TV Shows, Summer 2023

DuckTales (Disney+, Season 3) - It’s been a few years since I watched the first two seasons, but this series continued to delight through the third season. Like many shows of its ilk, it got a bit continuity-heavy and though I really appreciated the mythology gags (basically every Disney Afternoon character showed up at one point or another), I suspect this was starting to get inaccessible for the kids who are the actual target audience. I also object to the revelation about Webby’s parentage on the grounds that it goes against the “family is what you make of it” moral the show has been pushing for three seasons. Regardless, this was a very strong series that stood on the shoulders of the original and made something overall much better.

Titans (HBOMax, Season 4, part 2) – Picking up from where we left off, Brother Blood consistently proves himself not nearly as capable as he’s threatened to be. (He killed a roomful of people with his mind and took out Superboy with a single blast; he shouldn’t have a five-minute fight with two normal dudes with sticks.) The twist in the second episode that the two resistance members in Caul’s Folly are deaf was…not handled well from a realism perspective, as they’re apparently the world’s best lip-readers and can speak impeccably. Tim and Bernard do some romance tropes just for funsies. Superboy walks on the Lex side for a while and it blows up in his face. The Doom Patrol guest stars (or some version of them does—Titans and Doom Patrol appear to take place on similar but separate Earths) to ultimately just be amusing but do nothing of consequence. A bunch of minor hanging mysteries from earlier seasons were thoroughly ignored. The series ends on a high note, with all the regulars (including Jason Todd) resolving their major emotional arcs; everyone rides off into the sunset and Dick and Kory get together in the end. The series wasn’t brilliance, but it was decent and I was entertained.

My Adventures With Superman (HBOMax, Season 1) – The adorably anime Superman cartoon. Lois is Korean, Jimmy is black, and Clark is an adorable doofus who blushes a lot. It really gets Superman, and why Superman can’t be a loner hero. And while it packs a lot into ten episodes, they clearly expect more seasons and set up Waller, Brainiac and Zod to return as villains. I dig it.

Good Omens (Amazon, Season 2) – The fans wanted more Aziraphale and Crowley, and that’s what they got. A new set of complications with Heaven and Hell arise and the archangel Gabriel shows up naked and amnesiac on Aziraphale’s doorstep; and we get a season of them poking around at the edges of the mystery and lots of flashbacks to their interactions centuries before. There are a bunch of places where Gaiman (or the co-writers) were clearly trying to channel Pratchett; it’s not perfect but it’s pretty close. Gaiman commented that this was an interim piece between the origin novel and the sequel that he and Pratchett discussed but never wrote, which would in theory be season 3. (And if Amazon decides not to renew it, we can all safely assume Gaiman will actually just go ahead and write that novel.) But really, this is just a bunch of fanservice between other plots, a way to move pieces around the board to tell a real story later and toss candy to the Tumblr fans. I suspect it will ultimately be regarded as either a romantic-comedy third-act fluff interquel (if season 3 happens and tells a real story) or the series ending with a mean-ass coda.

Star Trek: Discovery (Downloaded, Season 2) – Compared to season 1 it feels more “Star Trekish” despite the very continuous, less-episodic nature, probably because you get a competent Captain and the crew trust each other and get to be good at their jobs. They give a bunch more screen time to the bridge crew to make up for the fact that it takes a third of a season to get all the regulars from last season back onto the ship. It remains interesting that this is the first Star Trek series that really has a “main character” (Michael) where the earlier five were all clearly ensemble pieces even if the captain always got top billing. The emotional beats really could have used more filler “monster of the week” episodes in between them to let them breathe; this was very dense for 14 episodes. The Red Angel plot has some serious holes in it (How did Starfleet know about the signals before they happened? How did Spock learn about them when the Angel he mind-melded with wasn’t the one who set the signals? Why didn’t they use the damn spore drive to hide in the Delta Quadrant where Control could never, ever reach them?) but I’m entertained that they came up with an excuse to remove Discovery from causing more continuity problems and a reason Spock would never mention Michael. This is a fun series, but I don’t love the dark tone and I’m hoping for lighter fare when we get to Strange New Worlds.

Star Trek: Prodigy (Downloaded, Season 1) – I watched the first three episodes and paid half-attention as Jethrien and ARR watched two more. This is an amalgam of Star Trek: Voyager and Space Cases (a ragtag group of young aliens end up on a Starfleet ship in the Delta quadrant with no idea what they’re doing) and a Star Wars cartoon animation style (the villain is a slightly-redrawn Snoke and his second-in-command is General Grievous without the lightsabers). A hologram of Captain Janeway is aboard the ship to act as their mentor, combining the two best characters from Voyager into one. Also, the Protostar has a 3D printer than can make shuttlecraft—clearly a reference to the running gag of how many shuttlecraft the Voyager lost but never seemed to run out of.

I've got too many comics reviews and need to start catching up

Lumberjanes (volumes 18-20) – The end of summer finally arrives, but it doesn’t go out on a whimper. The girls all do their “last big thing”, the story of the first Lumberjane is revealed, and most of the guest-star characters reappear for a big finale which reveals a monstrous being trapped by the magical woods with a really unsurprising weakness (the power of friendship). Honestly this series went on a little too long—I think they spent too long as a semi-anthology series with rotating creators before finally getting back to pay off material from the first few volumes—but it was adorable throughout. I continue to heartily recommend the first few volumes of this series to anyone who likes ADVENTURE! regardless.

At the Jersey City Pride Festival, I bought a “Bi Box” of comics (and assorted stickers and trinkets) for $60; which is egregious for five comic books but it was supporting indie queer creators.

Bi Visibility #1-2 and Rainbow Canvas #1 – These are anthology books, which carried the usual set of problems of being a thoroughly mixed bag, though the fact that it was basically all personal stories by bisexual creators made it appealing to me regardless. The story that was basically a big response to the fan reaction of Tim Drake (Robin) being bi warmed my heart. The latter book included links to a number of Webtoon series that it teased, but none of them leapt out at me as things I really cared about pursuing.

Slice of Life (Issues #1-2) – This was originally written as webtoon episodes, and it shows in the episodic nature of the story. It stars two sisters, and the protagonist of one’s favorite anime (“Lady Vengeance”) is mysteriously brought into the real world, where she starts a budding romance with the other sister. Fish out of water comedy and queer romance; two great tastes that go great together.