Plot summary: With The Justice League disbanded, The Society move on to the next part of their ‘divide and conquer’ plan.

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: 44 (S2.E18)

Original Air Date: November 22^nd, 2003

Directed: Dan Riba (24)

Written: Stan Berkowitz (17)

Animation: DR Movie Company Co., LTD. (6)

Music: Michael McCuistion (18)

Grodd credits Flash for giving him his psychic powers. You may recall Wally seemingly rendered Grodd catatonic during their fight in ‘The Brave and the Bold‘, instead leaving him with permanent versions of the powers granted by the experimental headband.

Batman catches Clayface out because of his over-egged “yo”, taken from Flash’s commercial for Lightspeed Energy Bars a couple of episodes ago.

Recap

Flash interrogates former members of The Shade’s crew, which leads him into a trap against Sinestro. Wally insists he can handle the ‘Yellow Lantern’, but then calls Batman for help.

Bruce arrives on the scene and immediately sees through the next attempted deception, attacking ‘Flash’, who is revealed as Clayface… who did not come alone.

The Society next lure Superman, Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl and Martian Manhunter to their training grounds, where the various robots and armaments are set to lethal.

The quartet hold their own at first, but more in-fighting leaves them vulnerable to The Society, who eventually defeat them thanks to superior battle tactics, with Clayface last capturing J’onn J’onzz.

Only Green Lantern remains free, having discovered one of Grodd’s spy drones earlier. He sneaks into The Society’s hideout, but Grodd senses him telepathically.

John does pretty well on his own, but ultimately he’s captured too, rounding out the complete set of Leaguers. Grodd transports them all to a football stadium, hoping to publicly humiliate their foes.

However ‘Clayface’ reveals himself as Martian Manhunter (remember, both can shape-shift), freeing the rest of the team for an all-out brawl in front of the sold out crowd.

The League emerge victorious, but are left to confront the fact that their words said in anger were legitimate, agreeing to apologise and move forward.

Best Performance

Pretty much the same as last time, but worse, really. It’s weird how often that happens as you’d think having two parts would let you play around with who gets a chance the shine or whatever, but instead Powers Booth couldn’t really lose, as Grodd does by far the most talking and is gifted a big monologue. He remains good as a devious little shit pulling everybody’s strings, but this is a less noteworthy performance than last time.

I commend Kevin Conroy’s attempt to make “yo” work, and the impassioned argument between Phil LaMarr and Maria Cannals-Barrera was solid. None of the other characters really stood out to me.

Episode Ranking

Right. So. While they botched the execution of a basic ‘The League need to learn the value of teamwork’ story last time, I’m still perplexed by the reveal that Grodd used telepathy to make the team ever so slightly crabby so that they’d bicker more. Like what the fuck are we actually doing here? You can say he simply gave them a nudge and their tensions were real if you want, but it still just smacks of being too cowardly to make your heroes ‘look bad’ when you were the one who chose to put them in that situation in the first place. Yes, I complained that the arguing made them all come across poorly to the audience, but if you’re going to do it, at least have the spine to own it. And then to cap it all off, The League don’t even win by working together! They each individually take down one member of The Society, with the single exception of Flash & Hawkgirl collaborating to defeat Clayface! Why even make this the theme you repeatedly communicate to your audience if you’re not going to have the decency to bring it full circle and have them learn a lesson??? I do kind of respect the downer ending though.

Those larger plot decisions that impact the collective (and make ‘Part I’ even worse in retrospect!) aside, this episode does work much better as an exercise in pure fun. There’s a feeling of bombastic throwback joy, with just a good old fashioned dust-up in an unlikely venue, culminating in Superman smashing Grodd through the uprights. That was cute.

I really enjoyed Flash getting creative with the ‘Batman dangles a goon off a rooftop’ trope. A huge improvement over the last time we saw Flash operating solo, when he couldn’t catch a truck despite being able to run across water and whatnot. That played nicely with the first of two fake-outs, where they use clever editing to sell the idea of a conversation, when in reality we’re seeing character in ‘Scene A’ in a vacuum, and then ‘Scene B’ features an imposter of the character from ‘Scene A’ making a phone call, and we are led to believe this is all one series of events. First it’s ‘Flash’ calling Batman moments after starting a fight with Sinestro, then it’s ‘Green Lantern’ reaching out to Hawkgirl after discovering Grodd’s drone. We don’t get to see/hear it, but Superman says the same trick was pulled with ‘Batman’ too.

The fight scenes remain well planned and portrayed, and I particularly loved Wonder Woman kicking a loose piece of scrap metal at Shade when he thinks he has the drop on her with her hands full with Sinestro. Just a good use of the space and a clever piece of choreography. Beyond that you had the dynamic sense of movement as Hawkgirl and Killer Frost raced around the battlefield, Parasite draining heroes left and right, Green Lantern’s decoy trick, and Clayface tricking Superman and then fighting J’onn to a standstill.

But honestly, all that good is undercut by the horrific and frankly baffling decisions they made. I said it already, but to me the failure to pay off the set-up of ‘Part I’ lowers it retroactively, which offsets any ‘pure fun’ improvements of ‘Part II’, leaving it exactly where it is, as I feel the bottom 4 are just genuinely bad.

1. The Savage Time
2. Legends
3. Only a Dream
4. Twilight
5. Hearts and Minds
6. Injustice for All
7. Paradise Lost
8. In Blackest Night
9. Tabula Rasa
10. The Terror Beyond
11. The Enemy Below
12. Secret Origins
13. A Knight of Shadows
14. A Better World
15. Fury
16. Maid of Honor
17. Secret Society (–)
18. Eclipsed
19. War World
20. Metamorphosis
21. The Bold and the Brave

Rogues Roundup

Gorilla Grodd (Powers Booth) (fourth appearance)

I may not like the scripting decision to have Grodd use his powers to annoy The League, but in-universe it’s a pretty solid plan, and we really get to see him play the team like a fiddle in the first half of the episode, as well as orchestrating the attacks of his own group.

I’m on the fence about what a drama queen he is though. I kind of appreciate the old school comic pageantry of making such a spectacle at the halftime show – in the vein of The Injustice Guild announcing their schemes to the public – but given they made such a point of portraying him as suave and calculating, this feels comparatively dumb. I suppose it’s a foible, akin to Brainiac mocking Superman for being a weak organic, only to demonstrate emotional outbursts. But they never really did enough with that rich mine, and I fear the same will happen with Grodd. You have to lean into your ideas, not just stumble around and make the audience do the work.

The Society (Ron Perlman/Ted Levine/Brian George/Steve McHattie/Jennifer Hale) (second appearance)

I was really hoping to get more personality and clashes from the other 6 members of the team, but it never came. There was the briefest of teases when Sinestro scolded Clayface for robbing him of the chance to kill a Green Lantern, but all they really did was fight. Wouldn’t it have made sense to reveal the villains aren’t as in-sync as they claim, and have them come unravelled after The League embrace teamwork?

Clayface still isn’t matching his BTAS heights, but I certainly enjoyed how key he was to Grodd’s deception, tricking most of The League with his impressions to lure them into traps. Similarly, Sinestro’s a step below his STAS appearance, but conjuring a giant yellow tiger (or perhaps a cheetah?) to fight Wonder Woman and later a demon creature was cool. Ditto Giganta picking Superman up like a toy and smashing him around. Parasite seems to have been majorly nerfed though, as the heroes he drains recover almost immediately after he stops touching them, compared to when he laid Superman low for hours at a time.

I have no choice but to move them down the list given all they were good for was fight scenes.

1. Darkseid
2. Dr. Destiny
3. Lex Luthor
4. Despero
5. The Joker
6. The Injustice Guild (and Brainwave!)
7. Amazo
8. Solomon Grundy
9. Vandal Savage
10. The Injustice Gang
11. The Imperium
12. Brainiac
13. Hades
14. Draaga
15. Aresia
16. Deadshot
17. Gorilla Grodd (–)
18. Orm
19. Simon Stagg (and Java!)
20. Colonel Vox
21. The Secret Society (↓)
22. Felix Faust
23. Ichultu
24. Eclipso
25. Morgaine le Fey
26. The Manhunters
27. The Justice Lords
28. Kanjar-Ro
29. Mongul
30. Doomsday