Quarantine Control #206: Godspeed, Mutated Stars by the Studio

This week officially marks four years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, after news of the first deaths started to come in from the United States and several other countries in the world. The virus soon racked up a massive kill count, the kind that should have changed several societies forever. Yet… it didn’t. It’s wild how we all just moved on like it never happened, and even worse how some people like to pretend the virus wasn’t a thing at all, while saying the vaccine is the real virus. We’re, uh, not in a good place in society, to say the least.

But hey, we’re still here! At least it gave you a cool ongoing feature on Damage Control Blog, which will reach its own fourth anniversary in mere weeks.

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Geoffrey Barnes

I participated in the calm before the nostalgia storm that arrives in six days.

X-Men: The Animated Series — Season 5 (1996-1997)
Source: Disney Plus
Episodes: 6

I’m very much looking forward to the start of X-Men ’97, the series set to pick up where X-Men: The Animated Series ended in 1997. Before that, though, I needed to refresh my memory on the final season, which I’d only watched three episodes of. (Note that this was for the actual season 5 in production order, not including the “Phalanx Covenant” and “Storm Front” episodes, that didn’t air until after the original “Beyond Good and Evil” finale.) I vividly remembered the final episodes not being that well received thanks to the extremely low-budget animation, after Saban Entertainment gave them to a cheaper and less-experienced studio to produce. But they were from the same writing and direction team, so they couldn’t have been that bad. That’s why I needed to rewatch them.

The X-Men series had plenty of multi-episode sagas, one of the earliest animated series I can think of (as someone who was young when the series first aired) which showed how the young’uns could and can absolutely handle semi-lengthy sagas. It’s a shame Jeph Loeb couldn’t be convinced otherwise when he spearheaded the second half of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ second season. This doesn’t apply to the final episodes in the season, which resolve all their tales in solo episodes. Some episodes are better than others, and they’re all rife with Quality Animation™. But when they hit, they hit pretty well. None of them are bad per se.

The stories for the two Jubilee-led episodes have the feel of filler material, though they’re not bad. They seemed to be from a team that wanted to give the character something to do and put her in the spotlight for the final episodes, as the character the younger audience was meant to identify with. (This was well before they turned her into a vampire — comic book stories are wild.) Having Jubilee as a potential host body for Apocalypse is a fun concept, especially when it gave the showrunners an excuse to bring back the extremely hammy Fabian Cortez. The second episode, which has her telling a fantasy story that features certain X-Men in a fantasy world to kids, is also nice enough.

The other episodes fare a bit better. The episode featuring an underground segment of the U.S. Army’s attempts to recruit mutants was solid, which feels like a setup for a future plot they should follow in the future. Two others focus on the pasts of certain characters. I remembered seeing “Old Soldiers” when I was younger, which features Wolverine/Logan telling a World War II-era story. It’s worth it for that and the appearance of Captain America. The same goes for “Descent,” which focuses on the past of Nathaniel Esssex/Mr. Sinister, even more important considering the part he’s set to play in X-Men ’97.

It’s of course “Graduation Day” that sticks out as the best here, the finale which teases a world on the verge of a World War among humans and mutans with Professor X’s presumed death. It’s also the episode I needed to refamiliarize myself with the most, considering the new series will pick up right from where this one ended, complete with Magneto taking over the X-Men.

It’s a real damned shame about the animation, though. The episodes indeed still shine thanks to the solid writing and direction all the way through, but the animation is distractingly bad at several points. The X-Men series’ animation was never good, but the results here were frequently off model in terms of the human and mutant proportions and perspectives. Beast was too reminiscent of a Goomba from the 1990s Super Mario Bros. movie at one point, in a scene that was hardly funny. But it speaks to how good of a cartoon this remained throughout its five-year tenure that the episodes still shine despite this sore sticking point.

The X-Men ’97 episodes are set to have much improved animation from the previews provided thus far, but hopefully the writing and direction are equally as strong despite the showrunners from the previous series having a largely hands-off approach. We won’t have to wait long to find out. But I’m glad the final season was still watchable despite its very evident flaws.

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Angela Moseley

As the time came closer and closer to writing this piece, I found myself wringing my hands. I haven’t really been watching a lot lately as my attention has been pulled in several directions. I’ve not made much progress in terms of catching up on anime– I just got started on the third season of Blue Exorcist. I’m slightly behind on Urusei Yatsura because HiDive’s newest update makes subtitles impossible to use on some streaming devices. HiDive has a great selection of shows, but their streaming service is at least a decade behind everyone else. On the gaming front, I’m still making my way through Nadeshiko’s route in Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness, and that deserves its own write-up. Thankfully, I’m always listening to podcasts at work and there’s one I’ve enjoyed for quite a few months now.

Warning, this one’s heavily Philly-based and is even heavier on WHYY/NPR tidbits.

Studio 2 (2023)
Source: WHYY, Any Podcatcher, 90.9 FM in Philadelphia
Episodes: 101 (as of this writing)

In 2022, longtime WHYY radio host Marty Moss-Coane announced that she would be retiring from Radio Times, a show she had hosted for 35 years. Her reasons for retiring were completely understandable. She’d been in the hosting seat for three-and-a-half decades, doing a daily show (which had been two hours long for many years), and wanted to spend more time with her family as she entered her 70s. She wasn’t leaving WHYY for good. Rather, she would be hosting The Connection, a weekly show that launched in 2023. (Shamefully, I haven’t started listening to this one yet.) As a result, Radio Times would be ending instead of being passed on to a new host.

This is quite the opposite approach from WHYY’s Fresh Air. The current host, Terry Gross, sometimes turns the hosting seat over to contributor and former Philadelphia Daily News columnist, Dave Davies. Additionally, co-host Tonya Mosley (no relation) was brought on a few years ago and is likely set to succeed Gross when she retires.

While Fresh Air is an excellent radio show that sometimes covers local topics, it really is more of a national show that relies heavily on interviews. Thus, it is not a great Radio Times replacement for local events. If I had been paying more attention, I would have tuned into Studio 2 when it launched in March 2023. It is more or less the successor to what Marty Moss-Coane started decades ago.

Instead of one host, Studio 2 features hosts– Avi Wolfman-Arent and Cherri Gregg. These are two WHYY hosts that arrived at the station within the last decade. During my late afternoon drives to work I’ve heard Wolfman-Arent on some radio segments. When Gregg came on as the on air anchor for WHYY in the afternoons and early evenings, it was immediately noticeable. Her style was a welcome change from what I was used to from the regular slate of NPR and WHYY anchors. Her causal and upbeat personality instantly transported me back to my childhood when I used to regularly listen to Power 99 FM (Philadelphia’s local Hip Hop/ R&B station). Gregg’s style fused with the measured NPR approach was something I didn’t know I wanted until it existed.

Wolfman-Arent and Gregg play well off each other as hosts on Studio 2. Together they cover news and events from Philadelphia and the greater Delaware Valley (Philadelphia and its suburbs, South Jersey, Northern Delaware, and parts of Maryland), in addition to national news. Their style is informative while being fun and informal at times. Each show features about three segments.

Topics in each segment include everything from niche local events, news of the day, sports, politics, and national events that have a local connection. For example, there was the ridiculously overblown story about adding a pinch of salt to tea that went international. The author of the book, Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea is a Bryn Mawr professor who received way more attention from her book than she expected. On the niche side, a good segment of one show was dedicated to unpopular Philly opinions including tossing shade at the Rocky statue (making the case for a Joe Frazier statue) and cheesesteaks that include Cheese Whiz.

Studio 2 also allows for listeners to call in to ask a question or leave a comment (much in the spirit of Radio Times). In addition to live segments, the radio show also sometimes includes packaged segments that usually consist of interviews. Again, these interviews range from the hyper-local to the national. The latest one of these packages featured an interview with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg when he was recently in Philadelphia.

The exciting part about listening to Studio 2 is not only being informed of local events or getting a local spin on national events, but being on the ground floor of a relatively new WHYY show. We get to learn more about Wolfman-Arent and Gregg, as they also learn about each other. We’ve recently learned that Wolfman-Arent is a huge Philly sports fan and not so much a fan of movies. And that Gregg is an avid dancer, in addition to being an attorney, an adjunct instructor at Temple University, and a former president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. (On a more amusing note, Gregg didn’t get why owls are Temple University’s mascot, but has come to appreciate them. As a Temple University alumni, I can say with confidence that owls make for amazing mascots.)

Studio 2 airs on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and it feels like an approach that ensures both hosts won’t become overwhelmed with their work, since they have other responsibilities at WHYY. The show also has a pre-show livestream on Instagram, and does occasional live shows around the region.

All in all, Studio 2 is good time for anyone in Philadelphia wanting to stay informed about local news without the mood ever feeling too formal or somber.

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Joseph Daniels

Happy Pi Day, everyone!

If there’s something I’ve been noticing a lot more lately, it’s that there have been a lot of animated pilot episodes showing up on YouTube.  The algorithm has likely decided that I’m a good target audience for them and they’re probably right.

The success of projects like Hazbin Hotel and the popularity of the Lackadaisy pilot episode have more than likely led to other projects being created and released to YouTube.  This week, I wanted to start highlighting some of them, so we’ll skip right to…

This Week’s Short Films
Port By The Sea (2024)
Tigers?: One minor character

Godspeed (2023)

Atlas and the Stars (2023)

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The lede was already negative enough, so let’s not even think about what’s in store for the next pandemic. That future pandemic could be closer than anyone thinks, too, considering the effects climate change are having on viruses. Whoops, this ended up negative too. Until next week, folks.