had a presence.

Don’t get me started out on the combat stuff here. I suppose it’s silly to ask for realism in what is still a superhero show, but Echo seemed to be going for a more grounded tone. Now, apparently, she’s MacGuyver-ing projectile weapons out of a skater’s utility room, using arcade components like whips., and taking out professional killers with skee balls. Some of the action scenes in the show have been heightened, to be sure, but this is the first one that was nigh-impossible for me to take seriously.

Somewhere in the middle, there was a good sequence. Maya chasing the New York goons through the laser tag area made for an appropriately chaotic pursuit and dust-up situation with a cool aesthetic. And even a few moments like her kicking someone through the “Make America Skate Again” wall make up for in cool factor what they lose in plausibility.

But the vast majority of this episode is one grand set piece (or, series of set pieces, to be fair) at that location, and very little of it works.

Some of the character stuff is a little better. I appreciated the scene of Chula and Skully getting together to talk about Maya. They have a great dynamic, even if the dialogue is a little clunky. The idea that both Maya and Chula clearly harbor deep feelings about one another, positive or negative, but can't push themselves to talk to one another adds a standard but still potent personal angle to the proceedings.

I’m less moved by the chance reunion between Maya and Bonnie (even if it’s nice to see Reservation Dogs’ Devery Jacobs in the show). The fact that it happens with Bonnie getting wrapped up in the loony skating rink assault scenario feels contrived, and the over-the-tipo situation they’re reunited in saps the event of its emotional force. The moment demands some realism to land, and “Tuklo” has little of it to spare.

There are a few things in this one that I did appreciate. Chaske Spencer, who plays Henry, does a superb job in this, and so giving him a few more notes to play is a plus. Him wanting to stay out of it, but choosing to fight with Maya once the war comes home is a good beat for the character. I also appreciate the fact that despite all her badassery, Maya loses. On theme, it’s because people she cares about have been put in harm’s way, which proves a vulnerability to her and to them. That's on theme, and the fact that iIt takes Kingpin’s last minute intervention to save her further muddies the waters between the two worlds she’s being pulled into.

I also like the idea, realized in both literal and figurative terms, that Maya is imbued with the power of the women who have come before her. The silent film homage didn’t work especially well for me, but I’ve cottoned to the fact that we’re seeing Choctaw women from the past to the present stepping up in key moments, and that they’re linked in a chain not just through their powers, but in their boldness and courage when the moment calls for it. The magic powers angle honestly feels kind of unnecessary, but it’s not like Marvel has eschewed that sort of thing in its street level heroes thus far.

Not for nothing, the last five minutes is a high point. Maybe I’m a sucker, but a beautiful song playing while Maya considers reconciling with her friend but instead drives off pushed the right melancholy buttons for me. And as a tease, Kingpin showing up in Maya’s backyard, practically seeming like a ghost, at a moment when her ties to the criminal world of New York and her ties to the Choctaw world she left in Tamaha are at their most fraught, is outstanding.

Overall, the main event here is exceedingly weak, but there’s some positives around the margins.

[7.2/10[ Hey! That's more the speed I’m familiar with from these kinds of projects!

What the hell was that train sequence? For one thing, it feels like a giant cliche, with tons of off-the-shelf problems and improbable solutions. But for another, it just looked bad. The compositing was off and the whole thing felt unreal in an unpleasant way. That can work in some of the MCU’s more cosmic settings, since you’re already in a heightened environment. But within the more grounded tone and setting of Echo, that kind of conspicuous effects work is extra jarring.

That said, despite having a bit of the same unreality problems the train sequence did, I actually really liked the Choctaw stickball set piece at the beginning. The idea of Echo being able to summon the help of her ancestors, in a way that's stretched across generations, is an interesting one. But even just the texture of seeing it happen in the past at a critical moment draws you in. I’ve been trying to figure out what touchstone Echo reminds me of, and I think it’s True Detective, not just for the catchy intro, but for this quiet sense of magical realism at the edges of the frame, starting to creep their way in.

The same tone pervades Maya’s adventures back in Tamaha. I’ll admit, despite not liking the train sequence, the scene where Maya’s bomb goes off and blows up Kingpin’s armory in New York rocks. I appreciate the idea that she is a child of two worlds, someone who is still of this place in Oklahoma and connected on a spiritual level to her people, but one who’s also been raised, in some ways, by Kingpin, and indoctrinated into his way of thinking. Seeing those worlds collide in her war against her surrogate father is cool.

It’s also nice seeing a little more glimpse of the world Maya was taken from. The particular ecosystem of Biscuits not wanting to tick off his grandmother, but inadvertently letting Bonnie know that Maya’s in town, while Chola catches word and confronts Henry, gives you the sense of how these people’s lives are connected. Maya can't avoid that forever, and I’m intrigued to see how things shake out once her family members start confronting her.

My favorite part, though, may be her interactions with Skully. Graham Greene has such a presence, so seeing him interact with some out-of-town schmucks or banter with Biscuits or work tirelessly to repair Echo’s prosthetic leg all carry an extra spark from his personality alone.

Overall, the non-action scenes, while still a bit predictable, were more my thing this episode, while the grand fireworks-filled action set piece was a low point. At least it’s familiar!

[7.4/10] A movie can live on good vibes alone. Don’t think too hard about the mechanics of a planet that can only communicate in song, or the logistics of the digestion habits and transportation of dozens of alien kittens, or the mechanics of the light-based entanglement of The Marvels trio of leads. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. If you can do that, you’re in for a good time.

The best part of 2019’s Captain Marvel was the buddy comedy between Carol Danvers and Nick Fury. Its more ecumenical sequel smartly leans into that, giving audiences the great buddy comedy of Carol and her new chums: surrogate niece, Monica Rambeau and young admirer Kamala Khan. And Fury is back for good measure, not only trading some laugh-worthy lines with the Marvels, but also amusingly bouncing off the rest of the Khan family and his subordinates. This movie thrives on banter and the charm of the proceedings, even if you have to leave sense at the door.

The charm is good, because beyond the science fiction-y, quasi-magical confluence of nonsense going on here, the character arcs are pretty thin here too. Captain Marvel is haunted by the consequence of her destroying the Supreme Intelligence had on the Kree homeworld, consequences that mostly happen off-screen and so have little impact. Monica is salty that Carol never returned despite promising to, and Captain Marvel’s decision not to is tied to that Kree catastrophe through a gossamer thin thread, which Monica forgives for reasons that are no firmer.

And Kamala Khan gets to meet her hero and, but for one minor bump in the road...it pretty much goes great. I don’t know what Ms. Marvel’s arc is supposed to be here. She dreams of being an Avenger and then basically gets to be one, I guess?

Still, I can't complain because Iman Vellani continues to be a revelation in the role, and Ms. Marvel continues to be the best new hero the MCU has introduced since Endgame. Her flummoxed-but-unruffled disposition, starry-eyed desire to do good, and sheer giddiness at getting to team up with her hero continue to win the day. The combination of empathy, enthusiasm, and relatable kid-dealing-with-parents energy the character brings to the table makes her stand out yet again.

The movie’s big silly set pieces are also just charming. The film makes the most of the thinly-sketched conceit that Carol, Monica, and Kamala are “entangled” via their light-based powers, and thus switch places every time they use their powers. The chaotic absurdity when they’re getting a handle on the swaps and squaring off against bad guys everywhere from an alien space station to S.A.B.E.R. headquarters to the Khans’ living room is a treat. The montage where The Marvels learn how to use their powers and have a ball testing them out is endearing for all three of them. And it ties into the movie’s vague theme about the three of them coming together and working best when they’re a part of a team.

Granted, the film’s action varies between inscrutable and bad. The Marvels can get away with a little bit of confounding combat, given the place-swapping conceit of the team’s powers. But even when they’ve mastered it, or are mostly fighting one-on-one, the fisticuffs are chopped all to hell in the editing bay, with indifferent results. In the same vein, the CGI here is a cut below, with unconvincing mid-air green screening and artificial backdrops, a not-ready-for-primetime fully-animated Beast, and full-powered over-glowy versions of Captain Marvel and Monica Rambeau that just look silly.

This level of craft might be forgivable for a mid-range project, but coming from one of the most successful movie studios in the world, they should be able to do better. WIth complaints about crunch and process from effects teams, the shabby results affirm that some rethinking of the whole approach is in order.

But some of that is forgivable with the loony charm of other set pieces in the film. As little sense as it makes, The Marvels’ visit to a planet that communicates entirely in song is terrific. In the humor department, Carol’s tenseness at being the planet’s princess strictly for “political reasons”, Monica being resistant to the whole deal, and Kamala absolutely reveling in it is a complete delight. Likewise, don’t ask why Nick Fury can depend on a bunch of newborn alien cats to keep his S.A.B.E.R. team in their stomachs for a whole spaceship ride, conveniently without gulping down any of the main characters, and just enjoy the goofy imagery of a litter of kittens gobbling up space accountants.

The only weak point that really gets in the way is the villain. Dar-Benn has a decent gripe -- that Captain Marvel, whom she dubs “The Annihilator” disrupted her world. She has an appropriately evil scheme -- stealing climate and resources from other worlds. And Zawe Ashton gives a solid performance. Dar--Benn’s just wildly underdeveloped, feels tossed into the proceedings rather than a vital part of them, and gets dispatched without much real trouble.

It doesn’t help that the nature of The Marvels’ powers is fuzzy as all hell, which isn’t a major problem, except that it’s vital to the plot. Dar-Benn is absorbing Carol’s powers to exert her schemes. But she’s also mixing some power from her big “cosmic rod” which messes things up. But she also has a matching bangle to the one Kamala inherited in the Ms. Marvel show. But it’s no problem, because Carol can just peel those off when she tackles Dar-Benn into a big interdimensional rift. But that's fine, because Monica apparently has the power to absorb the energy from that rift and seal it, even if it sends her to an X-Men universe. And it turns out Dar-Benn’s whole project was unnecessary, since all it took was a pep talk and some technobabble for Captain Marvel to realize she can use her powers to restart the Kree homeworld’s sun anyway. Phew.

It’s all a big nonsense stew. But you know what? In a “phase” that has left many MCU fans disappointed, he Marvels feels like classic Phase One or Phase Two Marvel. Yes, the villain is forgettable and the plot is held together by popsicle sticks and bubble gum, but there’s charm out the wazoo. Kamala, Monica, and Carol have an incredibly fun dynamic together. Nick Fury bouncing off of them and Kamala’s family is a treat and a laugh every time. This is light adventure, heavy on the light, and it’s not afraid of having a good time at the expense of pure soundness of construction throughout the movie.

It’s an approach that's worked well for the MCU for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy rollicking potboilers and clearer character stories as much as anybody. But regardless of whether The Marvels adds up to a greater whole, it is a fun watch on a scene-to-scene basis. In an era where more and more superhero films feel the need to present some vital lore or try to cram complicated character work between the mandatory fireworks shows, there’s something refreshing about a film that puts on a coat of paint for both, but saves most of its fire for simply being entertaining. On charm and fun alone, The Marvels is a good time at the movies.

[7.210] “Chafa” is a weird episode for me. It seems like most of the show is trying to be an AMC-style prestige drama, and I love AMC-style prestige dramas! And for a brief interlude, it seems like the show is trying to be the spiritual to those gritty Netflix Defenders shows, and by the end, I got so exhausted by those gritty Netflix Defenders shows.

And yet, when this was trying to be a spiritual meditation on a person experiencing tragedy and finding their direction through homes and father figures both old and new, it felt pretty flat and even tiresome. And when it was doing that now-standard Netflix Defenders unbroken hallway fight scene, it was downright riveting, so I don’t know what to do with this one, or myself really.

I will say that I initially rolled my eyes at Maya and the two Kingpin goons throwing down with a bunch of rival gangsters. I appreciate a solid oner, but the camera work seemed over the top, and there was an odd, almost green screen effect to it that took me out of the moment. But once they got through the melee potion, and it was pretty much just Maya locking horns with various goons, it became much clearer visually and more exciting psychologically. And the late entrance of Daredevil kicked things up a notch on both fronts.

Oners can be gimmicky. And you can see the seams and the cuts in a few place.s That said, I can't tell you how refreshing it feels to see hand-to-hand combat visualized without choppy editing, to where you can easily follow the flow and geography of the fight in a way that most modern action, superhero and otherwise, makes a complete hash of. So if all this first episode gave us was the extended fight between Maya, the bad guys, and Daredevil it would be worthwhile on that front.

That said, I do appreciate “Chafa” bringing us up to speed on what is essentially Maya’s origin story and how she got to the present moment. I seem to recall we got bits and pieces of this in the Hawkeye show that Echo spun off of. But I gotta admit, Hawkeye feels like a long time ago, and I wasn’t super engaged with it, so the details are fuzzy. Recapitulating them here through Maya as a protagonist, not a side character, is welcome, and the additions to the story help situate where she is in the plot and in life.

That said, there’s a ton of cliches here. The kid who loses her parent in a car accident and blames themselves feels very stock. Moving from a rustic locale to the big city and then returning home as an adult is another big cliche. And if you’re a white male age 18-49 (to where everyone listens to you, no matter how dumb your ideas are!), you've seen ten million “gangsters run this town” stories, so it’s hard for Echo to distinguish itself on that front.

Thankfully, there is the Choctaw culture and deaf community inclusions that help distinguish Echo somewhat. I’ll admit, the visualization of the Choctaw legend at the beginning threw me off and made me wonder if I had the right show. But the sense of these communities with their own ecosystems and intersections and concerns does help infuse the series with something to elevate it above the bundle of cliches it offers in the early going.

Of course, there’s also the return of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin, and what can I say, I’m a sucker for it. The casting remains perfect, both physically and in terms of presence, and I’m interested to see how the show aims to develop the character within the MCU. The idea of him as a surrogate father figure who was responsible for the death of Maya’s actual father motivates the show well, and I’m interested to see where they go with it. Not for nothing, in the light of D’Onofrio’s turn in Ed Wood, there’s a real “older Charles Foster Kane” vibe to Kingpin here, which I appreciate.

Overall, this one flips my usual expectations and preferences for television, with the more languid and meditative parts that could be in any serious drama dragging things down, and the standard issue superhero fighting scene being the thing that maintained my interest. But I’m at least curious to see where the show goes from here, now that it’s done setting the table and can start eating the meal it’s prepared.

[7.1/10] So here’s the problem -- I don’t really care about Pabu. That's not necessarily The Bad Batch’s fault. I think the show has dutifully established what this town means to Omega, Hunter, and Wrecker, and what it represents for them as a safe haven. But the other side of the coin is that, given the passage of time between seasons, I’m not sure I could name a single one of the characters who resides there, or recall what exactly their significance is to our heroes. (I vaguely remember Omega being friends with Lyana and Wrecker having a moment of camaraderie with Mayor Shep, but that's about it.) That means it’s more of a generic setting than an important place to me as a viewer. So for me at least, the idea of “Pabu is home” works in theory, but not really in practice, lacking the impact that, say, watching the Empire destroy the Marauder has.

Which is all to say that I get what The Bad Batch is going for here. The Shadow Agent has arrived! He’s brought Stormtroopers to their safe and sacred place! They’re hurting innocent people! Omega has no choice but to go with them to stop the suffering!

But it doesn’t really land for me emotionally. Some of it’s just that the pacing of this one is all over the place There’s a long slow build, and even once the Empire arrives, it’s a bunch of muddy and indifferent action, without much to latch onto as a viewer. I can, in principle, appreciate Wrecker getting incapacitated in the explosion, Hunter getting sidelined trying to grab a transport, and the locals seeing their livelihood destroyed. But without a more personal connection, much of this feels like standard piece-moving and table-setting for the final stretch of the series. I understand why the show needs to do these things, and the violation it’s supposed to feel like, but the stakes don’t really land and neither do the emotions.

There’s a few points worth noting. For one, the fact that the Shadow Agent is able to snipe a stormtrooper from seemingly miles way strongly suggests he’s a clone of Crosshair, which portends interesting things. While I can see the seams a little too plainly, the best thing this episode does to establish Pabu as important is making it the home for Tech’s glasses and Omega/Wrecker’s plush, sacred objects in The Bad Batch’s corner of the universe.

Most of all, I appreciate that on Omega’s journey to maturity, she is now willing to give herself up, put herself in harm’s way, both to save the villagers of Pabu, but also in a bid to rescue the clones who are still trapped on Tantiss. There is a selflessness, a courage, a righteousness to Omega that bears out. The interplay between ehr perspective and Crosshair’s this season ahs been a particular highlight. The way he tells her this isn’t a viable plan, and she responds “It’s all we have” shows not only how Omega’s grown, not only the bravery she displays on a daily basis, but the sense of self-sacrifice she’s picked up from Tech.

The most tension “The Point of No Return” can offer comes in the plan to track Omega’s jaunt to Tantiss. Her giving up her comms to the Shadow Agent as a feint, only for Crosshair’s secondary tracker to miss comes freighted with expectation and disappointment. And Omega’s sigh when she’s on the Shadow Agent’s transport, suggests there’s another layer to the plan, but also perhaps just a sense of exhaustion, of resolve, of that franchise trademark hope within the young clone heading back to the site of her captivity.

I can't say I loved this one. It strikes me as a more functional episode than a purely riveting one. But it does leave me impressed with the show’s main character, and excited to see what happens next, so it must be doing something right.

[7.0/10] Back in the halcyon days of the summer of 2012, we anticipated the superhero overload of The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers coming out one right after another. One fan described the pairing as akin to a well-seasoned filet mignon followed by a heaping plate of seven-layer nachos. The latter was substantive and nourishing, the latter a less substantial but still tasty cacophony of flair.

I don't necessarily agree with that read on the films, before or after I saw them, but it’s a reminder that superhero stories can be a lot of different things. They can be dramatic, serious works. Or they can be light adventures filled with whimsy. I’d argue that the cinch of the MCU is that it managed to walk that line: offering capers that were light and fun in tone, but which often had something more substantive on their mind. Regardless, both modes are valid. It’s wonderful when a comic book movie shows the potential of the medium with something grounded and poignant. And it can be just as worthwhile to have something that is, perhaps less an achievement of the human soul, but still successful as a bushel full of awesome.

Which is all to say that What If’s season 2 finale is mostly the latter, and that's okay. There is a touch of substance here. The script draws a dichotomy between Strange Supreme and Captain Carter. Dr. Strange would burn the rest of the multiverse to get the woman he loves back, and Captain Carter would give up her deepest desire, the chance to start again with Steve, in order to save a multiverse full of people she doesn't know. Both are driven by love, and yet what distinguishes them is the extent to which they’ll countenance what the people they’ve loved and lost would really want. The representation of that as a monster within Stephen Strange is a little on-the nose, and his last minute change of heart feels tacked on. But there is poignance in Peggy turning away from her fantasy to fight the good fight, and poetry in Stephen’s self-sacrifice being the thing that brings the love of his life back, albeit with the bitter irony that he’s no longer a part of that universe.

I don’t want to downplay that. There’s a strong, character focused idea there, which connects to brother ideas about the multiverse and personal tragedies and honoring legacies. But it feels like it’s roughly 10-15% of the episode.

The other 85-90% is, well, a cavalcade of maximalist Marvel mash-ups and stacking comic book-y silliness. Aside from a few throwbacks to season 1’s zombies and others, Peggy smashing open the containers of other heroes and villains is mostly an excuse to play “spot the reference” in a royal rumble’s worth of combatants. Only, ti’s too muddy and dense to catch more than a handful without going frame by frame, which makes the lot seem more like stuffing than something essential to the fight.

But again, this is an outing that “runs on awesome” rather than sound storytelling, so there’s something to be said for just kicking back and appreciating the toybox sensibility of pouring out all your action figures and having them do battle with one another.

Likewise, the fight amongst Captain Carter, Strange Supreme, and Kohorri is...pretty meaningless. Between Strange’s fuzzy-at-best magic powers, Kohorri’s seemingly unlimited abilities, and Captain Carter’s do-anything infinity armor, there’s no real rules or limitations to their fight. I’m not saying What If needs to lay out a complicated system of Magic the Gathering-style rules for what trumps what, but in a three-way matchup of “who can magic the hardest”, it’s hard to invest too much in which any of them can theoretically do anything. There’s no real stakes, no real cleverness to the finish, or problem-solving; just a lot of “I do a cool thing” “Now you do a cool thing” “Now you do a cooler thing!”

Even the departing heroes and villains tossing their weapons and armor to Peggy and Kohorri rings false since it’s not really clear how/why that stuff is an improvement over their existing tech. There’s some nice enough symbolism to it, with an array of other fighters trying to lend what strength they can given the multiversal stakes of it all. But the whole exercise rings pretty hollow.

Still, it helps if you think of it in that mega mash-up framing, where this is less about the story making sense or having narrative progression, and more about playing out the Rule of Awesome in as grand guignol a manner as possible. In that, it succeeds, even if it leaves me craving a bit more substance and, well, sense by the end, rather than feeling satisfied by the show’s grand finale.

But hey, after a long fight, Peggy gets to go home, and even gets a glimpse of the multiversal tree from Loki for good measure. I might have asked for something different given my personal preferences, but I can't fault What If for going for the “seven layer nachos” approach to its big climax. There’s certainly a lot here, and it’s flavorful, even as much of it ends up feeling like empty calories.

[7.9/10] A funny thing happens as you get older. Children stop being peers. They stop being those bratty things you have to put up with as a teenager. They’re no longer the little ones you see, but aren’t really responsible for as a young adult.

And somewhere along the line, they start becoming these small people that you need to protect, to look out for, to support, to nurture. You recognize, in a way that's hard when you’re younger, how vulnerable they are, how much they depend on the folks who’ve been through the wringer and know the perils of the world to make sure they’re okay.

Kids are not naive innocents. They have the same vibrance and diversity of thought and feeling and attitude their grown-up counterparts do. But they need help, your help, and that realization is humbling and more than a little scary.

Which is all to say that “Identity Crisis” hits harder when you realize you’re no longer a ten-year-old imagining what it’d be like to be Luke Skywalker hacking and slashing through stormtroopers, and instead, you’re a crusty old grown-up struck by what it’d be like to be the Luke Skywalker who’s been entrusted to look after his nephew and see that he goes down the right path.

I assumed that what lie behind the trooper-protected doors of “The Vault” was something expected: a bunch of jars of pickled Snokes, a few budding attempts at cloning Palpatine, maybe a few more deformed Clone Troopers or something. The last thing I expected was a small collection of imprisoned children, and it draws out the evil of the Empire in a way that few things could.

This is one of the more harrowing episodes of The Bad Batch. I can easily stand blaster fire and dogfights among commandos. I can readily handle life-or-death fights between good guys and bad guys, even if feisty Omega is in the fray. What’s harder to withstand is a toddler, who weeps without his plushy, being torn from his mother. What’s more difficult to stomach is seeing young force-sensitives imprisoned, who only want to return home, and are treated like indifferent property rather than people.

It’s devastating to watch, and The Bad Batch is counting on that. This is (I think?) the first episode of the show that doesn’t feature a single moment of Omega or Clone Force 99. This is all about Emerie Karr stepping into a bigger role and realizing the horrors it would require of her. It is seeing the depths of what she’s participating in, trying to suck it up and do her job, only for her to be moved by the plight of the young souls she’s supposed to treat like chattel.

There is great power in that. “Identity Crisis” has some cool moments for longtime fans. Tarkin’s appearances are always a pip. The back channel negotiations and rivalries of Imperial politics always intrigues. We learn that Omega isn’t necessarily a force-sensitive herself, but rather her genetic material can act as a “binder” for DNA from other force-sensitives, which is a welcome swerve. And The return of Cad Bane and Todo is always a plus. (I should have known Bane was in the offing once I heard Seth Green voice one of the random villagers.)

But for the most part, this is a more stark story, about someone recognizing the abject cruelty they’re a part of, and not being able to turn their heart away from it once they do. The callousness with which Dr. Hemlock encourages Dr. Karr not to become attached to tiny people asking for help and solace, the casual dispassion with how Cad Bane kidnaps a child and practically taunts Emerie for asking too many questions, all reveal a rot in the soul that must have taken hold for someone to be so unconcerned with the welfare of blameless children caught up in the machinery of the Empire.

Not for nothing, there’s a political charge to this story. It is hard to see children ripped from their parents, families ratted out by opportunistic neighbors, and most pointedly, kids in cages, without thinking about the current moment. The Bad Batch is not the first show to suggest a regime is evil by treating young ones this way, but it comes with extra bite in the wake of American policies that are not so different.

The message here is affecting -- that it’s hard for anyone with a heart not to be moved by such terrible things being visited upon little people who don’t deserve it. Dr. Karr wanting to step up, to replace Nala Se, only to see what the Kaminoan saw and realize why she did what she did, makes her change of heart palpable and meaningful.

Because she sees little Jax try desperately to escape and be harshly stopped and punished; she sees little Eva ask plaintively when she gets to go home; she sees a small infant torn from its mother whose tender age is treated like a boon to compliance, not a crime against an innocent, and cannot help but care.

I still love the stories of heroes choosing good with lightsabers and magic powers. I still love badasses leaping through the galaxy and fighting for the good. But the more real acts of evil, and more mundane acts of kindness move me more these days. And all the more, I understand how what could turn your heart, are these tiny beings who need your help, and witnessing an institution that would ignore their suffering, or worse yet, make it the point.

[7.7/10] Let’s start with the easy compliment and the easy criticism.

The easy compliment is this: Shakespearean Actor Loki is downright delightful. Letting Tom Hiddleston dive into the role of “drama queen” with self-satisfied aplomb is hilarious with every glimpse we get. And him jawing about Iago in Othello and responding with approval to Peggy’s sobriquets tickled my funny bone something fierce.

The easy criticism is this: none of the characters feel especially 1602. This is basically just the Avengers as we know them, except wearing old timey garb. It’s still fun to see them prance around Elizabethan London and whatnot, but it feels like everyone is a being out of time, not just Peggy.

Well, except for Happy Hogan. I will say, if there’s a particularly fun character “transformation” here, it’s reimagining Happy as a Sheriff of Nottingham/Captain Hook/Governor Radcliffe type. Jon Favreau is clearly having a ball hamming it up, and his black hat (er...feathered hat) swashbuckling with the good guys, and irascible annoyance when they best him is the most distinctive part of the outing.

That said, even if all the other characters feel too modern, I like the setup. The idea that this dimension is crumbling; it’s due to a “forerunner” from another world being in their reality, and Captain Carter has to find them despite being a fugitive to save the world and herself, creates both immediate and ultimate goals for everyone here. Thor blaming Peggy for his sister’s death is a little strained, but I’ll tolerate it as an excuse for Peggy to get the band together.

And Peggy may be the best part of this one. It’s fun to see 1600s Tony jury-rig contraptions with the tech of his era. The trio of merry men in the form of “Rodgers Hood”, Bucky, and Ant-Man have an amusing dynamic. Banner as “The Monster in the Iron Mask” is a bit of a stretch, but Hulk’s complaints about it being too noisy got a laugh out of me. And I appreciate that, despite being at King Thor’s side, Fury and Wanda are working together on their own for the greater good.

But this is really a showcase for Peggy. I love the idea that the Watcher offers to take her back to her home dimension, and she tells him no, there are people who need her help here. She isn’t going to give up; she isn’t going to care about her own skin at the expense of everyone else’s; she’s going to stick around and do what’s right, even if she has to put herself at risk to do it. The Watcher may think it’s hopeless, and may reason that worlds disintegrate all the time, but Captain Carter still has to try. That's who she is.

Of course, she has to try with Steve Rodgers. I’ll admit, there’s less immediate chemistry between the cel-shaded version of Peggy and Steve (and maybe it’s having the inimitable-but-different Josh Keaton voicing Rodgers instead of Chris Evans). But there’s still enough residual affection for the pairing from the movies to buy into Peggy and Steve reunited, even if it’s a different Peggy and Steve.

And that's the rub. I like how both Captain Carter and The Watcher are right in this. In an inspiring moment, Peggy says she doesn’t care about the odds or the risks, she has to try to save this world, and by god, she does. The Watcher was ready to let it rot, and she stepped up, and through an entertaining and daring caper, she saves it.

But in a just as memorable scene, The Watcher challenges her about the unknown consequences of her actions. He pointedly asks her a series of “What If’s about things that could go wrong even if she does manage to fix the dimension. And as in most good stories, it turns out there is a cost to her actions -- the “forerunner” is Steve.

That is a hell of a twist. They faked me out nicely, as I assumed (and I think they deliberately hinted) that it was Happy. The truth is much more surprising and devastating, in the best way. If there’s been a consistent theme to the stories of Steve and Peggy in the MCU, it’s been that doing the right thing often means paying a price. Peggy being willing to take the risk, and Steve being willing to sacrifice himself to protect this world, and Peggy losing the man she loves yet again, is a bitter pill for a good cause. Good on What If for having the cleverness and the guts to go there.

Otherwise, there’s some fun 1602 conceits like the mini-Yellowjacket soldiers and the Destroyer, and it’s cool to see real life London landmarks like the Globe and the Tower in play. But overall, this one doesn’t so much live or die on the back of its Elizabethan conceit, but rather on the great character storytelling and themes of Captain Carter saving the world once more, and once more, losing someone she loves in the process.

[7.2/10] Star Trek: Discovery does a better job of telling the audience that a relationship is important than spurring us to feel that importance. Your mileage may vary, of course, but across the series, characters have these soulful conversations about how much they mean to one another, and it’s rare, if not unprecedented, for the show to have earned that emotion through lived-in dynamics and experiences that believably bring two characters closer together.

But Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Saru (Doug Jones) are one of the big exceptions. They’re the two characters on the show who’ve arguably changed the most over the course of the series. Michael went from disgraced mutineer to respected captain. Saru went from a timid, by-the-book stiff to a more open and adventurous officer. And,as is Star Trek tradition, along the way, through hardship and heroism, they went from being mutual skeptics of one another to trusted friends.

Where so many of the friendships in Discovery fall flat, Michael and Saru are among the few who play with the ease and care of genuine confidantes. So an episode like “Under the Twin Moons” comes with the power of (supposedly) being Saru’s last hurrah as a Starfleet officer and, more importantly, his final mission alongside Michael Burnham.

In truth, the mission itself is no great shakes. The latest break in the Progenitor case sees the duo beaming down to the planet of the week, a lost world protected by one of those ancient technological security systems that Captain Kirk and company seemed to run into every third episode. The art direction work is laudable, with some neat designs of the weathered statues and other remnants of the fallen civilization, and a cluttered jungle locale that comes off more real and tactile than most of Discovery’s more sterile environments.

But this largely comes off as video game plotting, even before the show reveals that the Progenitor mission is essentially one massive fetch quest. The sense of skulking around old ruins, avoiding weathered booby traps, and using special abilities to avoid obstacles and find clues will be familiar to anyone who’s played Jedi: Fallen Order from the other half of the marquee sci-fi franchise dichotomy, or even precursors like the Zelda series of games. The challenges the away team faces feel more like perfunctory obstacles than meaningful threats to be overcome.

Still, these obstacles accomplish two things, however conspicuously. For one, they show Saru’s value to Starfleet in his alleged last mission. He shoots down ancient security bots with his quills. He attracts and evades their fire with his superspeed. He detects the hidden code with his ability to detect bioluminescence. And he’s able to use his strength to move a large obelisk back and forth to find the last piece of the puzzle. On a physical basis, it’s not bad having a Kelpian on your side.

More to the point, he also looks out for Michael. There’s a nice low-simmering conflict between them, where Michael wants to save Saru so he can enjoy the bliss of his civilian life with T’Rina, and Saru wants to fulfill his duty as any other officer would and protect his friend. In an episode themed around frayed connections between people, it’s nice to see that tension play out in an organic, selfless way between these two longtime comrades. Their ability to work together to solve problems, figure out puzzles, and most importantly, put their necks out for one another (in some cases literally), does more to honor Saru’s place in the series than all the Kelpien superpowers in the galaxy.

For another, they give Tilly (Mary Wiseman), Adira (Blu del Barrio), and eventually Captain Rayner the chance to do something science-y to help Michael and Saru down on the planet. Granted, their “Why don’t we use an ancient electrio-magnetic pulse?” solution strains credulity a bit, and Rayner’s advice boiling down to “You need to think like an ancient civilization” isn’t that insightful. But it gives a couple of the show’s players something to do, and reveals, however ham handedly, not only Rayner’s facility in the field, but his willingness to help out even when he doesn’t have to.

That's a good thing, since he’s joining the cast as the new first officer (something portended by Callum Keith Rennie’s addition to the opening credits. The dialogue to get him there is clunky, with thudding comments from Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) and Burnham about Rayner being a good man despite some poor choices born of tougher times. But after only a couple of episodes, Rayner is a welcome addition -- a fly in the ointment for a now-cozy crew, bolstered by Rennie’s vividly irascible performance.

While the signposting is a little much, the idea that Burnham does not just want a first officer who’s capable, but one who’ll have the guts to challenge her and her perspective is a good one. That approach puts her in the good company of Captain Picard, among others, and shows a humility and an openness in Michael that's commendable. Her willingness to give someone else a second chance, given what the one she received allowed her to accomplish, speaks well of the still-new Captain, and adds some poetry with Discovery’s first season in its unexpected final one.

On a meta level, this is also an interesting thematic tack for the series. Rayner is coded as conservative, battle-hardened, even sclerotic in a way that clashes with traditional Starfleet principles. The idea that he has a place on the bridge, that his viewpoint is worthwhile, and most notably, that he can be brought into the light of Starfleet’s new dawn, fits with the aspirational tone of Star Trek. It’s worth watching how the character arc, and the ideas and subtext in tow, play out from here.

The same can't be said for Book’s (David Ajala) interactions with Moll (Eve Harlow) and L'ak (Elias Toufexis). The show wants to make some trite yet strained point about bonds between individuals in the already-tortured estrangement between him and Michael. The tired pop psychology from Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz) doesn’t help on that front. But worse yet is the acknowledged unlikely coincidence that Moll is the daughter of Book’s mentor and surrogate father, a contrived familial connection that attempts to gin up through genealogy what the show can't from character-building alone.

Except when it can. The mission may be stock, and the surrounding plot threads may be underbaked, but the goodbye between Michael and Saru is legitimately touching. From Michael nursing Saru through his harrowing transformation, to Saru counseling Michael through good times and bad in her ascent up the ranks, the pair have blossomed into genuine confidantes over the course of the last four seasons. It did not always come easily, but that's what makes their connection now, and the parting poised to strain it, such a poignant, bittersweet moment between two friends.

Who knows if it will stick. Dr. Culbert came back from the dead. Tilly’s back in the fold despite leaving for Starfleet Academy. Saru himself returned to the ship despite ostensibly leaving to become a “great elder” on Kaminar. Discovery doesn’t have a great track record of sticking to major character exits.

For now, at least, Saru gets a swan song not only worthy of what the character, and Doug Jones’ impeccable performance, has meant to the series over the past seven years, but also of what, unassumingly, became one of the series’ strongest relationships. Michael will keep flying. Saru will hopefully enjoy some wedded bliss. But as “Under the Twin Moons” reminds us, they’ve both left a mark on the other that will stay with both of them, wherever they finally end up.

[6.1/10] The knock on Star Trek: Discovery is that everything is too big. Everything is a world-ending calamity. Every emotion is cranked up to eleven. Every mission is the most serious and important challenge Starfleet has ever faced.

“Red Directive” does nothing to shed that rap. We open with Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) yahoo-ing while surfing on the back of an enemy ship in warp drive, before cutting to a cliched “four hours earlier” bit of drama-mortgaging. A pair of smugglers named Moll (Eve Harlow) and L'ak (Elias Toufexis), with the MacGuffin du jour, get into a standard issue bout of fisticuffs with some nameless/faceless goons. Burnham, Book (David Ajala), and new frenemy Captain Rayner (Battlestar Galactica veteran Callum Keith Rennie) dodge boulders and other debris in an immersion-breaking artificial sandscape pursuit of the pair of pirates. And the ensuing rockslide which threatens to crush a nearby village is only halted by Discovery and another Federation vessel diving nose-first into the sand to block the onslaught, with neither the ships nor their crews seemingly any worse for wear.

Look, this is a season premiere. Some fireworks are expected. And in a stretch for the franchise where new kid on the block Strange New Worlds seems to have stolen much of Discovery’s thunder as the franchise flagship, you can practically feel the creative team pulling out all the stops to keep viewers excited and invested, even if it means leaning into accusations of always going big.

That includes invoking The Next Generation. The item Burnham and company are chasing is no mere trinket or weapon. It is, instead, the technology used by the Progenitors from 1993’s “The Chase” to create all humanoid life as we know it. This top secret mission, issued by Dr. Kovich (David Cronenberg), mirrors the one embarked upon by none other than Captain Picard centuries earlier, with clues to follow laid by an important Romulan scientist/background player from the decades-old episode.

In that, “Red Directive” falls into two familiar traps. The first is one shared by Strange New World, specifically the need to tie nearly everything into some familiar piece of franchise lore rather than starting fresh. Only, Discovery’s issue is that much more damning given its “millennium into the future” timeframe, with the whole point being a chance to refresh and reset rather than staying constrained by canon from fifty years earlier.

This episode is not above such pandering connections. In fact, the seedy antiques dealer Moll and L’ak do business with is a Data-esque synth named Fred who shares the famous android’s aesthetic and penchant for speed-reading. In a painful scene, Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Dr. Culber (Wilson Cruz) even remark that Fred’s serial number reflects the initials of Altan Soong, a long lost Soong baby and Star Trek: Picard’s most unnecessary character (which is saying something).

Earned canon connections are the thrill of existing within the same storytelling universe, particularly one that has lasted more than half a century. But these ties come off more like cheap fanservice and strained ties to more beloved properties than organic connections to Discovery’s ongoing project.

That might be a forgivable excess though if “Red Directive” didn’t fall into the second trap, of near constant escalation in Discovery’s stakes. Kovich remains cagey about Burnham’s mission for most of the hour, beyond a “recover this item at all costs” sense of dramatics to it all. Even Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) isn’t under the tent on it. And when Kovich finally spills the beans, after more blunt underlining of what a big deal this quest is, he calls it a search for “the greatest treasure in the known galaxy.”

The best you can say is that the season 5 premiere aims to keep the volume lower for its interpersonal relationships. A cringeworthy scene where Tilly (Mary Wiseman) awkwardly attempts to flirt with a wet rag colleague she has an obvious crush on is about the worst of it. But the adorably chaste romance between Saru (Doug Jones) and T’Rina (Tara Rosling) continues apace and fares much better. The Kelpien chooses to resign his commission to take a job as a Federation ambassador that would keep him closer to his lady love, and in response, T’Rina offers a Hank Hill-esque marriage proposal. The writing isn’t subtle, but the sweetness and underplaying from the performers wins out.

Hell, even the reunion between Michael and Book is relatively restrained, if not necessarily overwhelming. In truth, since Book hasn’t been away from the show for any period of time, the sense of distance between them doesn’t fully land. But the sense of simultaneous familiarity and alienation between them does. While a situation involving couriers that just so happens to require Book’s expertise comes off a tad contrived, and the quips about past jobs and plans are a touch forced, I appreciate Discovery taking some more time to unpack their relationship after the schisms of season 4.

Who knows if their exchange about how there are some things you cannot move past will stick. The show has generally seemed intent to jam the couple together from the first time they met. But either way, the restraint in this early hour is admirable.

The same can't be said for newcomer Captain Rayner. If you’ve watched Star Trek for any length of time, Rayner is a familiar archetype. Rayner preaches risk-taking while Burnham wants to take caution. Rayner will do anything for the mission while Burnham will do anything to protect innocent lives. Rayner puts the objective first while Burnham puts her principles first.

There’s something to be said for the clash of ideals between a Starfleet captain who lived through the era of The Burn, versus one weaned on the headier days of the Federation. And Book’s joking pronouncements of what they have in common suggests a “We’re not so different, you and I” reconciliation somewhere down the road. But for now, the philosophical and personality conflicts between them come off as stock and shallow.

Nevertheless, the mission is set -- follow the clues to the Progenitor tech before it falls into the wrong hands. The players are in place, from Burnham and the Discovery crew, to Rayner and his team, to the pair of chummy smugglers racing to find the same prize. And rest assured, humble viewers, terrified at the prospect of serene outings full of boardroom debates and ethical meditations, there’s plenty of explosions and firefights and feats of derring-do to keep you occupied.

But as it embarks on its final season, Discovery stumbles over some of the same hurdles it struggled with from the beginning. Season 4 was a big step in the right direction, with a strong central idea and themes that vindicated the heart of the franchise. That earns this show plenty of leeway to prove it can do the same in its last at-bat. But with “Red Directive”’s hollow action, world-ending stakes, and strained canon ties, the ultimate leg of its five-year mission gets off to a rocky start.

[7.8/10] So hey, hot take on my part, but Cate Blanchett is good at acting!

I’m joking, but I’m genuinely impressed what What If was able to get the actress to come back for a one-off appearance in the animated series. Maybe it’s because she gets to be the lead in this one, and I kind of love that.

The basics of this one is a Hela-focused remix of the original Thor film. What’s interesting is that even in Ragnarok, you get the sense that Hela was done dirty by Odin. So doin ga What If where she gets the chance to better herself and become a hero, much like Thor did, is a sideways way of rectifying that. And the idea that she needs to learn mercy rather than humility to regain her powers gives her a nice growth arc like the God of Thunder got.

The decision to mix her up with the world of Shang-Chi is a bit more a mixed bag. I like her dynamic with Wenwu. There’s something amusing about the enemies-to-lovers vibe between the two of them, especially with Wenwu being enamored with her general warriors’ bent, when it’s that same bent that makes her a bit, shall we say, combative with him. If it was just the two of them having Beatrice/Benedick chemistry together in Wenwu’s lands, I’d be on board.

And the truth is that I don’t mind her adventures with Jiayi in Ta Lo, but they’re just so so so very stock. Some of this is just replaying the standard Kung Fu movie beats, with the neophyte having to learn discipline and some flavor of inner peace before they can master the martial arts badassery. (No less a landmark film than Kung Fu Panda, of all things, riffs on the same tropes.) And there’s also a certain Eat Pray Love vibe (or, more charitably, Kill Bill) to the white (or at least white-coded) character going to a foreign land to learn their spiritual ways that's a bit uncomfortable. All of it feels like old hat.

But you know what? Blanchet elevates a lot of it, and so does the animation. I love Blanchett’s arch sensibilities getting to be brought to the fore in a more heroic, or at least antihero style character. Hela getting to banter and patter with her caustic wit is a treat unto itself, and boosts pretty much every scene Hela is in. Her sly remarks and taunts are particularly fun, and Blanchett brings a real joie de vivre to them.

And I’ll be honest, most of the action scenes in What If tend to leave me zoning out, but this one caught my attention. The beauty of the flowers zooming around Jiayi and Hela’s moves, and other objects dancing on the wind as they harness their abilities, looks stunning with the cel-shaded aesthetic. And the three way fight with Hela and Wenu taking on Odin is the visual peak of the show for me. There’s both a more discernible flow to the fisticuffs than we’ve seen previously, and a true sense of epicness with Hela’s abilities, Wenwu’s rings, and Odin’s staff all going up against one another.

The clear goal to separate Odin from his weapon, and the key to winning the battle being Hela showing mercy, rather than slaying her enemy, gives the fight stakes and meaning beyond the pure combat. And i also like the episode’s acknowledgement that what Odin did wrong by his daughter, taught her to be a weapon, kept her on a chain so that she wouldn’t topple him, and was poised to imprison or discard her when the skills he’d cultivated in her were no longer useful of convenient for him. There’s a lot that went unsaid or underexplored about their relationship in Ragnarok, and I’m glad to see What If processing all of that here. Vindicating Hela to some degree, showing what she could have been and become with the right help, and the freedom she could have attained if her father didn’t stand in her way, makes the project worthwhile beyond its imagery, tropes, and general fun.

All-in-all, this is one of my favorites of the season, with a top notch actor on board to carry the load, and a remix that not only gives us a different protagonist, but casts multiple characters and films in a different, fascinating light.

[7.5/10] So let’s start with the obvious. It’s really weird to have the first part of your duology on heartrending regret and recovery start as the abbreviated back half of an episode that's a whimsical lark. My guess is that it’s an homage to back-up stories in comic books? Who knows! Either way, it’s odd.

All of that said, I like it! I am a sucker for slow-spun stories of two people working through their issues together and becoming closer to one another in the process. I’m glad to see the show exploring Storm’s emotional struggle with losing her powers, rather than just having her disappear and then return fixed when it’s convenient. Seeing how this experience is as much about her acclimation to being a normie, healing of the mind and not just of the body, deepens the character. Frankly, it’s more than we ever got in terms of her overcoming claustrophobia in the original show.

Likewise, despite appearing in multiple episodes (and points along the timeline) of the original show, we never got to know much about Forge as a personality. So I like how this deepens him too, giving him regrets about his role in designing anti-mutant collars, explicating a little bit about his time in the war, doling out tidbits about how his powers work, and motivating him with a quest for redemption. He feels like more of a person here than he ever did in the 1990s, and I’ll take it.

There’s also a lovely, almost lyrical tone to the episode. Something about the quieter, more intimate pace of Forge helping Storm recover, with romance and attachment subtly bubbling under the surface, works well as a change of a pace for the normally explosive X-Men. This is an easy episode to vibe with, cozier and more inviting than the average outing for the show.

It’s also a tragic romance. That angle on it is well done, given how easy it is to see Ororo and Forge slipping into something amiable together, only for it to be shattered by Forge’s revelation. His speech about Storm being a goddess, regardless of her powers, is stirring as all hell, and her angry rejection is no less heartbreaking.

I’m less on board with the appearance of “The Adversary”, who already feels like a retread of Storm’s encounters with the Shadow King. But its design is cool and creepy, and as I’ve said before, I jive well with the dream logic, impressionistic presentation style, so there’s still hope on that front.

Overall, this seems like it would make more sense as its own thing, joined with its second part rather than stapled onto “Motendo”, especially when streaming services mean you don’t have to be as strict about runtimes. But it’s still a good outing on its own merits.

[7.7/10] I loved the X-Men arcade game growing up, so an episode of X-Men ‘97 that pays tribute to it, while advancing the ball for Jubilee and Sunspot both personally and romantically, pushes all the right buttons for me.

I appreciate all the little touches in this one, from the tributes to the intro, aesthetic, and sounds of the arcade beat-em-up; to the homages to The Matrix built into this “trapped in a digital space” conceit; to the cheeky mention of Dazzler. (Fun fact: that famous X-Men arcade game was not actually based on X-Men: The Animated Series, but rather a peculiar one-off special called Pryde of the X-Men which featured Dazzler as a main character.) In many ways, the target audience for this show is Millennials who are nostalgic for their 1990s childhoods and adolescence, and this episode feeds that need expertly.

But it also deconstructs that idea, which is, if anything, even more laudable. The tone is cheeky, but the idea of a newly adult Jubilee yearning for the days when she was a kid without expectations or responsibilities who could while away the day at the mal resonates with a lot of the crusty grown-ups like me who grew up with the original show. The lesson and theme, that nostalgia is fun, but it’s important to keep growing and not retreat to the past, is a worthwhile one, especially coming from a show whose very existence depends on nostalgia.

Adding that disclaimer is commendable. The fact that it comes from an older Jubilee, voiced by Alyson Court, who played the role in the 1990s show, gives it some added resonance, for Jubilee and for the audience. When the person who gave up the role is the voice telling you it’s okay, even necessary, to move on, it can't help but hit harder.

The Sunspot arc is a little weaker. The connection between him not wanting tot ake the risk of people finding out what he really is, especially his mother, and him taking some risks in the video game world, is pretty thin. But it’s still something, and the fact that after going through the wringer together, he and Jubilee can admit their feelings adds some oomph to his part of the story as well.

The only thing I’m mixed on here is Mojo. In truth, he was one of the most annoying characters from the show’s original run, so I wasn’t exactly enamored to see him back. But this new incarnation of him is less grating than the old one. Plus, despite the episode’s themes, there is a certain novelty to seeing him and Spiral back in action, which helps buoy the character.

Overall, this was a hell of an enjoyable lark for fans of the X-Men arcade game, which goes beyond cheap nostalgia and uses its novel premise to advance the characters and some interesting ideas at the same time.

[7.8/10[ I have to admit, I spent much of the first part of this one going “Who the hell is Kahhori?” I wracked my brain trying to figure out what the connection to the MCU was, until I looked it up and was delighted to discover that she’s a wholly original character!

I like What If and its reimaginative premise, but after a season and a half, you can detect certain formulas in its remixes. With that, something totally fresh and only lightly related to the rest of the known MCU is a welcome departure.

And I particularly appreciate the original story What If chose to tell here. Telling a story that is distinctively of and about the indigenous Mohawk tribes gives this tale a unique flavor that elevates it. There is a certain Tarantino-style “alternate history where the oppressed get to be the victors over their oppressors” vibe here, but in a more spiritual and culturally authentic sort of way that comes through.

Granted, maybe it’s just the stopping bullets motif, but Kahhori has a certain amount of Neo from The Matrix in her. That's a pretty familiar spin on the hero’s journey to begin with, but the whole sense of finding yourself in another plane of existence, with cool powers, that you can intuitively use better than experienced wielders, and come back to the world you know to make your stand, is familiar. But it’s good stuff, and even if the beats of Kahhori excelling instinctively come off a touch pat, the visuals are striking, and the ideas are strong.

I appreciate the themes here too, of that aspirational stand against colonialism, of the freighted idea that a place you’ve been forced to can be a paradise or a prison, of the resolve to help your people even when it requires great boldness and great risk. Those bigger ideas infuse this outing with a sense of epicness and a grander meaning. That makes it rousing when Kahhori uses her abilities to force the portal down to her rather than reaching toward it, and when her Sky World brethren break through to her rescue in blinding streaks of light, and when Conquistador and Monarch alike are brought to a level playing field by indigenous peoples able to match their firepower.

Some of this is simple, but the spirit of it bears out and wins you over. Particularly as What If has more wiggle room than mainline MCU projects to get experimental and depart from the standard routines without disrupting canon, I’d love to see it take more big and original swings like this, particularly given how well this one connected.

[7.5/10] At first I thought this was basically going to be a remix of Captain America: Winter Soldier, and it kind of is! The notion of redoing that film, except with Peggy as Cap, Steve as the Winter Soldier, and Bucky as...Secretary Pierce for some reason, is cool.

For one thing, it gives us more of the Peggy/Natasha friendship a la the Steve/Natasha friendship, and the two women work as well as a pair, if not better. For another, it lets us put the shoe on the other foot in terms of Peggy missing Steve, something we got to see intermittently in the Agent Carter spin-off. And it also puts Peggy in Cap’s role vis-a-vis a lost comrade, defying official reprimands and orders to save a friend. All of it adds up, and makes me look forward to the probably third part of this parallel trilogy when we get her squaring off with Iron Man.

And if that's all this episode had done, it would have been plenty. But I love that the writers chose to do something original and mash up Captain Carters misadventures with a spin on the events of the Black Widow movie as well.

For one thing, the Potemkin Village meant to represent the idealized 1950s America as a training ground for Red Room spies makes for a brilliant setting. It not only evokes cold war iconography, but the general Stepford vibe of the place is suitably creepy, and the robots are good cannon fodder for our heroes.

The ensuing fights are good. There is juice from a knock-down drag out brawl between Natasha and Melina, albeit one that only really has import if you’ve seen Black Widow. And Captain Carter fighting a re-brainwashed Hydra Stomper is a nice alt-universe reflection of Steve fighting Bucky in Winter Soldier. The fact that she, like this universe’s Bucky is able to get through to Steve, is a nice beat. And the fact that he pulls an Iron Giant to take down the Red Room makes for a cool climax.

Overall, I appreciate how original What If goes with this one once it gets past the explicit Winter Soldier homages, and the reimagined Peggy/Steve relationship remains a highlight.

(On a personal note, after having watched the excellent Harley Quinn show, it’s hard to hear Lake Bell’s voice coming out of Black Widow and not think of her take on Poison Ivy!)