DC’s Stargirl – Summer School: Chapter One

By starrymag | August 17, 2021

By: Atiya Irvin-Mitchell

 

 

The episode starts with a flashback to what appears to be the 1950s in Indiana. There’s a little girl named Rebecca (Olive Abercrombie) who wants to go to a birthday party happening across the street. Her mother (Myra Dunlop) says no because she threw a tantrum at the store. Rebecca says she just wanted the doll, but her mother tells her she’s already too spoiled. Realizing her mother won’t budge and her father won’t be home in time to plead her case, Rebecca goes outside to pout. While she’s sitting on the porch swing a little boy named Bruce (Milo Stein) appears. He tells Rebecca she should come to the party with him. He claims her mother won’t even notice she’s gone. They run across the street and the boy tells Rebecca she should take one of the birthday girl’s presents. She won’t even miss it, he reasons. Rebecca takes a box from the pile on the porch and opens it. Inside it there’s a doll, but it’s covered in mud and has glowing red eyes. Rebecca drops it and it looks like a regular doll. But she turns around and Bruce has glowing red eyes and calls her out for stealing (even though he encouraged her to). We cut away and Rebecca’s mother notices her daughter is gone. She assumes her daughter snuck off to the party and angrily goes across the street to retrieve her. But when she gets to the front lawn what she sees on the lawn leaves her screaming in horror. Presumably something’s been done to Rebecca.

 

Fast forward to the present. Courtney (Brec Bassinger), Beth (Anjelika Washington), Rick (Cameron Gellman) and Yolanda (Yvette Monreal) are patrolling the town. Except there’s nothing to patrol. Beth, Rick and Yolanda point out that they defeated the Injustice Society. Everyone involved is either dead or in jail. They think Courtney is having trouble letting the fight go since now there’s really no one to fight. When she goes home Pat (Luke Wilson) finds her pouring over old JSA files, but he tells her that the vigilance isn’t needed anymore. And, Pat says, her destiny isn’t just about being Stargirl but Courtney Whitmore too. But Courtney believes that as long as the staff is still responding to her, she needs to stay working.

 

The next morning it turns out that Courtney’s not the only member of the Whitmore-Dugan family with an interest in heroism. When Mike (Trae Romano) comes home from his paper route Pat tries to sell him on a family trip to Jelly-Stone Park. But Mike wants to quit his paper route and have Pat start training him to be a part of the JSA. Pat nixes the idea. And when Barbara (Amy Smart) comes in with Courtney she also thinks it’d be a great idea. So, even though the kids aren’t into it, the family is headed to Jelly-Stone for the Summer.

 

Elsewhere the JSA is having a rough last day of school. Beth is still struggling to revive Chuck. And after seeing her parents off to work she accidentally stumbles onto divorce papers. Yolanda is struggling with having killed Brainwave and goes to confession, something which has become a part of her morning routine it seems. Rick takes a detour into the woods and finds some footprints that suggest that Grundy might still be in town.

 

Later on the way to school Yolanda tells Courtney she’s still having visions of Brainwave. She says she doesn’t know if she’s good enough to be Wildcat anymore. And she feels like Ted Grant wouldn’t have done what she did. Courtney says she is Wildcat and she made the best choice she could as the ISA would’ve killed them. They spot Cameron (Hunter Sansone) with his grandparents. Courtney wants to check on him now that his mother and father are dead. Yolanda thinks they should steer clear. She shares that Henry might still be alive if he’d never learned the truth about his father.

 

At school Rick looks happy until his teacher asks him to stay after class. We learn that he’s decided to start using his parents’ surname: Tyler. His teacher tells him he got every answer on the final right. Unfortunately, she’s not congratulating him. Rick just decided to study, but she’s convinced he cheated. She demands he retake the test, but Rick feels like nothing he does will ever be good enough. So, he tells her to fail him and leaves.

 

Lunch arrives and the hits keep coming. Both literally and metaphorically. Beth is noticeably silent and distracted; most likely by her parents’ impending divorce. And Artemis Crock (Stella Smith) walks by the girls’ table and is talking about her parents being in jail. She’s convinced they’ve been framed. She moves and Courtney, believing she’s about to attack her, flips her on her back. This earns her a trip to the principal’s office.

 

In the principal’s office Pat and Barbara are given a good news/bad news speech from the new principal (Tywayne Wheatt). The good news is that Courtney has managed to make friends despite being a transfer student. The bad news is she got in a fight and failed English and History. She’ll have to go to summer school if she wants to advance to the 11th grade. Unfortunately, that means no family trip, which upsets Barbara. And Pat grounds Courtney from being Stargirl for two weeks because he thinks she’s forgotten how to just be Courtney.

 

On her way home Courtney approaches Cameron who is painting a mural in honor of his father. She asks him how he’s been. As well as can be expected now that he’s an orphan. His grandmother (Kay Galvin) and grandfather (Jim France) watch the teens interact with mixed emotions. Cameron’s grandmother thinks Courtney’s wicked, but Cameron’s grandfather notes he seems happy. They should leave it be.

 

In the middle of nowhere the not so dead Sylvester Pemberton (Joel McHale) aka the former Starman is at a diner. His waitress is a woman named Maggie (Elizabeth Bond). Maggie wants to offer him the special. But Sylvester wants to know about her ex-husband. She asks him to be specific about which one. He says, the one who was found of stripes. So it could be Pat.

 

Pat goes to the garage to tell Zeek (King Orba), an employee he asked to look after the cars and customers during the vacation, that the trip’s off. Unfortunately, Zeek stumbled into Pat’s secret room and discovered the S.T.R.I.P.E robot. A giant robot should be tough to explain away, but Zeek assumes it’s just a weird manly hobby and invites himself to assist.

 

Rick is in the woods and is leaving out buckets of food. When he leaves we hear large footsteps approaching the food, but we never see who they belong to. Speaking of food, Beth is at home and has prepared a large dinner for her parents. However, they both disappoint her by informing her they’ll be working late. And the disappointments keep coming for Beth. For a moment she thinks she’s gotten Chuck back when she hears his voice on the goggles. But although the voice sounds like Chuck, he doesn’t remember her.

 

Courtney is in her room flipping through the yearbook. She’s wondering what happened to Cindy (Meg DeLacy) when the staff comes to her. Someone’s broken into the house. Courtney confronts them and the two get into a massive fight which trashes the living room and kitchen. When it ends Courtney has been knocked to the ground and demands to know who the other girl is. She says she’s the Green Lantern’s daughter (Ysa Penarejo). Before they can talk anymore the rest of the family comes downstairs and is none too thrilled about the destruction. Courtney says there’s been a misunderstanding. Pat says there’s been a lot of those lately for her.

 

We cut away and finally see Cindy. She walks in the high school and retrieves an ISA file from her locker. Later she flips through a pile of pictures of kids who could be potential ISA members and among the stack is Mike Dugan.