This SOLAR OPPOSITES review contains spoilers.
Solar Opposites Episode 3
I have a lot of respect for how Solar Opposites is shooting for the stars with its stupid plotlines this early in its existence. It’s so charmingly goofy and weird that this is a series about aliens crash-landing on earth and, instead of obvious sci-fi stuff (though there’s still plenty of sci-fi stuff in there), only three episodes in we’ve watched the aliens pal around with a sitcom character, run to be presidents of their local homeowners’ association, and now one of them is becoming a famous magician.
It’s cool “The Quantum Ring” shakes up the character dynamics a little bit with Korvo mostly on his own, leaving behind the rest of the family. It basically is a Korvo episode; we get some Terry/Jesse/Yumyulack scenes, but Korvo is definitely the focus. This is fine, because, as I mentioned in my spoiler-free review of the season, typically the series sticks with a Korvo/Terry, Jesse/Yumyulack setup (with a side of Pupa), so it’s good to see that the series holds up when the characters are arranged in different configurations and, further, that one character by themselves can carry a plot.
Of course, it helps that this time much of the runtime is shared with the Escape from New York–style drama unfolding in Yumyulack and Jesse’s shrunken human wall terrarium. The way Solar Opposites has introduced this running subplot is an extremely odd and novel use of serialization. It’s awfully strange for a series to introduce you to what is supposedly its core protagonists in the first two episodes, and then, two episodes later, ask you to sympathize with the lives of a whole other batch of characters, dealing with very different conflicts in contrast to what’s going on with the goofy, pop-culture-obsessed, aliens (though the wall people also throw out their fair share of pop culture references).