Last night’s episode of Justice League Unlimited was so-so…it featured Booster Gold, who was never a favorite of mine (though I did buy his first issue, and even got the free “Go for The Gold – BOOSTER GOLD” pin that came with it). The premise of the episode revolves around Booster’s quest for recognition from his peers and the public, which, in a nice touch, reflects the character’s lack of recognition from the majority of the cartoon’s non-comic reading viewing audience. The voice acting seemed a little off to me, and the writing was not nearly as amusing as it thought it was, though Booster’s robot companion Skeets did get the funniest line of the episode (“I got nuthin'”). What did work for me was how the threat the rest of the Justice League was dealing with (while Booster was stuck on crowd control duty) actually felt like something really dangerous and world-threatening. More so, in fact, than in other Justice League episodes where the danger is the main focus of the show, rather than relegated to the background as in this installment.
There were more nice cameos, mostly of characters we’ve seen before. Elongated Man gets a speaking role in this episode, though his stretching power is accompanied by an unfortunately-annoying sound effect. Plastic Man gets name-checked, but not shown. And, if I may nitpick for a moment, I think the producers of the show may have confused EM’s abilities with PM’s…a reference is made to EM being on a stakeout disguised as a vase – aren’t EM’s powers more limited to just stretching, while Plastic Man is the fella what can change his body into various objects? Yeah, I know, the things I worry about.
EDIT: Chris is right…Elongated Man claims he disguised himself as a vase for three days, Booster calls him on it, and EM says, “okay, maybe not.” So anyway, ignore what I said, and go look at the screenshots Chris posted of this episode.
