2x18 Secret Society (2)

[7.4/10] Like several of these Justice League two-parters, “Secret Society” has a better ending than a beginning. It answers some of my criticisms from pt. 1, and does so in an interesting way, while tying up its major arc with a few good twists. There’s still some silly or implausible elements to it, but that’s par for the course for superhero stories.

My big gripe about the first installment in this duology is that it seemed implausible for the League to have so much trouble working together and for them to be at one another’s throats like this. Pt. 2 comes up with the moderately-satisfying explanation that Gorilla Grodd was using his psychic powers to put them all in bad moods, with some good dialogue about people saying hurtful things when they’re just “having one of those days.”

It’s a nice middle ground. It’s not crazy that the normally friendly and copasetic Justice League was out of sorts given that Grodd was manipulating them into being their harshest selves (presaging Loki’s staff in the 2012 Avengers movie). But it’s also not entirely his fault, as the bittersweet ending can attest. The Leaguers admit that they had those thoughts and that the feelings are real.

I appreciate the mixed nature of that conclusion. I still don’t know if I buy that our heroes have had these resentments bubbling under the surface all this time. It doesn’t really comport with their actions or demeanor with one another. But if you read it as passing thoughts and frustrations, only a piece of a whole, brought to the surface by a bad actor, it at least passes the smell test, even if it doesn’t fully track with what we’ve seen before.

There’s also just some cool choices in the story. I really like the Martian Manhunter vs. Clayface setup. Two shapeshifters going up against one another makes for some really cool sequences, and the most exciting narrative twist in the episode is J’onn pretending to be his adversary to take down the Secret Society from the inside. Likewise, Batman recognizing Clayface’s ruse when Matt Hagen overdoes it in his Flash impersonation is a pretty cool moment.

There’s still a handful of noteworthy problems here. First and foremost, Grodd’s plan is a little weird. He’s successfully sown discord among the Justice League, but rather than taking them down one-by-one once he’s broken them up he and his squad take down...a few of them individually before luring the rest of them together? It seems like a weird approach. Likewise, the metes and bounds of his psychic abilities are pretty fuzzy and seem like they could have been useful for, say, figuring out that Clayface was a fake. (Though maybe J’onn’s a talented enough psychic to block that or something?)

Likewise, the show does a good job of hand-waving why Grodd would try to execute the Justice League in the middle of a football game, but it still plays like a pretty thin excuse to have a good guy team vs. bad guy team fight in the middle of the gridiron. That’s silly, but enjoyable, so it gets a pass from me.

The closing fight is a good one. The skirmishes aren't that creative, but do a good job of showing the Leaguers more in sync, complimenting one another’s skills and talents rather than trying to do it all themselves. Again, that didn’t really seem like a problem before, but still, it’s a good way of dramatizing the way they’ve learned something through all these experiences.

Overall, this one is still a little clumsy or convenient in places, but it goes out much better than it started. I’ll give it more credit if the show actually follows up on the fissures that seemed to be exposed here in a meaningful way.