Andrew Bloom

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[7.1/10] This was my least favorite entry in Tales of the Empire. How did Barriss Offee die? Well, she was randomly stabbed in a big metaphor-laden cave...I guess.

To be more charitable, she dies trying to stall an Inquisitor long enough for an innocent family trying to escape the Empire’s collection of force-sensitive children to get away. That part’s all good. The idea that she broke away from the Inquisitors and managed to become a healer and source of solace and protection on a distant world is cool. But this is an ending that left me unsatisfied with ehr story.

Again, I get it. The cave is a big metaphor! Bariss gives ominous warnings about fear having taken over for Lynn! Lytnn runs in more focused on random attacks and anger than on sense! Even though Bariss gets killed, she offers forgiveness and a warning that it’s not too late to change! I get it, it's just not done particularly artfully. The metaphor is heavy-handed, and Bariss doesn't feel like a real person; instead just a sermon delivery system.

The episode is not without its charms. The fight where Barriss simply dodges all of Lyn’s attacks is pretty cool, and I like the idea of Barriss having become a sort of monk in exile, helping those who come to her and sparing as many as she can. This is just an ignoble end that doesn't amount to much. Maybe we get some sort of redemption for Lyn down the line (I don’t know when this short is supposed to take place relative to Obi-Wan, but considering I’d forgotten who Lyn was when this little arc started, I can't say I’m super invested in that.

The hint that Barriss might still be in contact with Ahsoka (or maybe Cere Junda?) is a tantalizing one. I half expected us to get some kind of teaser at the end with Ahsoka receiving that family of fugitives. But instead, we get something that has spiritualism but not really substance. It’s a fine enough but disappointing end to what’s otherwise been a great set of vignettes.

[7.5/10] Hey! Now there’s more of a surprise! If there’s one thing that seems clear about Barriss, good or bad, it’s that she has a strong sense of self-righteousness about her. In a way not unlike Count Dooku in the Tales of the Jedi miniseries from the same crew, you can see all these little things building up that make her lose her faith in the institution she’s a part of...again.

So when she sees Imperial citizens living in squalor, when she sees the Fourth Sister brutalize a square of impoverished people, when she hears excuses about needing to show strength to earn respect, when she sees a potential ally who’s ready to surrender mowed down, she can take no more. “Realization” certainly stacks the deck, but I didn’t see Barriss’ face turn coming, at least not in this episode. Given her history, maybe I should have.

I’m intrigued about where Barriss’ story goes from here. Do she and “The Jedi” she saves become confidantes and kindred spirits? Are they too simply hunted and eliminated by the people Barriss used to fight alongside? Does the Grand Inquisitor engage in even more rigorous “testing” for new recruits to ensure nothing like this ever happens again? Only time (or the finale) will tell.

But in the meantime, I can appreciate this one for showing the depth of the self-justified villainy of the Inquisitors that's enough to turn Barriss’ stomach and change her mind. The fear of children, the harshness of living conditions, the mortal blow on a defenseless person, all excused in the name of their mission, show how blinded and harsh this group can be. While a little heavy-handed in underlining the evil, it's enough to explain why Barriss would turn away from this and betray her erstwhile masters.

(Though hey, spoilers for the Obi-Wan miniseries: Some of the oomph is taken away by the fact that we see the Fourth Sister in that show, so we know she survives. Does a large fall kill any force-sensitive person in this universe?)

Overall, this is fairly standard stuff, but it’s done well, and gives us (or at least me) an unexpected direction for Barriss’ story.

[7.4/10] I’ve been itching to learn what happened to Barriss Offee pretty much since we saw her imprisoned toward the end of The Clone Wars show. Would she be killed in Order 66? Would she join the Inquisitors? Would she ever face Anakin again?

Well, turns out it’s no, yes, and yes.

I’m being a little glib there, but this is all to say that there’s not really a ton of surprises in “Devoted”, the first episode of Tales of the Empire that delves into Bariss’ story. Sure, there’s details at the margins, and it’s cool to see how the Inquisitors come to be in their earliest days, but things go about how you’d expect. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’d rather shows tell natural, if predictable stories, rather than conjure up some crazy twists. But despite the undeniable quality here, the answers to those big questions are a bit of a letdown.

Or maybe there’s a big surprise that went over my head. I’ll admit, it’s easy for me to get the Inquisitors mixed up. Maybe Barriss putting on the mask at the end confirms that she’s someone we’ve seen elsewhere in canon that locks something into place. Candidly, I’d completely forgotten the Fourth Sister from the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries until I looked her up after watching the episode, so who knows! I think I recognize one of the two silent Inquisitors as the one who fought Ahsoka in Tales of the Jedi, but I couldn’t swear to it.

(Honestly, the coolest part for me was probably hearing Nicolas Cantu, who played the main character in The Freemaker Adventures, returning to the Star Wars fold as the ill-fated Dante.)

The most interesting part of this one is not the canon connections, no matter how neat it may be to see an embryonic Fortress Inquisitorious or hear Jason Isaacs as the Grand Inquisitor again. It’s seeing how the Inquisitors are made, how they have the compassion wrung out of them, how they have to show a viciousness, and to the point of the title, devotion to the cause, to be able to join their ranks.

The tests that Bariss has to pass to join are interesting. She has to show her ability to follow orders, by sitting in a cell for a long period of time, something she’s become good at after her life sentence in prison. She has to show the Grand Inquisitor that she can use the Force to attack, not just for defense, that she can channel her anger and not fight fair. And when it’s her and Dante in a deadly duel, she tries to show mercy, to show craftiness, but when push comes to shove, she’ll kill rather than die.

The idea that this is how they indoctrinate people, how they weed out their better qualities, is compelling, even if it’s missing the extremes we’ve seen in the likes of Jedi: Fallen Order. (Maybe those methods came later?) You don’t get much of a sense of transition in Barriss. But taking this as her first step toward the darkness, knowing we have two more episodes of (presumably) descent comes, makes this an interesting introduction to the next phase of Barriss’ life. And with Ahsoka’s master staring her in the face by the end of the episode, who knows how long that phase will last.

Overall, this plays out about as expected, but what we get is solid.

[7.5/10] This is the least interesting of the Elsbeth shorts to date, but still good! Which says something!

I’ll admit, I’d forgotten some of the finer points of our visit to Corvus in The Mandalorian, so I had to look up who Governor Wing was and try to figure where in the timeline we are. (Especially since Wing mentions some “mercenaries” coming through. I thought that might meant this took place after Mando and Ahsoka’s visits, but now I assume he means Baylan Skroll and Shin Hati from Ahsoka.)

Still, I like “Path of Hate” as a sign of where Morgan’s childhood trauma and her association with Thrawn have led her. The first two episodes of the show are the cause, and this is the effect. We see a hardened warlord, ruling her fiefdom, generating fuel and resources to retrieve her master and “save the galaxy from ruin.” There is a cruelty, a by any means necessary spirit that has overtaken Morgan Elsbeth, and seeing her inflict that mentality on her people is tough at times.

From a diplomatic standpoint, it’s interesting to see the (presumably budding) New Republic try to make inroads in distant worlds like Corvus. The notion of Nadura, someone who lived and worked in the factories of Elsbeth’s enclave, come to free her people through diplomacy, and running into the perils of bigger stick diplomacy, again helps show the rough terrain the post-Imperial government is encountering.

There is some of the old Star Wars “don’t give up hope” here, with Naruda dying for her efforts, but inspiring Wing to play his part and making things right. More than any of the others, this episode is a prequel to a specific episode from another show, setting up Bo-Katan’s interest in Corvus and presumably setting up how she knows Ahsoka is there. There’s a gap-filling quality that isn’t always my cup of tea.

But this is mostly interesting as another brick in the wall of Morgan’s character development. Whether it’s the destruction of her people or Thrawn’s tutelage or both, Morgan has hardened out in these distant lands. She’s not afraid to deal death, to work her people to the bone, in the same of staging her cause. Even as the show lurches toward the present, we know where that leads, but not yet where it ends. Yoda’s famous aphorism suggests it's nowhere good, though.

[7.8/10] Another strong outing. As we continue down the path of Morgan Elsbeth’s backstory, this is a sharp vignette to show us how she first connected with Thrawn.

From a pure practical standpoint, I appreciate the fact that, whether she realizes it or not, she has to work her way up through his goons. An exchange of words with Captain Pallaeon (featuring Xander Berkley reprising his live action role in The Mandalorian) to establish her credentials, and a war of weapons with Rukh (featuring franchise royalty Warwick Davis reprising his role as Rukh from Rebels) to establish her prowess as a fighter unwittingly earns her an audience with Thrawn herself.

I like their dynamic. Candidly, I didn’t always love Thrawn in Rebels. But I appreciate his characterization here, as someone who thinks bigger than just the Empire, who sees the flaws and vulnerability in it even as he’s working to sustain it. He recognizes how many individuals within the Empire’s leadership structure are there out of pure greed or pure fear. But he recognizes not only a capacity to think bigger in Morgan, but an objective, a drive, beyond the venal or quotidian wants of the rest of the Empire’s ossified commanders.

That drive is revenge. That too is prosaic in its way. But it’s also something that led Morgan to rebuild herself, to find a backwater planet like Corvus (the planet where Mando meets Ahsoka in The Mandalorian), and turn it into a built-up base of operations that the Imperials themselves want to harvest. You can see how that drive has lit a fire under her, making her capable and distinctive in an apparatus without much ingenuity.

I also like that this is a moment of self doubt, for Morgan and for her followers. The sense of anger on Corvus, where the workers who untied around her in search of wealth and prosperity turn resentful and threaten revolution when she fails to sway the Empire to take her up on her ship-designs, shows how much Morgan has riding on this. She banked her reputation and maybe her safety on this ploy. Likewise, her disgust that try as she might, these aren’t her people, only continues to fuel her resentment.

Thrawn is someone who can channel that, who can provide resources, who can see not only talent but distinctiveness. It’s plain from the tone of their team-up here that this is a deal with the devil. There’s something ominous about Thrawn’s fighters lurching into view, and the scared murmurs of the citizenry. But to get what she wants, Morgan will work with whomever she needs to, and do whatever it takes. That's what Thrawn's counting on. And it makes for another strong chapter in the story of how Elsbeth became the witch we would come to know later in the timeline.

[7.8/10] When I saw in the trailer that Tales of the Empire was going to focus on Morgan Elsbeth, I sighed a little. The character, who debuted on-screen in The Mandalorian and came to prominence in the Ahsoka show. She was something of a big nothing in those shows, coming with that sort of flat blandness that, sadly, pervaded a lot of Dave Filoni’s follow up to Star Wars: Rebels. So to be frank, I was less than enthused at the idea that this rare treat, a Clone Wars-esque follow-up in the format of Tales of the Jedi, was going to focus on a character I didn’t really care about.

Well, kudos to Filoni and company, because this installment made me care about her. Some of that is just the visuals. It’s hard not to see a veritable child, running scared across the arid landscape of Dathomir, her and her mother fleeing from an incarnation of General Grievous who is the most frightening he’s been since Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars, and not feel for them.

The terror of the Separatist attack on the Ngihtsisters’ home base, the trauma of watching your mother cut down by their chief butcher, the panic of running and hiding while killers are on your trail, all give us a strong sense, both in terms of imagery and emotion, of the crucible that Morgan was forged in.

But I also like her brief refuge with the Mountain Clan. I’ll be frank -- I don’t remember much about the mountain clan. I think Savage Opress trained there before he was juiced up by the Nightsisters? But I don't remember exactly, or whether we know the matron and her children from before.

Either way, it works on its own, and that's what matters. After the glimpses we saw in The Clone Wars, and the visit to Dathomir in Jedi: Fallen Order, it’s nice to not only see the planet on screen once more, but to get another peek into its culture. The idea that there are people of this place who are not like the Nightsisters, not like Maul or Savage, who are nonetheless drawn into the depths of this war, add both dimension and tragedy to the fate of the planet and the communities who reside there.

I also appreciate the introduction of Nali, a young member of the Mountain Clan who is presented as a fulcrum between the path of war and vengeance stoked from within Morgan, to the path of peace and patience, preached by the matron. So much of Star Wars comes down to meaningful choices, about whether to give into anger and hatred and seek violent retribution, or whether to center oneself on calmness and redemption and no more than defense. Framing that as not just a choice for the Lukes of the world, but for the ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events like Nali, helps drive the momentousness and universality of these decisions home.

And you see both sides. You understand why Morgan is the way she is and wants to be prepared for the droids to come attacking once more. After what she’s been through, what she’s seen, being prepared for battle is natural. Wanting revenge is natural. The way she tries to prepare her fellow young women with weapons and fighting is understandable, given what she’s lost.

ANd in truth, the matron seems pretty naive. When she tells her daughter not to give into that strain of belligerence, and to trust that they’ll be okay, it sounds like a leader putting their head in the sand. So when the droids do show up, and she destroys them all with a mystical ball of light, it’s a hell of a turn. Her moral, that just because someone doesn’t seek out the fight doesn’t mean they’re unable, is a strong one, in the moral and spiritual tradition of the franchise.

It also sets Morgan on a path of tragedy. This being Star Wars, it’s framed in prophecy and vision into the future. But more in keeping with that ethical and spiritual bent, it says that Morgan has chosen the path to darkness, or more accurately, that it’s been thrust upon her by these devastating circumstances, and the road she walks will be a bleak one from now on. Poor Nali walked that path and was killed for it. We know from other shows that Morgan survives for some time yet, but we also know, from the fates of those who’ve walked a similar path, that it rarely ends well for them. Either way, I didn’t care about her path before, but I do now.

[7.6/10] Let’s start with the most obvious thing -- Bastion’s backstory is wildly confusing. So Mr. Sinister infected Nathan Summers with a techno-organic virus, and then Scott and Madelyne sent him into the future, and somehow that created human-sentinel hybrids (or the human-sentinel hybrids evolved separately?) and the successor to Master Mold sent a similar virus back in time to (I guess?) the 1970s to infect Sebastian’s dad, who then conceived Bastion, who has visions of the future that he’s now trying to create?

Who fucking knows? The show does its best to explain, but the whole thing is about as clear as mud. I have a high tolerance for comic book-y outlandish when it comes to superhero storytelling, but this is some Kingdom Hearts-level time travel insanity. What the damn hell.

But you know what? It doesn’t necessarily matter, because you get the gist of what Bastion is going for here. Regardless of how it happened, he can envision a future (or came from the future? Or has Nimrod’s memories of the future? Again, who fucking knows) where mutants vastly outnumber and eventually overwhelm the human population. So his idea is to enhance the human population, make them android hybrids the way he was, so that they can turn the tables and usher in the “utopia” that Cable has witnessed.

I like the concept and how it turns the tables on our heroes. The X-Men are used to being technically superior but socially ostracized. The idea of the opposite happening, beings who are more powerful, claiming that they are the next evolution, changes the dynamic. We’re used to the X-men fighting mutant supremacists or angry humans afraid of being left in the dust. Fighting a new “species” who claims to want to leave mutants in the evolutionary dust flips the script in a compelling way.

The problem is that the techn-zombies, and how far and wide they’ve been seeded without memories, is another loony touch to me. You’re telling me all of these people went in for Bastion’s treatment? And they’ve lived their lives blissfully unaware for so long. And that no one asked questions fr discovered them until now. Again, I don’t ask for much in the way of plausibility from an outsized show like X-Men ‘97, but the whole thing plays like a random Pod People/Cylon/Zombie twist for the sake of setting up a giant set piece than anything that makes sense on even a generous narrative plausibility scale.

But it’s a darn good set piece! I’m already a little tired of the Jubilee/Sunspot pairing, but him showing off his powers to save her mid-flight is a nice beat. And I especially appreciate how damning it is that, when confronted by her son’s abilities in front of shareholders, she’d rather sell him out to respectable-seeming monsters than own that her child is different. Again, in many ways, Roberto’s mom is worse than the openly bigoted parents we’ve seen in X-Men, because she accepts her son personally, but cares more about appearances and finances than his well-being.

I don’t know if I’d call Cyclops the epitome of great parenting, but he’s at least better than Roberto’s mom! The show doesn’t give the Summers family subplot that much room to breathe, but their mini-arc is good nonetheless. The idea of Jean having Madelyn’s memories and not knowing quite what to do with them is especially intriguing. Nightcrawler has really climbed the ranks of my favorite characters in this, and the way he describes one’s personal history as recollection plus emotion is both poetic and thought-provoking.

Her, Cyclops, and Cable jumping out of a fighter jet in a sports car, racing away from a flying horde of zombie androids, and bursting through a cave via Scott’s eye-beams is not exactly a typical family outing. And yet it’s surprisingly wholesome when they work together and become the world’s most extraordinary blended family in the process. Plus, I’m not made of stone. Them leaping into a cool pose while the car explodes behind them is eminently fistpump-worthy.

And hey, as much as it’s just mindless action, watching Wolverine and Nightcrawler team up, blades in hand (or in hands, or tail) to beat up the bad guys is hella cool. Even when the plotting and character beats get jumbled, X-Men ‘97 can reliably deliver the fireworks.

But there’s something under the hood here. The show makes Bastion an earnest villain of sorts, one who does terrible things to mutants both physically and by reputation. But he’s also someone who thinks he’s a dinosaur stopping an asteroid. It mirrors the way real life individuals justify bigotry and extermination with the idea that they’re just trying to fend of their own “replacement.” His excuses and self-justifications make him seem extra-pernicious, but to his own point, different than the mustache-twirling baddies like Mister Sinister.

I also appreciate Dr. Cooper’s change-of-heart, realizing the horror of what she’s been a part of after Genosha and wanting to make amends. Her releasing Mangeot as penance is a strong choice for a character who’s been a bit generic to date. Her speech talking about how moments of triumph and acceptance for the oppressed fall to ruin so often that they’re sad but not surprising, and go ignored by those unaffected, is gutting, and her “Magneto was right” climax is terrifying. Magento going to one of the poles and unleashing an electromagnetic wave that wipes out all power (and the technorganic goons) is a deft way to halt the problem du jour while also setting up a reckoning to come as “the war” begins.

And oh yeah, Xavier’s back. As I’ve said before, I'm pretty sanguine about that happening. Comic book resurrections happen all the time, and Xavier was tastefully written out at the end of the original series. I’m loath to see the show go back on it. But hey, I’d be lying if hearing him say, “To me, my X-men” again wasn’t rousing.

Overall, the plotting and practical elements of this one get more than a little off the rails, but the action-heavy parts are superb, and the reflections on intellectual fig leaves for bigotry and how easy it is for those unaffected to ignore the worst of it leave this one with a lot to like nonetheless.

[7.8/10] The crux of Star Wars is choices. Choices are at the heart of all good storytelling, but Star Wars in particular is founded on them. Luke chooses between the Darkside and the Light. Han chooses to return to the fight when he could take his money and run. Vader chooses to kill the Emperor rather than let his son follow in his mistakes. These are all monumental decisions, centered on character, that are a bigger part of what made the franchise so indelible beyond the space battles and special effects.

And my favorite part of Bad Batch’s series finale are the choices it chooses to center on. Crosshair wants to go in alone to spare his comrades, but Hunter and Wrecker choose to follow him anyway, because by god, they are still a team. Rampart chooses to nab the cloning research, no matter what harm it causes, because he wants it as a bargaining chip. Nala Se chooses to sacrifice her own life to destroy, because she won’t let her science be used for more evil.

Emerie Karr chooses to rescue those innocent children then continue being a handmaiden of the Empire. Omega chooses to forgo the easiest path of escape because she wants to help liberate her brothers. The imprisoned clone troopers could easily just leave themselves, but choose to fight alongside Echo and Omega to rescue the original Bad Batch.

And in the endgame, Hunter chooses to trust that, after years together, Omega knows what to do in a tough situation. Omega herself chooses to take her chance, knowing that she’s been prepared for this moment. Despite his shaky hand, Crosshair chooses to take the shot, and makes it when it counts. And Dr. Hemlock chooses to bank on the notion that loyalty is a weakness, rather than a strength, unwittingly sealing his doom.

Those are the choices that make “The Cavalry Has Arrived” a satisfying end to The Bad Batch. Clone Force 99 continues to function as a team despite their hardships and losses along the way. The children and clones are freed, with Emerie doing the right thing. Hemlock and Rampart are defeated, victims of their own hubris and greed. After seasons’ worth of worry, Hunter sees how much his surrogate daughter has grown and come into her own. Crosshair finds the mettle to rise to the occasion despite his traumas on Tantiss. And Omega herself aces her final exam, becoming a full-fledged member of the Bad Batch, able to face down anything, and remember the compassion and courage that held her steady through so many challenges.

Which is all to say I like where the show lands and how it lands there. It gets the core things right, crafting a sound ending and confrontation that reveals both who these characters are and how far they’ve come. That is not easy to do, and on that alone, The Bad Batch deserves its laurels.

Here’s where I struggle a bit: everything from about the midpoint of the finale to that final confrontation with Dr. Hemlock is kind of a mess.

What’s funny is that the first half of the episode is surprisingly well structured, clear, and propulsive despite having to juggle a lot. You have Omega and her mini-Bad Batch scheming to escape; Emerie and Echo following their trail; Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair working their way into the base; and Dr. Hemlock trying to fend off this attack he viewed as inevitable. The four-perspective structure gives you a sense of scope at the base, and allows the episode to keep the energy and tension up by moving from one plot to another.

There’s even a sense of escalation and chess match to the proceedings. Omega divides Hemlock’s attention by releasing the Zillo Beast. (Another nice bit of payoff!) Hemlock responds by unleashing his Shadow Operatives. There’s a sense of punch and counter punch to the various moves the parties make here. And the fact that the rest of the Bad Batch recognize Omega’s handiwork because she’s successfully following their playbook, is a nice way of showing how much the young clone internalized in her time with the crew.

Hell, I’d go so far as to say I downright love Omega’s rescue mission for the child prisoners. It’s one thing for her to be a full-fledged member of Clone Force 99. It’s quite another for her to successfully lead her own mission and organize a bunch of amateurs in a way that still lets them win the day. The biggest throughline across The Bad Batch has been Omega coming into her power, and this episode does a good job of dramatizing what she’s capable of even apart from her usual allies and resources.

But once the kiddies are on a transport with Dr. Karr, and our heroes are fighting the Shadow Operatives, everything turns to mush. “The Cavalry Has Arrived” runs into the same problem that a lot of clone-based stories run into -- by definition, a lot of these people look alike. So when you shoot everything in low light and put everyone in similar armor, who’s fighting whom and why it matters gets muddled pretty quickly.

The show tries its best. The Shadow Operatives have cool designs, even if they get samey quickly. I wish we got confirmation that the one operative is a specific clone of Crosshair, but whatever. They all have different fancy weapons and pose vaguely distinct threats, cutting the image of purge troopers from the Fallen Order games.

But the truth is that even high class goons are just goons. At the end of the day, the bad guy is Hemlock, and he’s never been a physically imposing figure. So slogging through fifteen minutes of undifferentiated firefights and fisticuffs with the bad guys doesn’t evoke much beyond a yawn from me, especially when it’s hard to follow the action.

There’s some catharsis in the notion that the sort of regs who looked down at Clone Force 99 in the beginning of the series are now willing to fight to save their lives. And our heroes’ steadfastness despite Hemlock’s “conditioning”, and Omega’s faith in her brothers, are both admirable. But little in the sturm und drang of the finish is especially compelling until that big confrontation with Hemlock on the bridge.

Ironically, I’ve always preferred it more when Bad Batch goes small than when it goes big. I can't deny the technically impressiveness of what the creative team pulls off her. You definitely get the sense of utter chaos and streaking combat throughout the facility. But I don’t know, I never really felt like the Bad Batch was in danger, and it was hard to muster up a lot of care when they were squaring off against the supposedly unstoppable Shadow Operatives.

Still, if you can strip that way, you have a lot of strong choices, from the creative team and from the characters. That reckoning on the bridge is the culmination of three character arcs, and one villain’s demise, all rolled into a single big scene, which is impressive. The way the good guys don’t just snuff out “Project Necromancer”, but reach a sort of fulfillment and self-actualization out of taking down the last remnant that saw them as science experiments, not people, is stirring.

The ending isn’t bad either. Though basic, there’s something to the idea that after fighting for so long, the Bad Batch and their fellow clones have earned that so precious of freedoms -- the freedom to choose. The central problem Clone Force 99 started with is what the lives of these good soldiers amount to when they don’t have any more orders to follow. The sense of being used up and spit out by the Empire pervades the series. So there is something just as stirring about Hunter reassuring Omega that they can stop running; they have the freedom to go and do and be whatever they want. And the closing tableau, of warriors at rest, is a lovely closing image.

Well, almost closing image. The gestures we get toward the future are nice enough. Tarkin reapportioning the funding to Hemlock’s project to the Death Star makes sense. Omega growing up and joining the Rebellion, in effect, choosing to fight, adds up. And while we don’t know the fate of his brethren, if anyone’s earned a rest, it’s Hunter. We haven't seen much in the way of clones getting happy retirements in the Star Wars universe, so I’m happy to see ol’ Space Dad get his.

I don’t know quite what to say about THe Bad Batch as a whole other than that it was the most consistently high quality show in the Star wars animated canon. The floor on this one was high, and you can tell that this creative team, who have largely sprung forth from The Clone Wars and Rebels, knows this sandbox like the back of their hands. The art, the thematics, the character growth, the politics, the canon connections, the little moments of joy and pain, were all well done on a week-to-week basis.

And yet, despite that technical excellence, I’d be lying if I said that the series had wormed its way into my heart like some of the other animated series have. The best I can guess is that there’s a sort of sameyness to the show, and a flatter tone, which can make it harder to distinguish sometimes. Still, watching Omega grow while maintaining her righteousness and care for her fellow clones, watching Hunter become a good parent and caretaker despite never having one of his own, and especially watching Crosshair goes from Imperial true believer, to traumatized used up defector, to reformed hero, were all worth the price of admission. Despite any ups and downs, like Hunter, The Bad Batch has earned a little rest.

[7.8/10] I’m going to offer “Whistlespeak” some high praise -- it feels like a meat and potatoes episode of 1990s Star Trek, updated for the modern day. The visit to a pre-warp planet where our heroes have to blend-in, the moral dilemma of whether to observe the Prime Directive or save the lives of innocents and friends, the contemplation of what belief means in the shadow of tremendous scientific advancement, were all the bread and butter of The Next Generation, and Voyager and sometimes even Deep Space Nine. Seeing Discovery replicate those rhythms, and in some instances even improve on them, is a sight for sore eyes after an up and down season.

For me, this is a better spin on the type of story TNG aimed to tell in “Who Watches the Watchers”, where Starfleet officers were captured by a community of Bronze Age proto-Vulcans, and Picard had to save his crewmembers without letting the locals believe he was a god. “Whistlespeak” isn’t exactly the same. But the principles, of pretending to be a local, rescuing an ally from their potentially deadly practices, and reconciling your advancement with their beliefs are at the heart of both episodes.

The premise sees Burnham and company following the trail of an ancient Denobulan(!!!) scientist to a comparatively primitive planet called Hemenlo, to find the next clue. To secure it, they must blend in with the locals and work their way to a weather tower disguised as a mountain than Hemenloites revere as a holy place. That means taking part in a ritualistic race, meant to mirror one of the community’s hallowed myths, where the winner gets to tread the holy ground and complete the ritual to ask the gods for rain.

It’s a good setup! One of the best parts of Star Trek has long been the “new life and new civilizations” part of the mantra. While the outlines are familiar, meeting a new forehead-accented community with a unique form of communication, vibration-based curatives, and their own distinctive set of cultural practices is invigorating. The premise of Burnham and Tilly needing to hunt down the clue without being discovered or disrupting the locals’ rites adds a sense of tension to the proceedings. And as in classic Trek, we get a parent and child, named Ovaz and Rava, to help bring the planet to life in a personal sense, each of whom gets meaningful interactions with our heroes.

For Tilly, that means running the famed Helemna thirst race and bonding with young Rava. In truth, the show has underbaked the story of Tilly’s struggles to find the right connection with her students at Starfleet Academy. But I like that her interactions with Rava, both before and after the big reveal, show that she’s capable of forging that kind of mentorship connection. It’s a simple gesture, but her choosing to refill Rava’s bowl, re-qualifying her to finish the race, is gracious and powerful. Seeing her compassion, and the two women lifting one another up to reach the finish line, does a nice job of selling why Tilly makes sense as a Starfleet instructor at a time of uncertainty for her.

Honestly, the interpersonal interactions, which are typically a weakness for Discovery in my book, were one of the highlights here. If nothing else, this episode brings back the friendship between Burnham and Tilly in a way that's shown and not told that I love. The two have an easy, playful rapport that befits the show’s longest-running friendship. Their joking with each other, banter, and breaking all the rules to save one another fits the two people who’ve been in each other’s corner for the longest. Hell, even their racing together comes with echoes of the famous “Disco” shirts and jogs along Discovery’s corridor.

It’s not limited to that, though. One of the best parts of this episode for me is Adira getting their chance to step onto the bridge, and pushing past their nervousness with the help of Commander Rayner. I like it on two fronts. On the one hand, Adira has sneakily become one of my favorite characters on Discovery. They are basically what Wesley Crusher was meant to be -- a talented but untested young ensign -- except that Adira is more endearing through their anxiousness and stumbles, which are more relatable than the young wunderkind on the Enterprise-D.

At the same time, this is a good episode for Rayner, clearly changed after the events of “Face the Strange”, the way his usual calm but firm demeanor is used not to demean his subordinates or give them the short shrift, but rather to show a steely confidence in Adira, makes him feel like a good Team Dad rather than a recovering Team Jerk. It’s a good look for all involved.

Not for nothing, this may also be the most I’ve liked the interactions between Dr. Culber and Stamets. In truth, I’ve never fully bought their relationship. It’s long seemed to miss that spark that turns on-screen relationships from script-mandated pairings into something the audience can invest in. But I don’t know what to say -- they felt like a genuine married couple here, familiar in their way with one another, a little playful but caring, and tender in an area where they’re nervous to tread. There’s a relaxed sweetness between them that we don’t always see, and it helps sell Dr. Culber’s ongoing storyline of personal discovery.

I’ll admit, I have my qualms about that storyline. Star Trek is no stranger to spiritual awakenings (hello Deep Space Nine fans!), and my assumption is that it will tie into the ongoing storyline in a plot-relevant, not just personal way over time. But I’ll admit to appreciating the humanist spirit of the franchise, and I’m always a little leery when creative teams veer away from it in ways that don’t feel fully baked. (Hello Voyager fans!) Still, both Stamets and Book telling Dr. Culber not to fret over his newfound sense of attunement to something greater, but rather just enjoy it and let it wash over him, is a solid start.

That humanist spirit is more alive in Burnham’s adventures down on Helemna. It becomes necessary to break the Prime Directive and talk some future sense into Ovaz when it turns out the prize for winning the race isn’t just a visit to the sacred mountain, but rather the “privilege” of becoming a sacrifice to the gods in the hopes that they’ll bring rain. When it’s Tilly who’s suddenly on the chopping block (or, more accurately, the suffocation block), Michael is willing to throw the rules in the can like so many great Starfleet captains before.

I appreciate the twist! The episode runs a bit long for my tastes. But I like the fact that this triumphant moment of Tilly’s kindness and camaraderie with a young but aspirational soul quickly turns into a horror movie when you realize what their “reward” for winning is. The secret weather station containing a vacuum chamber that becomes a sort of altar creates a ticking clock as Tilly and Rava lose oxygen. And it creates urgency not only for Michael to disobey the Prime Directive in the name of her friend, but to convince Ovaz of the truth so that he’ll open the door and free her and his child.

What follows has shades not unlike the best part of “Who Watches the Watchers” -- a Picard-esque conversation between the wizened space-farer and the local mystic about what’s really going on. (Heck, Burnahm even shows Ovaz a view of the planet from above, a Jean-Luc classic.) I appreciate the idea of Michael rooting her pitch in both the practical and the personal. She explains to an already devastated Ovaz that his people can have their rain regardless of the ritual, and on the personal front, that Rava doesn't need to die for it. The explanation of the weather station and technology on the one hand,a dn the personal appeal on the other,shows the best of Michael.

And despite the on-the-nose “Here’s the lesson we learned from our treasure hunt today” ending that would make even Kirk blush, I like the theme about the evolution of belief more than the tacked-on theme of being cautious with technology. Burnham doesn't use her knowledge or technological advancement to invalidate Ovaz’s gods or tell him his rituals are no good. But she also recognizes that there is a hunger for the community’s beliefs to evolve and grow alongside the needs of the people and their evolving view of the world. The notion that ritual and tradition can sit comfortably alongside advancement is a heartening one, and it’s delivered with a blend of high-minded philosophy and personal compassion, and understanding nuance that would befit The Next Generation.

This is the kind of thing I want more of from Discovery even as we only have four episodes left. Even though it’s connected to the larger chase, this episode could stand on its own. It dusts off old franchise tropes but finds new spins on them, updating the lessons for current problems. And most of all, it puts our heroes hand-in-hand with another, with believable relationships and interactions among both the regular cast and the guest stars. As the episode’s own moral suggests, it’s never too late to keep the good from what’s old and blend it with the best of what’s new, and in an episode like “Whistlespeak”, it’s nice to see the show taking its own advice.

[7.7/10] My biggest gripe with “Drone” is that there’s just not enough time for everything it wants to accomplish. The story -- of a Borg baby raised to adulthood, of Seven becoming a surrogate parent rather than a surrogate child, of teaching him the values of the Federation, of him internalizing those values to the point that he’d rather sacrifice himself than put the crew at risk -- is more than enough to fuel a two-parter, and frankly, would be plenty for a feature film.

In fairness, Voyager and its veteran team of writers (Bryan Fuller, Joe Menosky, and Brannon Braga) are pulling from a lot of past Star Trek episodes here -- from Hugh the liberated Borg; to Data’s daughter, Lal; to even Kamala, the bride in a politically-arranged marriage who took a shine to Jean-Luc -- and all those episodes managed to tell their stories within a single episode. It’s not crazy to try to spin this yarn in under an hour. But the scope gets too wide, and the developments become too rushed, to where what could be a moving tale of growth and tragedy doesn’t have the emotional impact it might if the narrative had more time to breathe.

There’s so much here that “Drone” just sort of breezes past because it pretty much has to if it’s going to get to the finish line in forty-five minutes. What are the moral implications of incipient life that could grow up to provoke annihilation? Is the Doctor okay giving up his mobile emitter in perpetuity because it’s necessary to keep the nervous system of a new being functioning? How does Ensign Mulcahey feel about having his DNA stolen and used to create what is, presumably, some clone or genetic offspring of him? How does the rest of the crew feel, not just about having another Borg on board (B’Elanna’s quip about the new Borg strategy being to just show up looking helpless is a great one), but about the potential for this drone powered by 29th Century technology to supercharge the Collective?

We don’t know! We don’t have time to know! Set aside the actual logistics of all of this, which Star Trek has always hand-waved away anyway. There are so many facets to the presence of a being like One, an accidental life form, yearning to know his people, trying to be taught a life other than what his programming dictates, who could effectively doom the galaxy. “Drone” barely has the time to explore a third of them, and what it does examine, it rushes through by necessity.

(As an aside, I’m not crazy about the wacky comedy routine of Torres’ blase attitude about fixing the EMH’s emitter. Aside from the gratuitous cheesecake aspect of it, the whole thing has a vibe of “Yeah yeah, I’ll get around to fixing your wheelchair sooner or later; stop whining you dope!”)

Instead, the writers choose to focus on three main ideas: Seven as a surrogate parent, Janeway valuing life over the risk of destruction, and One feeling the pull toward one collective or another.

The first is the most interesting to me, if only because raising One is an opportunity for Seven to see her own development from the other side. If Seven’s arrival comes with the subtext of a troubled teenager who was raised in an unhealthy environment, One comes with the subtext of a young adopted child who’s curious and wants to know who his biological parents are.

The upshot is that Seven seeing someone who was once like her, demanding instructions, unable to shake Borg programming, yearning to return to the Collective, gives her a new perspective on her own journey. There’s something amusing but sweet about Seven’s calm but firm tone with the giant toddler, her annoyance when he keeps defaulting to a drone-like approach to problems, and the sense of protectiveness and care she develops for him.

Nothing speeds along maturation like having to care for others (hello Amphibia fans!), and it’s nice watching Seven step into Janeway’s role, guiding along someone who’s been conditioned to be part of a mindless collective into thinking of themselves as an individual. After these experiences, she sees herself in a new way (literally and figuratively, given the mirror imagery), and as compressed as One’s character arc, this is a nice step along the way for Seven’s much longer arc toward humanity.

Janeway’s balance of whether to continue guiding One along, as both an individual on his own terms and a potential asset to the ship and its crew, is perfectly fine. There is the usual weighing of practical risk versus Starfleet principle, and even Janeway’s sense of boldness in seeing the positiveness and chance for innovation over the possibility of destruction.

But the truth is that The Next Generation basically already did this with Hugh, and Voyager already did it with Seven. One being a brand new board rather than a person liberated from the collective does put a somewhat different spin on things. And the fact One nigh-miraculously manages to extrapolate the mobile emitter into all kinds of even more advanced technology that the Borg could use to assimilate and dominate does raise the stakes. Despite that, this plays out largely in keeping with the franchise’s other bites at this particular apple.

Frankly, I wish “Drone” spent more time gaming out the practicalities here. I’m all for protecting the rights and chances to flourish of individuals, but holy hell, the prospect of the already fearsome Borg upping their arsenal with 29th century tech is something everyone takes pretty darn lightly under the circumstances. The fact that Janeway even lets One go over to the Borg sphere in the first place is pretty galling.

I can't help but recall Admiral Necheyev’s words to Picard, that the deaths caused by the Borg after he returned Hugh to the Collective are on his head. If one were to be consumed by his people, an uber-powered Borg that can assimilate the whole galaxy would be on Janeway’s. And while the episode seems to care about that possibility, no one ever seems to take it that seriously. (Though hey, if Hugh is any indication, maybe returning One to the Collective would poison them with individuality anyway, assuming we haven't all just tried to forget TNG’s “The Descent”.)

Then there’s One himself. He has a strong, if abbreviated story, one that, oddly enough, puts him in line with Kamala from TNG’s “The Perfect Mate”. There is a poetic irony to the fact that Seven spends much of the episode trying to instill the values she’s learned from Janeway and the crew into One, to care about the well-being of others and not just rote assimilation, only for him to turn around and use those values as motivation for his own self-sacrifice lest those he cares about come to harm.

There may be no more heartening moment for Seven than her pronouncement that “Voyager is my collective.” “Drone” teases us a bit, suggesting that when the Sphere arrives, even she still has a certain longing to return to the comforts of that web of consciousness, but instead, of course, she and One maintain their loyalty to the rest of our heroes.

What follows is, like many Voyager endings of late, a bit too convenient and quick. But I’m sure One upgrading the ship’s anti-borg tech will come in handy down the line. And however reckless Janeway signing onto this plan is, him beaming aboard the Borg sphere, commandeering it, and steering into the destructive spatial anomaly of the week is pretty darn cool.

His survival is a little miraculous, but it’s cause for a good epiphany and moment of martyrdom in the name of what he’s been taught by Seven and company. The sense of him denying his worth because he’s an accident is sad. But his realization that the Borg will pursue Voyager forever with him there, that they’ll never stop trying to assimilate this new “collective” with him as the prize, prompts him to end his own life to protect those of the many. It’s a righteous thing to do, and a tragic sign that One absorbed everything Seven tried to teach him, maybe even a little too well.

And Seven gets her moment with Data and Lal: the moment of pain and growth that comes with losing a child. “Drone” doesn’t quite hit the same heights, but seeing Seven get emotional, the changed echo of her declaration that One’s actions are hurting her, is worth the price of admission. Seven’s disposition toward children will become a recurring part of her character through the rest of the series, and you can see the seeds being planted here.

I just wish Voyager spent more time plowing the field. Budgets, time limits,and ambition are not always a friendly mix. Sometimes, boring plots get stretched beyond recognition to fill the tie available. Sometimes, multiple episodes worth of story get crammed into a single-episode container. The balance is hard to strike. But one of the most exciting and frustrating modes of Star Trek is the concept that could spur something of real greatness, if only it had time. I imagine that's how Seven and Janeway feel about One.

(SPOILERS FOR MUCH LATER IN THE SERIES: It’s interesting revisiting this episode as a precursor to not only Seven’s relationship with Naomi Wildman, but Icheb and the rest of the Borg babies she would adopt down the line. You can see the show working through ideas here that they would explore in more depth down the line, which suggests they saw the potential in letting this concept breathe too!)

[9.0/10] To be frank, I didn't think Voyager had the chutzpah to do an episode like this one. For a solid half of its runtime, this episode has no imposing villain, no deadly anomaly, no ticking clock, no major crisis of any sort. Instead, it centers on the kind of thing you don’t get much of on network television, but would presumably be a tremendous part of any extended journey through the vastness of space -- the oppressiveness of monotony.

How does the crew react when they have nothing to do? When there’s no stars in the sky to look at? When the captain is remote and closed off? When the lack of challenges and differences in their day-to-day lives also comes with a lack of purpose? When the ship offers relative comfort but no excitement? When you have nothing on the docket but to sit and wait and think and stew?

I remember “Night” from childhood, and I have to admit, it hits differently after the pandemic and lockdown. The unchanging days, the isolation, the testiness, the anxiety, the random diversions to pass the time, the little “hacks” to get a sliver of normalcy aboard Voyager, all hit home when much of the world experienced the same thing in recent years.

Which is to say it’s relatable when the ship’s holodecks are in high demand because it’s all there is to do. (Appropriately enough, I watched a lot of Star Trek during lockdown.) It’s understandable when Tom and B’Elanna and even Neelix are getting short with one another amid the tedium. It’s sympathetic when Neelix starts to have panic attacks and bouts of cabin fever. It’s familiar when Tuvok tries to meditate in astrometrics as a substitute for the outside world. And it’s recognizable when Harry has nothing else to occupy him amid the doldrums and so pours his feelings into a sonata for clarinet. (Some of us pen reviews of classic television instead.)

I can't pretend that Voyager fully commits to this. The back half of “Night” goes into full “moral and practical crisis” mode while hitting some pretty familiar Star Trek beats. And even in the first half, we get the debut of the “Adventures of Captain Proton” holodeck tribute to the sci-fi B-movies of old. (Which I remember being more fun than either Janeway’s Victorian pastiche, Chez Sandrine, the resort set, or da Vinci’s workshop as Voyager’s holo-diversions go).

But for a solid couple acts, Voyager is downright languid, reflective, unbothered by the need for dramatic incident in a way we’d never really seen in thirty years of Star Trek. Leaning into that, examining what the torpor of monotony would feel like aboard a starship traversing a vast void, is bold in a way that I just don’t expect from this series.

As if to cement that “Night” is an outlier among Voyager episodes, this may be the finest hour of the series for Chakotay, and by extension, Robert Beltran. Chakotay has never been more complex or sympathetic than when he’s trying to manage the daily functions of a ship, the morale of a stir crazy crew, the moods of guilt-ridden captain, and his own struggles under the tediousness of life aboard Voyager. Hell, the show even pulls off a strong scene between him and Tuvok, rooted in their fraught history and shared admiration for the Captain.

More than anything, Chakotay feels like a real person flustered but steadfast in an impossible situation, with Beltran showing layers of the character we’ve never really seen before. The show’s usual stars shine here, but for once Beltran came to play, and it’s a glimpse at who and what this character could have been under the right circumstances.

But Chakotay is only pressed into such circumstances thanks to the self-blaming spiral of Captain Janeway. One of the coolest choices writers Joe Menosky and Brannon Braga make here is to keep Janeway from the audience for much of the early stretch of “Night”. We feel her absence in the same way the crew does, and especially for a season premiere, the delayed gratification of a Captain in absentia makes for another bold move that heightens the sense of frustrating listlessness aboard the ship before the fireworks start.

What I love most is that without the ongoing risks posed by the Kazon or the Vidiians or the Borg, the only enemy Janeway has left to fight is herself. The lack of excitement means the Captain resorts to soul-searching, reflecting on the choices she made that left everyone stranded in a faraway place for years, with the promise of decades more to come. This is probably a reach on my part, but given how she’s shot and lit, there’s an almost Colonel Kurtz-like quality to Janeway in her seclusion.

The idea that when the music stops, when the momentum that's sustained the crew grinds to a halt, the weight of their circumstances falls on Janeway in a more concentrated, demoralizing sort of way is the kind of engrossing personal hardship and reckoning that, frankly, Voyager should have done more of in its first season when the wound was fresh. I’m glad that with new leadership at the helm, the creative team is doing it now.

Of course, the quiet meditation and moral reflections can't last forever. So of course, our heroes run into some locals from “The Void” who manage to shut off Voyager’s power, board the ship, and attack from the shadows. It’s a nice little horrorshow in between the two major sections of the episode. Seeing the ship go completely without power and light is striking as a change of pace. And the all-black, scaly aliens who hiss and emerge from the darkness have a much creepier design and vibe than the similar spooks from TNG’s “Identity Crisis”.

Plus hey, it’s enough to convince Janeway to spring back into action. She needs a crisis of her own to spur her to rise to the occasion and become active once again. And the fact that she reverts to her badass space marine guise, as she did in “Macrocosm” doesn’t hurt either.

What follows is pretty standard, but well done stuff. Another ship in the void fends off the Night Aliens’ ship, and offers to lead Voyager to a vortex that could spare them another two years in the void. Only, its pilot, Emck, is cagey about why he’s there and what he wants. Naturally, it turns out the Void Aliens are misunderstood indigenous people who’ve been taught to fear strange ships polluting their territory, and Emck is a craven waste-merchant willing to sacrifice lives to make a buck.

There’s elements worth holding onto there. The idea that people who attack reflexively may not be evil, but responding with learned behaviors from other aggressors, is an interesting one, especially in the context of Star Trek. Guest star Ken Magee does a great job as Emck, giving him an appropriately slimy quality while giving the sense that he could just be a harmless local eccentric. And the idea that another operator would be so cruel as to reject civilization-changing, life-saving technology, because stopping deadly pollution would hurt his bottom line, makes Emck into something of a Captain Planet villain, but also a good vessel for societal critique.

Still, that material is largely set-dressing for the larger point here. The big idea of “Night” is a simple one -- this is a referendum on the choice Captain Janeway made four years ago. The scenario the episode presents is the same one Janeway faced with the Caretaker in miniature. Either you do the self-serving thing and take the shortcut so as to spare your crew a long journey, or you do the altruistic thing and destroy it, consigning your crew to the wilderness for longer still.

Granted, it’s not exactly the same. Two extra years in the Void is a lot shorter than seventy years through the Delta Quadrant. One chump with a radioactive tanker is a far cry from a dying demigod. And at this point, you’re talking about making the choice just for your own crew, not for the Maquis you’d be stranding alongside you.

The broad contours, however, are the same. What’s striking is that this time, Janeway would still do it all again, but won’t subject her crew to the consequences of her actions. She’d rather stay behind in the Void and send Voyager on so she can destroy the vortex alone. She’s still honor-bound to save the Night Aliens from cruel extinction, but she wants to be a martyr for the cause, bear that weight alone, rather than imposing it on her subordinates. There is a nobility in that, a brand of self-reflection and questioning that the series frankly should have interrogated in more depth when it launched.

The heartening part of “Night”, though, is that her crew, and more importantly her friends, won’t go along with it. You can quibble about how the stakes aren’t the same here as they were in the beginning of the show. But again, the upshot is plain. Every member of the main cast affirms that they would rather be stranded for longer in this miserable empty expanse than be without their captain. (Except for the extras, who are, amusingly, still pecking away at their control stations in the background while this grand, dramatic stand is going on.)

It is, in many senses, a ratification of Janeway’s original choice, the one that put all these people here in the first place. It’s a sign that they admire the Captain’s commitment to doing the right thing, even at tremendous cost. It’s a sign of how much they value her specifically. And it is an affirmation that, even if they’d rather not be stranded lightyears and lightyears from home, if it meant following Kathryn Janeway, they’d do it all again.

The rest of the episode is, frankly, kind of perfunctory and a little cheap. The opposing captain boasts that he could destroy Voyager in ten seconds, and yet the Federation starship puts up a standard fight without issue and finds a convenient weakness in Emck’s vessel. The Night Aliens have their Big Damn Heroes moment, showing well-timed trust in Janeway’s ability to be a captain of her word. And the science team figures out a way to have their cake and eat it too -- to both make it out of the vortex while destroying it in the process.

All of it feels like a zip to the finish, where the solutions are not particularly earned, and the big choices our heroes make have less impact because no one ever has to deal with the consequences of them. But that is less Voyager’s retreating to its usual reset button and more the inexorable inertia of 1990s network television.

So I’m apt to forgive it, especially when the point stands. Janeway need not torture himself. Her crew believes in her, trusts her principles, and would follow her through hell and back again. If season 4’s “Scorpion” was a turning point for Voyager, that divided the series’ eras into “Before Seven” and “After Seven”, then “Night” is a re-pilot. In some ways, the season 5 premiere relitigates the very beginnings of the series, offering a more complex and personal take on them, while also reaffirming Janeway’s righteousness, and the love she’s earned from the men and women who serve with her. That's a hell of a way to kick of off the fifth year of Voyager’s mission.

As I write this review, it’s been long enough since lockdown that the whole thing feels like a strange fever dream. I can remember the same lulls, the same sense of restlessness, the same need for distraction, the same self-questioning in the quiet spaces with nothing else to do. Despite coming out decades before, “Night” captures the feeling of that period better than any other piece of media I’ve experienced.

But I also remember how hard it was to do the right thing sometimes: to keep a safe distance from loved ones and strangers alike to protect their safety, to postpone favorite activities and celebrate holidays through computer screens, to be diligent about protective gear for the sake of others, to upend our whole lives during a crisis no one had an end date for. There were times I wanted to give up trying to do the noble thing and just give in, and if I’m being honest, times that I did.

I can't pretend that the steadfastness of Captain Janeway in “Night” is what kept me on the side of the angels. But one of the things I love about Star Trek is that there was always a set of ethics behind it. Not every moral stance is right, and not all of them have aged perfectly. And yet, time again, the franchise has given us stories of people doing the right thing even when it’s hard, even at great personal cost, because as a great Starfleet officer once put it, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

There is a cost to doing the right thing. Seeing the crew squabble and fracture confirms that. Seeing the captain beat herself up confirms that. But there is also something rousing about a group of people banding together in the name of mutual support and doing what’s right. That's the sort of ideal that sticks with you, whether you’re a middle school kid enjoying your favorite space-bound stories, or a grown adult trying to find the strength to weather your own storms. If you’re lucky, the stars still shine brightly on the other side of the darkness.

[8/10] I’ll confess, I had no idea this existed until the Robin Williams lost boy made a cameo in the short film Once Upon a Studio. And I’m glad I found out about it, because as always, WIlliams is a delight.

If anyone was born to be in cartoons, it’s him. It’s such a blast to see a pre-Genie collaboration between Williams and Disney, that takes Williams’ motormouth, free-association style and realizes it in the medium of animation.

I’ll admit, it’s a little odd pairing him with Walter Cronkite or all people, but they make for a surprisingly effective pair. Cronkite is a good straight man, and the combination of Williams’ whimsy and Cronkites steadiness pays dividends. Just seeing them banter in front of gigantic books or seeing Cronkite work as Robin’s wry guide through the tribulations of animation is unexpectedly fun.

This is also a solid introduction to the process of hand-drawn animation. Obviously there’s a lot of intricacies left out, but especially for the purposes this was intended for -- introducing people to these concepts on a studio tour -- this is a perfect little primer.

I enjoyed the Duck Amuck-esque hijinks of animated Robin flitting about the studio, wanting to transform into other personas or bibbing and bobbing with the famous Disney squash and stretch. The work to mix him into live action and play around with backdrops and settings is superb.

And the scene we get with him in Neverland is stellar as well. Corey Burton does a great Hook (as Kingdom Hearts fans know). Williams is outstanding as a fretful and then frenetic foil for the not-so-good captain. And the solution to the problem, of a little pixie dust to spare Lost Boy Robin and make the crocodile a floating problem for Hook, is clever and amusing.

All-in-all, if there’s someone who makes sense within the world of animation, and as a lost boy at that, it’s Robin Williams. I’m sorry I didn’t know about this until now, but it’s a wonderful little tribute to the man and to the medium all at once.

[8.0/10] So fun story. When I was a kid, my parents forbid me from watching South Park. This was at the peak of the show’s controversial rep, and they’d read the usual horror stories in the local news about how it was poisoning the minds of today’s youth.

But hey, it was cool! It was a cartoon! It starred kids! Everyone was talking about it! There were t-shirts! One of the WWF wrestlers carried around a giant Cartman plush! So I did what any kid would do. I snuck onto the computer when my parents were otherwise occupied and watched clips online.

Which is all to say that it’s funny (and I think, deliberately self-referential) for South Park, of all shows, to do an episode about content built behind the facade that it’s only intended for adults, with the wink-wink/nudge-nudge of the knowledge that kids will consume and absorb it. Part of the gag here is that, even nearly three decades after its debut, the show is showing penises and gore and other raunchy material that would have caused the pearl-clutchers of the 1990s to blow a gasket, with the knowledge that kids will undoubtedly watch it. The irony does not seem to be lost on the show’s creative team.

Only, for once, South Park seems to have some qualms about the idea of adult content reaching and influencing children. And I don’t know what it says about me, the show, or the way time makes fools of us all that I’ve gone from being a kid who watches puerile comedy behind my parents back to sharing those same concerns about what messages and influences are making their way to kids these days.

The “Not Suitable for Children” special is right to point out that the current culture of online influencers mixes hollow affirmations with conspicuous product placement. They’re right to point out that it blends self-esteem, social standing, and consumerism in ways that lead to uncomfortable arms races and badges of self-worth for young people. They’re right to point out that a raft of pornography makes its way to kids, and they’re right to worry about the effect that firehose might have on minors (or miners).

I want to remember what I thought when was going online and watching ribald cartoons: that kids are smarter than adults give them credit for, that not everybody buys into fads and school reputation bullshit, that young people know when they’re being shilled to, that they’re not so naive or susceptible to manipulation, that they’re swimming in hormones and need safe outlets for them, that they can separate fantasy from reality.

I want to credit those opinions, that I imagined still exist in some form of another with today’s young adults, and I remember how infantilizing it felt to have the grown-ups of the world feel the need to protect us from things deemed “too naughty” or “too real.”

But I’m also cognizant that what was a trickle when I was growing up is now a downpour. I’m cognizant of the horrid shit I saw online and the soulless, South Park-admiring edgelords who practically ran corners of the internet at the time. To date myself even further, I’m cognizant of begging my parents to get me JNCO jeans and No Fear t-shirts, because I thought I just had to have them to be cool like everybody else. And I’m cognizant of the effect a lot of that B.S. had on me, some of which it took a long time to shake off.

So I dunno, I’m a cranky old man now. I clutch my own pearls and worry about shitbags like Logan Paul having a tremendous following among kids in the way my parents worried about South Park. I worry about the garbage that's sold to children via the trojan horse of manufactured authenticity and social status. And as hilarious as it is to show old timey pictures of mineworkers flashing their junk, I worry about kids seeing the ocean of smut out there and not just getting the wrong ideas about sex and sexuality, but deciding they want to try this at home.

Sunrise, sunset. The mischievous scamp who snuck online to watch forbidden cartoons grows up to be the hand-wringing chump concerned about the minefield of unsavory influences shotgunned at today’s kids. And the television show that made its bones on knowingly producing crude and bawdy content it knew kids would watch in exchange for ad dollars is now making hilarious but seemingly sincere polemics about the current institutions that are doing the same. It all comes full circle, I suppose.

This is all to say that, unlike the last regrettable special, this one hit home in terms of its perspective, even if I felt the irony, and a little queasiness, at agreeing South Park’s seeming “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” stance.

Even if you feel more like my younger self, this is also just a quality episode on the merits! I kind of love the Clyde story, even apart from the messaging involved. It’s rare that someone on South Park evokes genuine sympathy, but by god, you feel legitimately bad for Clyde when his parents understandably don’t want him drinking junked up sugar water, when his idol is telling him that sugar water is exactly what he needs to truly be himself, and when there’s unfathomable amounts of peer pressure at school to do just that.

South Park walked that territory before in the “Chinpokomon” episode, with a little more irreverent cynicism and a little less incisive sophistication. But the thrust remains the same. You sympathize with Kyle for feeling left out, and you sympathize with Clyde for the same. The moment when the boys expose his rare bottle of Cred as containing nothing but apple juice is quietly heartbreaking for the poor kid, in a way little is.

You feel for his quest to try to get int he good graces of his peers. You feel for the alienated young people in his palace still trying to belong. You feel for the struggles he goes through to get a different rare bottle and the carnage that ensues. You get him wondering if all of this insanity is worth it. And you feel for him, as Wendy did in the social media episode, giving in and participating anyway because he feels like he can't beat the system.

I don’t know. This episode is something of a tragedy in a way that few South Park episodes are. I may be a crusty, heartless old man now, but I remember what it’s like to be a kid like Clyde, and something about it still hits home.

Thankfully, Randy’s story is there to bring the laughs. I may not be as mature as I think, because even though it’s the same joke over and over, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh at Randy trying to get to the top of the OnlyFans charts by flaunting his, shall we say, unremarkable equipment. His obsession with climbing the ranks of influencers, his naivete about his own appeal, and the way he doesn’t care about Sharon showing off the goods or sleeping with other men so long as he’s still getting more views and followers than her is all classic Randy manchild shtick. I don’t necessarily need the “beat my wife” double entendre, but I dunno. “Dumb middle aged dad tries to become an online exhibitionist megastar” is a premise just loony enough to tickle my funny bone.

Along the way, there’s a strong vein of satire. The ecosystem of conspicuous consumption at South Park Elementary mixed with the liquid garbage the Logan Pauls of the world are slinging has bite. The sense of false scarcity and exclusivity are topics South Park has hit before (see also: Cartman’s theme park and the mobile game episode), but they still work here.

The open secret that these various avenues reach kids despite nominally being aimed at adults, and that various forces, both benign and malign, are bidding to bake their messages into that content, is as strong a polemic as South Park’s issued in a long time. And as silly as the presentation is, Randy’s realization that kids see mature content and are inspired to try the same trick is, likewise, as direct a warning as the show’s issued in years.

Apart from the themes, and despite my reservations about South Park reverting to “everything’s a secret giant conspiracy” as the end to all its stories, I love the swerve of the ending here. The twist that it is, in fact, Clyde’s stepmom who’s somehow behind this influencing industrial complex, in the hopes of being a “good influence” on her stepson, is both just wholesome enough and just absurd enough to work for me. It too brings things full circle, and is a more satisfying answer to the episode’s big mystery than I might have expected, one much better than a random boogeyman.

What can I say? I don’t think South Park has lost its “cred” just yet, even as it turns the table a bit, and accuses others of corrupting the youth. But there is something kind of cosmic about the onetime source of so much parental concern, one that fiercely defended unfettered free speech, using its platform to ask if we’re okay with the messages now burrowing into the brains of young folks.

It feels weird for me to be on the other side of that fence too. But maybe all this hand-wringing is for nothing. After all, I watched tons of South Park when I was growing up, and I turned out alright, didn’t I? Uh...didn’t I?

[8.210] Holy cow! A lot freakin’ happens here.

Let’s start with this. I love the memorials for Gambit. The show feels especially solemn and impacted by the loss of one of its main characters, which is as it should be. Nightcrawler’s eulogy is lovely, an appropriate blend of card metaphors to befit the guest of honor, but also with words that speak insight into the noble man who was dealing them. And you can feel the impact that the loss of Gambit has on everyone in the X-Men and beyond. Especially Rogue.

I kind of love Rogue’s roaring rampage of revenge here. On the pure fanservice front, it gives us the (I think?) first glimpses of the wider Marvel Universe we’ve had in X-Men ‘97 outside of the mutants’ corner of it. Rogue threatening none other than General Ross in an anti-Hulk base, and crossing paths with Captain America (replete with Josh Keaton reprising the role from What If), has a cool factor to it, and makes the show feel part of a bigger world.

On the personal front, it’s a sign of how much Gambit meant to Rogue. There is something that's always compelling for me about the person who’s lost some semblance of control, and their usual grip on what’s right and wrong, in the throes of grief. It’s a very human act to be unmoored after a great loss. Seeing Rogue throw out the usual rulebook, threatening government representatives, clashing with erstwhile allies, rejecting doing anything by the book, is a reflection of how messed up she is by what happened to Remy.

I appreciate Nightcrawler being there for her as a sibling, helping her process that loss in healthier ways. The acknowledgment that her pain is real, but that she has a whole family behind her, is a heartening one. The show smartly doesn’t diminish the intensity of Rogue’s feelings, or shortchange the time she has to express them in messy ways, but circles back to her support system, even as she’s clearly not better given the events at the end of the episode.

But that also speaks to an interesting curing theme in an episode chock full of complex ideas -- a sense of anger and even disgust at the sympathetic moderate. Cyclops reacts with anger to President Kelly pulling resources because siding with mutants isn’t good optics in the political scene right now. Beast responds with out-of-character scorn for the reporter who sits idly by as a neutral party when tragedy is happening, whatever sympathies she may offer. And Rogue refers to Cap himself as a “top cop” when he’s on her side, but doesn’t want to act to address the problem, lest the imagery of his presence knocking heads in Mexico City be an issue.

What I like about this is that the foils in these discussions are not one-note, caricatured bad guys. They’re people making points that make sense from their perspective, some of which are fair. But they also fall as cheap words upon the ears of a maligned community that's facing a monumental collective tragedy. The people who aren’t there to hurt them, but won’t step in to help them, despite the injustice of Genosha, are still painted in a bad light for their unwillingness to take the side of the people in genuine need, because of others’ prejudices. That lack of integrity is damning.

It’s why my favorite scene in this whole thing might be Roberto coming out to his mother. In contrast to the scene from the X-Men film series, there’s no rejection or fear from his mom. Instead, she offers acceptance, a confession that she’s always known, and the parental sense of wanting a child to tell their own secrets in their own time. It’s the kind of warm response you don’t expect, something that calms Roberto’s fears and makes him realize that his mother will love him no less.

But then she drops the bombshell -- that even if she personally accepts him, their company’s shareholders won’t, and so he’ll be expected to keep his full identity under wraps. It’s a different, but no less pernicious form of marginalization than the kind that Rogue faced from her father. Accepting someone behind closed doors only, giving into the prejudices on the outside for pragmatic or financial reasons, is a different type of oppression than that of the outright bigots, but it’s no less insidious. As with so many things, the way X-Men ‘97 picks up that baton from the original show, and takes it to more complex places, is masterful.

I’m also impressed by how much the crimes of Genosha are allowed to resonate. I’ll admit, one of my gripes with the old show is that some gigantic, incredible thing would happen, and then it’d be just on to the next thing. That is, to some extent, the nature of comic book storytelling. But it makes the destruction of paradise in Genosha a bigger deal when we get to linger on it, and really sit with the mutants mourning not just their dead, but this paradise lost. The simple triumph of rescuing Emma Frost from the rubble, matched with the stark reminders of who’s still missing, give this a punch. And Beast quoting no less a saint than Mr. Rogers tugs at the heartstrings.

It’s enough to build some bridges between Cyclops and Jean. Tragedy has a way of bringing people together. That's the small silver lining. And seeing them acknowledge the complexities of their relationship, but still want to provide solace to one another at a difficult time for everyone, is heartening development after the high drama of their last interaction.

Amid all of this serious meditation on both the plight of oppressed peoples writ large and the personal struggles of our X-Men, the show does a good job of setting up the next grand villain. I’ll admit that I found Trask doing a quasi-Oppneheimer routine and then becoming a killer robot kind of cheesy, and I don’t know much about Bastion. But the episode does a good job of introducing him as a sly, craft, malevolent presence within the world of the show, one with the presence of an antagonist from Dexter, and a mastermind sensibility. Him having captured Magneto is an intriguing twist, and while he fulfills some standard villain tropes, they did a good of leaving me intrigued to see what exactly he has planned for our heroes.

Overall, another outstanding episode of the show, which raises some legitimately thorny issues in an emotionally potent way, and ably sets up the next challenge in an organic one (if you’ll pardon the expression).

[7.0/10] Here’s where I ultimately come down the 2008 Tess of the d’Urbervilles miniseries -- it is fine. The story hits the appropriate beats. You get the gist of the characters and the themes. And the sense of tragedy that pervades all of this does hit, albeit not quite as forcefully and thoroughly as in the novel.

But I also cannot help but feel like this is a softer, diminished version of the tale. Some of that is the inevitable translation from page to screen. Thomas Hardy’s novel is a long read, undoubtedly, but it gains some strength from that. You feel the steady stream of pressure from Alec on both sides of Tess’ assault, you feel the gradual but inexorable falling in love of her and Angel, you feel the bitter march of days when Tess is consigned to her starve-acre farm and Angel is absented in Brazil, you feel the camaraderie forming between her and the dairymaids. Unless someone had the chutzpah to do a four-season television show adaptation of the novel, you’re just never going to be able to replicate that for the screen, and it’s not the 2008 miniseries’s fault.

At the same time, I can't shake the sense that this is an adaptation meant for teenagers who aren’t quite ready to handle the intensity or complexity of the book just yet. I cut my teeth on Wishbone adaptations of classic literature, and while I wouldn’t go quite that far, this interpretation does come off like something meant to be more accessible, more simplified, more palatable for a wider and younger audience. Give or take Eddie Redmayne’s bare ass, the way the adaptation turns up the volume while turning down the contrast results in a film high in drama, that checks the necessary boxes, but lacks the real feeling of the source material.

All that said, it’s worth acknowledging what the miniseries, this episode in particular, does well. For one thing, it made me wonder where this striking cinematography was for the other three installments. The long zoom and slow reverse or Angel standing at a window waiting for Tess builds the sense of anticipation and retreat. The overdramatic horror movie score goes too far in Angel’s return to Enminster, but it’s shot and edited to elicit the maximum degree of shock as the prodigal son limps back into his father’s parish. And the scenes set at Stonehenge capture the sense of the young couple and the place itself as out of time, a little heathen paradise, until the police come to pierce their idyllic bubble.

The big loss in any literary adaptation is the prose. Unless you want to use clunky voiceover, you lose the wondrous descriptions and way of communicating of the original author. But cinema’s answer is the imagery, the editing, the composition, in a way that can convey the same lyricism in a visual medium that a good author can via the written word. This is the closest the miniseries comes to aligning with Hardy’s prose on those terms.

Part 4 is also the most that Alec d’Urberville has felt like the predatory asshole I recognized from the book. I will say that despite my qualms about the depiction of Alec, Hnas Matheson is the best part of this miniseries, and I get why fans gravitated to his depiction of the character. Not only is this a softer take on Alec overall, but there is a force and a truth in his performance throughout that's missing or inconsistent elsewhere in the adaptation. He is oily, manipulative, and frightening here. Even as Alec’s increasingly intimidating entreaties come much quicker, the sense of pressure and abuse come through in a way that sells what Tess is effectively forced to give into.

(Also big shout out to Kenneth Cranham’s performance as Rev. Clare. He doesn’t get much to do in this story, but he makes a meal out of his opportunities each time. You can perceive the layers of Mr. Clare’s reactions to his son’s situation in every moment, which is, again, a rare thing for this adaptation.)

The other thing I really liked is the brief moments of peace and intimacy we get between Tess and Angel in their fugitive retreat to the abandoned manor. My second biggest knock on this adaptation is that, not for lack of trying, you never quite feel that spiritual connection between Tess and Angel here, that makes you understand why Tess would be so devoted to her husband, and why Angel’s response to Tess’ confession is damnable not just for the hypocrisy, but for the beautiful thing he’s throwing away for no good reason. Whether it’s the only mild chemistry between the actors, or the inevitable brevity of the miniseries, or the failure of the scenes we do get to really sell that connection, it means one of the great counterweights of the book is missing or diminished.

But when they’re lying there in that bed together, and Angel is remarking upon what he witnessed in a far away land that changed him, and Tess wishes once again to delay the inevitable and bask in their paradise a little longer, you feel the lived in intimacy and familiarity that comes from two people who are truly comfortable and connected to one another that I’d been asking for elsewhere. I’d be lying if I said I really needed the sex scene (I’m not really the target audience for a scantily-clad Eddie Redmayne), but it functions well as a blissful contrast to the rape scene with Alec, and the catharsis of Tess and Angel’s physical attraction that's been interrupted or outright thwarted in the adaptation on multiple occasions.

(As an aside, it’s funny to see the adaptation treat Angel’s appearance as so ghastly after he returns from Brazil. The makeup and styling doesn’t really sell that, so you’re left to imagine a conversation that goes, “Oh no! He’s become all pasty and gawky!” “Er...uh...that’s how he normally looks.”)

But so much of the choices here either falter or don’t add up to much. Taking more time to develop Liza-lu doesn’t make it any less awkward when it’s implied that she and Angel have married, as Tess wished. Making Groby a constant present in Tess’ life rather than a late edition, and someone known to Alec has...little effect on the story, other than I get he’s a recurring pure antagonist and a “Could be worse than Alec!” figure, I guess? They skip one of my favorite lines in the Stonehenge scene, which is Tess telling Angel that she’s glad their time is short, because it means there won’t be enough time for her to despise him again, showing how much Tess has been scarred by her experiences, even as she’s basking in this reunion with her lover.

That is emblematic of the miniseries’ approach, I think. The giant harvester, which is a stretch of great fear and poetry in the novel, is just another day at the office in the miniseries. The bleakness of Angel’s time in Brazil, the kind stark enough to effect a change of heart in him, is largely told not shown. Angel’s own regrets and acknowledgment of wrong is comparatively minimized. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a neutered adaptation, but it’s certainly cushioned in a way the novel isn’t, and in some ways seems like it’s just aspiring to less.

Granted, some of the problem may be that, at the end of the day, I just don’t particularly like this interpretation of Tess Durbeyfield. Eddie Redmayne’s performance is a mixed bag too, with his breakdowns being superb and his everyday interactions seeming more stollid. But there’s more bad than good in Gemma Arterton’s performance.

Her nonverbal acting can be tremendous, and when her Tess is full of righteous fury, you buy it. For the everyday scenes, or less high-volume moments, she’s uninvolving and unconvincing. Her tess as a kind of pouty, childish air about her that made some sense in the first part of the adaptation, but adds a trivializing tone to her harrowing experiences in the rest of the adaptation. The acting is not without its merits, but never fully brings the character to life in a compelling way.

But in fairness, I think the same can be said for much of the piece. Outside of a few superlative moments, the miniseries seems to shy away from the gravity of what it’s depicting, turning peak moments from the story into just-another-thing scenes that lack punch or intensity. Throughout the whole miniseries, there is a very stagey quality, where the realness of these sorts of events is muted in the throws of outsized performance and presentation. Even the closing montage, where a death row-bound Tess imagines the blissful life she might have had if she and Angel had dared to dance at their first meeting, comes off cheesy and heavy-handed rather than moving.

Despite all that carping from me, I wouldn’t call this a bad adaptation, just a sanded down one. If your purpose is to share the story with someone, introduce the basic ideas, acquaint them with the characters, you could do worse than this stately but often soulless rendition of it. But if you want the heart of what makes the book such an achievement of form and feeling, or the force of the deeper ideas about society and love and the tragic forces of a broken world, your chances with this adaptation are about as good as Tess’.

[10/10] This is nothing but sap and fanservice, but damnit, it absolutely worked on me.

I don’t know what to say. I remind myself that Disney is an emotionless corporation whose prime goal is simply to earn money for stockholders. It’s a business, like any other, and shorts like this are basically a giant, heartstring-tugging ad for it.

But I’ve also been indoctrinated by decades of films and television shows and video games and other little pieces of schmaltz just like this one. Whether I want to honor the artists who fueled the studio’s creative output, or look cynically upon the corporate moneymakers who monetized it, these characters mean something to me. I can't help that, or the emotional reaction seeing them all together, honoring the history and the spirit those stories represent provokes from me.

On a nuts and bolts level, the Toy Story-esque premise of the studio’s characters coming to life at night is an appropriately fantastical one. The short derives tons of joy from mixing and mashing-up characters from across the Disney landscape. (Something The House of Mouse, of all things, thrived on.)

I love the little sequence where Moana enlists Merlin to magic some water into the Mad Hatter’s tophat for Flounder, in a seamless melding of different players from different eras. Mirabel’s little cousin guiding the various animals to the photo spot is a nice touch. The gags involving the Zootopia sloth and Baymax getting into the elevator, much to Donald’s trademark chagrin, were delightful on their own terms. The fairies changing the studio storefront from pink to blue rather than Sleeping Beauty’s dress was a treat. And god help me, I love Fix-It Felix repairing Goofy’s camera while Tinkerbelle lifts him up to take the picture.

Again, this is all just pushing nostalgia buttons and deploying cheap fanservice, but if there’s a safe place for it, it’s this kind of celebratory occasion. In that spirit, it’s great to see some of the less-loved or more obscure films be represented as well, from the protagonist of Oliver & Company, to Chicken Little, to even a prominent appearance from Ichabod Crane. This whole short has the spirit of a family reunion, and sometimes that means inviting the rarely-seen cousins too, which is nice for the all-encompassing, celebratory spirit of the piece.

The only real demerits here are the awkward human performances at the beginning, but I assume it’s because the lines are read by animators and not actors, so they get a little slack.

What can I say? Even as someone who has mixed feelings about Walt Disney, it’s hard not to get a little choked up when Mickey doffs his cap to his creator. And even as someone who reminds himself that the big companies that make the art you love are not your friends, it’s hard not to hear generations of Disney characters I grew up with singing “When You Wish Upon a Star” together, culminating with Jiminy Cricket’s original croon, and not get a little misty-eyed.

Disney has a power over us. That is the great and scary thing about the studio having invested a century in generating stories for screens great and small, and marketing their own history and legacy in shorts like these across the globe. I can't pretend any of it’s pure, but I also can't deny the spell all those smiling cartoon faces still cast over me.

[7.4/10] My favorite of the chapters so far. I’m not usually a big fan of Eddie Redmayne. Nonetheless, the way his Angel immediately shifts from a loving, enamored husband to a cold, detached partner hits home. I still don’t necessarily feel the charge between Angel and Tess that you do in the novel, but you do feel the devastation of that shift from him, which is an achievement.

I also appreciated the choice to cut between Tess’ downtrodden and embarrassed return to her home and Angel’s ashamed and regretful return to his. It gives you a real sense of both of them reacting to these events, and paralleling them creates an interesting game of contrast and compare. Angel is 100% at fault, and Tess is the blameless party here, but still, neither of them are happy, and both are doleful in having to face their families and answer questions about what’s amiss.

The miniseries does go overboard in places. The scene with Tess’ mud-draped lament after her run-in with Groby feels more overdramatic than a reflection of lived-in anguish. Likewise, Angel having an auditory collage when his father’s doing a prayer about virtue comes off like too much in my book. But that's just a part of the tone of the adaptation and something chumps like me will have to live with.

That said, for once the cinematography lives up to the descriptions of the novel, if only briefly. The vision of the starve acre farm is as grim and brutal as you can imagine. I particularly appreciate the wide show where the gray earth takes up most of the frame, and the contrast between this emaciated harvest of death and the verdant splendor of the dairy farm is made patently clear.

The other interesting choice here is that they make Izz more serious and Alec softer once more. The scene where Angel asks Izz to go with him played out differently in my head, at least in terms of tone. Izz was more enthused and then matter-of-fact about Tess loving him more. But it's an interesting approach to show her seeming graver and more severe about the magnitude of what’s about to happen.

Likewise, the “reformed” Alec still has his moments of menace, but Hans Matheson plays him as much more earnest, almost sweet in his entreaties to Tess. He seems legitimately moved, genuinely in love, then in the more imposing figure from the novel. Again, I don’t know how to feel about the softening of a rapist in the adaptation. But there is something interesting about the idea that Alec is the hero in his own story, even if he’s the villain is Tess’. I can't say it sits well with me, but it’s a different take on Alec, and I can appreciate that. It makes it more of a choice between two options for Tess rather than one angel and one monster.

There’s other interesting choices in the adaptation. They give more time and shading to Liza-Lu, which makes sense in the fullness of the story, but is still kind of funny for book-readers since she’s pretty anonymous in the novel. Likewise, it’s a little odd that Groby is Alec’s former servant and the tyrant who runs the starve acre farm, but I guess they (not unreasonably) liked Christopher Fairbank and wanted him to stick around.

The one thing that holds me back here is the fact that, at the end of the day, I’m just not a big fan of Gemma Arterton’s Tess. She has a whiny, almost whimpering quality that feels like such a put-on. In moments of grand anger, like Tess’ rightful dressing down of Alec here, the fire comes out and the performance really clicks. But in a lot of places, her over-the-top reactions and general whiny tone really bring the material down. Tess is not a whiner; she’s someone who suffers tremendous hardships and goes through hell, but with Arterton’s affected performance, it’s tough to feel that.

Overall, still the strongest installment of the miniseries to date, and one that sells the gut punch that is Angel’s hypocritical response to Tess’ confession, which is much to its credit.

[7.0/10] I don’t have as much to say about this one. It’s largely fine, dutifully working its way through the story beats and the iconic moments. The changes and compression are all defensible given the miniseries format. What it aims to do, it does perfectly fine.

But I still can't help but feel like this is the CW version of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, one that's simplified for a teenage audience and missing the layers of the original novel. Everything has the sense of artifice to it, and I’m not sure if it’s the style of acting or the swelling music or just the overall tone. But these never feel like real people in live moments that we and they become lost in to me. Instead, I just feel like I’m at a play watching little scenes with actors putting on a performance. Of course, that's what’s happening (more or less), but the performance aspect of it is conspicuous enough that it’s hard to connect with the characters.

And I don’t know, there’s just a certain gravity missing here. The interlude at the dairy farm is the happiest part of the book, and I do think this episode vindicates that. But there’s also a charge, a little spoken, almost forbidden passion between Tess and Angel, that I simply didn’t get here.

Against all odds, I actually like Eddie Redmayne here, as he evinces a certain scruffy charm that gives him a winning quality. But Gemma Arterton’s Tess has reverted to seeming like too much to me. And their dalliance feels like a silly teenage romance more so than the profound spiritual connection of the novel. Even in a mini-series, there’s only so much real estate, but I wish we had more time with the two of them together beyond the nuts and bolts of marriage and secrets. Seeing them come together and feel for one another was always a delight, and often moving, and the famed water-crossing is really the only place where it comes through loud and clear.

Otherwise, the changes don’t really bother me. It’s kind of funny that they bring Alec to Angel’s hometown so that the two suitors can lock eyes. Angel constantly planning for Brazil is a bit of a change from the novel, but one that helps seed his destination. And Tess wanting to be a schoolteacher feels a little random, but gives her a dream denied.

My one significant complaint is that I don’t really sense the camaraderie among the dairy maids. There’s some friendship there to be sure, but one of the best parts of the novel was the sense of mutual understanding and bond that emerged among the young women. Here, they seem much more like rivals than allies, but I guess we’ll give that one space to breathe.

I don’t know. Unlike the first episode, the changes made don’t feel as drastic, and don’t either impress me or bother me. This is a solid enough rendition of the story beats, and some of the performances are quality. (Marian and Reverend Clare do particularly well.) There’s just some of the magic, and more importantly, the depth missing from this telling of the tale that leaves me cold.

[7.2/10] It’s especially amusing watching this episode following a viewing of the O.J.: Made in America documentary. Seeing a roughly contemporary send-up of Johnny Cochran’s strategy to, as another huckster would say, “flood the zone with shit” in order to win the day and pervert justice is entertaining and telling at the same time. The scene where one of the jurors’ head explodes was particularly funny. And hey, as a Star Wars fan, the fact that it’s the “Chewbacca Defense” comes with an extra layer of amusement. (Though I’m not sure Chewie ever lived on Endor -- maybe that's part of why it “doesn’t make sense.” Oh no, did Cochran get me too?)

For the most part though, this is just an excuse to trot out a bunch of famous musical guest stars. Some of the material for them is amusing. Meatloaf starting out as a musician named “couscous” is a laugh. And Ozzy biting Kenny’s head off is a nice melding of the iconic bits from both the singer and the show. Plus hey, it’s nice to see Primus in the show proper and not just the intro. But for the most part, this is the kind of cameo cavalcade that seems antithetical to the show’s sensibilities.

That said, returning to these early episodes, there’s still a charming DIY quality to them, before the show got more polished and sure of itself. Frankly, this is more of a patched-together bit of nonsense than a cohesive story, but that's part of the charm.

I enjoy the sheer randomness of the early episodes. The boys going around to celebs and selling candy is a laugh via their sales pitch. Cartman’s frantic German dance is rib-tickling in its silliness. Even Chef’s exhaustion from escorting around town has a raunchy charm to it from the show’s puerile early days.

Overall, this one is mostly interesting as a time capsule of both the 1990s and of a particular shaky-but-endearing early era of South Park, but still has plenty of ridiculous charm to go ‘round.

[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.