Now that season 3 is on its way it’s the best time to rewatch the show, preferably on the DC Universe streaming service if you’re in America as that helps support the show directly and hopefully get us more than just season 3. This Re(af)Watch series is not quite a review, more of an opinion piece about each episode as I rewatch them. Covering all 46 episodes of the show’s first 2 seasons, and maybe more. Continuing on with season 2 episode 13 The Fix
Written by: Greg Weisman
Directed by: Tim Divar
Episode synopsis: With Psimon about to enter Kaldur’s mind and Black Manta going to send someone to kill Miss Martian, Artemis drugs Psimon and blames it on Miss Martian’s psychic tampering, and saying only Miss Martian can undo it. So he sends Artemis and Deathstroke to kidnap Miss Martian, and they do, leaving a broken legged Lagoon Boy in their wake. Meanwhile Green Beetle tells the Team the Reach’s plans for their new energy drink, which will make the human race sedate and addicted to it over generations, while also tracking the Meta-Gene. Back on the Manta ship Miss Martian and Artemis enter Kaldur’s mind to try and fix it, but Miss Martian’s feeling too guilty over her actions and is nearly killed by Kaldur’s mind. Artemis has to save both her and Kaldur at the same time. Nightwing has to tell Lagoon Boy and Superboy about Kaldur and Artemis’ undercover mission. And Blue Beetle convinces Green to try and fix his Scarab so he’s in control of it, and at the end he declares it’s worked, he’s got control.
This is Artemis’ episode. It is about M’gann and Kaldur too, but it is her episode first and foremost. She’s the one who has to help both of them sort out their own problems while still keeping her cover as Tigress. She even has an inner monolog going on. She manages to stop Psimon from revealing their secrets (using the same drug her father used back in Salvage), then spins that into a way to help Kaldur that doesn’t expose them and help M’gann not get assassinated at the same time. That’s some excellent problem solving right there.
Artemis is having a little bit of an identity crisis, feeling a little bit lost in the role of Tigress, which is apparently a common thing for those in deep undercover work. She is all alone, can’t trust anyone around her, can’t talk to anyone about what she’s going through, and always having to play the part of Tigress every minute of every hour of every day. Never knowing if today is going to be the day someone discovers the truth, through a slip up from her or something completely out of her control, and gets herself and Kaldur killed. That’s a crushing weight to deal with all the time. The fact that she’s able to pull off everything she does in this episode is a testament to how great she is.
M’gann’s role here is the culmination of her character arc, she has to fix what she has broken. Her relationship with La’gaan is coming to an impasse as she has closed herself off to him, and they were going to have The Talk before Tigress and Deathstroke interrupted them. This rebound relationship isn’t looking too good. M’gann is still at her low point this episode and is unsure how to climb up out of it until Artemis helps her before she let herself die inside Kaldur’s mind.
The resolution to the arc is a bit lacking. It feels a bit rushed to go from her thinking she should die for what she’s done to helping Kaldur fix himself. It’s literally just a beat between those two points, and all it takes to resolve them is Artemis saying “together.” It’s just a little disappointing because it doesn’t touch on anything other than what happened to Kaldur, nothing on all the other horrible stuff M’gann did before breaking Kaldur’s mind. She’s not redeeming herself for those other actions, we don’t see her tackle her cruel and callous nature towards anyone she deems as a “bad guy.” I just wish the show addressed that rather than having her be redeemed just by fixing Kaldur.
Nightwing’s secrets come out too, if only to a limited audience. You can really see the toll this is taking on him, he’s just worn down by it all. The reason he tells La’gaan and Conner is as much to reassure La’gaan as it is to just get some of this weight off of him. He can’t take much more of this. Conner and La’gaan’s reactions are his chickens coming home to roost. Seeing him vulnerable like this makes the secret keeping plot work a lot better than it has on other series. Here Nightwing doesn’t come off like a dick, he’s not keeping secrets for no reason, and he’s not coming across as self-righteous in his justifications. We see the cost this is taking on him and we sympathise with him for it rather than hate him. It helps that he’s not Batman, because with Batman it seems like we’re not allowed to see that vulnerability very often from him for whatever reason. So the Batman-like characters tend work better and have a lot more human moments.
Something interesting on the rewatch is just how much Green Beetle is stringing along Jaime. He’s got a lot of reverse psychology going on, pushing Jaime away, telling Jaime that him trying to fix the Scarab is a bad idea, that it’s dangerous, and that he doesn’t want to do it, all feeding into Jaime’s desperation. He wants so bad to be free of the Scarab that he’d do anything, and with Green there he gets pushed into making a big mistake.
The Reach commercial was entertaining in how much of a commercial it was, it’s just so ridiculous and silly. We also get a glorious appearance by G. Gordon “I’m not drinking the space cola” Godfrey. That right there shows you how much people like Godfrey are committed to the principles that they preach, in the fact that there’s no principles to be had. The Reach’s drink is just called Reach and you know some marketing person got paid a lot of money by Lexcorp to come up with that name. The Reach’s plan here speaks a lot to their methods, the drink won’t do anything right away, but after generations it will be addictive and make the population docile. They play the long game, they are not planning on doing a full scale invasion War of the Worlds style.
Deathstroke is our redesigned character this episode. He’s been around a lot, many TV shows, cartoon, movies, that it feels almost redundant talking about him here. The biggest thing about his design in the show is the ponytail, which is a somewhat contentious point. Some who worked on the show liked it and others did not, and I vaguely remember reading that some changed their minds to not liking it after seeing his ponytail-less design in the Flashpoint Paradox movie (which shares the same character designer, Phil Bourassa). So maybe in season 3 he will have cut his hair. I kind of like how big and poofy his ponytail is, it’s probably not a great practical choice for someone who’s supposed to be “the world’s best and most expensive mercenary” though. It has a ridiculous charm to it, not one that fits with the practical design aesthetic of the show mind you and I wouldn’t miss it if they do get rid of it. Wentworth Miller did a killer performance as Slade and I hope he comes back and does more because he’s been great in everything I’ve seen him in. He got replaced as Slade in later appearances this season as he wasn’t available, which was a big shame.
I feel like this should have perhaps been a bigger episode than it was, at least in terms of M’gann’s arc. I think it might be a by-product of the very story driven nature of this season, there’s a lot of story to get through and only so much time in an episode. So this episode has to further the Jaime plot, reveal the Reach drink and what it does, and also get Nightwing revealing his secrets, that’s a lot. So to have all that in there means having less time inside Kaldur’s mind and dealing with M’gann. Add to it the fact that the show spent the first half of the season showing us how M’gann was going off the rails and the damage she was doing; but the resolution to that is all about what she did with Kaldur and not mentioning that first half stuff. It’s not a bad episode by any means, I love Artemis episodes and she is fantastic here, but I’m faulting it for not being better than it was.
Little things I liked: There’s a freshman Atlantean course, that’s just a cool little in-universe detail. Manta thinking Tigress and Kaldur are a romantic item, wrongly as he’s reading into things but I like that he’s still a supportive dad of them. That Artemis spent six hours inside Kaldur’s head without noticing and is feeling tired after getting back in her body. Green Beetle creepy smile.
Quote of the episode:
“How about we meet up first thing in the morning, like noon-ish.” Jaime, being a teenager.
Quote that takes on a new meaning after watching the series:
“It’s getting a little hard to remember who myself is.” Tigress
I’m just thinking on how her monolog at the beginning reflects on her status at the end of the season.
