Hearts and Minds Part 1

Christ why do I keep making myself do two-parters? I must be the dumbest person alive. If I get fired for writing stuff at work all the time, you guys are gonna have to chip in to buy me food, ok?

That said, my boss isn’t even here today because she’s sick.

Season 2 of Justice League is probably my favorite of any season of any DCAU show. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Cadmus stuff and the overall story arc involved there. But I loved the 2-part structure of the season 2 episodes, and the focus it allowed them to give characters. Hearts and Minds was an episode completely lacking the big three, and I love the way the other four work together. And not just because Hawkgirl and GL’s macking results in Flash and J’onn being in scenes together all the time.

Hearts and Minds opens with a group of Green Lanterns. We immediately recognize three of them from In Blackest Night early last season. There is of course, Kilowog. And then Cueball and Zorrofox. Chickenfish is notably, and disappointingly absent.

(PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME THEIR ACTUAL NAMES, I ALREADY KNOW THEM THESE NAMES ARE JUST COOLER)

The 4th Lantern is a hot sexy lady Lantern. Cueball and Zorrofox are cranky about this mission which seems to be going poorly, as they attempt to battle off a whole bunch of ships which have guns and rockets and shit. They get pushed back into a cave-ish area and are throwing down the sides to try to stop the oncoming enemies. As their forces continue their pursuit of our heroes, Cueball decides the cave is a terrible battleground and flies upwards to get out of it, along with Zorrofox who agrees with that assessment. Sexy Lady (Katma Tui) tries to stop them, but as they pop out of the opening, the find themselves staring up the backside of an engine. As some flame-esque um…flames…come shooting out of it, the two Lanterns are vaporized.

Like fucking DEAD. They’d not so definitively killed someone like that on the show at this point, and had not killed heroes. It was pretty “whoa what the hell?” at the time.

Kat yells at Kilowog to go for help though he insist he stay with her. She reminds him that her name comes first alphabetically so she’s in charge and Kilowog takes off while she goes totally nutso with her ring.

OPENING CREDITS!

Back from the credits, GL is outside doing some repairs on the Watchtower while Hawkgirl is inside guiding him through the process. “Guiding” meaning “yelling” and “him through the process” meaning “at him for messing up.” There’s a debate about what clockwise means since she told him to turn something counterclockwise and he apparently turned it the wrong way. He says that she told him Thanagarian clocks move opposite of Earth clocks so I guess he assumed she meant that and maybe she said Earth-counterclockwise because she figured he didn’t know about Thanagarian clocks and by the end of this I actually have no idea which he moved it and which way she wanted him to move. I just know they had opposite things in mind and maybe it would’ve been better to establish a “righty-tighty, lefty-loosey” sort of understanding prior to doing repairs.

As the argue, Flash comes walking by, sipping a beverage and reading POW! comics.

Look at that kid.

OH. NO.

He yells at them for their bickering, being the most adult-ish person in the room, I guess. Suddenly some alarms start going off and what looks like a big ol’ meteor is hurtling its way towards earth. Sensors are reading a life sign and GL bolts off to check it out because he was outside already anyway. Flash grabs J’onn (WINK WINK) and they get in the Javelin with Hawkgirl.

At the crash site, GL is already in a huge crater and we see that the life sign was Kilowog, who for somehow ended up on earth, despite the place he had being “at the fringe of the galaxy” or whatever. Kilowog informs John that they “got Kat” before passing out, and GL bolts the fuck out of there like a maniac.

On the Watchtower, J’onn is doing some martian doctoring on Kilowog and as they heal him up, Kilowog explains what’s what with the whole “him crashing into earth” thing. Something called The Legion of the Third Eye is doing something mean or something and they’re led by this asshole named Despero. He also explains that Kat was the Lantern that trained John, which Hawkgirl immediately takes to mean that they were doing each other. Like teacher/student relationships are just expected on Thanagar. Don’t get me wrong, they were fucking, it just seems like a conclusion you don’t necessarily leap to so quickly.

In space, John is flying by some wreckage of Lantern ship. It’s a G-Class cruiser (the G stands for green!) and over the Lantern logo someone has painted a Third Eye logo instead.

Wouldn’t painting in space be…

Ya know what, nevermind.

GL scans the area and picks up Kat’s signal from a nearby planet. He lands and sees a guy getting chased by what would be a couple of cops. The guy trips and books spill out of his backpack. Book are of course, forbidden on Kalinor and the cops move in for the kill as the guy begs for mercy. John decides to lend the guy a hand, and bubbles up the cops. They yell some whiny shit too and GL pops them one with cool “inside bubble” punches.

He turns to the guy they were chasing and asks for some information, but the guy panics and runs off. A nearby crowd has noticed John’s presence and are murmuring about this stranger and are worried that he’s going to rob them because they are racist. GL decides he needs to go undercover instead.

Back to the other guys! They can’t get ahold of GL to ask where they should meet up with him and he didn’t leave a note on the counter or anything so they ask Kilowog if maybe they should go find him. Kilowog says he can take them there with his ring except that his ring is dead and he doesn’t have his battery nearby. Flash suggests that John might have one, and Kilowog whaps him on the back in agreement.

Back to GL! He’s now got himself a fancy robe that he’s just wearing over his Lantern uniform even though we’ve seen him change his apparel with his ring before. He’s decided that he wanted to go undercover, but not too undercover.

He follows the signal from Katma’s ring until he finds a tiny little room. He rings open the door, which looked to be a wooden door with no lock or even any sort of latching mechanism, but I guess if you’re a Green Lantern you get used to using those rings for absolutely everything. The room is empty, but he finds Kat’s ring under a pillow, next to a tiny doll that’s helping her sleep at night. He puts the ring on his other hand,

which got me all pumped for some dual-ring action that never occurred, and he is then zapped from behind by some asshole cop dudes.

Back on earth! Flash and Kilowog have decided to raid John’s apartment in a quest to find his Lantern battery. As Kilowog scans with his ring, Flash heads to the fridge to get some food. He starts chowing down on GL’s leftover fried chicken before opening the fridge and finding his ice cream. He shows it to Kilowog who promptly eats it. Flash then heads to the TV area where he finds a copy of Ol’ Yeller, which Kilowog also eats.

The joke in this scene, in case you missed it, is that GL’s have a weakness to Ol’ Yeller. And, ya know, the image of John sitting on his couch crying while eating ice cream is pretty funny too.

Something like this:

**ARTIST RENDERING AND A TERRIBLE ONE AT THAT. DO NOT ATTEMPT. PROFESSIONAL CRYING ON CLOSED COURSE**

As they search for other embarrassing items, they are approached by John’s landlady who starts wailing on them with her broom. She goes straight after Flash, despite Kilowog being a giant pink-ish, monstery-looking thing with weird teeth. As she beats on him, Kilowog finds the battery and they make a run for it.

Back to GL! He’s being dragged through a room with a lot of people by a couple of the cop guys who shot at him. They drag him up to Despero and when he says his name the whole crowd goes “DESPERO IS ALLLLLLLL” like their in church, and the priest is saying stuff and everyone else knows exactly what to say back to him but you can’t find this script anywhere so you just kinda mumble stuff.

Despero tells John how he’s gonna take over the universe and regales us with the story of how he was a weakling and was kicked out of town because he had a nasty extra eye and while it’s fun to throw dirt in three eyes, it’s not fun enough to justify his creepiness. Out in the desert, a bunch of thieves jump him and as they’re gonna steal his stuff but the ground cracks open a big purple flame comes out. Despero says it “spoke to him” and made him tough and gave him flame powers in his eye. And then he went back and made everyone listen to him, like an asshole.

GL thinks he’s lying. Like “here’s a weird story about how I got flame-y powers, I just made that up though, so you don’t know the real story of how I stole them off a hobo.” Despero shows him the flame which they had packed up and moved to his big palace. GL tries to blast him with his ring which they let him keep for some reason, but Despero overpowers him. There’s more dragging as Despero orders GL to be thrown into the flame.

AND WHO IS THERE TO DO IT BUT KATMA TUI OH NO

GL is hurled into, but is moments later being transported to an underground hideout thing. I think it’s underground, I guess I just sort of assumed it was. So he’s ok, and Katma punches him and explains that she’s fucking undercover you fucking asshole and maybe he should’ve called ahead. Maybe you should’ve had your fucking ring with you because he just got your stupid ring voicemail. He hands Katma her ring back and she puts it

ummm

somewhere.

They argue some more, then she asks him if he still snores and he says he wouldn’t know and he’s never slept even remotely close to anyone in the last million or so years who might’ve complained about his snoring. They lock lips and tie tongues and make outs then Kat tells John to stay with the resistance and she’s gonna go back to pretending to be a priestess. John wants to go with her but she says he wouldn’t look good in a brass bikini.

Hey though. She doesn’t know that for sure. He might.

The episode ends with Despero doing some chanting and all of his little army getting flame powers and zipping off to space.

TO BE CONTINUED ON FRIDAY (TOMORROW)!