The preview for "BEREFT" looks both interesting and possibly annoying. Just when Superboy has started to ease up from being a stock angry loner, here comes a plot that brings it out of him. He's quickly becoming the Wolverine; the most dysfunctional yet useful member of the team; the guy who normally should be the weakest link, but who the plot often turns into the strongest one. In real life, a guy who screams and rages blindly and disobeys orders is canon fodder; in fiction, he's more useful than the best trained, rational leader.
I am curious about whether an episode in which the team forgets about each other is really a good idea for a 9th episode. I suppose if the season was 12 episodes it might be, but I don't know if it is. Artemis has only been a part of the team two episodes; it seems a bit of a waste from her perspective. One would imagine that if the "memory lapse" negates 6 months of memories, that Robin, Kaldur, and Kid-Flash should still know each other, although they may not know Megan, Superboy, or Artemis. As Superboy was rescued from a test tube less than that length of time, he'll be the most effected. Part of me wonders if the amnesia angle is a hammer that is being used to actually get some solid depth to some of the characters that can't be accomplished any other way. Movies often use absurd situations as shorthand to getting to narrative places that take more nuance to reach normally. "What if you were granted a wish by a magic carnival machine" and all that.
Amnesia episodes are also a standard TV plot for serial series. Same as the "leader loses faith" episode. Again, where is the shrinking episode? The time travel episode where people meet dinosaurs? The "adopt a pet/baby" episode? The mind swap episode? C'mon, if you're going to adopt one or two older than stone plots, you may as well do them all! I normally can't stand amnesia episodes, because all you do is spend 22 minutes waiting for the characters to figure out who they are so they can FINALLY overcome the threat that they usually could have overcome in 5 seconds with their memories, which they then do at the end. Often, if anything different is learned during the amnesia episode, it doesn't remain, because the older memories supplant it. For team episodes, an amnesia episode often stresses the power of teamwork harder than usual (usually about as subtle as a sledgehammer to Jello). It is possible that this could be the best amnesia episode of any show ever made, but I usually can't assume that until I see it.
Two screen shots depict Kid-Flash and Artemis together; if the amnesia plot hook is used as a hammer for any story purpose, it will be in getting these two together, which THE HELMET OF FATE suggested. Without 6 months of knowledge, Artemis doesn't know Wally is a mouthy fop, and Wally wouldn't be initially irritated at her for at the notion of "replacing" Speedy as the team archer. The two are like oil and water and may NEED something as crude as an amnesia episode to get ANY scene out of them where they aren't arguing. I can imagine when everyone's memories return, Artemis and/or Wally might retain some of their experiences in the desert together. There should be a better way to get them together than that, but we'll see how it goes. The experience could allow Wally to see Artemis beyond simply assuming she is Speedy's replacement and rejecting her on those grounds, while Artemis might see that in an area like a desert where there are fewer things to trip over, Wally could be useful.
The irony is that unless they enter the desert at night, a black uniform is actually LESS useful for stealth purposes than a yellow/red one.
The desert of Bialya is naturally one of DC's fictional areas, and comes with a slew of stories from past lore. It is the desert with Dan Garret initially found the Blue Beetle scarab, which later empowered him and Jaime Reyes. Black Adam has been involved in affairs around the area too. But perhaps more to the point of the show, it is an area that the villain Queen Bee has often been involved in. We do know that Queen Bee has been confirmed for this show; what better a villain in an episode that harps about team work than a villain who is used to programming drones? The desert is north of Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is naturally a hotbed region now.
If those 3 dont think about how to use their pwoers properly then he would be a challenge for them. Espically since they never faced him before. If you just try to use brute streangth against Clayface (which SB probably did) then I dont think it would work that well since he is jsut made up of clay or whatever and one punch is not goign to affect him in his A game, Megan probably didnt even think of trying to pull him apart with her TK and Kaldur clearly didnt think about using electricity against him.
I still don't see how Clayface TKO's Superboy. AMAZO couldn't even do that with Superman's strength; Clayface isn't that strong.
I just feel the scene either needed more time and set up, or a different villain needed to be chosen. The DCU is a big universe; no need to rely almost exclusively on Batman villains.
The sad thing? I have no problem understanding how Clayface could have beaten Kid-Flash. He likely just slipped on clay.
I actually like that aspect. It separates Atlantis from the typical depictions such as Marvel's. It's closer to Asgard in that magic and technology are one and the same and that's very cool to me. I love the idea.
Exactly. I loved this show's version of Atlantis.
I don't know if someone said it here but "Downtime" felt more like
"Kaldur: the last Waterbender"
In my review, I noted it as "KALDUR: THE STARRING WATERBENDER" (as Tula and Garth were guest waterbenders).
http://s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?rid=888
Greg confirms that Orm and L-5, the Light member Black Manta talks to at the end, have the same voice actor (Roger Craig Smith).
Hmmm....
Interesting. Aquaman must be away a lot if he can't tell Ocean Master is his brother, though.
Here's an old point I've been wanting to make on the whole Wally/Artemis thing.
Earlier, Dread mentioned Wally/Raven from the comics as a parallel to Wally/Artemis in a point about "opposites attract" couples that don't really last. I actually read a Wally/Raven fanfic called "Dragons, Demons, and Other Wonders of the Heart", which was part of a series that was basically about taking the pseudo lesbian subtext between Wonder Woman and Princess Audrey from "Maid of Honor" and making an entire fic about it (great stuff). What was interesting about the story was the portrayal of Raven as this sort of quiet, mousy roommate of Starfire (whom Wally was initially interested in). The geek-girl thing worked well with Wally's boisterous, upbeat nature, and let Wally champion Raven through her problems.
Which brings me to Young Justice; I've read fanfics that are more inspired than this show currently is. And that's all Young Justice is: a fanfic. All DC animated shows are basically offshoots of somebody else's idea or characters; the only original character here is the new Aqualad. But here, there hasn't been any really gripping interactions or twists yet, other than the strong continuity and the appeal of the standard Animated DC show.
I saw Raven as more of an introverted goth than a "geek girl". She did actually have emotions under the surface, you just had to pierce her emotional armor. Of course, there were no end of Beast Boy/Raven shippers from "TEEN TITANS" forums.
Artemis is not a "geek girl". I actually think one would work well with Kid-Flash. Artemis is an assertive, no-nonsense, all attitude competitor. A type A personality, as it were. While Kid-Flash sees himself as similar, he relies more on bravado he can't back up, at least so far in this show. He's the team's weakest link. One would argue Superboy should be, since he is the angry, emotional loner, but his brute strength makes him more vital as the muscle of the team. Kid-Flash has experience and training, but he hasn't quite combined them properly on the field, IMO, in this show so far. In fact he reminds me very much of how Michelangelo often acted in the 2k3 era TMNT show. There were times he could get serious and actually be a very efficient, even creative fighter (especially in training sequences; Mikey could even frustrate Raph in sparring sessions) - but 90% of the time, he was the one who made wisecracks, screamed like a girl, and screwed up.
I suppose Artemis and Kid-Flash could work in a similar fashion as Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable did (an efficient, non-nonsense action girl and her spastic load of a male sidekick), but to be honest I didn't see enough of that show to understand why Kim and Ron worked out beyond story demands. And to be fair, Wally doesn't screw up nearly as much as Ron did.
At any rate, I wouldn't say there has been no interaction between the characters; I think that is the strength of the show. My problem is many of those interactions, so far, have not risen far above established tropes, which doesn't make them bad, but more predictable than they should be.
