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 4 Salvage
Written by: Greg Weisman
Directed by: Tim Divar
Episode synopsis: Superboy and Blue Beetle face an Appellaxian golem created by Intergang members Bruno “Ugly” Mannheim and Whisper A’Daire. They have to stop it before it destroys a nuclear power plant, while Sportsmaster and The Light’s new Partner watch on. Meanwhile Red Arrow is hitting rock bottom and Green Arrow, Black Canary, and friends stage an intervention. Which doesn’t go so well and it’s up to Red Arrow’s wife, Cheshire, and their new daughter to break through to him.
This is an episode with a fairly conventional superhero cartoon A plot with an unconventional B plot for a superhero cartoon. I’m not knocking the A plot, it’s a good proper introduction to Blue Beetle and showing what his deal is, showing his character conflicts. But the B plot is not something that you’d expect to see in a superhero cartoon, especially the ending. It’s all great character drama, people just talking to each other, set in one location, and our heroes fail to convince Roy to let them help him get better.
The Roy we see here is at one of the lowest points in his life. It’s not just the stealing from someone he just saved, it’s everything about him. He’s obviously lost a lot of weight, he’s unhealthily skinny, he’s not keeping in shape, probably not eating or sleeping well. Given he’s stealing money he likely can’t afford a decent meal so he’s eating cheaper more unhealthy foods. Black Canary’s line “you used to treat your body like a temple” is telling about his previous fitness regime because she is one of the pre-eminent martial artists in DC, she would not say something like that lightly. Though one has to wonder if he was treating his body like a temple because he wanted to or if it was the clone programming of “become a member the Justice League” pushing him to do so.
Which comes around to the reason for Roy’s depression, finding out his entire life’s a lie, that he’s nothing but a copy, and he’s been used to hurt people, people who are his friends and family. So he’s distancing himself from all of them, and doing that so much he’s done it to himself. He doesn’t consider himself Roy Harper and has made the jump into not considering himself to be a real person, so all his action and consequences that negatively impact him don’t matter to him because in his mind he’s not real. Him getting back the “real Roy Harper” is his penance for his actions under The Light’s control, and one wonders what he would do once that happened if he stayed on this path. Given how hard he was leaning into him not being “the real Roy” I can’t see him having anything less than a tragic ending.
However that was before Cheshire came back, bringing their daughter Lian into his life. Now he has something to live for, as corny as that sounds. Lian is someone that is physical proof he’s not just a fake copy, he’s a real person in his own right. That’s not something Wally, Dick, or the others could provide. They tried, made some very excellent point that “the real Roy” was never their friend, they’ve only ever met him, and he is real to them. But they tried to talk him out of searching for “the real Roy” and that was the wrong approach, that wasn’t causing his depression just a symptom of it.
Jim Harper was obviously dealing with clone depression too, but while he is also a clone of “the real Roy” he’s dealing with different things than Red Arrow is. He never took over someone’s life, he had his own fake life that he now to re-evaluate. That’s why he gave up the superhero life as Guardian, that’s something The Light made, not him. He’s trying to figure out how he is a real person and not just a copy for The Light’s agendas. But because he already has a disconnect from “the real Roy” with his identity as Jim Harper, he just has to figure out who that is once you remove all of The Light baggage.
And I keep typing “the real Roy” instead of just removing the inverted commas because they are all real, to specify one is real means that the others are not real. They are all each their own person, with their own characteristics and personalities, all forged from their own unique experiences. It’s just that there’s no other way to distinguish them at this point that gets the same point across. (Now some episodes down the line there might be an easier distinguishing name, but not by this episode.)
We also learned what happened to another two missing original Team members, Wally and Artemis. They have hung up the cape and cowl life and are living together. They’re in college now, both taken a Vietnamese literature elective, something they might have picked up from Artemis’ mom. They also have a pit bull dog modelled after Artemis’ actress, Stephanie Lemelin’s, real life dog. They are such a cute couple and it’s nice to see things working out for them. He may not be putting on the costume any more but Wally’s still there when his friends need him, any time Dick calls I’m sure he’ll come running.
Back in the A plot we see Superboy has certainly come far since season 1, he’s got his own investigation going on with some solid sleuthing too. He has figured that since the bomb planted at the Krolotean base last episode was of alien origin, and that the Kroloteans clearly didn’t plant it, that he should track their other known source of black market alien technology on Earth, Intergang. He’s managed to track down high level Intergang members Bruno “Ugly” Mannheim and Whisper A’Daire, and drags Blue Beetle along pretty much because he was the only Team member not being homeschooled or making-out with his ex. You’ve got to wonder if someone’s been teaching him a few tricks of the trade, maybe even an award winning investigative journalist. That would be a fun series to watch, Conner and Clark investigating crimes and Clark having to teach him how things work, and also how to do while using superpowers and not get caught.
Blue Beetle is more of the focus here, though. After two episodes of joking around that he talks to himself we get to see he really is talking to a voice in his head, and hear it for the first time too. The Scarab on his back that gives him his power armor is alive and talks to him, mostly telling him to kill things in the most efficient manner possible. It was an interesting choice to wait till episode 4 to reveal what his deal is; it certainly puts the audience in the same position as the other characters, just trying to work out what’s going on with this guy who angrily talks to himself. As I’ve mentioned before it helped that the character was a prominent recurring character in Batman The Brave And The Bold, so while this was probably the first time some of the audience had seen the character there would’ve still been plenty that knew him.
Blue’s main character conflict is laid out here, his own literal internal conflict with the Scarab. That the Scarab is constantly talking in his head and then in battle giving recommendations that are more lethal than helpful. Like the solution here with the Appellaxian golem was to communicate with them rather than trying to blow them up. He’s got to teach the Scarab to think outside the programming given to them.
We also got a version of the Scarab’s origin, being a machine that the second Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, made that The Light killed him for. It’s an interesting variation on it, tie’s it into the greater narrative, and it’s not like the comics made it easy to adapt the origin either. The Jaime Reyes comic origin is tangled up with the event series Infinite Crisis, and another comic gimmick called One Year Later (where all the DC comics did their own timeskip of one year), with Ted Kord’s death being due to Max Lord and the OMACs, which is its own can of worms. Suffice it to say they did not make it easy to simplify the Jaime Blue Beetle origin. Batman The Brave And The Bold also did the same sort of thing, start with Ted Kord already dead and Jaime having the Scarab, and gloss over the rest. Strip it down and keep the important parts of the origin.
Our redesigned character this time was the Appellaxians, the villains that brought the original Justice League together. While not typically thought of by modern fans as the first foes of the Justice League they are from Justice League of America #9 (1962) titled “The Origin of the Justice League” where the League tell Snapper Carr (who also appears in this episode homeschooling Beast Boy) how they formed the League. I think this threw a few fans for a loop who had never heard of the Appellaxians before, but this is a cool nod to JLA history. Honestly I do prefer this to more modern depictions which has the League face Darkseid right out of the gate. If you start at the biggest villain then where else do you go? Bringing him back just means diminishing his status as he keeps getting defeated, so it’s better to build up to the big villains rather than push them out to be the first one the heroes fight.
This episode kicks off the second arc of the season, as we see The Light has a new shadowy Partner and he’s dangerous, deadly, and has a very familiar looking weapon. We get a good character introduction to Blue Beetle, who will become a major player this season, as the episodes return to being more self-contained pieces. Plus we get the return fans have been waiting for, Sportsmaster! And Roy, Artemis, and Wally too. This was a nice more low-key episode after the more bigger and explosive episode 3.
Little things I liked: Seeing Lagoon Boy and Beast Boy in casual clothes, it just has that nice aesthetic to it with the more “monstrous” characters. Beast Boy getting cave-schooled by Snapper Carr, since he can’t really go to a public school with green skin and all. Blue Beetle’s staple gun, and the even larger one he makes for the Appellaxian golem, it’s just neat. Wolf and Sphere being part of the Team and the fight. There being no sound in space at the start when setting up the Zeta Shield.
Quote of the episode:
“Freshmen never do the homework” Conner to Blue Beetle.
Quote that takes on a new meaning after watching the series:
Not a quote but the drug Sportsmaster uses to make people drooling comatose bodies does come up again in the future, many episodes from now.
