Roz Schotz, better known as Grandma, is a Beekeeper who appeared on a show called Bizaardvark. Played by Ellen Ratner, Roz is the grandmother of Bernie, one of the members of the main cast of teenagers. We’re never told what happened to Bernie’s parents (though we do know that she despises the other side of his family), but Roz is Bernie’s legal guardian.

Raising Bernie, Roz is overprotective in a way she’s not when we see her chaperoning other children. This is no contradiction to her personality however. All indications are that Roz is not usually a parental type and would be fine letting children do whatever they want so long as they leave her alone. At first it seems harsh that she imposes seemingly arbitrary rules such as not being allowed to touch pointy fruit or use hot sauce, but when we see Bernie unsupervised it takes mere seconds for him to stab himself with the pointy fruit and get hot sauce in his eyes. Roz is only as strict as she is because otherwise her idiot grandson would simply be doomed. I can only assume that Roz had no intention of raising the kid, but circumstances forced her to and now she takes the job seriously.

In between the strict rules, she does teach Bernie things in the hope that he’ll develop life skills that will let him survive the world (specifically noting that she won’t be around to help him forever). She pays for his wilderness lessons. She teaches him to dance. She’s even proud when Bernie shows skill at manipulation and lying because those will help him get along in the world. And she’s also taught him some beekeeping skills. Oddly, the reveal that Roz is a Beekeeper occurs in an episode in which she doesn’t even appear. We learn about it when Bernie uses Beekeeping skills that she taught him to smoke a hive. It never comes up otherwise, so we have no idea how good she is at it. But given Bernie’s idiocy at the best of times, if he can be competent from her training, she must be good.

Of course, I like other skills in my Beekeepers as well. Is Roz tough? Heck yes. The show repeatedly goes to the “isn’t it funny that a grandmother could be tough” joke well. Roz is known to be a bareknuckle boxing champion, is in a fight club, was a medic in “the war”, has a flamethrower, and she’s known to the police in six different states. She once beat up a roomful of people in the dark. It doesn’t quite reach supernatural levels, but I would be remiss if I didn’t note that Bernie says his grandmother likes bloody videogames about hunting vampires because “they remind her of her childhood.” He doesn’t know any more about it, but if we had proper details about that Roz could have the potential to raise her score by a whole point! Only on one occasion do I remember her being shown as anything less than super-tough: when she and some kids she was looking after were surrounded by dozens of scorpions. Perhaps she simply has a phobia of the arachnids.

Of course, Roz is unfortunately susceptible to the biggest flaw found among apiarists: Beekeeper Rage. Roz openly admits that she has an anger problem and is repeatedly shown taking her doctor’s advice (do puzzles, enjoy sunsets, and cetera) to try to lower her rage levels. I have to give Roz commendations for being aware of the issue and trying to treat it. She fully admits that she hates her doctor and their advice, so I have to assume that if Roz were still living a life among her “violent friends” she may not even be trying to temper her anger. I think that the fact she’s caring for Bernie is why she is bothering, and that’s kind of nice.

Three Honeycombs out of Five. A solid Beekeeper who cares for her grandson as best as she can.

As a booster of beekeepers, and by extension bees, I feel like I should have a strong opinion on hornets one way or the other. I don’t really. I figure they’re out there doing work the same as anyone else. But when one gets into my apartment, I want it out of there.

This is why, mere moments ago, when I found a hornet in my living room I tried to gently usher it out by capturing it under a glass and doing the thing where you slip a paper under the glass and all that. You know what I mean. I’ve done this successfully before with hornets and other insects. But this time, either because I was tired or because it was jumpy and moved too quickly, instead of being trapped in the glass, it was crushed under the edge of the glass and cut nearly in half. I’d wanted be merciful, but fate wouldn’t have it. So I took the remains and placed them in the soil of my potted plant Borson, and I am making a post here on my website to honour a little insect that fell through no fault of its own.

(Also, it’s entirely possible it was a wasp. I genuinely can’t tell.)

I am reminded about how when I was a child I tried to make a deal with God that I would never unknowingly crush an insect under my feet while walking. I don’t know what I was offering God in return. I figured, if I see an insect as I stride along, I can handle the pressure of correcting course to make sure everyone is happy with the outcome. But if I don’t know its there, what can I do? I don’t want to step on anyone.

I guess I was a little wiener kid and now I’m a big wiener kid. I just don’t want to step on anyone. Or bisect them with glass. Can’t always get what you want, though, PDR.

I’ve already gone over his career history, but want to make it clear that Bob Farrell’s motivation to act as the super-criminal called the Rocket Racer is less because he’s a “bank robbing supervillain” kind of criminal and more that he’s a “Robin Hood Noble Outlaw” kind of criminal. He’s not just robbing for his own benefit, and he’s not just robbing to help his poor family (though that would be enough to put him on the path to noble criminality already). Bob wants to be, or at least wanted to be, someone who would target rich victims and would redistribute wealth to his entire community.

The earliest of Bob’s crimes we know is stealing bonds and securities from Wall Street people, an obvious target when “robbing from the rich”. In his second appearance he’s already gotten into the crime-for-hire game and his first employer is an embezzler who had mistreated workers, so Bob blackmailed him for more money. When Bob is finally captured and put on trial we’re shown that the judge was lenient because of Bob’s “strong ties to the community” and that community was full of people willing to help him pay his bail for as long as they could. If the community loves Bob that much, he must have been doing something for them.

We don’t have a lot of specifics on Bob’s crimes after that, but we know that he quit for a time and what brought him back was seeing Spider-Man wrongfully accused of crimes and wanting to set that right. Trying to right an injustice like that is also very Robin Hood in style. After that, most of Bob’s career is spent on the mercenary side of the aisle, if not the “superhero” side, and we know what money he gets goes to his family and his schooling, but maybe some still goes to other people.

We know that Bob’s attempts at actually being a superhero have never really come to anything and he’s been seen doing crimes again. Nobody has bothered to focus on Bob in a long time, so we don’t know the details. I like to think that he just realized that punching things as a superhero doesn’t do the kind of good he wants to do. So he’s back to robbing, and hopefully his targets are still rich assholes.

(We can’t ignore the fact that Bob also grew to love the power and adrenaline involved with the super-criminal line of work. But that’s a discussion for another day.)