Stargirl, Season 1, Episode 10: Brainwave Jr.
It's interesting that the episode basically starts off with a flashback to Pat and Barbara's first meeting in a diner and ended up sharing a banana split (that diner waitress was totally playing Cupid, by the way, since we see two banana splits later on). This cuts away to the present day, with Barbara finding out Courtney, Pat and the Cosmic Staff, and after several episodes of the father-and-daughter pair being wishy-washy about telling Barbara everything (and after Courtney's broom excuse) we finally have everything on the table for Barbara. Who, after making the obligatory jabs about the absolute lameness of the superhero name 'Stripesy', begins to lay it on pretty thick on her husband and her daughter about just how utterly irresponsible they are. And considering the faux car accident... yeah, Barbara has an absolute right to go ballistic, making the 'civilian parent gets angry about teenage superhero' plot have a fair bit more impact.
We also get the build-up that, hey, Courtney's "Starman's my dad!" insistence is about to get torn to shreds pretty viciously. Barbara denies it flat-out, and in the episode even sends an email out to get in touch with Court's biological father, Sam Kurtis, which is hopefully going to lead to an adaptation of one of my favourite heartbreaking scenes in the Stars and STRIPE comics.
I also want to briefly talk a bit of poor, poor Mike, the little brother who tries his best to be mature but he's also just a kid and everyone keeps telling him to go out of the room, this doesn't concern him when he's seeing Pat and Barbara seemingly at the brink of a divorce. And as supportive as the little man wants to be, the sight of everyone essentially shutting him out is kinda sad. I'm not sure if we're going to have an elaborate 'family member finds out about superhero' stuff since we just got one with Barbara this episode. It'd be annoying, but I'm pretty sure they have to do something with Mike, right? After honestly being treated as an afterthought for the majority of the season, I find myself surprisingly invested in the little kid.
On the bad guys' side, instead of a family breaking up, we have a reconciliation. Or at least, what initially seems to be a reconciliation. I have gone on record saying that one of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is convenient amnesia plots, and this would've been a pretty terrible one. Oh, Brainwave wakes up, and forgets everything about recent events, about Project New America, and seems to be a misguided but good dad who's proud and happy that his son is having the same mind powers that he has. Brainwave seems to have regressed into how he was many, many years ago after his wife Merri (who almost changed Brainwave's view of the world on humans being assholes) died... found in an ice-cold pool. Considering the lengths we've seen Icicle do things, of course we -- and Henry Junior -- assume immediately that it's Icicle that killed Mirri Pemberton (who also happens to be Starman's sister, oh what a small world). The 'damn you Jordan' in Brainwave's tape is also a pretty delightful red herring. Thus distrusting Icicle, Henry Junior returns to the hospital too late, because Brainwave and Icicle are already palling around, and the Cosmic Staff, who goes off to fight Icicle on his own, gets one-shotted and frozen by Icicle. Henry Junior sees it all but manages to hide. And, well, ultimately all he can do is seek out Courtney, literally the only person who he can trust to help him. Courtney, who, herself, is dealing with her parents fighting and her missing Cosmic Staff. I also absolutely love the meeting between the two. "My dad's lost his memory!" "That's good! ...I mean, that's bad!" as well as the instant decision to adopt Henry as her cousin because he's the son of Merri Pemberton. That's hilarious.
Of course, the rest of the JSA refuses to hear of this, especially Rick and Yolanda. Rick's constant noting that they're going to have to take out Brainwave as well ends up causing Henry Junior to get aggressive too... but ultimately the JSA helps out although Yolanda does give an ultimatum that she's just helping Courtney to keep her alive, but they're no longer friends after this.
I also do love that the show is giving Barbara some agency. Sure, she's panicking, planning to leave Blue Valley and taking Courtney away from this superhero madness... but she's also researching Starman on her own. The thing is, both Pat and Barbara's priorities of keeping the kids safe are on-sync, and when they actually do bump into Jordan Mahkent, Barbara acts smart and ends up recording his Norwegian-speaking parents. Sure, she's angry at Court and Pat, but that doesn't make their enemies any less supervillains. They don't discover much from the senior Mahkents, other than the revelation that Jordan likes Barbara and that there's some mysterious machine.
The episode, of course, culminates in the JSA (and Brainwave Jr) going off to the underground base. Stargirl, Wildcat and Brainwave Junior recover the Cosmic Staff and fighting against the Dragon King's henchmen while Hourman and his one-track mind gets distracted by the cage with Solomon Grundy in it and tries to rip the door open. The fight scene in here is pretty neat even if it's just against a bunch of mooks, coupled with the revelation of the Dragon King's lizard-man face and Cindy just yelling in the background begging to be allowed to join the carnage and kill Courtney. Meanwhile, Brainwave has recovered his memory, and Henry Jr is clearly not happy at the cold-hearted asshole his dad truly is. Conflict! Sure, they get the staff back and zapped the Dragon King, but Rick ultimately just wastes time trying to open Grundy's cage and Brainwave is unleashed.
The JSA are forced into a retreat, and, hey, it seems like this whole episode is a recruitment episode for Brainwave Junior, right? His dad's redemption and rehabilitation is aborted by Icicle and Dragon King; and he also discovers that Icicle might've killed his mom to ensure his dad's compliance. And while the rest of the JSA hates him, his 'cousin' Courtney likes him enough, right? Except not really. As they arrive on one of those RPG sewer dungeon gratings and they slip through the bent metal gratings courtesy of Hourman, Brainwave Senior arrives and faces off against them. Henry Jr uses his mind powers to forcibly send Courtney into safety before confronting his dad.And Henry Jr tries his best to get through to his dad, talking about how people aren't monsters, talking about his mom... until we get the revelation that, no, Brainwave was the one who killed his own wife to strengthen himself to 'make a choice', and he's going to make one now. Brainwaves Senior and Junior fight... and Brainwave Senior straight-up just executes his son, whacking him with giant chunks of debris bringing the entire tunnel collapsing above Henry Junior, bringing us yet another casualty of battle -- this time a character we've actually spent time building up instead of a literal 'hi I'm here for the week' guest star like Joey Zarick. And just before he dies, of course Henry Jr manages to at least redeem himself -- apologizing to Yolanda and encouraging Courtney to continue with her belief about 'people are good'.
And for a character that has mostly been a background presence alternating between 'jock' and 'mourning' and only really had any sort of proper screentime in episode 9 and 10, it's amazing just how well-done they wrote Henry Junior's eventual character change. The death is well-written and, while not super-original, pretty engaging. I'm not sure if the temporary amnesia for Brainwave was necessary for it to work (all it really functioned was to delay Icicle knowing about Courtney = Stargirl), but it somehow did. And ultimately, the episode serves what it's meant to serve -- the huge escalation before the ultimate final fight of the season. We've got one of the major villains being brought back to prominence, we've got a major character death, and our heroes are at the backfoot. I'm also surprised at how well the Barbara stuff ended up being portrayed, considering how these sort of storylines don't tend to always come off well. Anyway, a pretty fantastic episode.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The Girl of a Thousand Gimmicks, a.k.a. Merri Pemberton, is the adoptive sister of Sylvester Pemberton in the comics. She is a vigilante who uses a lot of gimmicks as weapons, and as here, he also married Henry King Senior and is the mother of Henry King Junior. She's not dead in the comics, though.
- Brainwave Jr (or sometimes just "Brainwave", and sometimes with a space in the name), a.k.a. Henry King Junior, is a superhero who was bequeathed his powers by his dying father, the reformed supervillain Brain Wave. Brainwave Jr. was part of the original Infinity Inc, and would waver back and forth between being a hero or a villain. Evidently, this backstory and character history was vastly altered for the show.
- "Snapdragon", the name that Courtney mis-calls the Dragon King, is actually the name of the Dragon King's project in the original Stars and STRIPE.
- One of the emails in Barbara's computer is from "RoyalFlushC", a reference to the playing card based Royal Flush Gang from the comics. In the comics, Sam Kurtis was a low-ranking member of the Royal Flush Gang for a while.
- Barbara mis-names Icicle as 'the Iceman'. That's an X-Man, Barbara, wrong comic-book publishing company.
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