Justice League Unlimited – Episodes – Season 1, Episode 3 – Hawk and Dove

Wonder Woman teams up with two super powered brothers, one warlike,the other a pacifist, to stop Ares’ plans to escalate a European civil war into World War III.

Review by Bird Boy
Media by Bird Boy

Voices:
Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman
Carl Lumbly as J’onn J’onzz
Fred Savage as Hawk
Jason Hervey as Dove
Michael York as Ares
Ed Asner as Hephaestus
Patrick Bauchau as Kaznian Monk
Ed O’Ross as General Olanic
Lex Lang as Nardoc
James Arnold Taylor as Private

“Oh, a story about Greek gods…that’s always fun,” I say to myself,
“‘Paradise Lost’ was a lot of fun, so this should be just as good.” Even halfway through the episode, I still believed this—but once it hit the point where Wonder Woman revealed that the monster’s weakness was for everyone to be happy, the episode just dumped out anything it had going for it.

The entire episode seemed to roll on and on, never really going anywhere.
Yeah, it’s Kaznia again—the country we’ve seen once and heard of many more times throughout the run of S:TAS and TNBA, and I don’t think
I really ever care to hear about this place anymore. It’s nice for them to have a setting where they can refer to other stories, but when the entire story itself takes place there…it gets really tired, really fast.

Just about the only thing interesting about the show was the new duo of Hawk and Dove, two brothers with complete opposite opinions on everything. While some may sense some homosexuality in Dove (and I’ve joked about it as well), it’s really just the way he is—Hawk is the tough, strong one (like…ah, a
Hawk) and Dove is the gentle, peaceful one (like…a Dove. See where there names come from?). The characters fit their name, which is always nice to see, but I honestly, with all my heart, don’t want to ever see these two again. I’m sure there are two, much more interesting characters in the DC universe they could’ve pulled out—but for fans of the duo, I guess they got a treat to see them animated.

Story wise, I was really bored throughout the entire thing. Some episodes can pack a good bit of action, good dialogue, and good story into twenty-two minutes, but this one took the smallest portions of each, and threw them in random places. A few witty exchanges of dialogue between Hawk and Dove in the bar and Hephaestus and Wonder Woman; some nice animation thrown in when we see Annihilator take on a missile, catch, and then throw it back; the hint-dropping along the storylines progression and the brilliant backgrounds are just about the only positive things about the episode. Granted, that may sound like a lot—but in the grand scheme of twenty-two minutes, we’re left with two groups of warring neighbors that we ultimately don’t give a crap about and a corny Sunday School moral at the end of the story.

Don’t kick yourself if you missed this episode—there wasn’t a whole lot to see and even less to enjoy.