For this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase, we have a LOT of ground to cover.
Superman & Lois
Tal-Rho (aka Morgan Edge) has become the Eradicator and can turn people into Kryptonians at will. Superman and John Henry Irons are pushed past their limits to knock the Kryptonians out of their respective human hosts and shut Tal-Rho down once and for all.
Zeta-Rho, Tal-Rho's total hard ass bastard of a father, is occupying Jordan Kent but Lois and his brother Jonathan expel Zeta-Rho's corrupt ass out of Jordan using the power of love or something.
In the season finale's extended epilogue, Superman goes public with the truth about Edge's origin.
Lois purchases half of the Gazette to keep Chrissy from selling it away.
A vessel locks onto Irons' suit and lands at the Kent farm. His daughter Natalie pops out and thinks Lois is her mom.
Oh, this is gonna be awkward.
We'll have to wait until January 2022 before season 2 of Superman & Lois drops.
I am disappointed the entire season goes by without Supergirl being even so much as name dropped at least once.
Otherwise I have enjoyed how this series has taken the Superman mythos in an entirely new direction from any other Superman related project.
Stargirl
Season 2 kicks off with super heroes with nothing to do. Courtney Whitmore and her JSA patrol Blue Valley for supervillains. Nope, no super villains here.
Courtney is assigned summer school after failing several classes and getting into an unintentional altercation with Artemis. Yolanda, struggling with the traumatic stress of killing Brainwave, is also enrolled in summer school. Yolanda gets all A's but her very much unforgiving, judgemental asshole parents have enrolled her in summer school to "keep her out of trouble".
Meanwhile, Rick is also consigned to summer school despite passing his history final. His total bitch of a teacher assumes Rick must have cheated instead of him actually buckling down and studying for the damn thing. Rick has a side project of bringing food to Solomon Grundy who's living out in the woods. It's not a healthy diet, mind you, pizza and buckets of fried chicken but Grundy seems appreciative.
Dear sweet positive Beth is having the sweetness and positivity beaten out of her. Her parents who just can't seem to stand the girl (she makes them breakfast and cooks their dinner, for Christ's sake!) apparently can't seem to stand each other and are filing for divorce. Beth is able to reboot the Chuck A.I. in the Doctor Mid-Nite goggles but Chuck doesn't remember her and shuts himself down.
Enter Jenny, the daughter of the deceased Alan Scott, Green Lanterns. Courtney is skeptical but slowly comes around to believing in this girl who is struggling to understand and control the power of the Green Lantern.
Man, if only these kids had some super villains to fight.
Well, Cindy Burman's working on it with the mystic Black Diamond of Eclipso which has turned Cindy's estranged stepmother into ash. Cindy likes to think she's in control but Eclipso has other plans.
And another old JSA foe has shown up in Blue Valley, a British man called Richard Swift. Pat Dugan recognizes him as the Shade.
Season 2 of Stargirl lacks the focus of Courtney's journey of self-discovery from season 1. Hopefully with the arrival of the Shade and the ultimate culmination of whatever Eclipso is up to, the show will have a renewed sense of direction.
Star Trek - Lower Decks
The second season of Star Trek's animated action comedy series has kicked off. The season opener deals with that classic Trek trope of a crew person getting zapped into something greater like unto a god yadda yadda yadda. Commander Ransom gets zapped with strange energies that transform him into a god like being who as a large disembodied head attacks the Cerritos.
The second episode taps into the lore of Next Gen episodes, "Darkmok", "The Most Toys" and "Second Chances". If you were missing Boimler on the Cerritos but didn't want him to lose his shot at serving with Captain Riker on the Titan, thanks to a disruption field and a transporter mishap, you get both.
Lower Decks continues to have fun with exploring every nook and cranny of the Star Trek mythos. There is no Trek reference too obscure for this show make.
What If...?
Like the comic book series for which it is named, What If...? is an animated series on Disney+ that posits an alternate take on established events in the MCU.
The first episodes look at what would've happened if Peggy Carter got the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers.
A few things play out differently from Captain America: The First Avenger.
- Bucky Barnes does not get lost to fall in the clutches of Hydra to become the Winter Soldier.
- Decades before his son gets a chance to do it, Howard Stark builds an Iron Man type suit for Steve Rogers to use.
- Peggy as Captain Carter does get lost in time but not frozen in the ice but sucked into a Tesseract created portal in order to stop an alien squid monster from destroying Earth.
The second episode posits what if the Ravagers abducted a young T'Challa instead of Peter Quill. In Chadwick Boseman's last performance, T'Challa becomes Star Lord and turns the Ravagers into a force for good. Even Thanos is just one of the guys on the team. Howard the Duck's in this for more than a cameo. All of this doesn't stop Ego from still wanting to get his hands on his son Peter Quill.
What If...? is beautifully animated with with clever stories playing on our collective knowledge of the MCU. And where possible, original actors are providing the voices for these stories. Hayley Atwell and John Slattery are on hand as Peggy Carter and Howard Stark and Michael Rooker and Karen Gillan provide the voices of Yondu and Nebula.
Jeopardy
Well, this is a total fuck up. Last week after taping 5 episodes of Jeopardy as it's new host, Mike Richards as stepped down as host. The litany of bad news was just overwhelming.
The discrimination lawsuits surrounding his time as producer of The Price Is Right.
The offensive comments towards women and minorities in a pod cast.
The over all bad optics of the executive producer of Jeopardy actually getting the host job in the first place.
The slow drip of behind the scenes chatter that Richards' involvement in the host selection process was not above board and the growing sense that all is not well with the support staff at Jeopardy under Richard's leadership.
What will be done with those 5 episodes will be interesting. The word is they will air but I presume there will need to be some editing or reshooting of intros with any big speeches from Richards on what an honor it is to be the new host of Jeopardy, blah blah blah.
Quite frankly, this whole guest hosting thing leading up to the new host was the kind of circus that I think Alex Trebek would have absolutely hated. The show should've appointed one person as a interim host for the rest of the season and assuming that person didn't drive the show into a ditch, they could have the gig on the regular if they wanted it.
Apparently after Richards' one week of episodes are over, we're back on the guest host train for awhile again.
Well, we'll be tuning in because we're curious how long Matt Amodio can sustain his run as Jeopardy champion.
As Alex said, the contestants are the true stars of Jeopardy.
And that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase. Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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