Superman on Television

Justice League: Episode Reviews

Season 3 - Episode 7: "The Greatest Story Never Told"

Hey Booster, The Greatest Story Never Told is the One NOT Told

Too bad that "The Greatest Story Never Told" wasn't told - it looks like it would've been a blast. A veritable legion of super heroes teams up to take down the wizard Mordru and, somehow, the DCU's most prominent widower, the stretchy Elongated Man, inflicts the TKO blow. Blink and you might miss it because, on this week's JLU, this is merely the "B", or secondary, story.

Unfortunately, while the League is otherwise occupied, viewers are subjected to a really lame story involving S.T.A.R. Labs, a black hole sucking scientist, and 80s creation Booster Gold, and his robotic buddy Skeets. Where exactly is the Blue Beetle when we really need him?

JLU has been wildly inconsistent since its debut last month. For every tired time-traveling super hero on crowd control story, there's also the superbly crafted "For the Man Who Has Everything" and last week's "Fearful Symmetry". The reason for these huge quality fluctuations does not appear to be the anticipated loss of characterization that many predicted when the change from JL to JLU was announced. After all, it would be difficult to say that Booster Gold's characterization suffered when his chief character trait has always been his lack of character (kind of like Donald Trump in tights). More to the point, last week's newly-introduced hero was the Question and his characterization made me like him more than I ever have in comic books. What's really killing the League is the fact that it's essentially a new show every week written by wholly different people. Someone must be responsible for quality control to make this super-hero showcase work week after week.

Moreover, if I were Cartoon Network and I'd made it known that I expected JLU to appeal to a younger audience than the previous two seasons of JL, I'd be peeved. Had I not known that Mordru was someone totally different from Mordred, the wizard in "Kid Stuff", I might actually think they were one and the same - especially because Mordred's fate at the end of "Kid Stuff" was the loss of his eternal youth and Mordru is an elderly wizard too. From a virtually encyclopedic inventory of DCU villains, why choose two with such similar names?

Thankfully, Superman and Supergirl both appear - albeit super-briefly - in this episode so that my harsh review cannot again be explained by their absence from the episode. Notwithstanding the episode's Kryptonian presence this not-so-great story only gets two out of five speeding bullets and it earns those bullets only for the glimpses of the real show which would've been a story well worth telling.

Almost two dozen heroes appear next week. Sounds like they may be telling a better, and maybe even great, story. I hope they put Booster on crowd control again so we can be sure of not seeing him.

Peace out.

Back to the main TELEVISION page.