As someone who is not a fan of
Smallville (caught a few episodes early on, and I've seen all of the Geoff Johns written episodes), I think this is the kind of episode you enjoy more if you don't know a lot of the baggage of all the previous episodes and seasons.
Booster was pretty spot-on and I loved the inclusion of the "The Greatest Hero You've Never Heard of..." line. As far as Skeets, I didn't feel like we had to see him, but I did miss Billy West as his voice (I kind of expected it since he did the voice for
Justice League Unlimited and
Batman: The Brave and the Bold. A lot of nice references to Booster's past were woven into the episode as well (even a mention of Michelle, his sister!).
I wasn't as happy with Blue Beetle, though. They took everything that is awesome about Jaime Reyes and dumped it for a character that could have easily been replaced with Jimmy Olsen from
Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. I was also a little iffy about the ending, "Great, he was able to stop the suit from killing someone once, so, he's good to go, just, you know, keep an eye on him." Granted, I know they couldn't do much, but if they dumped some scenes of Clark being douchey and had the fx budget, I would have liked to see Jaime actually doing something more heroic than just not killing Booster. Still, I guess at the end, we got the beginning of the Blue and Gold team. I was also expecting the test footage we saw last year to be the ending scene of the show, or at least the Blue Beetle part.
I was also a little disappointed by Ted Kord. I was hoping they'd work in that the Kord we saw was Jarvis (Ted's genius, but evil Uncle) as the one running the country, then have Jarvis arrested for endangering citizens, and Ted coming in to take over the company. Then a quick scene of Ted and Booster meeting and hitting it off right away.
I did love that they included the
Booster Gold Fan-Club T-Shirt, which first appeared on G4 tv and on the cover of
Booster Gold. By the way, if you want, you can get
one for yourself.
