Young Justice S02E13 Review: The Problem With Mind-Reading

Young Justice, Season 2, Episode 13: The Fix

This is definitely a slower episode in which the cast ends up having to deal with the whole "M'gann mind-wiped Kaldur'ahm's mind" mistake that the rather ill-advised deep cover mission caused as a result. Again, it's arguable just how effective Nightwing's decision to keep this deep cover deal in the dark, but they've made their bed and now have to lie in it. The problem, though, is how Artemis, now Tigress, can cure Kaldur's mind without blowing her cover or cause any of her friends to be permanently harmed. The episode smartly keeps the episode as close-knit as possible, starring mostly Artemis and M'gann as the main focus, and Aqualad, Black Manta and Deathstroke just kind of hang around.

We get a pretty fun narration from Artemis at various points in this episode, which basically boils down to "great, what the fuck am I going to do?" while keeping a very straight supervillain-minion look when interacting with Manta and Deathstroke. She also has her monologue as a very thinly-disguised recap... and some parts of her dialogue with Black Manta and M'gann honestly feel rather clunkily worded. Which is probably necessary considering the show's huge breaks during its original runtime, but just kind of feels wonky when watched in bulk.

Still, the episode itself is pretty fun, with the cliffhanger from the previous episode, bringing Psimon in to fix Kaldur'ahm's mind, ending with Artemis poisoning Psimon and making it look like Psimon ended up freaking out and attacking her -- something Artemis blames on some sort of psychic virus left behind as a booby trap. It's a clever move to try and get the bad guys to catch M'gann alive so she can actually fix Kaldur'ahm, but as Artemis notes to herself, she might just be trading one friend-in-jeopardy for another. There's definitely some neat scripting where Artemis is definitely dropping hints, but makes it look so that it is Black Manta himself who suggests the plan. If nothing else, the fact that Artemis was chosen for the mission considering how great she is in improvising is certainly being displayed quite well.


M'gann, meanwhile, is dealing with a different sort of conflict -- namely, she was brought in as their resident friendly martian to mind-probe our new buddy Green Beetle and to verify if he's a legitimate ally. Green Beetle might not quite know how to properly smile (and his attempt to do so is hilarious) but he seems cooperative enough to offer up his mind to M'gann and calm her down when he recognizes M'gann's hesitation due to her recent... mishap with mental probes. It's definitely a fun bit of "so is Green Beetle really legit?" moment, because he is a wild card in all this. And honestly? He does seem pretty dang friendly and ever so polite in his scenes, and seems to be shaping up as a mentor for good old Jaime. We also get a brief note of the Light/Reach's plan to sell the Reach's addictive drink which will pacify the humans over a couple of generations. It's honestly questionable how the logistics of this plan will work, but presumably the Light/Reach collaboration will dip their toes into other sorts of foodstuff, and it feels like a fun Silver Age comic book plan anyway. I suppose I'll acknowledge some of the episode's final scenes right now since it's thematic, as it ends with Green Beetle 'fixing' Blue Beetle's scarab and silencing its noise in Jaime's head, a piece of information that Impulse, interestingly, seems unsure to make of.

Meanwhile, M'gann and La'gaan end up going into a junkyard to talk and sort out their feelings, with La'gaan noticing the distance that the two of them are having and acknowledging that while the M'gann/Conner shippers might be super happy, Lagoon Boy has feelings too! Said conversation gets absolutely interrupted when Artemis-Tigress and Deathstroke show up, and absolutely demolish the two of them. Poor Lagoon Boy ends up being kind of left aside as Artemis and M'gann converse through their memories. It's a good thing M'gann isn't any angrier, or this would probably go bad.

And honestly, while this is mainly a more emotionally heavy episode, the action scene is pretty damn badass in this junkyard, with Deathstroke's jumping around and gadgetry really showing off his badassery, while M'gann and Tigress "pretending" to fight with telekinetically thrown cars also ends up pretty damn well. This ends with Deathstroke and Artemis "abducting" M'gann... but the complications end up being piled up when Black Manta apparently has a specially-made collar that inhibits some of M'gann's powers... and will explode, manned by Deathstroke that is following behind the submarine from a different ship, meaning that there's no real way for Artemis to really take out M'gann's power inhibitors or the bomb without alerting the rest of the baddies to her complicity.

To add to the pile of complications in poor Artemis's mission, M'gann is worried that Kaldur's shattered psyche will read her mental assault as a threat, prompting Artemis to tell M'gann to bring her in as well. The scene in Kaldur's psyche is perhaps a lot more action-minded and disorienting than actual character development, though, which is the big problem I have with this episode. It treats "symbiosis" as some sort of overreaching word with some kind of meaning, but the show never really gave any weight to it. We spend a bunch of time with M'gann and Artemis figuring out how things work in mental-land, and fight a ghost-Aquagirl, M'gann has to deal with her guilt, until it's Artemis that ends up getting Kaldur and M'gann to basically get their heads in the game and start fixing Kaldur's mind. For all the buildup we had, it was quite sudden and honestly a bit of an anti-climax on the way to fix Kaldur's mind. I get that Kaldur is definitely understanding enough to forgive M'gann, but on the other hand I also thought that getting M'gann to get through Kaldur's subconscious would take a lot more than that.


More interesting for me is the fact that the cat is out of the bag, with Nightwing finally telling Superboy and Lagoon Boy in the hospital about Artemis and Aqualad's deep-cover agent mission. Lagoon Boy is decidedly pretty damn furious. "I mourned her!" La'gaan snarls, before pointing out all the flaws in Nightwing's plan. He basically went for the kill any time he sees Kaldur'ahm, and there were a lot of missions when they could've accidentally hurt or killed each other -- especially the whole deal with Miss Martian frying Kaldur'ahm's brain, as Nightwing just found out. Superboy, interestingly enough, backs Nightwing's decision... right until they walk out of Lagoon Boy's room, and his calm condemnation really ends up being far more effective on both Nightwing and myself, the viewer, than Lagoon Boy's angry ranting.

Overall, despite a pretty strong first half, the latter half of the M'gann/Artemis/Kaldur story ended up being somewhat of a disappointment. It's still a pretty neat episode, though, and a much-needed slower one after all the excitement we've been getting.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Tigress, Aqualad, Nightwing, Miss Martian, Blue Beetle, Lagoon Boy, Adam Strange, Superboy, Green Beetle, Impulse, Robin, Deathstroke, Aquagirl (vision)
• Villains: Black Manta, Psimon, The Ambassador, G. Gordon Godfrey

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Psimon mentioned his encounter and subsequent near-catatonic stage at the hands of M'gann back in episode 21 of the first season, "Image". And... and that's honestly the only real Easter Egg in this episode. Everything else just works off information we already know from episodes earlier this season.