'Mandalorian,' 'Picard' score satisfying finales

This past week delivered a season finale, a series finale and a season premiere of a recently revived series, so join me as I reveal some MAJOR SPOILERS while reviewing all three shows.

"The Mandalorian" wrapped up its eight-episode third season on Disney+ on April 19, and was followed by "Picard" completing its 10-episode third-and-final season on Paramount+ on April 20.

While both shows' most recent seasons were entertaining, well-made and mostly satisfying, I've seen comments online that echoed my own feelings that they seemed a bit too neatly resolved.

Because I did not experience this feeling with the first-season finale of the more episodic, self-contained "Strange New Worlds" - like "Picard," a "Star Trek" show on Paramount+ - I suspect this is a pitfall of modern show-writing, in which each episode is merely a chapter in a season-long arc, and each season is merely an arc in the epic saga of the complete series.

As I worried about while watching the fourth season of "Stranger Things" on Netflix, when each episode is intended to build on all the previous ones, with the promise of a big payoff at the very end, it makes it that much harder for even a well-executed final act to meet all expectations.

"The Mandalorian" did such justice to all its remaining unresolved plot threads that I've seen fans ask whether it was a stealth series finale (don't worry, a fourth season is already in development), while "Picard" finally delivered what fans of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" wanted the "Next Gen" crew's movies to be (and aside from "First Contact," they never were).

Many fans voiced their discontent with how much Katee Sackhoff's Bo-Katan Kryze crowded Pedro Pascal's Din Djarin out of the lead character slot in his own show, but anyone who complains that our soft-spoken "Mando" didn't retain the Darksaber to reunite all the Mandalorian peoples under his rule has never truly understood his character.

Yes, as Din Djarin grows closer to Grogu and meets more people, he opens up and gradually evolves, but he's always wanted to serve a worthy cause, rather than spearheading it.

Just as she did as Starbuck in the 21st century remake of "Battlestar Galactica," Katee Sackhoff makes characters like Bo-Katan Kryze work, in ways they might not work within the script alone.

We're also treated to a sneak preview of Grogu's rebellious adolescence to come as he gains some independence by piloting his own taller-than-person-size war-droid mech-suit.

Virtually every episode of "The Mandalorian" has delivered inventively and flawlessly choreographed hand-to-hand combat sequences, culminating in the finale's midair jetpack battle between Mandalorians and beskar-enhanced Imperial Stormtroopers, followed by Din, Bo-Katan and Grogu's three-on-one faceoff with Giancarlo Esposito's never-more-powerful Moff Gideon.

"Picard" makes its villains compelling by casting them in the opposite light, finding an excuse to unite the Changelings and the Borg against the Federation by highlighting their similarities, as collective species who have been reduced to remnants by how Starfleet has defeated them, as both Amanda Plummer's snarling Vadic and the wailing Borg Queen (voiced by a returning Alice Krige) both lay bare the physical and emotional scars from their losses.

This season's fan-service has ranged from red herrings such as Daniel Davis briefly reprising his role as the holographic Professor Moriarty to Brent Spiner depicting the complete mental and emotional integration of Data and his evil twin brother Lore, and even a restored Enterprise-D riding to the rescue of the galaxy.

Data gleefully piloting the Enterprise through an impossible Death Star run inside of a Borg cube will go down as one of the best moments in "Star Trek," and the resolutions to Seven of Nine and Raffi Musiker's arcs are deeply deserved.

And it ends, as "The Next Generation" did on TV, with a card game between old friends, and the specter of Q promising more mischief to come.

Speaking of mischief, April 20 on Paramount+ also saw the premiere of the second season of the revived "Beavis and Butt-Head" series, which the streaming service resurrected last year.

After the boys' original five-year, roughly seven-season run on MTV from 1992-97, the channel brought back the dimwitted duo for an eighth season in 2011, which saw their snark take aim at contemporary trends from "Twilight" to the spate of "reality" shows airing on "Music Television."

Paramount+ prepared audiences for its two seasons of the show by premiering the streaming film "Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe" in 2022, which signed onto the "multiverse" craze spreading across pop culture, not only to account for how the boys' ages froze since the 1990s, but also to introduce an alternate timeline in which the juvenile delinquents got old.

Plagued with receding hairlines, post-adolescent obesity and a whole host of other adult health problems, these late-middle-age versions of the boys open all sorts of new comic frontiers, as their addled brains struggle to navigate unemployment, jury duty and emergency surgeries.

We still get new adventures with young Beavis and Butt-Head, as Beavis attracts the romantic attention of at least two "weird" girls (but still doesn't score, of course), and the boys crack wise while watching YouTube videos on their "smart" TV.

Highlights include:

• Butt-Head overdosing on pills designed to temper his aggression, much to Beavis' chagrin.

• Beavis discovering an image that looks like Jesus on a nacho chip, leading him to explore religion with an endearingly scholarly Catholic priest, and a rabbi who knows Marvel Comics even better than he knows the Torah.

• And the boys accidentally attaining enlightenment, during a meditation session led by their hippie teacher Mr. Van Dreissen, because it's so easy for them to empty their minds, which causes consternation on the spiritual plane for Buddha, Ganesh, Jesus, Zeus and ... Bill Gates.

Coming up next week: I catch the premiere of "Peter Pan & Wendy" on Disney+, and I catch up with Peacock's new streaming series, "Mrs. Davis."

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]