Justice League S01E14-15 Review: Monkey Business

Justice League, Season 1, Episodes 14-15: The Brave and the Bold

Sometimes comic book stories are the best when you take a hilarious premise and let it play out seriously. Case in point, a man that can run really fast and a man who can create light structures with a piece of jewelry powered with willpower do battle against a mind-controlling super-intelligent gorilla criminal that escaped from a hidden city of technologically-super-advanced sentient gorillas. Man, whoever came up with these classic Flash villains must be on some awesome acid back in the day.

This is one of those episodes that I really liked as a kid. It's paced pretty well other than some iffy moments in the earlier parts of the episode. It's got a great dynamic, focusing this time on Flash, but also brings Green Lantern in as the second most prominent character. It does a fair amount of world-building, too, with Gorilla City being introduced as a part of this insane world. And Gorilla Grodd, despite being utterly stupid on paper, works so freaking well when you actually see stories with him. This cartoon was what made Gorilla Grodd go from 'that talking monkey in Superfriends' to 'holy shit, it's Gorilla Grodd!' The same way that Joker and Lex Luthor successfully made a clown in a purple tuxedo and a bald dude effective as villains, Gorilla Grodd does so as arguably the fourth most important villain in the Justice League series.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, and analyze this episode. There are several relatively weak points, a couple of it related to having the earlier parts of the episode just focus almost solely on the Flash. Yes, I get it, having a long action sequence with him running to chase the out-of-control truck is a way to give the Flash screentime, but the whole point of the character is that, y'know, he's very fast. The truck chase scene felt like it took forever... and, yeah, one of the main criticisms of the first season is that Superman and Flash were underpowered. There were a couple of 'weak Superman' episodes, most notably War World and Savage Time... but Flash has consistently been the group's punching bag because the show still is kind of trying to figure out just how far they can go with the superspeed to make him still feel like one of the lower-tier JLA members yet not make him look weak.

And then there was this one point where Flash was put through some really weird acid where he's fat, he's got a big head, he's an ape, he's a puppet... it's a treasure trove of homages, I know, and it's supposed to represent him being mind-controlled, but that's either overblown and unnecessary, or a really clever way of incorporating Silver Age silliness. You be the judge.

But all throughout the two-parter, we have the Brave and the Bold. Flash and Green Lantern has always been a duo that are always joined at the hip, from Barry Allen and Hal Jordan in the original incarnation of the JLA, to their successors in the 90's comic, Wally West and Kyle Rayner, the two youngest members of the League at that time. This episode plays with lobbing together Wally and John, expanding on their brief moments together in 'Secret Origins' and 'In Blackest Night'. The Flash is this very impetuous, brash kid that does things first before really thinking about it, while John is like his long-suffering big brother or superior officer that just tries to rein him in and remind him to be careful. The two work well with each other, and throughout this episode Lantern does manage to respect Flash somewhat.

Lantern and Flash discover that, hey, apparently there's this talking, sentient gorilla, Solovar, running around chasing a fugitive, Grodd, who's going around mind-controlling people for some heinous plan. Grodd works together with one dr. Sarah Corwin to infiltrate Central City's military base and gain control of the missiles stored within, but not before mind-controlling nearly the entire population of Central City.

As this is all going, we get a nice division of labour where the rest of the League (Batman, Wonder Woman, J'onn and Hawkgirl... which is basically everyone except Superman!) tries to figure out where Central City has disappeared to, and independently manage to find out where Gorilla City is. There's just something surreal at seeing Batman swing around the super-highly-advanced Gorilla City, scaring gorillas crossing the street with their gorilla children, and a pretty cool breakout sequence during their little misunderstanding, too. The climax is pretty cool, with Green Lantern chasing down and tearing the missiles apart and later helped out with J'onn (always phasing with style), Hawkgirl lives the dream of smashing shit up, and Diana, and the birth of a legion of shippers as Batman digs the ground around the missile desperately when Wonder Woman seemed to be crushed underneath it. He gets a sweet kiss for muddied gloves! How sweet.

Meanwhile, Flash does battle with Grodd, and manages to defeat him by tricking him to using his mind-control helmet while he has crossed the wires prior. Grodd himself is a treasure trove of memorable lines, including the "I hate bananas" thing.

It's not a perfect episode by any means, and has a really slow opening, but definitely one of the most entertaining. Flash and Green Lantern's relationship is really well-written, and seeing Flash finally take the big role of heading an episode on his own, having a brief origin story flashback, and outwitting Grodd in combat, is really nice.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Brave and the Bold is the original DC title that pairs other superheroes up in crossovers, before, y'know, the whole Justice League of America thing was created. In modern times the title is most often used to refer to a Flash and a Green Lantern.
• Flash's origin story is sort of re-told in a brief flashback of lightning striking a laboratory that he's working in though we don't get any long monologues about it. Central City, the city that Flash lives in, also makes a prominent appearance here. 
• In the comics, Flash does have to eat a lot because of his accelerated metabolism, hence the mountain of hot dogs and hamburgers he consumes during this episode.
• Grodd, Solovar and Gorilla City all originated from a Flash comic-book. There, all the gorillas of Gorilla City were telepathic, and did not require the usage of the mind-control helmet seen here... though honestly only Grodd really used mind-control powers most of the time, so I understand why the show-makers needed to give a shorthand of showing why Grodd was so dangerous compared to the average gorilla. Flash's antics may have given Grodd the powers permanently, though. Gorilla Grodd is one of Flash's most persistent enemies. In the comics, Solovar was actually King Solovar, not a mere leader of security.
• While showing off to the girls at the restaurant, Flash briefly mentions a battle with Solomon Grundy, who won't show up until an episode after this.
• Solovar's first line, "get your stinking paws off me, filthy human!" is a homage to one of the famous lines from classic sci-fi movie Planet of the Apes, where the roles are reversed -- a human saying a similar line to an ape surprises the ape that humans can talk.
• Flash tells Grodd to 'go climb a skyscraper', which obviously is a reference to King Kong. He also calls Grodd 'Mojo' at one point, a reference to Mojo Jojo, the monkey villain in Powerpuff Girls.
• Flash's acid trip sequence contains multiple references to the most insane covers of different Barry Allen era Flash comics, among others fat flash (Flash #115: the Day Flash Weighed 1000 Pounds"), puppet Flash (Flash #133: Plight of the Puppet Flash), mirrored Flash (Flash #105: Master of Mirrors), big-headed Flash (Flash #177) and ape Flash has definitely been done multiple times in the various gorilla-themed series. Kudos to the internet for helping me figure this out, I wouldn't have bothered to search Flash covers one by one myself.