Plot summary: With Flash and Green Lantern missing, The League seek answers in Gorilla City, unaware it’s the target of a missile attack by Grodd.

For background on the creation of Justice League and info about how I’ll be covering it, check out the Series Primer.

1. Notes and Trivia
2. Recap
3. Best Performance
4. Episode Ranking
5. Rogues Roundup

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 15 (S1.E15)

Original Air Date: March 17^th, 2002

Directed: Dan Riba (8)

Written: Paul Dini (2) & Rich Fogel (5) (story) and Dwayne McDuffie (2) (teleplay)

Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD (15)

Music: Michael McCuistion (5)

Gorilla City reuses the designs of the 30^th Century version of Metropolis from ‘New Kids in Town‘, while the shield generator room is re-used from The Terrific Trio’s base in ‘Heroes‘.

Batman and Wonder Woman have a moment here. Fan reaction to it was so strong that the creative team would revisit their dynamic a lot, though Bruce Timm almost tossed the scene out.

Phil Morris voices the gorilla general. He’d go on to play Martian Manhunter in Smallville.

Recap

Solovar explains to Green Lantern and Flash that Central City is now being concealed by a shield identical to the one that keeps Gorilla City hidden.

The trio are unable to damage the shield generator so explore the city to try and find Grodd. Luckily that doesn’t prove very difficult as he’s already amassed a small army of followers.

Meanwhile the rest of The League investigate the ‘missing’ Central City, trying and failing to penetrate the energy shield from the outside.

Batman’s scans of the energy signature lead them to Gorilla City, where they’re immediately captured. They fight their way free but come to a truce when they learn Grodd has launched missiles at the city.

Green Lantern (having flown after the missiles) takes down two of them, while the others take out the remaining two. The gorillas thank them, and Diana gives Bruce a lil smooch.

Back in Central City, Flash tampers with Grodd’s mind-control crown, frying his brain. Solovar thanks The League for their help and promises to care for Grodd, who isn’t as mindless as he seems…

Best Performance

For the first time in the history of this site I am choosing nobody. I simply don’t think anyone merited it. I love Kevin Conroy as much as anyone, but he has like two matter-of-fact lines. David Ogden Stiers and Powers Boothe are both significantly worse than last time. Michael Rosenbaum is enthusiastic, but his dialogue is atrocious, while Phil LaMarr has surprisingly few lines.

Episode Ranking

I’ve talked about how most of these episodes have done a great job at world building and providing a window into other cultures, be they alien, Amazonian or Atlantian. ‘War World’ did a worse job at this and I dinged its ranking accordingly, but this is even worse. The creative team demonstrated precisely zero interest in giving Gorilla City the spotlight beyond the absolute surface level ‘Whoa, these apes can talk!’ stuff – established in the opening seconds of Part I. That gimmick never really developed into anything, aside from 2-3 slightly funny lines. Emphasis on slightly.

The League are taken hostage, tortured, fight their way free, and then immediately form a truce. That’s not terrifically interesting, and we get zero interiority or sense of the gorilla perspective on things other than them being extremely wary of the outside world. Everything about them is surface level implication.

None of the action is satisfying, with silly things like the Central City trio getting surrounded, only for John to dig a trench around them and fly away… leaving Flash and Solovar to be swarmed by the angry mob, who can easily scale the gap. But then Flash simply sprints off to take out some of the armed guards, and then returns to carry Solovar to safety. Why not just do that in the first place? Plus the reason they’re even surrounded is that Flash heckled Grodd while they were in the midst of an army of his followers. Normally when John bullies Wally I think he’s being unfair and kind of a dick, but that was so dumb that I’m with him for once. The League escaping captivity never gets out of first gear, with Batman escaping handcuffs and Diana doing her standard bullet blocking.

Honestly if you told me this was originally written as a pure Green Lantern/Flash/Solovar team-up and then they tossed in the rest of the team in Gorilla City because they realised how boring that was, I’d believe you, because their section feels redundant. Although the only interesting thing that happened in the episode was when The League were taking down the missiles and Hawkgirl’s recklessness reared its head again, as she broke one of the rockets in half, not realising the end with the payload in it was still heading for Gorilla City, so Diana had to get it. Solid recurring theme.

Oh, and I guess Wonder Woman smooched Batman on the cheek when she realised how devastated he was when he thought she was dead. I do get why Bruce Timm wanted to cut it, because it honestly is a bit of an odd moment, but I enjoy the ship long-term.

Anyway, yeah Part II may have been even worse than Part I. More boring than abjectly awful, I suppose, but to me these are firmly the worst two episodes and it would take a concerted effort to beat them to the bottom of the pile.

1. Injustice For All
2. Paradise Lost
3. In Blackest Night
4. The Enemy Below
5. Secret Origins
6. War World
7. The Bold and the Brave (–)

Rogues Roundup

Gorilla Grodd (Powers Boothe) (second appearance)

I’m genuinely shocked Grodd didn’t have a stronger showing after his extremely brief appearance last time. It wasn’t just the lack of time, they just simply had no remotely interesting ideas for him. If anything he’s worse this time, as he at least had a sense of charisma before, and now it’s just a weakly voiced generic villain who just so happens to be an ape.

Dr. Corwin calls him the greatest intellect on earth, and he was smart enough to invent a mind-control crown, but his fight against Flash may be the dumbest effort put forth by any DCAU villain to date. Just straight up running into shit while Wally dodges. Over and over.

They try and tack some extra stuff onto him late, like the reveal Dr. Corwin sincerely is in love with him, and him only pretending to have his brain fried, but whoooo could care?

1. Lex Luthor
2. The Joker
3. The Imperium
4. Hades
5. Draaga
6. The Injustice Gang
7. Deadshot
8. Orm
9. Felix Faust
10. The Manhunters
11. Kanjar-Ro
12. Mongul
13. Gorilla Grodd (–)