One must look inward before moving forward – or, to apply it to Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, one must go one universe forward, three universes back in “Spoiler: We’re As Confused as You Are”, which follows in the (literal) footsteps of “Spoiler: Dexys Midnight Runners Get a Royalty Payment” as the time-traveling quartet work backwards through the worlds of previous episodes in hunt of themselves. Unfortunately, with only a few incipient character threads and no interesting, clarifying universe to tether them to, “Spoiler: We’re As Confused as You Are” is mostly a parade of cameos, a bit of navel-gazing… and not much else.
The premise is simple: after ending up in the centaur world following the events of “Spoiler: Dexys Midnight Runners Get a Royalty Payment”, the team decide to use the newly-found “skooch” button to pull back a couple universes, creating and resolving the paradox we saw the other end of in last week’s episode as they try to survive the horrors of the militaristic universe (which claims the life of at least one version of Gary midway through the episode). This is… kind of an interesting idea that Stuart Fails to Save the Universe does precisely nothing with; outside of a brief, quiet moment of reflection shared between Stuart and Denise in their military bunk, “Spoiler: We’re As Confused as You Are” has a pretty empty agenda, mostly filling its 18-minute running time with a whole lot of military monologues – including one from Colonel Richard Williams (Dean Norris), previously known as the military employee who steals a bunch of research from The Big Bang Theory crew in season ten.
Richard Williams’ appearance is a uniquely strange one, a nearly two-minute long monologue in a scene of characters standing around listening (that, in total, takes up about 20 percent of the episode’s running time). His speech, a bunch of empty military platitudes, holds no significance or importance to the story at hand, doesn’t make any winking references to his original character – and more importantly, adds nothing to the episode’s story, which ultimately see our multiverse hopping team get court-martialed and sentenced to death at the hands of Firing Squad Penny (Kaley Cuoco, making her second appearance in the season), before escaping with the time machine, and getting themselves trapped in a universe with an ominous, sentient ball of intelligence, who has somehow trapped them within the bounded pages of a comic book (Kyle and Trevor are revealed to be secretly working for said sentient body, for good measure).
The actual plot mechanics of this episode are pretty thin and linear; the team double back to steal the original time machine from themselves, get court-martialed, then hop through universes until they get trapped in a comic book. There are a couple wrinkles – Kripke shoots a guy trying to motivate everyone to charge out of their trench, Firing Squad Penny gets left in the centaurverse – but none of these plot points hold any consequence, nor do they help inform the nascent emotional strand of Stuart and Alternate Denise’s budding romance that surfaces for a moment in “Spoiler: We’re As Confused as You Are”. Even though it’s a scene I enjoy, with Stuart crawling into Denise’s cot for a little cuddle and conversation, it’s not something that’s ever pushed by the larger dramatic stakes of the episode; like every other scene of the episode, Stuart and Denise exist as a couple seemingly just to fill space (as I mentioned last week, Alt Denise has been given very little agency to do anything in this season).
One would think Stuart Fails to Save the Universe closing a literal loop would be an opportunity to push the season forward; instead, “Spoiler: We’re As Confused as You Are” gives the illusion of movement without actually going anywhere – and more frustratingly, shrugs at every opportunity it presents itself to do so. With two episodes left, it doesn’t feel quite like the first season is completely running out of gas – but “Spoiler: We’re As Confused as You Are” certainly feels a bit anemic, with its suite of underwhelming, recycled ideas and hackneyed, almost disinterested storytelling, continuing the show’s mini-slump after the highs of “Spoiler: Bert Gets Married”.
Other thoughts/observations:
- “Why are we fighting them?” “Wrong family, wrong country, wrong God”.
- Trevor and Kyle died in the military universe; “They died how they lived; reading comics they didn’t pay for”
- Joshua Malina appears again in the court martial scene. Cameos!
- After this week’s “the opening credits are talking to my family dog” bit, I’m over the opening title sequence, though I still appreciate a show that has something beyond a simple title card (Lanterns, you disappoint me!).
- Keep forgetting the specific world this Denise comes from is the Not-Matrix one. Maybe something to pay attention to?
- Col. Williams: “… and we’re low on morphine, so try to not get hurt out there.”