Young Justice S02E15 – Review

By: Jon Weisman (story)

The Story: It stands to reason that a race which envisioned the Death Star wouldn’t fall for a massive planet-destroying spaceship.

The Review: For anyone experiencing early pangs of nostalgia and grief about the impending end of this show, the show doesn’t make it easier by continuing to stick to its high level of excellence despite the doom before it.  It especially doesn’t help when the show manages to deliver not only a respectable episode, but one of the best showings it’s ever made, one that puts all its sophistication, class, and appeal right in the forefront for everyone to see.

As much as I appreciate the show returning briefly to the “Wanted” Leaguers and their trial on Rimbor, the scene only serves as a catalyst for a much bigger and more important development for our heroes back on Earth.  The introduction of WarWorld, with its zooming dissolves and brisk exposition, feels truly epic, the stuff worthy of a blockbuster action-adventure film.  For anyone wondering, this is how you inform the audience of the episode’s premise without forcing them to slog through a long, excessively detailed briefing.

Young Justice S02E11 – Review

By: Nicole Dubuc (story)

The Story: Once again, Young Justice proves that it is not their fate to have an HQ.

The Review: Well, it’s been a long, strange hiatus, but we made it.  I must say, it’s not easy being a Young Justice fan with this unpredictable air schedule they’ve got going, but I suppose we can live with it as long we get something worth waiting for.  While some of you may have started the year with last week’s episode, some of us managed to catch that episode last year, making this week’s showing our first real foray back into serious YJ business.

In retrospect, the tenth episode was probably the better one to start off with.  It showcased nearly every member of the group, tied together a number of important plotlines, and packed in a ton of action to boot.  It was in almost every way an ideal example of the show’s appeal.  That’s not to demean this episode in any way, but by comparison, it’s much more straightforward and reserved than the one preceding.

A good chunk involves wrapping up ends left loose from the team’s encounter with the Reach under the sea.  Black Canary merely confirms what we’ve long known about the aliens’ agenda on Earth: manipulating the potential of the human meta-gene for their own ends.  Jaime actually does surprise you with his decision to reveal some fairly big secrets, some of which are not his own, but the impact of this remains to be seen.

Another chunk of the episode involves the seething tension between the remaining League and the Reach, who manage to gain the favor of public opinion in a surprisingly short amount of time, helped by the nigh-hysterical commentary of G. Godfrey*.  Still, you got to give props to the noseless invaders for their utter smoothness.  Simultaneously revealing the League’s intergalactic criminal status and showing them up in full public view are two pretty slick moves, frustrating Captain Atom’s attempts to call their credibility into question.  It’s pretty clear that the public of Earth-16 will have to go through a painful “I told you so” moment down the line.

It’s pretty amazing how many continuity details you can forget in three months.  Like the destruction of YJ’s base or the increasingly obvious problems in Mal and Karen’s relationship or even Miss Martian’s traumatic psychic attack on Aqualad.  This episode neatly brings all these issues to the forefront, a reminder of the show’s excellent long-term plotting, and even more impressively weaves them into the thick of the action.

Personally, I don’t care too much about M’gann’s switch from aggression to timidity where her telepathic powers are concerned, but it may be the very thing to jumpstart the explosion waiting to happen when everyone discovers Nightwing’s subterfuge.  Honestly, I’m more impressed by Mal’s big role in this episode.  He probably would’ve been content playing second banana to Karen forever had she given him any attention whatsoever, but since that’s not happening, his confrontation with Despero feels distinctly like an attempt to reclaim some self-respect.  More on this, please.

Conclusion: After the big high of last episode, this one doesn’t have quite as much pizzazz, but it’s a worthy sample of the show nevertheless.

Grade: B+

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * Whom I’m just itching to punch every time I see him.  Doesn’t he just remind you of some of the most hypocritical, showboating pundits in our own media?

– Oh, yeah, Billy Batson’s grown up some, now.  No wonder he seems a little less jolly and a lot more raring for action than before.  Nice detail, YJ writers.

– I appreciate that Black Lightning’s lightning is actually black in this show.  It lends some doubt as to whether his name is actually inherently racist.

– Let’s be honest here.  It’s L-Ron who really has all the power in the relationship; Despero’s just his trophy “master.”

Young Justice S02E09 – Review

By: Jon Weisman (story)

The Story: The team’s HQ may not be a Mt. St. Helen, but it sure blows up like one.

The Review: During the show’s first season, I complained frequently about how the characters didn’t seem like “real” teens, whatever that means in a world of superheroes.  As much as I appreciated that they never rushed into anything without looking first, I sometimes longed for a little more spontaneity and humor from them.  After all, what teenager doesn’t like doing something completely random and laughing a bit stupidly about it afterward?

So among the many improvements this season’s brought, I like most how much more often you laugh during an episode now.  The addition of purely comedy-driven characters, like Beast Boy, Blue Beetle, and especially Impulse has something to do with that, I imagine.  Kid Flash kind of served this function in season one, but his counterpart from the future really relishes his role as team jester.  Bart’s happy-go-lucky attitude is infection, and has the potential to draw the others into fun outings they’d never have taken with the first-gen YJers.

Young Justice S02E08 – Review

By: Greg Weisman (story)

The Story: The original Roy Harper proves he can take on Lex Luthor with only one hand.

The Review: I will never understand this show’s habit of going on hiatus mid-season.  Of course, this is the same show which aired its pilot months before the rest of the first season episodes, then took a summer-long break in between.  I’m sure there are some very good practical reasons why all this must be so, but it’s annoying anyway.  You would never put up with this on a lesser show.

However, Young Justice has the good fortune of being a very good show, so it can afford its logistical oddities from time to time.  We left off last time with some fairly gnarly plot twists, and this episode shows that the creators have given plenty of thought over the summer as to how to proceed.  More than any other cartoon I’ve heard seen on American television, this series does not mess around when it comes to exploring its stories from every possible angle.

Young Justice S02E01 – Review

By: Greg Weisman (story)

The Story: YJ’s philosophy toward recruitment?  The more the merrier.

The Review: When I reviewed the show’s season finale last week, I was all settled in for a summer’s break until its return.  I suppose I should have known by now to give up trying to figure out this show’s release schedule.  Who could ever predict that the premiere of the second season would follow right on the heels of the first’s season finale?  I can only guess this is Cartoon Network’s way of keeping up its newly-minted DC Nation block.

The first few minutes of the episode get you pumped for another season of teen superhero action, as you watch Superboy, Miss Martian, and Robin take down Clayface in a sewer with great finesse and confidence, proving their victory aboard the League watchtower did wonders for their street cred.  When Robin appears from the shadows in a whole new costume, you’re only briefly curious.  Then an alligator slides down a chute and becomes Beast Boy.  Blue Beetle flies in, remarking on the smell.  A shrunken Bumblebee hovers above and resizes back to normal.  You think to yourself, Wow, their street cred really must have taken off to recruit this much.  And then Superboy reports back to HQ, only to be told to head back by one “Nightwing.”

Young Justice Episode 18 – Review

By: Peter David (writer)

The Story: Will Artemis and Zatanna come to “Harm”?  It’s a “Secret.”  Yeah, I went there.

The Review: Unlike the Teen Titans, which brought kids together to learn the value of friendship and heroism, David’s interpretation of the adolescent vigilante on the original Young Justice comics emphasized their most irritating qualities: distractible, selfish, temperamental, petty, and recklessly impulsive (and not just Impulse either).  But he also wrote with great credibility about their capacity for idealism, cleverness, grief, and compassion.

So it’s not surprising he brings a similar mixture of playfulness and darkness to his guest episode.  Sadly, he can’t deliver the quite same tone he did on the original comics.  For one thing, he works with completely different characters than the ones he wrote back in the day, even though they share some of the same names and origins.  Take Superboy; David’s version was a hopeless swinger with a fade haircut; ours is a sullen loner with a major chip on his shoulder.

But our clone has shed some of his angst lately, and David takes advantage of that to bring back a little of his mischievous side, featuring a return of Superboy and Miss Martian’s Happy Harbor High classmates at the same time.  As Marvin goes for the “greatest prank ever” at a Halloween dance, the joke turns on him when Connor retaliates with a trick of his own.  His brings a surprising amount of enthusiasm to the ploy, even getting M’gann and Wally on the joke too.

All this is really a fun side dish to the main course of Artemis and Zatanna hitting the town.  A fun idea, and in the early parts of the episode you do get a kick out of seeing the potent combo of Zee’s magic and Artemis’ martial artistry.  But once they run into Harm, a villain David created in the old YJ days, the episode essentially becomes a “Will the girls survive the sadist?” routine.

This would be entertaining in itself, except Harm is a painfully flat character, a case that was true back when he originally debuted.  He seems, in the tradition of Cathy, innately and incurably evil.  The episode even introduces him as such, since he can wield the sword of Beowulf, which only accepts the pure of heart—“It never said ‘pure good.’”  Like anyone who skews toward the extremes of the moral spectrum, Harm is just predictable.