Despite the fact that JLU has been off the airwaves for months now, and that it only has a few episodes left, I was not looking foward to "Far From Home". I've done nothing but bashed and dreaded the episode since I heard about it. After all, I'm not a fan of the Legion of Superheroes OR Supergirl. In fact I just about felt that Kara'd worn out her welcome by "Chaos at the Earth's Core". And out of all the LOSH's members, Bouncing Boy just seems silly. Plus, while Paul Dini's past B:TAS stories have been great, his JLU work hasn't been so great; "The Little Piggy" had its moments but overall wasn't exactly "Comfort and Joy" or "Harley and Ivy" here. So my expectations were very, very low.
After having seen the episode, that feeling was a bit harsh. "Far from Home" is hardly a terrific episode, but is a comfortable average, entertaining episode. Not one to fear if you missed it, because it's pretty much the definition of "filler", but one that didn't leave me scowling at the end. There are about a dozen things I would have rather seen in a JLU episode as the show winds down, and a few bits were predictable or heavy-handed, but, well, it wasn't as bad as I feared. And at least it involved slightly more than "let's have chicks fight!".
The episode begins in the 33rd century, where Brainiac-5 and Bouncing Boy (snicker) are the last members of the LOSH who are not captured by their enemies, the Fatal Five. Despite the risks of time-travel mucking, Brainiac-5 with his "12th level intellect" (y'know, at one point I was a 17th level Vampire in high school RPG's, but I didn't brag about it), Brainiac-5 feels they have no option but to bring in heroes from the past to help them. After all, their history records claim that 3 heroes from the 21st century DO have an adventure in their time, and now of course has to be the time. So they activate their "time bubble" and off it goes.
It picks B'Wanna Beast, Creeper, and Vibe. The universe ends.
Kidding. Fortunately their luck was better.
Back in the present, Supergirl is celebrating her 21st birthday by beating the heck out of some simulated villians under the instruction of Green Lantern, and the supervision of Superman. Green Arrow is also on-hand to watch, and am I the only one CREEPED OUT that he seems to spend an aweful lot of time around a girl about 10 years younger than him? And he's NOT BATMAN? After a few runs, GL claims that he has nothing left to teach her (as no one on the JLU seems to give a damn about property damage while they're smashing people into buildings/streets), while GA and Superman have a chat. GA notes how Kara refused to go out clubbing with he and Canary (again, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU INVITING A THIRD WHEEL, YOU SICKO) and that despite Superman's insistance on letting her be her own woman and escape his shadow, that she does likely want to get closer to him and take on the "family business". The dialogue is all nice, superhero mature stuff. However, when GA joins the pair in the training area, the time bubble envelops all of them, and vanishes before Superman can free them.
DAMN, talk about bad luck! Five seconds away from having Superman on your team, instead you're stuck with a guy with arrows. If I knew, I'd be pissed.
The trio are zipped to the future, and Kara immediately starts hammering on Brainiac-5, as he is, well, a Brainaic. Fortunately, while in the future Brainiac has moved onto biological life, the kid here is a good guy, making up for his evil legacy. And Bouncing Boy is a fat ass who bounces. Fans/writers only like him because (or if) he usually fits their physique. No one else does. No one. But I'll admit he could have been worse here; in this episode he's tolerable. They indicate that they were deperate and the heroes were picked at random, and explain their situation. The trio naturally agree to help them, although Brainiac-5 and Bouncing Boy know a secret; one of them WON'T return home to the past, and as Supergirl's data file ends at a certain point, it's likely that it is her. Meanwhile, Kara finds Brainiac-5 "cute". Anyone else predict where this is going? Because if you did, you won't be wrong.
In the hallway, the gang are attacked by two of the Fatal Five, Emerald Empress (with her hover-eye) and the axe-carrying Persauder (what the heck does an axe have to do with "persuading"? The CHOPPER would be more accurate! Least he looks cool). In short fashion they overpower the heroes and manage to successfully capture Bouncing Boy and Green Lantern (turns out GL's are rare in the 33rd century). This leaves Green Arrow, Supergirl and Brainiac-5 to mount a rescue. Green Arrow notes how he can tell that the kids are "hot" for each other. But they don't use an accurate term like "you like her" or "attraction". No, they say "in love", which is inane. They just met 20 MINUTES AGO. Love is deeper. It is impossible to be in love at that time. The terminology is important because while this romance between the pair was cute, it was very heavy-handed and the terminology did not help. Turns out after a few seasons of not mentioning anything, Kara misses the hi-tech of her home planet of Argus, and manages to connect to Brainiac-5. Meanwhile, Green Arrow decides to pilfer some "future tech" for his arrows; safe so long as he doesn't bring any back in time.
They track the Fatal Five via GL's communicator and find them en route to attack some peace-loving planet that they have a mad-on for destroying. Their full roster includes a half-cyborg (Tharok), a massive guy who displays his brain (Validus) and Mono, named after a deadly sexual infection (not really; he just has currosive hands that he apparently can't turn off). Supergirl is the only one of then who can defend the planet from an army of brainwashed superheroes, so despite fears of her death, she goes for it. Meanwhile, Brainiac-5 and GA crash into the Five's spaceship via a kamakazi/"like in Star Wars, the bigger the ship, the worse it does against a tiny opponent" sort of plan. Mono ends up being TRIPPED and defeated, but the pair are quickly on their route to be Five-food. Supergirl does her best to fight all comers, and does it better than Superman has, like, EVER done (I've never seen him take on more then 3 people at once without being slapped) in any episode that wasn't "Dead Reckoning", although she takes a devistating amount of damage. The mind control is deactivated, but GL fears he's killed her, and they stand around to ape a pose from CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, which was classy. The Five get dusted, naturally.
The LOSH make them "honorary members", but they can't take the decoder rings into the past, so basically they hand them to GA and GL, only to get them handed back. Supergirl, meanwhile, chooses to stay. Whoops, guess her history vanishes not because she dies, but because she chooses to stay in the future. But wait! Maybe she DID die and only because she was warned about it, that she lived, but something else came along and made history right. Who knows? The point is, had this been a "storyarc" for Kara, that she'd felt out of place and alone, then it would have worked better. Instead, we basically had her being shoved off in this episode, and it felt rushed. She's willing to throw away her whole life just because Brainiac-5's cute? Oh, well. Maybe I'm too used to TMNT, where a character shift sometimes takes place in, like, more than one episode.
GL and GA return, and hand a worried Superman a message box from Kara, where she explains her reasoning for staying in the future, and hopes that Superman understands. Clark is saddened that he didn't get a chance to say farewell to her, but GA assures him that "she knew how you felt" in typical "cop drama" style dialogue. The episode ends on a cute note as Superman asks to know the name of Kara's boyfriend (and saying "Brainiac" is about as bad an answer as you can get aside for "Luthor" or "Wayne").
All in all, an enjoyable, if generic, episode. While I like Green Arrow, I feel this episode would have been a lot stronger had Superman went along instead of GL. That way we WOULD have seen him say farewell. Perhaps he could have been the one to thrash Supergirl under mind control and we'd have had a DIRECT homage to "Crisis on Infinite Earths". Plus, Clark and Kara barely had 5 minutes of interaction time together since the end of S:TAS. The LOSH technically showed up once before, in "The New Kids in Town", circa 1998, but no allusion to that was made, and the Legionarres involved (Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Chameloan Boy) only served as canon fodder for Kara. Despite how heavy-handed the Brainiac-5/Kara romance was, it was cute (at times) and having Superman play a bigger role would have made the episode better, IMO. Green Lantern'll be appearing next episode, anyway; he could have sat one out.
So, this episode didn't deserve a lot of my scorn. On the other hand, there may have been better uses for an episode than giving Kara a farewell. The episode could have been better. But after no JLU for about a month, any JLU is a welcome sight. And if the next 3 episodes are better than this, the show may go out on a bang after all.
