Some comments about episode 74

Who cares its a stupid filler

Barry was a whole lot worse than Sharpner. Sharpner was pretty much just jealous, but Barry was practically evil, even before Watagashi got to him.

To answer your question, yes, Watagashi is kind of like Baby, just a lot less extreme. Watagashi, it seems, is a parasite that latches onto a person and brings out the darkness and evil in their heart. That darkness is then turned into power and causes the host to mutate. The greater the darkness and hatred the host has in their hearts, the stronger and more mutated they become (can you imagine if it had latched onto Zamasu).
Baby worked similarly. The Tuffles (the race that lived on Planet Vegeta before they were killed off by the saiyans) were a genius race that created a parasitic organism infused with the cells of the Tuffle king and launched it into space. This organism was then found by Dr. Myuu, who had been creating machine mutants, living organism similar to cyborgs with a metallic cellular structure rather than a organic one. He used the parasitic organism he discovered in his experiments, and it eventually grew into "his precious baby" (Baby wasn't really his name, but he had never been called anything else).
Unlike Watagashi, Baby was fully capable of acting on his own, but he was very weak compared to other DBZ villains (according to interviews, his power level was only about 130 million). What he did was get inside a persons body (through a wound, the mouth, the nose, etc). He then takes full control and possess them, essentially making the a prisoner in their own body. He also adds his own power to their own, essentially giving them a 130 million power level boost. Before leaving the body, he lays an egg in their brain, which turns them into his devoted slave. He eventually infects Vegeta, and stays inside him. Unlike with past hosts, he intends to remain inside Vegeta permanently, and spreads his essence throughout Vegeta's whole body, causing Vegeta to take on Baby's characteristics. Goku is eventually able to weaken Vegeta enough to force Baby out, and then kills him. The eggs inside the other people Baby infected remained intact though, so they use the Mystic Water (the kind used in the Garlic Jr Saga) to cure everyone. So, overall, Watagashi is similar to Baby, on less threatening scale.

I definitely saw the connections you mentioned, and agree that history is kind of repeating itself. I hope it gets Gohan more into the protector role and he starts training more. We know he still becomes a scholar due to the 10 years after Kid Buu episodes, but it would be nice if he didn't give up fighting and training completely. He'd be kind of like Superman.

One other thing, if you're not watching GT because of the bad reviews, don't take them so seriously. Those are mostly just purists that bitch how anything non-canon sucks. Is it as good as DBZ, no, of course not, but it was still good (at the very least decent). I thought Super was on par with GT, but it surpassed it when the Future Trunks Saga started. And here's something a lot of those purists that complain about GT don't know. Even though Toriyama didn't write GT, he DID approve of many of the things that happened in it.