Monsters of Television

“Do you have a problem with you?”

And so we continue with a “Hasn’t this been done before?” approach to narrative on Green Lantern. I’m not saying this as a knock since this approach, like I said last week, can work just fine and help us think through our characters. Like the crime procedural and its formula, using tired-and-true story formats (in this episode an isolated planet with a group of not what they seem survivors), the pleasure comes from both knowing the narrative arc (though your mileage may vary on this point) and seeing how our characters interact in and with it.

“Lost Planet” is a little rote, but at least the struggle of whether or not the planet’s lone inhabitants (a group of 3 convicts, as is often the case) isn’t drawn out since one of them tries to kill Hal rather quickly. So while the reversals of Aya and Kilowog’s companions aren’t surprising, it makes space for the episode’s actual surprises, which is where the episode does have it successes.

I’m not familiar with Saint Walker, beyond knowing that he’s a Blue Lantern, but his role in the episode, as the cryptic and wise guy who doesn’t engage in actual combat while fighting someone, works nicely against Razer’s rage, and provides probably the highlight of the episode, both in terms of pushing Razer toward his inevitable redemption and the general choreography and animation for their confrontation in the forest (Kilowog’s fight with the cyclops-alien was kind of blah for me).

The real benefit of the episode was the reveal of the doomed, lost planet as Mogo, the Green Lantern that is a planet. It solved a couple of issues for the episode’s closure: destroying the asteroid and keeping the two convicts captive, allowing us to avoid another jaunt to a prison. But then there’s the rather nice narrative symmetry of Mogo’s arrival onto the scene. I like that the ring of Shyir, who died trying to save a planet, would go to a planet in need of saving. Likewise, introducing Mogo into the mix also gives some balance to the Red Lanterns’ mobile remnants of a ruined homeworld as their base of operations.

So while Saint Walker and Mogo feel like successful elements crafted onto the episode’s borrowing of the stranded planet format, the rest is just kind of there. There’s not much sense of danger (I feel like the asteroid is all but forgotten until the end), and little things like “Why did all those ships crash?” and “If Aya is disabled, why is the ship still working?” kind of bugged me during the episode. Likewise, Kilowog’s sudden desire to follow Lantern regulations felt a bit tossed in for the sake of conflict, despite the origin of the show being based on stealing the ship in the first place.

DC Nation Short: Animal Man! Until the relaunch of the DCnU, I knew nothing of Animal Man. And now that I’m reading that book monthly (it’s really good, folks), this bright and humorous short caused a little cognitive dissonance for me. It is funny though, from Animal Man springing into action not to stop Captain Cold from robbing  the bank, but from stepping on a mouse (that is caught by a hawk, in a funny little sight gag). The joke is repeated with Animal Man saving a cow from being hit by a train, ignoring the tied up damsel on the railroad tracks.

I hope that future shorts expand beyond this initial structure to something a bit more sustained, but the animation is nice and sharp, though I initially thought that Animal Man was Booster Gold, so the character design was a bit of an issue.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Enjoyed Hal’s Pong-esque construct.
• Hi, Clancy Brown! Good to hear you! And you were on Young Justice today too!
• I missed the name of the female convict, but she looked really familiar. Anyone know who she was?