1x04 The Enemy Below (1)

[7.5/10] I like the contrast in this one. On the one hand, you have an intergalactic tribunal, with rabbeling aliens and some Star Trek-esque giant faces on a screen as judges. On the other hand, you have John Stewart wandering through his old, working class neighborhood. There’s a touch of whiplash there, but it works for the episode’s purposes, not only creating a certain sense of shock as those two worlds collide, but juxtaposing how far Green Lantern’s gone with where he started.

It’s also nice to get some focus on Green Lantern. He’s one of the characters who got a bit of the short shrift in “Secret Origins”, so it’s good to not only get an epsidoe that puts him at the center, but also one that tracks hsi backstory a bit.

My complaints here are that the action is a little flavorless, and that the setup seems a little too obvious. Maybe it’s just my having watched a similar storyline from Star Trek: Enterprise of all things, but it seems pretty darn likely to me that John didn’t actually destroy that world, even by accident, but rather it’s a conspiracy from some bad actor, possibly one within the Corps. That suspicion makes it pretty hard to invest in the possibility of John actually going down for this (beyond the fact that, you know, there’s dozens more episodes of this series and he’s on the DVD covers).

But however much the threat here feels like false jeopardy, I like both the world-building and the internal story for John. We get to see more of the Green Lantern Corps. Members, their leadership structure, and the respect that John commanded as part of their ranks. (Though no mention of Kyle Rayner after his episode of Superman: The Animated Series, which is interesting), and we also get a sense for the broader intergalactic community that we’ve only seen glimpses of in prior shows.

More to the point, we see John struggling with what happened, even if the whole thing feels like a feint. Whatever really happened, John believes he’s responsible for three billion lives being extinguished, and that return to where he grew up, and his willingness to go with his pursuers, shows a certain doomed nobility that makes him all the more interesting and principled as a character.

There’s still some parts I don’t love about this one. Again, the League’s fights versus the Manhunters and the dogfight on Adjurus 5 don’t do much for me as action sequences. I’m also lukewarm on Flash trying to flirt with every female leaguer. But the John Stewart material is good, and that wins the day here.