I was, I must admit, pretty intrigued by this episode’s title. I dreamily envisioned a plot wherein the villainous members of the Legion of Doom would go on a concert tour, something along the lines of the classic Monsters of Rock shows. The image of Solomon Grundy running out onto stage while pumping his huge white fists in the air, then scooping up an electric guitar and belting out some power ballad about hot swamp lovin’ before thousands of screaming mall kids, had a definite appeal.

Alas, it was not to be.

Instead, we open with the obligatory shots showcasing, as the Omniscient Narrator confirms, the "boggy mists of their treacherous swamp," wherein "the sinister Legion of Doom prepares to engage blah blah…." Yawn. That’s like how every episode starts. On the other hand, I am impressed by their ability to work ‘boggy,’ ‘treacherous’ and (of course) ‘sinister’ into one all-purpose sentence.

And the program was still capable of startling departures from the norm.  Here, for example, the Hall of Doom is not seen rising from the bog’s fetid waters. Instead, the camera dips down below to reveal the Hall’s underwater resting place—the building seems half buried in silt, in fact, so perhaps it can’t rise up—as a couple of catfish swim by.

Sinister catfish.

Inside, Bizarro stands at a podium and addresses his fellows. It says something about the Legion’s superior organizational skills that they have furniture which actually seems designed for their regular meetings, particularly their trademark horseshoe table with a designated spot for each member. (Or not. There’s a shot of Toyman sitting next to Grodd the Gorilla, whereas in the last episode he sat between Grundy and Sinestro.)

The Superfriends, in contrast, are nearly always seen standing, generally in front their giant video monitor as they receive a Trouble Alert. They do have a meeting table in the Hall of Justice, but it only has four chairs. (Sometimes. On other occasions, there’re like eight. Even so, there are never enough for everyone.)

"Me have plan to destroy Superfriends," the chalky-faced Bizarro explains. Well, yes, so you’d think. That’s pretty much the agenda every week. "Sounds like Bizarro has a twisted idea in that backward mind of his!" notes Toyman, as he plays with a windup Superman doll.

A sinister windup Superman doll.

Or not. Perhaps annoyed at Toyman’s unnecessary interjection, Bizarro grabs the Superman doll and crushes it. "Me know way to make ray device turn anyone into 100-foot giant," he explains. Ah. This means that the Superman doll he crushes in his hand is roughly to scale, and thus a useful visual device.

In any case, this establishes Bizarro as yet another of the Legion’s surfeit of technological geniuses, joining Luthor, Brainiac, Toyman and Grodd in their ability to whip up extraordinary gadgets. Indeed, it seems a bit unfair. This guy has all of Superman’s powers, and he can also invent an embiggening ray? Talk about an overachiever. My guess is that he talks that way on purpose, just so that he doesn’t seem to be lording it over everybody else.

Sinestro enthusiastically asks for more details, although I myself wanted to see Giganta’s reaction to Bizzaro’s announcement. After all, her superpower is to grow to enormous heights at will. If Bizarro’s plan comes to fruition, she would become as pointlessly redundant as, well, Hawkman is on the Superfriends. And the Justice League has to put up with useless teammates, because they’re good guys. Really, imagine Sinestro’s reaction if Bizarro suddenly started passing around a bowl of power rings, or Grodd’s if Bizarro’s ray would turn everyone into gorillas, or Scarecrow’s if Bizarro announced he was going to stuff straw down everyone’s pants.

"Me got rare Sorium element from asteroid," Bizarro notes, holding up a bubbling beaker. "Only need two other elements." That’s exactly as it should be, because as fans of the show know, anything the Legion does requires three steps. Now, you might be thinking, ‘but wait, he already has the Sorium, so that means there’re only two steps left.’ That’s true, but as Bizarro explains, after they acquire the necessary "Robalt" and "Introdium," they’ll need access to the Justice League computer to, and I quote, "Fuse elements into giant ray!" Uhm, OK. I’m not sure how a computer would ‘fuse’ elements, but there you go.

This highlights one the show’s perennial mysteries. The Legionnaires basically putter around on their off hours and whip up artificial planets and time travel devices and shrinking-ray pistols* and whatnot. Yet for some reason they could never create a supercomputer that was the match of the Justice League’s. And where the Legion has an embarrassment of super-geniuses, the Superfriends sport only Batman and, to stretch things a bit, forensic scientist Barry Allen, a.k.a. the Flash.

[*In the episode just prior to this, Monolith of Evil, Brainiac at one point wielded a ‘proton shrinking ray’ to reduce the UN Building down to a portable size. So rather than going to all this trouble to become giants, why not just shrink the Superfriends down to maybe six inches in height and basically accomplish the same thing? On the other hand, technically he employed the shrinking ray on what actually proved to be a hologram, so perhaps the gun doesn’t really work. That’s probably not the case, but it does provide the writers an out, I suppose.]

Presumably Batman created the League’s supercomputer, if only because you can be pretty sure Aquaman didn’t have anything to do with it, except, perhaps, to provide a swimming fish screensaver for the monitor screen. Still, the inability of the Legion to create their own equivalent computer patently remains an ongoing plot device designed to motivate their involving the Superfriends directly in their plans. Otherwise the heroes would just remain sitting on their assess in the Hall of Justice—well, up to four of them would be sitting on their assess; the others would be standing—and waiting until they got a Trouble Alert or call from the authorities asking them to actually come outside and do something.

Anyway. As predicted, Giganta angrily objects to Bizarro’s plans. By the way, were the writers trying to imply something by making Giganta the show’s most masculine character? And yes, I’m including the huge gorilla and the 10-foot tall zombie guy. I’m not saying anything, but I’m saying.

"Bizarro’s a fool!" she kvetches. "There’s no way he can get to the Justice League computer!" Actually, they’ve already done that once, whereupon they programmed the League’s satellite to broadcast a beam that transformed everyone in the world into a Bizarro or Cheetah clone. Plus there was that time they hypnotized Superman into stealing all the gold from Fort Knox for them, and the Flash to purloin Britain’s Crown Jewels. Oh, and they once tricked the Justice League into altering the entire Earth’s climate, so that aliens could invade our planet. And they also fooled the Superfriends into stealing an incredibly dangerous power source for them that was guarded by a big lava monster. And…well, anyway, you get the idea.

Giganta then points out that she can already turn into a giant, a fact that again you’d have to think explains her poutiness here. She even demonstrates her power, which I would think her teammates already knew about, although it does give Scarecrow and Grodd a chance to look up her skirt at her now oversized panty region. (At least I hope it’s her panty region.) Toyman and the Riddler are also in a position for such peeking, but I doubt they’d be much interested. Not that I’m saying anything. I’m just saying.

Bizarro responds that he’s formulated a plan to get to the computer (well, duh), and boasts that his beam will make them twice as tall as Giganta. I guess he means twice as tall as she is now, because in other episodes we’ve seen both her and her Justice League counterpart, Apache Chief, get larger than she is presently.

In any case, Luthor—who probably dithered coming up with this week’s backup plan and has only a vague idea involving an elaborate scheme to trick Aquaman, Samurai and Green Lantern into creating a sinister breed of toaster-sized whelks—quickly throws his support behind the venture. Bizarro knows how the game is played, and before he can be stuck with a team made up of Black Manta, Cheetah and a broom from the Hall of Doom supply closet, quickly announces that he and Sinestro will go get the Robalt.

Cut to the moon. "Later," the Omniscient Narrator announces, "on the cratered surface of the moon, the astronauts of Moon Base One are unaware of the sinister plans of the Legion of Doom!" Well, yes, they would be, wouldn’t they? Soon Bizarro and Sinestro come flying into view, with the former declaring (yes, in space) "Robalt element at core of moon."

Sinestro uses his power ring to create a gigantic yellow "atomic laser." (So he can materialize plutonium? Whatever.) This he uses to cut through the moon’s surface. For some reason, however, instead of just drilling down, Sinestro plays the beam across the moon’s circumference, apparently intending to split the planetoid in half. (!!) Wow, that’s going to affect the tidal patterns.

Inside Moon Base One, the situation draws some attention. "Captain," one astronaut cries, "we’re picking up some unusual moonquake activity!" The captain turns on a surprisingly efficient viewscreen setup, which gives him a shot from space (?) of the two villains at work. "Oh, no!" he declares, "Bizarro and Sinestro are cutting the moon in half!" Actually, what he’s seeing doesn’t really support that, but perhaps he’s just very intuitive.

"And that’s not the worst of it!" his subordinate replies. (Which, really, seems sort of a bold statement.) "That laser is headed right through the base! It’ll cut us in half!" Given that the surface area of the Moon is over 14,600,000 square miles, the odds of the beam hitting one small complex seem kind of slight, but hey, isn’t that always the way?

With the beam mere moments away from destroying them, a SOS is sent to the Superfriends. Even Superman, however, would have trouble getting all the way to the moon in about ten seconds. Also, what’s the communication lag between Earth and the Moon? If its over ten seconds, they’re screwed.

In any case, we cut down to the Hall of Justice (Superman and the Flash sitting at the table, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Batman and Robin standing—I mean, cripes, at least get some lawn chairs in there) as the Emergency Alert appears across the monitor screen. I’m not sure what the difference is between an ‘Emergency Alert’ and the more typical ‘Trouble Alert,’ but then I’m not a Superhero. As the words blink across the giant screen, accompanied by the familiar beeping sound effect, Batman trenchantly observes, "It’s an Emergency Alert!" I assume he’s spelling things out because Aquaman’s in the room.

Major Thomson from the Moon Base appears onscreen and explains the situation, while providing that weird, space-based image of the supervillains at their dastardly work. "There’re only moments before they cut through our…" And indeed, it was only moments, for here the transmission cuts off. "We’ve got to get to the moon fast!" Superman opines. Yes. Yes, I think I see what he’s getting at. Of course, he could have already been a good portion of the way there by the time he finishes uttering that comment, but then his teammates might end up feeling a bit useless.

Meanwhile, Batman says that he and Robin will follow in the ‘Bat Rocket.’ (!) Yeah, I’m sure that puts Superman’s mind greatly at ease. Why the Dynamic Duo would go in place of the rather more logical Green Lantern is left unexplored. I guess if you have a Bat Rocket, you use it whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Back to the moon. "Any second now," Sinestro chortles, "and we’ll have cut the moon in half!" You know, cutting the moon in half in pursuit of a device that will make you a hundred feet tall seems kind of ass-backward, importance wise. Meanwhile, for some reason there isn’t any explosive decompression as the laser slices through the lunar base. Despite this, one astronaut does predict that they’ll be "thrown into deep space."

In any case, the moon does end up split in two (!). The two halves begin floating apart, and the astronauts are indeed seen drifting into space, if not ‘thrown,’ per se. You’d think they’d be wearing magnetized boots, but I guess not.

By the way, in the interest of fairness, let me note that, for all its faults, any cartoon series—especially one of this vintage—that gave its young audience such sights as the entire moon being sliced in twain (even if, as one suspects, Superman will soon put things aright) while astronauts spill out into space, at the least possessed a rather endearing grandness of scale. Admittedly, this is because the writers were completely unconstrained by any sense of logic or even the most fundamental knowledge of physical science, but even so.

Sinestro and Bizarro fly to the exposed heart of the moon and harvest the softball-sized sphere of Robalt, which helpfully is pulsating with light. (Again, though, if you have to go to this amount of trouble to get the stuff, you’d think you could use it to whip up something with a little more pizzazz than a garden-variety embiggening ray.) Meanwhile, the astronauts, who fortuitously have managed to stay in direct proximity to each other as they tumble through space, are picked up on a Bat Rocket Monitor. Considering that space is, well, sort of big, that’s pretty impressive.

Batman radios Superman that he and Robin will rescue the astronauts, to which Superman replies (that’s right, replies…in space) that he’ll "take care of the moon." And so the Caped Crusaders employ the "electronic Bat Hoist" to snatch up the errant astronauts. Meanwhile, Superman pushes on one half of the moon with his hands, rejoining the halves while somehow not just pushing the opposite half away, and then fuses the sphere back together with his heat vision. Frankly, I suspect there is one or two scientific problems with that sequence of actions, but let’s not spend all day on this.

Well, OK, there’s this. If they had just scripted Green Lantern to come along, he could have whipped up giant energy clamps to hold the moon segments together while Superman welded them. That still would have been ridiculous, but less so by an order of magnitude. Also, it would have emphasized that even Superman needs help if the job is big enough.

And so Superman flies around the moon, employing his heat vision in such a way that the crack isn’t just sealed, but seems to vanish altogether. "Now to take care of Bizarro and that sinister Sinestro!" he exclaims upon finishing. Uh, ‘sinister Sinestro’? For all his amazing abilities, Superman’s really got to work on his Heroic Declarations. I mean, it’s sort of lame to use an adjective that so closely corresponds to the villain’s actual name. I’d also stay away from "that bizarre Bizarro", "that brainy Brainiac", and, if she is prone to infidelity or card sharpery, "that cheatin’ Cheetah." Although admittedly that last one would make a great country-western song.

His task completed, Superman flies off and quickly intercepts the two miscreants responsible. "Superman!" Bizarro exclaims, as if this eventuality were entirely unforeseeable. I guess they didn’t notice him pushing the moon back together and welding the pieces together. Less nonplussed, Sinestro boasts that "my power ring will take care of him!" And I have to admit, if any combination of two Legionnaires are going to give even Superman trouble, it would be this pair.

However, Superman brags that Sinestro’s power is nothing to him—which I guess means that Green Lantern would have no chance against Superman either—and punches (!) Sinestro’s energy beam. This bounces off his fist and envelopes his foes in a yellow energy sphere, which the Man of Tomorrow then flies back to Earth. Now, if Bizarro is as exactly powerful as Superman, and if Sinestro controls the energy via his power ring, I’m not exactly sure how the energy bubble would imprison either of them, much less both. I’m probably just missing something, however.

Back to the Hall of Justice, where we find Sinestro and Bizarro contained within a cage of improbably powerful energy beams. (Of course, they don’t explain why Bizarro just doesn’t smash his way through the ceiling or floor.) "You’ll never keep us in here," Sinestro sneers, which seems sort of snooty for a guy who was just captured within his own energy bubble. "Not with eleven more members of the Legion of Doom on the outside," he clarifies. Yes, I’m sure that Toyman, Scarecrow, Black Manta, the Riddler and Cheetah are mounting a rescue operation right now. Meanwhile, Batman has possession of Sinestro’s power ring. Personally, I’d just have Superman crush the bothersome trinket and be done with it, but I guess that would leave Green Lantern without an archenemy.

Flash announces another Emergency Alert. A cop or something appears on the viewscreen, blurting, "Captain Cold and Toyman have taken over the Parthenon!" Uh…so? What are they going to do with it? Seize the T-shirt concession and ticket kiosk? Sell the tourists substandard baklava? Mock the locals by doing a purposely half-assed version of the Zorba dance? By the way, Captain Cold and Toyman are just guys, so my inclination would be to just shoot them. Doesn’t Greece have snipers?

Of course, mankind has been so infantilized by having the Superfriends do everything for them—remember the time members of the Justice League were doing maintenance work on one of NASA’s space stations?—that such an idea is probably beyond them. "Let’s go," Aquaman declares, and he and Green Lantern head out. I’m sure Aquaman’s abilities will come in handy here, given that the Parthenon is located underneath the ocean waves…oh, wait.

"Meanwhile," the ON segues, "at the Parthenon in Athens, Greece…" (Oh, that Parthenon.) "Soon we’ll have the third element for Bizarro’s giant ray!" Toyman giggles. "Then we’ll all become big kids and have the Earth as our toy!" What an embarrassment to the gay community that guy must be. Anyhoo, Captain Cold freezes the entire mountaintop with his ray pistol (while somehow not freezing himself or Toyman, who are standing right on the site), and Toyman uses a full-sized but wind-up powered bulldozer to dig through the frozen crust.

Just then Green Lantern and An Oven Mitt, I mean, Aquaman, appear on the scene. "Great Neptune," Aquaman exclaims. "Toyman and Captain Cold are digging up the Parthenon! It’s starting to cave in!" Sure enough, the ancient structure is falling apart under the weight of all the ice. Well, that’s embarrassing.

Just then a glowing hunk of rock, presumably the Introdium, is uncovered. So it was like, what, six feet underground? Dude, all you guys had to do was show up after hours and dig it up with a shovel. Then you wouldn’t have had the Superfriends all over your ass, you morons.

"You’re going nowhere!" Green Lantern calls out. "That’s what you think, Green Fool!" Toyman scoffs. Man, it takes a lot of balls for that guy to taunt GL. Oh, and Aquaman, of course. So saying, jet skates—toy ones, presumably--suddenly pop out of the bottom of his and Captain Cold’s boots. Gee, that’s really going to flummox a guy who can fly.

However, GL doesn’t even bother going to that much effort. Instead, he materializes a green igloo before his foes and their momentum carries them right into it. "That green energy igloo would hold them until we get back to the Hall of Justice," he notes. OK, if you say so. Anyway, good thing he brought Aquaman along, huh?

Back at the Hall of Justice, Superman and his comrades brag about their success at capturing their opponents. Considering that this is no doubt part of Bizarro’s plan to gain access to their computers, this means that the Superfriends are both arrogant and stupid. Well done, chaps.

Indeed, just as Superman is dissing Bizarro, the Hall comes under attack from a large flying ship. "Holy jailbreaks!" Robin blurts. (Man, I hope he gets killed.) "Luthor and Brainiac must be trying to get the others free!" Huh? They haven’t turned on their viewscreen yet. So how the hell does Robin know who’s inside the ship?

Superman tells Green Lantern to guard the prisoners. (What, with Hawkman and Aquaman just standing around?). "The rest of us will take care of Brainiac and Luthor," he notes. Yes, I’d send like nine guys outside to deal with two guys while leaving one behind to guard four others. Also, since you’re constantly falling for some plot of the Legion’s, wouldn’t you at least suspect that they were hoping to lure most everybody outside?

And so, Hawkman, Batman, Robin, the Flash, Apache Chief, Samurai, Wonder Woman and Aquaman head outside and line up on the sidewalk (??) while Superman flies up to confront the ship. That’s a great battle plan, you dopes. However, a force beam manages to knock the Last Son of Krypton on his superass. "If Luthor and Brainiac want a fight," Batman replies, "that’s just what they’ll get!" Whatever, dude.

Luthor is, amazingly, unimpressed by this threat. "My gravity scrambler will slow them down," he notes, whatever that means. Said ray hits Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman and causes them to do pinwheels in the air. Meanwhile, Green Lantern is watching on the monitor screen rather than attending to his job. "Great Galaxies!" he cries. "I’ve got to figure out a way to help them!"

Concurrently, Sinestro notes to Brainiac that "Getting captured on purpose was a brilliant idea!" Well, not really, but brilliant ideas aren’t all that essential when dealing with the Justice League. Meanwhile, in a highly dubious moment, he notes that he’s set his power ring "to go off" any second now. I wouldn’t have thought it worked on a timer, but what do I know?

Luckily, the ring just happens to be pointed directly at Green Lantern’s head, and soon his cranium is enveloped with yellow energy. "Sinestro’s ray!" the Green Gladiator exclaims. "Taking over my mind!" This is a classic Challenge of the Superfriends moment, involving one of an endless parade of incredibly useful powers / gadgets / strategies / whatever that are introduced and employed one time and then never mentioned again. I mean, Sinestro can use his ring to control his foes’ minds. (This means that Green Lantern should be able to do the same, although maybe that’s not a ‘good guy’ thing.) Wouldn’t you use that ability all the time?

The bewitched Green Lantern is ordered to shut off the force field, after which Sinestro orders the Emerald Avenger to join his comrades outside. Ah, imagine Green Lantern’s horror when he reclaims control of himself and realizes that he’s been forced to attack and kill at least a couple of his surprised teammates…

Well, that’s what I’d do, anyway.

Meanwhile, Bizarro is suddenly holding the hunks of Introdium and Robalt, not to mention that bubbling beaker of Sorium. (Where the hell did that come from?) These he presents to the Justice League computer. "Justice League Computer Warning!" the machine blares. "Circuits are not programmed to follow Legion of Doom’s orders." Actually, that’s far better security than I would have suspected the Superfriends to install.

However, the show’s writers aren’t about to let that stop them, not when they can just write something retarded into the script. "My power ring hypnotizes computers as well as people, you stupid machine," Sinestro sneers. (I don’t know, insulting a computer seems a bit lame.) Apparently one of the ring’s lesser known but most impressive abilities is to gain whatever power one announces it to have. In any case, he indeed takes control of the device and soon the elements are fused into a vanilla wafer-sized disc.

"Giant ray now ready!" Bizarro brags, inserting the disc into a ray pistol he also apparently had concealed upon his person. "Soon we put end to Superfriends and rule world!" Considering that they now control the Hall, the Justice League computer and Green Lantern, I’m not even sure why they’d bother with the giant ray, unless maybe Bizarro’s just sort of anal. In any case, the pistol projects an energy field and the quartet are soon growing to a massive size. (Amusingly, the pistol grows as well. I’m not sure about the physics of that, but anyway.)

Outside, Superman is trying to force his way through the gravity ray and get to Luthor and Brainiac’s ship. (Here’s a hint, Superman: Fly around and attack the ship from the back, you super-maroon.) Anyway, he eventually does manage this and soon has grounded the craft.

However, the sinister diversion has worked, and suddenly a behemoth Bizarro, a colossal Captain Cold, a tremendous Toyman (not exactly the most fear-inspiring image, I should note) and a stupendous Sinestro come into view as they shoot up to a gigantic size. There’s no indication, such as debris—too hard to draw?—that they’re crashing through the roof of the Hall of Justice, in which they were clearly standing when they started to grow. They instead appear to be growing from a position behind the building, which throws the continuity off.

"Great Gotham!" Batman exclaims. "They must be a hundred feet tall!" (Well, he is the World’s Greatest Detective.) "The Superfriends don’t look so ‘super’ from up here," Sinestro sneers in return. Actually, Superman could still kick your giant ass, so I’d watch it.

In fact…let’s see. Toyman isn’t really that much more impressive, even if the tinkling bells hanging off his harlequin suit are now gigantic. In previous episodes, and even this one (the bulldozer), he has employed giant ‘toys’ to menace his enemies with. So the only real advantage he’s gained right now is that he’s a giant. Frankly, I’d rather have to confront a 100 foot tall Toyman than, say, a regular-sized Bizarro or Solomon Grundy.

Captain Cold in a previous episode had a flying ship equipped with a ray cannon capable of flash-freezing an entire city. I don’t see that his now gigantic freeze pistol is much of an improvement.

The power of Sinestro’s ring is supposedly only limited by his will, so that doesn’t seem like it would be any more formidable, unless making him bigger has made him more confident. That’s a bit of a stretch, though.

Only Bizarro, who presumably has multiplied his Superman-like strength, would really be that much more threatening at this point. Although at normal size, Superman was strong enough to push the sundered moon back together. In other words, his strength is functionally limitless, meaning that the equivalently powerful Bizarro really couldn’t be any stronger.

Anyway. Superman flies at Bizarro—wouldn’t you attack one of the weaker giants first?—and Bizarro sweeps him aside with a brush of his huge hand. "Stopping Superman now easy as swatting fly," he gloats. Then Wonder Woman tries to lasso one of them, but Toyman catches the lariat on his finger and uses it to turn Wonder Woman into a "super yo-yo." OK, that one’s kind of clever, I must admit. Then Bizarro attempts to trod upon Batman, Robin and Apache Chief—three guys he could kill in the blink of an eye whenever he took a mind to anyway—scattering the heroes.

Soon their giant foes have the Superfriends surrounded. "This is the last time you’ll get underfoot," Sinestro quips. Good thing his power ring doesn’t run on clever badinage. Captain Cold fires down on Our Heroes with his humongous freeze pistol, encasing the Superfriends in a huge block of ice. You might think this would kill nearly all of them, but previous episodes have indicated that they would merely be in suspended animation.

Suddenly, in the next shot the giant ice cube is an ice bullet. "I’ll send you where you’ll defrost for a few million years," Toyman prisses in an ungrammatical fashion, before firing their ice prison into the frigid reaches of outer space. If you’re 100 feet tall and have a suitably big slingshot, such a feat is apparently no real problem.

"Helplessly suspended in their frozen tomb," the Narrator narrates, "the Superfriends speed toward the distant planet Saturn. Surely, frozen or not, everyone but Superman will be killed when the ice missile smashes into that planet?

Meanwhile, Lex is actually making contingency plans for once. "In case the Superfriends are lucky enough to escape their frozen doom," he explains, "the Justice League global force field will keep them from Earth permanently." Now, I guess radiation is allowed through this force field, since otherwise the sun’s rays would be blocked and the Earth would freeze. So I think that means that Black Vulcan, who can turn into pure energy (I believe that’s right) should be able to get through…but whatever, we’ll just go with it.

Meanwhile, back to Our Heroes. Luckily, we see, the Ice Bullet doesn’t crash into the aforementioned planet, but instead glides to a safe stop on "the super cold, gaseous interior of Saturn!"

"Later, in Washington D.C.," the Narrator continues. We see citizens fleeing from the embiggened bandits, like extras in a Godzilla movie. "Washington D.C. surrender to Bizarro or me destroy capitol!" Big Bizarro thunders. (Actually, he doesn’t sound any louder than usual, but anyway.) I’d love to see jet fighters firing upon Bizarro here, but fat chance. And again, Bizarro at normal size is powerful enough to seize Washington if the Superfriends aren’t around. Still, to show he means business, he karate chops the Washington Monument, which breaks in half and smashes to the ground. I think they may have ripped this off from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.

"Thousands of miles away, in Peking," the Narrator segues. The oversized Sinestro steps over the Great Wall of China (!) and exclaims, "Well, my Chinese friends, I command you to surrender your country!" (You wouldn’t think a purple space alien would be so hung up on human ethnicity, but there you go.) The episode is becoming a regular tribute to old sci-fi movies, since this portion of it recalls nothing so much as the montage of giant monsters attacking the great cities of the world in Destroy All Monsters. Indeed, Larval Mothra also attacked Peking in that film.

However, the clearly Communist leaders defy their gigantic attacker. "We will fight you with our army of millions!" one decrees. Which, actually, is a pretty good threat. "Whatever you say," Sinestro retorts. "But I have my army too!" So saying, he whips a big yellow energy lion, tiger and bear (?!). Again, couldn’t he do that at normal size? And he’s still not cannon-proof or anything, just because he’s big. Indeed, a well delivered bazooka shell should do the job. Despite this, the leaders cave, perhaps figuring that anyone willing to do something so incredibly goofy would stop at nothing to gain his objective.

Meanwhile, back on Saturn, the automatic warming module on Batman’s utility belt—look, I’m just describing the action here—activates and melts off all the ice. Whatever. On the surface of Saturn, which is like a million degrees below zero. And I’m talking centigrade, too. Freed, the Superfriends all instantly die of exposure and from breathing in Saturn’s poisonous atmosphere. Oh, wait, no they don’t. In fact, they can comfortably talk in it. "It a good thing my Bat Utility Belt was equipped with an infrared defroster for just such an emergency," the Caped Crusader declares. Just such an emergency?

Rather than fly, the Superfriends decide to walk forward through the murky atmosphere. Whatever, dudes. Soon they are confronted with a monster of some sort, which grabs up Robin in its tentacles. "Great Gotham!" Batman inevitably exclaims. "It’s some sort of gaseous monster." If you say so, Caped Crusader. (My theory is that Batman cut one and was trying to affix the blame elsewhere.) Soon much of the rest of the team is similarly ensnared.

However, the Flash starts rotating at superspeed, which creates a "super tornado," and, as he notes, "sucks" (I’ll say!) them out into the, er, safety of space. Then everyone, including Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman, fly toward the Earth. Which is weird, since those three can’t fly. I guess they’re riding the momentum of the super-tornado, which to be fair makes their flight rank down at about the 104^th dumbest thing in this episode so far.

Meanwhile, the Legion of Giants continues to terrorize the world. And so here we cut to "the blazing Egyptian desert area of Giza." Needless to say, the pyramids and the Sphinx in the immediate background, because, you know…it’s Egypt. In any case, two men in white robes speed past in a jeep, followed by a taunting oversized Captain Cold. "Tell your leaders that Captain Cold and the Legion of Doom are now in control of the entire African continent," he booms. Uh, OK. If you say so.

To back up his contention, he fires his pistol and turns the entire surrounding desert into a snowfield. Doesn’t snow require more than just cold? Like, I don’t know, moisture? And man, I don’t even want to think of the energy demands of that freeze gun. To turn a 120º desert in broad daylight into a winterscape, all in the wink of an eye? And imagine the weather they’re going to have here as soon as that snow starts evaporating and adding all that water into the air!

Again, as with cutting the moon in half, this seems a bit more impressive than growing big. And while we’re on that subject, how the hell did they transport a hundred foot-tall Captain Cold all the way to Egypt?

Still following the Destroy All Monsters template, we cut outside of the Parliament building in London. A tank battalion, commanded by a guy who doesn’t remotely have a British accent, tells his men to stand at the ready. Sure enough, they are quickly confronted by…Toyman, riding atop a giant toy tank.* Wow. Toyman. I mean, I know Britain’s not a world-class power anymore, but that’s just insulting.

[*By the way, at what point does a ‘toy’ tank cease to be a toy, even if it does run on wind-up power? It seems to me that a gigantic tank strong enough to have a 100 foot-tall fop ride around atop it is more than just a toy.]

"Prepare to fire!" the tank commander yells, although obviously they don’t, because being a hundred feet tall doesn’t exactly make you invulnerable to 90 mm tank shells. Instead, they sit there while Toyman smirks that, "It’s too late," which it isn’t for about another twenty seconds, which would be more than enough time to turn him into a giant grease spot.

Instead, Toyman is allowed to summon a squadron of ‘toy’ airplanes, which drops a platoon of 20 foot tall robotic wooden soldiers to the ground. At this fearsome sight, the tank commander instantly surrenders, all without firing a shot. (!!) Again, twenty foot tall wooden soldiers…main battle tanks…don’t know, dude, you might have had a shot. You guys really need to stop hanging out with the French so much.

"Excellent!" Toyman exclaims. "Now the entire European continent is mine to play with!" You’re not even on the European continent, you moron. Sheesh.

We then cut to outer space. "As the Superfriends rapidly approach the Earth," the ON explains, as we watch the Superfriends (with no apparent protection from the vacuum of space) rapidly approach the Earth. However, Superman is rebuffed by the aforementioned force field. Batman recognizes this as the Justice League force field (??), and I have to say, good work on creating something that nobody on your team can penetrate.

Green Lantern and Superman—what, no Apache Chief? Aquaman? Robin?—give it the old college try, but it’s no go. However, Batman notices that the Justice League Satellite is orbiting just about ten feet away from them. Huh. That’s weird. Isn’t space like…big and stuff? Anyway, it’s right there, and Batman explains that there’s (three guesses) Just One Chance: To re-wire the satellite to turn off the force field. Which means…anyone else could do the same. Aliens. The Legion of Doom. Mormons. I mean, it’s like installing a huge steel security door in your house and then leaving the key under the welcome mat.

To try to explain why this isn’t so, Robin expositories that the satellite defense systems can only be turned off at the Hall of Justice. (Another brilliant design idea.) This is to foster suspense and stuff, although why the indestructible Superman doesn’t rewire the device under Batman’s instructions—the Batman currently floating around and breathing and talking in space sans any special gear, I mean—or have Green Lantern toss a protective field around Batman while he does the work, well, anyway.

Oops, my fault. I wasn’t being fair to the show’s awesome scientific accuracy. Instead, I should have been mocking the animation. After the Caped Crusader slides a transparent, albeit non-sealing, space mask over his cowl—it’s amazing the crap that guy carries around, especially since he had no idea earlier in the show that he’d end up in space—the Narrator explains that he is "leaving the protection of Green Lantern’s energy field." Except that, you know, they forgot to animate such a field, which should be pretty easy to see, as it would be big, green and glowing. None of which is readily apparent.

And so Batman, with a transparent mask but no space suit, floats out of the supposedly extant protective field and drifts over to the satellite. He pries open a panel, pushes a now exposed button, and then grabs a switch helpfully marked ON and OFF. After flipping said switch Up, Down, Up, Down (??), he notes, "I’ve almost got it!" (!!) "The force field’s gone!" Superman then super-observes. Whew! That was a close one!

Back in the Hall of Justice "moments later," the Superfriends are dismayed to see the giant Legionnaires lording it over various capitals. "Great Scott!" Superman super-notes. "The Legion of Doom has taken over every continent!" What, even Antarctica!? Then surely the world’s fate is sealed!

"With their incredible growth ray and the increase in their powers (what, like Toyman’s?)," Hawkman stalwartly declares, "there’s little we can do to stop them!" I sure admire your Never Say Die spirit, Chicken Man. Er, Hawkman. Luckily, though, the Justice League Computer has been programmed with Butt In software. "Hawkman’s calculation is in error," it suddenly interjects.

"The Legion of Doom has made a crucial mistake," it continues without prompting, albeit presumably after conferring with the Justice League Garage Door Opener and the coffee machine. "Assuming that he would not be able to return to the Hall of Justice, Bizarro left traces of the three growth ray elements in my computer analyzer."

Uhm, if he was assuming that he wouldn’t be able to return to the Hall, wouldn’t that make it more logical for him to take the elements? I guess we could be generous and write this off as a bit of backward Bizarro logic, although I doubt if the writers had really thought any of this through. In any case, I suspect the line was actually meant to be more along the lines of, "As he was assuming that you Superfriends would not be able to return to the Hall of Justice…." That makes a lot more sense, anyway.

In any case, due to the faulty design of their planet-protecting force field projector, the deficiencies of their satellite’s defense systems, the outright stupidity of their foes, and the unasked for kibitzing of their computer, the Superfriends now have a fighting chance. Good work, you guys!

We now are shown the remains of the elements glowing away on the analyzer tray, which again isn’t making Bizarro or his comrades seem overly bright. I mean, I forget my car keys sometimes, but they’d don’t pulsate with light. Anyway, even Robin can put the pieces together. "Holy miscalculations!" he exclaims. (Somebody, please, kill him. Really.) "That means we can use the growth ray to stop the Legion of Doom!" he concludes. Holy no sh*t, Boy Wonder.

"That’s right, Robin," Batman agrees. "I’ll just reprogram the computer to duplicate the growth ray." Nice try, dude. Yeah, I’m sure the computer needs you to ‘reprogram’ it to execute a plan that it just independently came up with. Feeling a little emasculated, are we? Needing to exert a little control? In any case, the computer instantly fires a beam and soon Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and the Flash (this is why the Superfriends will win—because they aren’t wasting their grown beam on losers like Toyman and Captain Cold) are shooting up in size.

Like the Legionnaires before them, said Superfriends begin growing inside the Hall of Justice, yet are magically outside the building moments later when they attain their full height. Then they briefly insert a pre-existing shot of some Superfriends dispersing before the Hall of Justice, apparently hoping that we won’t notice that the insert does indeed feature Batman, Green Lantern and the Flash, but with Robin in the place of Superman. Holy Continuity Errors!

In Peking, Sinestro is lounging in a giant rickshaw (!), and a real one, not a yellow energy one. Chortling, he commands a team of coolies to take him to the palace. Really, that’s why the guy wants to conquer the universe, so he can make people pull him around in a custom-built rickshaw? Yeah, conquering the universe and five bucks will get you that one. However, Sinestro’s gloating comes to an end when the gigantic Green Lantern pops up nearby, looming over the Great Wall of China.

Although initially shocked, Sinestro quickly conjures up a yellow energy whip, with which he pinions the arms of his rather slow-reacting archenemy. "You’ll never stop me!" he sneers. "Your end is near, Green Fool!" Yeah, just like the eight hundred other times you guys have tussled, right? Amazingly, though, Sinestro hasn’t counted on the fact that binding a guy’s upper arms doesn’t keep him from shooting an energy beam from his ring. This creates a giant stoppered bottle around Sinestro, which is clear and sporting a stupendous brown cork. However, there’s a green glow around it, and I guess they figured that was close enough. "Sorry to bottle up your plans, Sinestro," GL ‘quips.’ Don’t give up your day job, my emerald friend.

Meanwhile, a group of Arabs right out of a high school Christmas pageant is standing in the desert, presenting Captain Cold with a heap of stereotypically Arabian treasure. Oddly, all is sunny and sandy where they are, but all is snowy over by Cold, who currently is sitting on the back of the snow-capped Sphinx. I have to admit, if you enjoyed shows with hallucinatory imagery, this was the program for you. "One $100 million more and I’ll defrost your desert!" he preens. Yes, I’d certainly bankrupt a country’s treasure to get somebody to defrost a desert. Because…er, anyway.

Anyway, Giant Flash shows up in the form of a giant red tornado. I never really figured out why Captain Cold would be the enemy of the Flash. Speed vs. Cold doesn’t really make any sense, even in comic book terms. Surely Captain Cold should be the bane of some fire-based hero, like the Human Torch. (I know, I know, wrong company. Still.) On the other hand, they thought the Flash the natural foe of a talking super-scientific gorilla, too. Did the Flash even have an enemy that could slow down time or something? That would seem to be more fitting.

Anyway, we all know that if the Flash runs or just spins in circles real fast, that he gets really dizzy. Er, I mean, can do anything the script requires. Here his rotations instantly burn off all that snow. I think that means the cubic tons of the stuff have been converted to steam. This indicates that he has thus scalded all the aforementioned Arabs to death. Wisely, however the show spares their young audience this sight.

"Who melted my ice?!" Captain Cold bleats, apparently confused by the scarlet-hued tornado before him. "I did!" the Flash explains, after coming to a halt. "And now I’m going to defrost you!" Seriously, the Justice League needs some writers.

Cold responds by firing at the Flash and just barely missing him. (This despite that fact that the Flash can move at like the speed of light, which is the major reason it always seemed unlikely that Cold would represent a threat to him. Imagine fighting a guy armed with a gun, but who takes 10,000 years to bring it to bear on you). The freeze beam bounces off a pyramid (???!!!) and naturally boomerangs back on Cold himself, freezing him in a gigantic block of ice. What a maroon.

Meanwhile, in England, Toyman is still riding around on his ‘toy’ tank as his wooden soldiers march around. Holding up a globe, he giggles, "Europe is all mine!" "Wrong, Toyman!" a voice replies, and Toyman is shocked to see a 100 foot-tall Batman before him. (I guess when you grow gigantic, you also become extraordinarily nonobservant.) Again, I have to wonder how the hell Behemoth Batman got himself across the pond.

By the way, Toyman is traditionally a Superman villain. I know, you wouldn’t think so, would you? On the other hand, you probably wouldn’t want to send even Behemoth Batman up against Brobdingnagian Bizarro. On the other hand, there was that previous episode where Batman pushed a button on his utility belt and somehow encased Bizarro in a plastic bubble he couldn’t punch his way out of. (Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense to me, either.) However, he’s already used that once, and according to the show rules, he can’t employ it again. Hey, that’s just the way things work in this universe.

Toyman helpfully telegraphs that he’s going to fire a ray from his tank at Batman, which allows the Caped Crusader to leap to safety. Then Batman knocks over the aforementioned Wooden Soldiers, which earlier where maybe twenty feet tall, but which now are the same size as Batman, which is totally off. But anyway. He then puts his hand on Toyman’s shoulder, which I guess works the same way as in touch football.

Finally, we cut to Washington D.C., where Giant Bizarro is causing almost as much havoc as Congress. "Government of Bizarro, by Bizarro, for Bizarro," he declares, which I have to admit is pretty funny. Finally, somebody on this show gets off a good line. It only took like eight episodes.

Again, we get another ‘villain is shocked to be confronted with a giant Superfriend’ moment, while I waited in unbearable suspense to see the two massively powerful enemies begin fighting, destroying Washington in the process. Sure enough, Bizarro picks up the Washington Monument, which he broke apart earlier, and hurls it like a missile at his Kryptonian foe. However, do-gooder Superman boringly just catches it and puts it back in its proper place. Yes, I’m sure it will just stay upright now, even if he didn’t even bother to match the two halves up correctly.

Superman next grabs Bizarro and sticks him behind the stone columns of the Capital Building, effectively jailing his opponent. Or ‘ineffectively’ jailing him, if truth be told. I mean, even the regular-sized Bizarro could tear through those like tissue paper, must less the 100 foot tall version. However, the touch football rules are apparently still in effect, and Bizarro quietly acquiesces.

Suddenly, all the Giant Superfriends and their colossal captives are standing right by Superman (??). Superman goes into the obligatory too-early gloat, which is then, as always, immediately followed by the villains’ ‘surprise’ escape.

In this case, the flying Hall of Doom suddenly is noticed in their midst—again, once you’re a giant, you completely lose focus—after Luthor announces their presence over the Hall’s sinister public address system. After that is accomplished, the gigantic supercriminals are teleported to safety. As they are every week, even when they aren’t giants. Which, actually, brings up an interesting point regarding where exactly they are being teleported to. Usually they are brought up into the Hall of Doom. Only now they wouldn’t fit.

We probably weren’t supposed to think of that.

By the way, the Hall of Doom is now about half as tall as the giant Superfriends. Why doesn’t Superman grab it and take the entire place in custody? Why doesn’t Green Lantern throw a giant energy bubble around the Hall and block its teleportation beam? Why doesn’t the Flash whisk the captured villains thousands of miles away from the area and keep them from being rescued?

We probably weren’t supposed to think of any of that, either.

Instead, after the four have in turned been dematerialized, Green Lantern then observes, "It’s Luthor and the Hall of Doom! Quick, after them." Of course, in the five seconds it takes him to utter that, either Superman or the Flash could have grabbed the Hall about a zillion times. Also, rather than shouting pointlessly after-the-fact advice, why not just capture the Hall with your energy ring, you green goof? Needless to say, however, this is not what happens.

Giant Superman does indeed intercept and grab the flying Hall, only to declare "It’s empty!" Yes, Superman, like your head. "That’s right," a sniggering PA System Luthor confirms. "You caught yourself a big decoy, not the Legion of Doom." What a super-putz.

Momentarily stymied, the Superfriends again decide to just kick back and rest on their superlaurels. "Maybe not this time, Luthor," Superman says, just like he does every week after Luthor has already left. "But at least we’ve proven that the Giants of Doom are no match for the Giants of Justices." And so ends the show, with everyone still a giant.

I guess it wore off before the next show.