Review: "Sword of the Atom!"
**Ahoy! Here be Spoilers!**
There's a new comedy troupe in town, folks--Aquaman and the Atom, one night only! Get your tickets now!
We start off with The Currys of Atlantis, a.k.a. Aquaman as a sitcom! He even sings his own theme song!! :D Honestly, I kind of got the feeling that the writer just had no idea for a teaser, turned on the television, and happened to catch a rerun of The Honeymooners. It was basically generic sitcom plot (Aquaman forgot his wedding anniversary!) punctuated by audience noises ("Filmed in front of a live studio audience!"), but it was worth it just for the "Aqualad is my decoy" line in the song--oh, heck, the theme song period-- and Black Manta constantly trying to bomb the Currys because their pet dolphin keeps ruining his octopus garden.
The main plot starts out with a flashback. Batman reminisces about his adventures with Atom Ray Palmer back in the day, and for a moment I was worried because this is how Blue Beetle Ted Kord was introduced before we found out he died, but thankfully, this story ends with Ray voluntarily retiring. The flashback continues by detailing Ryan Choi's adventures as the Atom, and how he too ended up retiring to pursue his first love--science. So that's where Ryan's been all this time. But now, the villain Chronos has returned, and Batman needs Ray Palmer's help to take him down. Only problem? Ray Palmer has gone missing. Last known location? The Amazon rainforest. So Batman shrinks himself down to go searching for him. The only thing he finds is a Hercules beetle.
Cut to Ivy University. Ryan Choi is alone in his lab and is taking advantage of the solitude to goof around:
Ryan: "So, you think you're tough, huh? Do ya, punk!? You don't know who you're dealing with! I am Dr. Ryan Choi, and you are GOING DOWN!"
*adds minus sign to complicated equation on chalkboard*
Ryan: "Ha! That's right! I JUST INVERTED YOUR EXPONENTIAL INTEGRAL!!!"
I have no idea what that means, other than that it made my love for Ryan increase fivefold. <333
Ryan's very serious work is interrupted by a call from Aquaman, who subsequently comes barging in and DEMANDS Ryan help him find Ray Palmer and the now-missing Batman. So poor Ryan gets dragged all the way down to an abandoned cabin in the middle of the rainforest--turns out it was Ray Palmer's lab or something. They also find "wee little footprints" (oh Aquaman) and a fancy-looking doohickey with a white dwarf lens that shrinks stuff. Aquaman tricks a still reluctant Ryan into shrinking down with him and going after Batman in person.
There's one thing that bugged me about this scene. The shrink ray shrinks down with Aquaman and Ryan. But when they first discovered the ray in the cabin, it was at normal size. So, if the implication is that Batman used the shrink ray to make himself tiny earlier, how could the shrink ray still be at normal size? Wouldn't it have shrunk down with Batman once Batman used it just like it shrunk down with Aquaman once Aquaman used it? Well, whatever. The shrink ray gets broke, Ryan gets mad, and so do I!
SCIENCE TIME
Okay, so the power source for both Atoms' belt is described as a piece of a white dwarf. I could literally write a thesis on how much is wrong with that, but here's the short version. A white dwarf is what's left after a sun-like star "dies", or puffs its outer layers into space. It is a very small (by astronomical standards), compact, dense object. And when I say dense, I mean that a teaspoonful would weigh more than your car. So while I can suspend my disbelief long enough to believe that a chunk of carbon could give human beings the ability to shrink and grow at will, and that a white dwarf fragment could even get to Earth in the first place (the closest one is 50,000,000,000,000 miles away!!!), and that it wouldn't cause massive amounts of destruction if it DID get to Earth, it absolutely drives me bonkers whenever I see these characters carrying around shrink rays and various other "doohickeys" made with white dwarf material when they should need Superman to even lift it off the ground!!!
END OF SCIENCE TIME (Sorry about that, I've been holding that in for a while)
Anyway, Aquaman tries to convince Ryan to become a superhero again, to no avail. They eventually stumble upon Batman's field of battle, and Ryan immediately deduces how it all went down. He's smart like that. The only thing he can't figure out is why it looks like the beetle just vanished off the face of the planet after a while--at least until they are confronted by a poison dart frog. And when I say "confronted", I mean "Ryan is almost eaten by it." Aquaman saves him, but when Ryan hypothesizes that the Hercules beetle and Batman must have both been eaten by this very same frog (why it couldn't have been another frog or another animal altogether, I don't know), Aquaman allows the frog to eat him so he can go inside and look for Batman. Only an Aquaman could come up with a plan like that.
After a quick search, Aquaman finds nothing and shows the frog who's boss. Ryan then takes a sample of froggie poison that rubbed off on a stick, just in case. (IMPORTANT!)
We then cut to a brief flashback that shows what really happened to Batman. He was saved by Ray Palmer, who's "gone native" (long hair, jewelry... over the Atom costume...) and pwns the beetle. He then goes all Ant-Man on us and summons some wasps to fly him and Batman away to... somewhere. We find out later. But Aquaman and Ryan Choi don't know that yet, so the King of Atlantis summons his own form of jungle transport--silverfish!
"But wait!" the entomologists in the audience cry out. "Silverfish aren't marine animals, they're bugs!" Ryan brings that up too, but as far as Aquaman is concerned, a fish is a fish. I... yeah, somebody obviously wrote themselves into a corner with that one. Either that, or they wanted an excuse for Aquaman to say "Hi-ho, silverfish", but anyway.
While this has been going on, Ray takes Batman to see where he's been living all this time. Turns out that Ray discovered a tiny alien civilization that crashlanded in the Amazon, and he's been helping them rebuild their spaceship with a white dwarf lens (IMPORTANT!) so they can go home. Oh, and he's got himself a hot alien girlfriend now, but she's basically useless so we can ignore her. And hey, it just so happens that the very last part they need for their spaceship is something that Batman has in his Bat-jet. What a happy coincidence!
So Batman and a few of the aliens head towards the Bat-jet, but the alien Chancellor is unhappy that their princess (Ray's girlfriend) has allowed outsiders into their community. So he and his buddies ambush Batman and throw him into a spider's web. Dun dun DUN!
Lucky for him, Ryan and Aquaman just happen to stumble upon the web (they're bug-sized in the middle of the Amazon. What're the odds?). Aquaman immediately tries to save Batman by... leaping right into the web. -_- Luckily, "A" is for both Aquaman AND awesome, as he manages to break both himself and Batman out of the web right before punching the spider in the face. Batman then tells them that Ray Palmer is in danger, and they go running back to the alien camp.
Not a moment too soon, either--Ray and his girlfriend have been thrown into a colusseum-like place and are about to be eaten by... um... naked mole rats? O_O I have no idea, I've already accepted the fauna in this episode is completely messed up so whatever. Ray tries to defend himself with a sword, but that lasts three seconds before the other heroes show up and pwn the mole rats. They then make a break for the spaceship, where the Chancellor uses that white dwarf lens to make himself normal-person size, which to our heroes is giant-sized.
Luckily, one of the heroes has a plan. Is it Batman, who has been becoming more and more of a Gary Stu these past few episodes? I am pleased to tell you no, it was not Batman, but Ryan Choi who comes up with the super-dee-duper day-saving plan--the other heroes distract the Chancellor, the princess stands by uselessly, and Ryan makes a poison dart with a thorn and that frog poison he collected earlier. The plan is a success, earning him an Aqua-hug and a medal from the princess. Ray decides to stay with his hawt girlfriend the aliens, but he does so with a clean conscious, as Ryan has apparently changed his mind about his retirement. Accordingly, the episode ends with Batman, Aquaman AND RYAN beating up on Chronos. Who was pretty much just a MacGuffin, but hey, it's cool.
So yes, ladies and gentlemen, Batman did NOT get to play Mr. Loner McAwesomesauce today. It was very much a team effort--everyone had something useful to do, something to contribute. AND I LOVED IT SO MUCH. Finally, they're beginning to remember what this show was about in the first place! The character interaction was also great--I think they were trying to recapture the Aquaman/Atom awesomeness from "Journey to the Center of the Bat!", but it didn't just feel like a carbon copy. It felt fresh, fantastic, and funny. Aquaman and Ryan Choi make an awesome team. Anybody want to give them a spin-off?
This is the best episode to air since the show came back on. I'm a little confused on why it's called the "Sword of the Atom!", as Ray Palmer only uses a sword for about five seconds. I guess it could have been referring to the thorn that Ryan used to defeat the Chancellor. They're both... pointy... yeah, I don't know. In any case, this one gets an A+ from me, and here's hoping the rest of the series is as solid as this one was.
There's a new comedy troupe in town, folks--Aquaman and the Atom, one night only! Get your tickets now!
We start off with The Currys of Atlantis, a.k.a. Aquaman as a sitcom! He even sings his own theme song!! :D Honestly, I kind of got the feeling that the writer just had no idea for a teaser, turned on the television, and happened to catch a rerun of The Honeymooners. It was basically generic sitcom plot (Aquaman forgot his wedding anniversary!) punctuated by audience noises ("Filmed in front of a live studio audience!"), but it was worth it just for the "Aqualad is my decoy" line in the song--oh, heck, the theme song period-- and Black Manta constantly trying to bomb the Currys because their pet dolphin keeps ruining his octopus garden.
The main plot starts out with a flashback. Batman reminisces about his adventures with Atom Ray Palmer back in the day, and for a moment I was worried because this is how Blue Beetle Ted Kord was introduced before we found out he died, but thankfully, this story ends with Ray voluntarily retiring. The flashback continues by detailing Ryan Choi's adventures as the Atom, and how he too ended up retiring to pursue his first love--science. So that's where Ryan's been all this time. But now, the villain Chronos has returned, and Batman needs Ray Palmer's help to take him down. Only problem? Ray Palmer has gone missing. Last known location? The Amazon rainforest. So Batman shrinks himself down to go searching for him. The only thing he finds is a Hercules beetle.
Cut to Ivy University. Ryan Choi is alone in his lab and is taking advantage of the solitude to goof around:
Ryan: "So, you think you're tough, huh? Do ya, punk!? You don't know who you're dealing with! I am Dr. Ryan Choi, and you are GOING DOWN!"
*adds minus sign to complicated equation on chalkboard*
Ryan: "Ha! That's right! I JUST INVERTED YOUR EXPONENTIAL INTEGRAL!!!"
I have no idea what that means, other than that it made my love for Ryan increase fivefold. <333
Ryan's very serious work is interrupted by a call from Aquaman, who subsequently comes barging in and DEMANDS Ryan help him find Ray Palmer and the now-missing Batman. So poor Ryan gets dragged all the way down to an abandoned cabin in the middle of the rainforest--turns out it was Ray Palmer's lab or something. They also find "wee little footprints" (oh Aquaman) and a fancy-looking doohickey with a white dwarf lens that shrinks stuff. Aquaman tricks a still reluctant Ryan into shrinking down with him and going after Batman in person.
There's one thing that bugged me about this scene. The shrink ray shrinks down with Aquaman and Ryan. But when they first discovered the ray in the cabin, it was at normal size. So, if the implication is that Batman used the shrink ray to make himself tiny earlier, how could the shrink ray still be at normal size? Wouldn't it have shrunk down with Batman once Batman used it just like it shrunk down with Aquaman once Aquaman used it? Well, whatever. The shrink ray gets broke, Ryan gets mad, and so do I!
SCIENCE TIME
Okay, so the power source for both Atoms' belt is described as a piece of a white dwarf. I could literally write a thesis on how much is wrong with that, but here's the short version. A white dwarf is what's left after a sun-like star "dies", or puffs its outer layers into space. It is a very small (by astronomical standards), compact, dense object. And when I say dense, I mean that a teaspoonful would weigh more than your car. So while I can suspend my disbelief long enough to believe that a chunk of carbon could give human beings the ability to shrink and grow at will, and that a white dwarf fragment could even get to Earth in the first place (the closest one is 50,000,000,000,000 miles away!!!), and that it wouldn't cause massive amounts of destruction if it DID get to Earth, it absolutely drives me bonkers whenever I see these characters carrying around shrink rays and various other "doohickeys" made with white dwarf material when they should need Superman to even lift it off the ground!!!
END OF SCIENCE TIME (Sorry about that, I've been holding that in for a while)
Anyway, Aquaman tries to convince Ryan to become a superhero again, to no avail. They eventually stumble upon Batman's field of battle, and Ryan immediately deduces how it all went down. He's smart like that. The only thing he can't figure out is why it looks like the beetle just vanished off the face of the planet after a while--at least until they are confronted by a poison dart frog. And when I say "confronted", I mean "Ryan is almost eaten by it." Aquaman saves him, but when Ryan hypothesizes that the Hercules beetle and Batman must have both been eaten by this very same frog (why it couldn't have been another frog or another animal altogether, I don't know), Aquaman allows the frog to eat him so he can go inside and look for Batman. Only an Aquaman could come up with a plan like that.
After a quick search, Aquaman finds nothing and shows the frog who's boss. Ryan then takes a sample of froggie poison that rubbed off on a stick, just in case. (IMPORTANT!)
We then cut to a brief flashback that shows what really happened to Batman. He was saved by Ray Palmer, who's "gone native" (long hair, jewelry... over the Atom costume...) and pwns the beetle. He then goes all Ant-Man on us and summons some wasps to fly him and Batman away to... somewhere. We find out later. But Aquaman and Ryan Choi don't know that yet, so the King of Atlantis summons his own form of jungle transport--silverfish!
"But wait!" the entomologists in the audience cry out. "Silverfish aren't marine animals, they're bugs!" Ryan brings that up too, but as far as Aquaman is concerned, a fish is a fish. I... yeah, somebody obviously wrote themselves into a corner with that one. Either that, or they wanted an excuse for Aquaman to say "Hi-ho, silverfish", but anyway.
While this has been going on, Ray takes Batman to see where he's been living all this time. Turns out that Ray discovered a tiny alien civilization that crashlanded in the Amazon, and he's been helping them rebuild their spaceship with a white dwarf lens (IMPORTANT!) so they can go home. Oh, and he's got himself a hot alien girlfriend now, but she's basically useless so we can ignore her. And hey, it just so happens that the very last part they need for their spaceship is something that Batman has in his Bat-jet. What a happy coincidence!
So Batman and a few of the aliens head towards the Bat-jet, but the alien Chancellor is unhappy that their princess (Ray's girlfriend) has allowed outsiders into their community. So he and his buddies ambush Batman and throw him into a spider's web. Dun dun DUN!
Lucky for him, Ryan and Aquaman just happen to stumble upon the web (they're bug-sized in the middle of the Amazon. What're the odds?). Aquaman immediately tries to save Batman by... leaping right into the web. -_- Luckily, "A" is for both Aquaman AND awesome, as he manages to break both himself and Batman out of the web right before punching the spider in the face. Batman then tells them that Ray Palmer is in danger, and they go running back to the alien camp.
Not a moment too soon, either--Ray and his girlfriend have been thrown into a colusseum-like place and are about to be eaten by... um... naked mole rats? O_O I have no idea, I've already accepted the fauna in this episode is completely messed up so whatever. Ray tries to defend himself with a sword, but that lasts three seconds before the other heroes show up and pwn the mole rats. They then make a break for the spaceship, where the Chancellor uses that white dwarf lens to make himself normal-person size, which to our heroes is giant-sized.
Luckily, one of the heroes has a plan. Is it Batman, who has been becoming more and more of a Gary Stu these past few episodes? I am pleased to tell you no, it was not Batman, but Ryan Choi who comes up with the super-dee-duper day-saving plan--the other heroes distract the Chancellor, the princess stands by uselessly, and Ryan makes a poison dart with a thorn and that frog poison he collected earlier. The plan is a success, earning him an Aqua-hug and a medal from the princess. Ray decides to stay with his hawt girlfriend the aliens, but he does so with a clean conscious, as Ryan has apparently changed his mind about his retirement. Accordingly, the episode ends with Batman, Aquaman AND RYAN beating up on Chronos. Who was pretty much just a MacGuffin, but hey, it's cool.
So yes, ladies and gentlemen, Batman did NOT get to play Mr. Loner McAwesomesauce today. It was very much a team effort--everyone had something useful to do, something to contribute. AND I LOVED IT SO MUCH. Finally, they're beginning to remember what this show was about in the first place! The character interaction was also great--I think they were trying to recapture the Aquaman/Atom awesomeness from "Journey to the Center of the Bat!", but it didn't just feel like a carbon copy. It felt fresh, fantastic, and funny. Aquaman and Ryan Choi make an awesome team. Anybody want to give them a spin-off?
This is the best episode to air since the show came back on. I'm a little confused on why it's called the "Sword of the Atom!", as Ray Palmer only uses a sword for about five seconds. I guess it could have been referring to the thorn that Ryan used to defeat the Chancellor. They're both... pointy... yeah, I don't know. In any case, this one gets an A+ from me, and here's hoping the rest of the series is as solid as this one was.