I am a big fan of many things, and without ordering the things that I am a big fan of, two of those things are lists and television. Accordingly I have been reading any number of 'Best of the Decade' TV lists from many sources. Just a small sampling are Alan Sepinwall, Daniel Fienberg, and the AV Club. If you noticed that all of these lists have the same number 1, well good for you and I agree with them more then others. Now I am going to recognize a show that no one has recognized.
Cartoon Networks Justice League (later retitled Justice League Unlimited) 2001-2006
First, I can give any number of reasons why this show has not been recognized. In fact I will. This was a show made with children in mind, and even children's programming at it's best does not get the recognition. In fact it was written to a young teenage audience, but the principal characters are superheroes. Superheroes might have been big box office this decade, but not until later in the decade and not as animated features. Also the fact that it was written for young teens placed it squarely outside of Cartoon Networks two defined sweet spots for original programing this decade. The first was young children with shows like Power Puff Girls, Johny Bravo, and Samuri Jack, early in the decade. The second was young adults with the advent of Adult Swim being built around Anime features and later Family Guy reruns spawned a bushel of college age humor that has almost defined the network. Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Sea Lab, Space Ghost, and many others defined the tone of network. This show would premier on Saturday nights and then finding episodes later took quite a bit of effort. For these and many other reasons this show does not make lists by TV critics. Now, just the small list of Cartoon Network shows I just mentioned were all creative and wrote very well to their audiences, which just goes to show how rich this decade was in original television. So what did Justice League do to separate it from it's peers? Well in a completely biased tone, it just rocked.
Right away this show is something special, this is the only non comic to place the Big 3, Superman, Batman, and Wonderwoman right next to each other in the same universe. As an action show the animation was exciting and engrossing. As a kids show it was funny and self referential. The creators of the DC Animated Universe had already had great success with Batman: TAS, Superman, Batman Beyond, and Static Shock, but with this show they got to take that level of writing and unleash it on the entire DC Universe.
The first two seasons of this show, known simply as Justice League, followed the big seven of the DC Universe. Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, Flash (wally west), Green Lantern (Jon Stuart version), Martian Man Hunter (referred to almost exclusively as J'onn J'onzz), and Hawkgirl. The first episodes brought our heroes together meeting J'onn to fight the white aliens that took over Mars and discovering a promising rookie hero from the Amazon named Diana. The first season took place in 2 or 3 episode installments that were sometimes clunky, sometimes action based, and sometimes very funny. A silver age homage called Legends was both fun and self referential. The first season might have been uneven, but it ended on a 3 part alternate history movie, called the Savage Time. Vandal Savage went back in time to usurp Hitler and take a more pragmatic approach to world domination guided with his access to future weapons technology. Our Heroes go back in time to set things straight and from this point on the series never backed away from a theme or event that might be considered to serious for a kid's show.
After the shaky first season, the show only got stronger, keeping the same format as the first, the second season ended with a betrayal by a lead character (Hawkgirl) that challenged the trust of the entire league and threatened all of Earth. This subversion led to the expansion of the Justice League into the third season revamped as Justice league Unlimited bringing in second tier DC heroes like Green Arrow, Supergirl, Hawk and Dove, and the Question. From this point forward the show became a series of self contained episodes that had some significant and impressive story arcs.
This show, like everything Bruce Timm has done with Andrea Romano, had fantastic voice acting, centered by Kevin Conroy as the Batman we have known for years, and added to by just about everyone who came into the series, with an extra nod to the perfectly solemn Carl Lumbly as J'onn J'onzz and the irreverant but still likeable Michael Rosenbaum as Flash. Inherantly the conflicts adn resolutions of a comic book are objectively silly, but every actor attached to the show treated it seriously and thoughtfully. There were no silly voices or winking sarcasm, these characters acted in a manner where the world was at stake and still enjoyed each other in the confines of battle and rest. The voice acting is certainly a reflection of writing that never directly catered to the youth that were most predisosed to watching this show.
The writers, after years of showing sophistication beyond the medium of simply a superhero in Batman:TAS, took a while to get used to serving 7 lead characters (and later many more) but once they did were able to explore many themes with the characters provided. In the 4th and 5th seasons the idea of power and trust of the powerful were explored to such depths a child watching the show might no longer trust Superman himself. The Heroes were placed directly against the interests of the U.S. Government in manner that put the trust and faith on both sides in question. The writers did not abdicate the Heroes of responsability, although they were more noble in accepting it, of the importance of challenging authority. The show very clearly took on the idea of tyranny and that it does not always come from craven despots but from well meaning altruists trying the serve the needs of everyone at the same time. It was not simply Lex Luther versus Superman, it was the ideas of Luther versus Superman, a possibly challenging idea for a young audience, but one that the writers did not back away from the percieved intelligence of their percieved audience.
As the lists above show, this decade has been a glut of fantastic television, and when you look at works like Deadwood, Sopranos, or The Wire, their ambition and audience had no limits, but when a show has limits, a younger audience, a childish premise, and years of history to respect, and still succeeds, it deserves special credit. Justice League had many masters to serve, comic book fans, children, animation fans, and the public at large. It managed to please and surpass the expectations of all of these fans, be it with fantastic fight scenes, references to the Jack Kirby history of the medium, a quick glance of Hal Jordan, or an intense allegory of the Patriot Act played out with superheroes, this show deserves great notice for this decade and preferably syndication of it's 91 episodes.
