Turn and Face the Strange Ph-ph-phases

A Marvel show that's marvelous on its own [View this email online]( [Pop Culture Happy Hour]( by Glen Weldon Welcome! It was a record week for Beyoncé ([the historical kind and not, unfortunately, the album of the year kind]( and for Viola Davis, [who got that EGOT](. It was the week a truly iconic TV comedy set freshly [to work to make itself less so](. And it was the week that we received the happy news that we will soon [feel justified in shouting Azúcar]( every time we dump quarters into the washer at the laundromat. Even more than we do already, somehow! Imagine! Turn and Face the Strange Ph-ph-phases Which phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are we in again? I’ve lost my scorecard. Epsilon? Black Diamond? Platinum Plus? Club Level? Whichever one it is, you’d be forgiven for feeling a bit underwater. The IP just keeps flowing, after all; where once it pooled around our collective cultural ankles, we’re now all of us wading hip-deep through Marvel flotsam and jetsam without a bilge pump in sight. Another [big Marvel movie descends on us next week]( in fact – one which promises (probably not the right word) to end one movie trilogy while tossing a big ol’ handful of Mentos into the 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke that is current MCU continuity. Amid all that messy, sticky, corn-syrupy tumult, the Marvel animated series [Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur]( slides onto Disney+ on Friday. It’s a bright, sunny, colorful bauble of a show that happily self-isolates itself far from the portentous multiversal shenanigans and phase-shifts that beset other Marvel properties. It’s off in its own little corner, though its retina-sizzling colors, dynamic animation and propulsive soundtrack betray its indebtedness to the terrific Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. They share a breeziness, a blithe disregard for the twin nerdy specters of Canon and Continuity that turn some fans into joyless, overzealous bookkeepers. Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur/Marvel Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is aimed squarely at kids, starring as it does 13-year-old Lunella Lafayette, voiced by Diamond White. Lunella’s a smart Black kid living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a neighborhood she dearly loves – as witnessed by the first scene of the pilot, in which she roller skates through the streets greeting everyone she meets as the lyrics to the song in her head magically manifest on street signs and storefront windows. (The three episodes made available to critics suggest the series is also a kind of stealth musical, as original songs composed by Raphael Saadiq feature largely on the soundtrack.) Lunella’s loving family runs a popular roller disco. (Not for nothing, but her grandmother and mother are voiced by Alfre Woodard and Sasheer Zamata, respectively.) Lunella’s a steadfastly confident, upbeat presence, though her intelligence and her propensity for inventing gadgets mark her as an outsider at school. When one such gadget opens a portal that summons a T. rex with the personality of a golden retriever (voiced, or I should say grunted, by Fred Tatasciore), the two become a crime-fighting team, cleaning up the streets of their beloved LES with a publicity assist from Lunella’s social media influencer classmate Casey, voiced by Libe Barer. There’s a STEM component here too, as each episode comes with a science or engineering lesson tucked neatly inside. In a nice, humanizing touch, the only time Lunella’s chipper demeanor cracks is whenever someone prevents her from showing off how smart she is. I felt seen. Then I felt targeted. The press materials note that the show is directed and written by a team composed entirely of women of color – though maybe the very funny episode in which Lunella invents a chemical treatment so harsh that it turns her hair into a super villain would have tipped folks off. The series was produced and co-created by Laurence Fishburne, who shows up a few episodes in to voice a character I won’t spoil; he knocks it out of the park and, naturally, gets a great song to sing while doing so. Forget phases, forget variants, forget needing to read a MCU wiki to know how what you’re watching fits into what’s come before it. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur simply, mercifully is – and what it is, is a delight. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- We Recommend The MCU may be all over the map these days, but the DC Extended Universe is no slouch in the “Wait, what?” department either. It’s recently [been taken over by Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn]( which suggests a move away from Snyderian gloom (yay!) but augurs a drift toward cynical glibness (resigned sigh). But I’m greatly encouraged by his stated fondness for [Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow]( a recent comic by writer Tom King and artist Bilquis Evely now collected in trade paperback. It’s a vastly different take that relocates Superman’s cousin to a faraway planet and turns her into a fantasy/sci-fi version of True Grit’s Rooster Cogburn. A big swing, but it works. I gave up on [Elden Ring]( after a few months of dying, er, trying. I loved roaming the vast landscapes, but hated all the boss battles, with their rote memorization of attack patterns that only let you chip away at the bad guy’s health in depressingly wee increments before having to endlessly lather, rinse and repeat. It sent me scurrying back to the warm embrace of my old standby, the Assassin’s Creed series. I’d beaten [Valhalla]( a month after it came out, but it was therapeutic to return to those familiar shores in such an overpowered capacity, making mincemeat out of anyone foolish to cross my path as I amassed all the gold, armor and weapons I didn’t have time to collect before. It was so satisfying to scour the map clean of all its previously overlooked glowing dots of treasure, like some kind of cartographical Viking Roomba. I’d skipped Valhalla’s precursor, [Assassin’s Creed Odyssey]( but I just downloaded it and have started to sail the wine-dark seas of Ancient Greece while flirting with hot locals. Heaven. Or, more precisely, Elysium. Our pal Chloe Veltman had a terrific piece on Morning Edition about how [performing arts groups are being forced to change how they work]( – and how they think. Bill Nighy’s [up for a best actor Oscar for Living]( and he’s quite good in it, which made me remember some of his previous performances, big and small. One I’d forgotten about completely was his uncredited cameo at the end of the Doctor Who episode “Vincent and the Doctor,” in which he’s [an art curator called to explain the legacy of Vincent Van Gogh to … an incredulous Van Gogh himself](. That Who episode was one of the first things I’d talked about on the first episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour 13 years ago now. And while I maintain that the episode’s Monster of the Week (a giant invisible space-turkey) is hilarious, I’d forgotten how much gravitas Nighy brought to a tiny role, which made the ending of a mostly very silly episode land with the power it needed to. What We Did This Week Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgård star in Infinity Pool/NEON On Monday, Stephen, Anastasia Tsioulcas and Kiana Fitzgerald [broke down the Grammys](. And Stephen wrote up [some Grammy takeaways](. On Tuesday, Linda, Aisha and I [rhapsodized about Poker Face]( which manages to be Peak Rian Johnson, Peak Natasha Lyonne, and, not coincidentally, Peak Us. On Wednesday, Aisha and Jordan Crucchiola [swam laps in Infinity Pool](. On Thursday, Stephen, Daisy Rosario and Ella Cerón wondered if [80 for Brady would leave audiences feeling … deflated](. On Friday, Stephen, Linda, Aisha and Christina Tucker asked [Magic Mike’s Last Dance to hold them, to scold them, cause when they’re bad they’re so, so bad.]( What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - Stephen: Remembering [Burt Bacharach]( - Linda: The movie Sharper [coming to AppleTV+]( on Feb. 17 - Aisha: The Switched on Pop episode [about SZA]( - Christina: The Lord of the Rings at [Radio City Music Hall]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. [Find a Station]( --------------------------------------------------------------- [Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+](. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? 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