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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Young Justice - "Drop Zone"

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Last night's episode of Young Justice featured our heroes getting a mission that is supposed to be recon only, but of course you know it's not going to work out that way.

On a remote Caribbean island, a factory for producing a dangerous superhuman drug has been taken over by the villainous Kobra. But our heroes don't know this at the time, and so they are walking into something beyond their experience. Or, in Aqualad's case, swimming into it:
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Aqualad and his teammates--Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy, and Miss Martian--manage to get into the island and deal with some of Kobra's goons, as well as the unexpected presence of another supervillain, Bane.

Bane offers to help Young Justice take on Kobra--with plans to double-cross them, of course, and together they sneak into Kobra's base of operations.
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But soon the team realizes they are in over their heads--especially team leader Robin, whose confidence is shaken, shaken so badly that in a quiet moment he turns leadership of the team over to...Aqualad!
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Later, Robin takes on Kobra mano a mano and lives to tell about it. They manage to blow up the factory, slowing Kobra down--for the moment--and make their way home.

When they have a mission post-mortem with Batman, they are sure he'll be furious that their "quiet recon" mission wasn't so quiet:
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...but the team faces another surprise: Batman isn't mad, at all--in fact, he's proud that they faced someone as dangerous as Kobra and not only managed to get back in one piece, but acted as a team and changed their approach once they learned what they were really up against. That means Young Justice is on its way to becoming a real team.


Hey, Aqualad as team leader? Even if its just for this episode, that's pretty darn cool!


Post Script: I meant to mention this the first time around--if there are any devoted Young Justice fans out there who have a basic grasp of graphics editing and enjoy recapping episodes, please drop me a line!

5 comments:

Ken O said...

Aqualad has been the obvious leader since episode one. About time the rest of the kids realized it.

Bane was really well done in this. Usually he is just a mindless muscle guy. Danny Trejo voicing him was the episode's highlight for me.

Joe Slab said...

The producers have said Aqualad will be the leader thru the 1st season at least, and that Aqualad's origin details will be coming in a new episode very soon...

And I will just say it, I live YJ Aqualad a whole lot better than Brightest Day Aqualad so far!

HollyH said...

I definitely enjoyed this one, and having Aqualad be recognized as the team's obvious leader was a real bonus, because -- yes, that was obvious to anyone who really thought about it.

In fact, my main criticism of the episode is: all the stuff about Robin, and others, assuming that HE will be team leader. And Aqualad's line at the end, about how he'll be the leader until Robin is ready, because "you were born to lead this team".

... Huh? I'm writing here as someone who's never read an issue of the "Young Justice" comic. I probably know more *of* Robin than know him from reading him. Yes, Dick Grayson became the leader of the Titans way back when (I did read those comics... but that's a long time ago). But that continuity has nothing to do with this one.

So I'm at at loss as to why everyone seems to think Robin "should" be the leader. As a new viewer, nothing about him as presented to me tells me why he should lead. Sure, he's been "in the business" longer than the others, despite his young age, but that has nothing to do with having leadership qualities, which this boy doesn't appear to have. And I should point out -- neither does his mentor. (At least all of the Justice League stuff I've seen/read has never had Batman as a leader of the team; he's too independent-minded. If anything, that would seem to have rubbed off on this Robin.)

So I really didn't get that part. Does anyone else? Can you explain it to me?

Joe Slab said...

I agree Holly.

The nod to Batman/Robin is probably required by DCE in all media so as to not alienate Bat-fans from viewership, they can be a very entitled lot (unlike Aqua-fans who are just awesome)!

Samax said...

Aqualad rules. I'm very pleased by the episodes so far. I agree w/Holly that the auto-deference to Robin at the end felt forced, like an editorial change. I ignored it, and am prepared to complain if the leadership shift feels that artificial.