Hi there! This week's Tuesday TV Touchbase takes a look at two season finales, both of which star Jack Quaid!
Jack plays Hughie Campbell on the Boys and is the voice of Brad Boimler on Star Trek: Lower Decks. Jack is the son of actors Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan.
His first major role in a movie was the son of a bitch who killed little Rue in The Hunger Games for which Jack is very, very sorry.
The Boys
What a wild and crazy ride this 2nd season has been.
The Boys drove a freakin' speed boat through a whale!
There's a super powered Nazi to contend with! No, not a NEO-Nazi but an O.G. Nazi that actually hung out with fucking Hitler!
There's a supe with an elongating super long penis called Love Sausage!
Almond Joy KILLS!!!!
There's a supe out there with the power to make HEADS SPLODE!
OK, Vought Corporation is exposed for using a drug called Compound V. Super heroes are made, not born. This is not the win for the Boys hoped for in their battle against Vought and their team of irresponsible and deadly super heroes known as the Seven. Vought CEO Stan Edgar turns this potentially damaging revelation to his advantage and damned if Vought's stock price ain't going up.
The Boys continue the fight to bring down Vought and the Seven down and it looks like they have any ally in Victoria Neuman, a progressive US congresswoman who thinks that Vought's power is too unchecked.
But Rep. Neuman's efforts to get to the bottom of Vought's shenanigans take a bad turn when during a congressional hearing, the chief witness against Vought is prevented from testifying when his head explodes!
Then another head splodes! Lots and lots of heads splode!!
HEADS? SPLODE?!
<take a moment for the shell shock>
<then we move on>
Meanwhile Billy Butcher finds out his wife Becca is not dead but alive and raising the son she had after Homelander raped her. Her son Ryan seems normal enough but can produce heat vision under stress. Homelander and Stormfront (the aforementioned Nazi) decide that li'l Ryan would be better off with them and they fly off with the child.
Becca goes to Billy for help in locating and retrieving Ryan. The Boys lock and load for a rescue mission.
Meanwhile, Hughie and Annie (Starlight) get some secret intel from A-Train who gets a secret file from the Church of the Collective on Stormfront. A-Train wants back on the Seven but the African American speedster can't get there with racist super Nazi Stormfront on the team. With the click of a button, Hughie and Annie send this info out into the wilds of the internet and the story quickly breaks: Stormfront is a 100 year old Nazi from Nazi Germany where she was buddies with Adolph frickin' Hitler.
I did Nazi that coming.
<rim shot>
The Boys get Ryan back with Becca but shit is going down. Homelander's pissed and flash frying anyone who gets in his way. Stormfront is super pissed but gets the ham salad beat out of her by Kimiko and Starlight and hell, Queen Maeve joins in on the fun as they punch, kick and stomp the shit out of Stormfront.
Stormfront summons up enough of her electrical powers to zap herself away as she unfortunately catches up to Becca and Ryan. Becca gets a good shot in when she stabs Stormfront in the eye. But Stormfront is turning up the juice now and is going to kill Becca. Meanwhile, Ryan screams at her to stop as his eyes glow red and...
Stormfront ends up like Anakin Skywalker, not quite but nearly dead, badly burned and missing her arms and legs. She muttering stuff in German. Becca, tragically, is collateral damage from Ryan's heat vision burst. With her final breaths, Becca makes Billy Butcher promise to protect Ryan, to make sure he understands that her death is not his fault.
Butcher makes that promise but he's not happy about it. Ryan may be just a boy but he's another supe whose cost Butcher dearly, this time the life of the woman he loved more than anyone.
But when Homelander shows up and makes a move to take Ryan with him, Butcher stands up to protect the boy. But it's Queen Maeve who sets Homelander back on his heels. Maeve finally reveals the video she has of the airliner from season 1 that Homelander allowed to crash.
There is an uneasy detente. Starlight is back on the Seven and in her original skirt/cape combo and not the super tight sexualized outfit Vought's marketing team made her wear; Annie is asserting herself on this team now.
The reverend who heads up the Church of the Collective is collaborating with Victoria Neuman.
Well, that sucks! We thought she was one of the good guys.
It gets worse when Vic causes the reverend's head...
to SPLODE!
Oh, hell no! Is there not anyone on this damn show we can trust?
There is a Season 3 a comin' but we don't know when.
It can't get here soon enough.
Star Trek: Lower Decks
There is a trope in serialized fiction known as "the status quo is god". Whatever actions are taken by the characters in any given installment will not impact the long term status of those characters.
In the finale for the first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, the status quo is told to go get bent.
Mariner's secret, that she is the daughter of Captain Freeman, gets blabbed by Boimler. Knowing she is the captain's daughter, other crew members and officers of the USS Cerritos start sucking up to Marriner which is making her life hell. All Marriner ever wanted was to lay low amongst the workers bees on the lower decks.
Meanwhile trouble is a brewing out in space. The USS Solvang has been destroyed, it's entire crew killed by the Pakleds.
Wait! The Pakleds?!?!
The same Pakleds who appeared in "Samaritan Snare" from the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation? The slow witted aliens who "look for things to make us go"? Those Pakleds?!?!
Well, yes. They're not any smarter (they assume any Federation starship is the Enterprise) but they have become more brutal in their collection of parts to help make them go. Seems no one was paying attention to the Pakleds after the Enterprise encountered them years before.
What happened to the Solvang is now happening to the Cerritos as grappling arms from the Pakled's smorgasbord of a ship grasp and tear at the Cerritos.
As the Pakleds beam over to the Cerritos, an injured Captain Freeman lets Mariner take command, counting on her daughter's unconventional thinking to somehow save the day.
Rutherford develops a computer virus using his holographic creation Badgey to disable the Pakled ship. But it can't be transmitted; it has to be delivered to the Pakled ship and manually placed in their system.
They have an exocomp named Peanut Hamper that could deliver the virus but decides not to. Peanut Hamper doesn't want to die. Peanut Hamper beams off into outer space.
Peanut Hamper is a dick!
Bajoran security chief Shaxs flies Rutherford to the the Pakled ship in a shuttle. (It's the same shuttle our main cast has been working on all season.)
This is the sort of high octane, action packed fighting Shaxs has been waiting for all season as he fights the Pakleds single handedly on their ship while Rutherford down loads the virus using his cybernetic implants.
Badgey, however, has other plans and refuses to upload the virus 100% until he is sure Rutherford is going to die on the Pakled ship.
Shaxs has a different plan.
Tearing out Rutherford’s cybernetic implants and throwing the young crewman back into the shuttle and literally kicking the shuttle off the Pakled ship, Shaxs stays behind fighting the Pakleds as the virus clicks to 100% and the Pakled ship goes BOOM!
Guys, Shaxs is dead. We have a character played by an actor in the opening credits actually killed off.
The Pakleds are defeated.
Except the Pakleds have other plans.
Other Pakled ships arrive to decimate the Cerritos. Marriner is actually out of ideas and orders an "abandon ship".
Captain William T. Riker has other ideas.
Yep! The USS Titan commanded by Will Riker his own damn self shows up to kick Pakled ass!
Woo-Hoo!
The USS Cerritos is in a star base space dock being rebuilt. Capt. Freeman insists the ship come out of its rebuild looking like it did before. She doesn't want it come out looking like a Sovereign class ship.
But even if Freeman can keep the Cerritos looking the same, so much else has changed.
Shaxs is dead. Freeman leads a funeral and sadly says that he is with the prophets now as per his Bajoran faith.
Rutherford survived the destruction of the Pakled ship thanks to Shaxs' sacrifice but the loss of his cybernetic implants have resulted in the loss of his long-term memory. Tendi takes a positive outlook on Rutherford's memory loss, suggesting this just means they get to become best friends all over again.
Capt. Freeman is forced to re-examine her relationship with Marriner, deciding that maybe her daughter's unconventional thinking may be less of an obstacle and more of a benefit.
And Brad Boimler is leaving.
Wait! What? Boimler? Leaving? No!
Boimler accepts a promotion to the USS Titan. Whoa.
It took me awhile to get use to the rhythm of Star Trek as an animated comedy but the show is a wonderful answer to a Trekker's dreams, a Star Trek showing building on the foundation of all the Star Treks that have come before while building its on thing.
Star Trek: Lower Decks is an oasis of hope and light in a Star Trek universe that current Trek overseer Alex Kurtzman is determined to make as grim and gritty as possible.
Star Trek: Lower Decks challenges our expectations for Star Trek can be but it does so with a spirit of fun and joy and true affection for what has come before.
Replacing Star Trek: Lower Decks as NEW Star Trek on CBS All Access is season three of Star Trek: Discovery. I will not be writing about that for awhile as my family and I are still catching up on the seasons 1 and 2.
Well, that is that for this weeks Tuesday TV Touchbase.
Until next time, stay safe, remember to be good to one another and keep it down, would ya, I'm trying to watch some TV here.
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