What a gem of an episode. Written by the current Birds of Prey scribe, Gail Simone, Double Date is full of great dialogue, good action, and a decent (if somewhat predictable) plot. On top of all that, I’d have to say it has the best voice acting so far this season: what a lineup:

• Black Canary: Morena Baccarin (Inara, from Joss Whedon’s Firefly, and rumored to be in the running for the live action Wonder Woman) brings the fiesty, sexy fighter to life.
• Green Arrow: Growing up with sisters addicted to General Hospital gave me a great appreciation for many actors, including GA’s voice: Kin Shriner (Scotty on GH). His bemused delivery just struck me as perfect for the character.
• Huntress: Amy Acker, Fred/Illyria , from Joss Whedon’s Angel, sort of melds those two characters together vocally. This Huntress definitely does both the prowling and the hunting.
• The Question: Jeffrey Combs (formerly the voice of the Scarecrow on the Batman animated series and more recently guesting on the season opener of The 4400, among other roles) has a voice that carries the Question’s somewhat meandering and conspiratorial thought processes.

Each of the actors really goes all out to make this episode work and they succeed. But it’s Gail Simone’s stellar dialogue that really elevates this show. We already know from previous episodes that the Question sees connections in everything. Take this snatch of dialogue:

Huntress: “Well, I have a question for you. Do you know what apophenia is?”
The Question: “Apophenia… noun… the tendency to see connections where none exist. Did you come here just to make fun of my work?”

When’s the last time “apophenia” was used in a cartoon? Probably never. But the exchange starts the flirting between the two characters that carries on into future episodes. Arrow and Canary also get their time in the spotlight, too: Green Arrow is portrayed as a sneaky detective and excellent judge of character, while also a fighter who does just fine without the bow, thank you very much. There’s a requisite fight scene between the two sets of lovebirds, with Green Arrow and Black Canary rightfully coming out on top.

For some reason, the villain of the piece is a Stephen Mandragora, though the appearance and powers suggest the Black Lightning villain, Tobias Whale (somewhat a DC Comics version of Kingpin). I have heard that it was originally supposed to be Tobias, but changed along the way (I blame Black Vulcan).

The plot itself is somewhat pedestrian, but adequate. With the dialogue this episode sported, the plot could have been just about anything and it would have still been great. Gail certainly needs to write more Justice League. Actually, she needs to write more ANYTHING.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 8th, 2005 at 11:43 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Entertainment, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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