Originally Posted by
Bored at 3:00AM
I've had a strange relationship with the Young Justice cartoon from the beginning. There's so much to love about this show, but my problems with it always keep it at an arm's distance from me.
I really appreciate how deep the show digs into the morality of the superhero community over the ethics of what is the right or wrong course of action. It's important to show that these people are fallible enough to make mistakes, but are willing to own up to them, change, and become better heroes. Drama comes from seeing protagonists fail, pick themselves up again and try again to succeed. In this respect, Young Justice has succeeded, particularly because its main characters are meant to be still learning the ropes.
However, this moral ambiguity has repeatedly left the adult heroes of the Justice League looking ineffectual, or worse, morally compromised. My guess is this is why Superman's role within the League has been so minimized throughout the show, because there's no way to reconcile a properly written Superman with how this show's League has been portrayed. The in-story explanation is presumably that he's too busy raising his new son with Lois to notice that the League is such a useless mess, but that doesn't really make Wonder Woman or the rest of the League come off any better. Batman being portrayed as a manipulative asshat isn't new, unfortunately.
The show's embrace of the sheer vast scope of the DCU is something not seen since the heyday of the DCAU with JLU. Hell, it's even surpassed the DCAU in terms of how much time this show's multi-generational superhero history spans. On the other hand, the show is just so relentlessly unfunny. When it's not trying to be dour, the attempts at humor or levity are often downright painful.I'm not expecting Young Justice to be a carbon copy of the DCAU, but, while that incarnation of DC's animated continuity had its own problems, it was, above all else, genuinely fun most of the time, whereas Young Justice takes itself so damned seriously, it comes off as pretentious more often than not.
I dunno. I really want to love the show, which is why I keep watching, but my problems with it have remained. Maybe the idea of having Black Lightning come in as chairman to course correct the League will fix that issue, and maybe the producers could bring in some new people into the writers room who can punch up the scripts with jokes that aren't so cringe-inducing.