Once you start a running gag, you need to really commit. This would have been so much better with another two weeks more of “hatmobile”. Those cool rockets should have played a critical role in capturing the bad guys! “If there’s a gun lying on the table in act 1, it had better be fired by act 3.”
Oh, this is fantastic! Topical, yet different, and it makes perfect sense within its own universe. The relationships and stories in JumpStart are rich and tangled and interesting. In this respect I am reminded of the Doonesbury universe. (An important difference, to me at least, is that JumpStart has a mostly happy, mostly sensible family at its center.)
I think we are in agreement here. I just wanted the punchline to be the rockets—satisfying Shakespeare and Chekhov in one go.