[S3E9] Grudge Match

Huntress starts following Black Canary after noticing she seems a little off her game and discovers that Roulette has revived Meta-Brawl, but this time with a twist. Called the "Glamour Slam", and featuring only female fighters, she has taken over the minds of Justice League members and forces them to fight in brutal cage matches with each other.

[S3E9] Grudge Match

• This episode includes examples of: Added Alliterative Appeal: Roulette seems to enjoy using this during her announcements, but the crowning one has to be calling Black Canary the "sultry siren of the sonic smackdown".

• Beam-O-War: A sonic one between Canary and Sonar. It's hilariously brief when Canary absolutely overpowers him and his gun explodes.

• Cat Fight: Roulette and Tala nearly get into one when Roulette starts getting a little too handsy with Lex.

• Comically Missing the Point: The Question during the "what are you wearing?" phone conversation.

• Curb-Stomp Battle: Wonder Woman completely trounces Shayera and Vixen. Luckily, Canary and Huntress are able to break the trance before she's able to smash their heads together.

• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Roulette's whole intent is to fund Luthor's plan; with access to mind control powerful enough to work on Wonder Woman, you'd think there'd be better ways to profit than Fight Clubbing.

• Designated Girl Fight: Averted. The episode primarily involves female characters and the males who are featured fighting (the mook guards and Sonar) get their asses absolutely handed to them.

• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Sonar seems to get a little too much enjoyment from watching Tala and Roulette nearly getting into a fight. This inspired the idea of create a new Meta-Brawl featuring only female fighters.

• Hypocritical Humor: Canary and Huntress discuss the stereotype that superheroes only use violence to solve their problems. They proceed to settle their rivalry with a final rematch.

• The Question, of all people, points out the Huntress is a little too obsessed with Black Canary.

• Intimate Telecommunications: The whole "what are you wearing?" phone conversation between Huntress and Question. Fortunately for the kids, he has no idea how the game works.Huntress: So, what are you wearing? Question: Blue overcoat. Fedora. Huntress: [sighs] You really stink at this. Question: Orange socks? [Huntress hangs up]

• Irony: Earlier in the series, Canary attempted to get Wildcat out of superhuman cage fighting, who was the star attraction of the show. Now here Canary is (unwillingly) part of the brawl and the main undefeated champion of the Glamour Slam. Possibly an Enforced Trope, as Roulette may have specifically picked her as possible payback for ruining her business the last time around.

• Painfully, Shayera and Vixen had earlier talked about their (un)settled rivalry over John Stewart, where Shayera noted she couldn't hurt Vixen the way her Hawkworld culture would want her to. During the fight with a mind-controlled Wonder Woman, Diana battles Vixen and uses her as a shield just as Shayera is swinging her nth-metal Mace down. Horrified, Shayera has to pull back before she leveled a blow that could hurt Diana but kill Vixen. Leaving them both vulnerable to a serious beatdown by Wonder Woman.

• Kubrick Stare: A brief, really scary one from Shayera when under mind control.

• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: The long-haired figure on the rooftop watching Black Canary and Huntress enter Bludhaven is indeed Nightwing. At the time, Batman's supporting characters were Exiled from Continuity (known at the time as "the Bat-Embargo"), so production snuck Nightwing in.

• Lighthearted Rematch: The episode with Canary and Huntress challenging each other to one final match just for fun, cutting to the credits moments before they make contact.

• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Black Canary, Huntress, Shayera, and Vixen after being released from their mind control once they see who their next opponent is: a mind-controlled Wonder Woman.

• Mind Control: How Lex and Roulette force members of the League to fight. Sonar tampered with the League's comm-link earpieces to put them in an obedient trance.

• Non-Action Big Bad: Roulette subverts this. Huntress expects that she's the type that likes to watch others fight and doesn't get in on the action, but then Roulette breaks out the stilettos in her hair and catches her by surprise by turning out to be an actually decent fighter.

• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Huntress mowing through the security guards when the elevator door closes. Cut to her stepping out and they're just slumped over, unconscious on the floor.

• The fight between her and Black Canary after the episode, too.

• Sequel Episode: To Season Four's "The Cat and the Canary" (and to a lesser extent "Double Date").

• Stupid Evil: Roulette brainwashes five members of the Justice League (including two founding members) and has them in one place at the same time, no possible way to fight superhumans herself other than Sonar and a few mooks, and never considering what might happen if it all went wrong and her devices stopped working. Which they did. Kind of hard to call this idea anything but Stupid Evil.

• Also questionable is using the mind control to force the superwomen to fight each other in a rather low-scale enterprise, rather than use that mind control to affect all League members into committing high-value robberies or worse.

• Vitriolic Best Buds: Huntress and Canary seem to be developing into this by the end of the episode.

• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Subverted and justified with Roulette. The simpler solution would've been to just kill Huntress and Canary, but her greed and need to make a profit get the better of her and she puts the two in a cage match. Of course, she had good reason to be confident that they would both get killed as they were facing off against Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl and Vixen, three major superheroes who have consistently proven they are forces to be reckoned with.

• Worf Had the Flu: Black Canary is usually considered to be an equal, if not superior fighter over Huntress, but Huntress is able to defeat her in the parking lot in this episode. This can be justified based on the fact that Canary was mind-controlled at the time, and as is seen at the start of the episode, this makes her sloppy and less competent in battle. Even then, Huntress has to capitalise on the brief moment where Canary's mind control is broken and she's all dazed and confused to finish her off.

• You Do Not Want To Know:Shayera: [after being freed of the mind control during the cage match] I don't think I want to know. Vixen: We're all in a cage match fighting to the death. Shayera: Yeah, see?

I wasn't surprised to see Rothstein walk away from Nucky and Atlantic City. After all, he makes his living in New York City, where things "actually matter." Hopefully this will open the door for the likes of Chalky White to comes back into the mix and help Nucky defend what he has built. We certainly have not seen the last of the Manhattan boys or the Chi-town twosome of Torrio and Capone. For now, though, it seems the stage is set for a one on one grudge match by the sea.

Meanwhile, on the bridge of the Enterprise, Data is only able to find a birth record for Volnoth. While Riker and Data mull over the lack of information present, Dr. Crusher comes to the bridge with a startling fact: 53 years ago, someone died of the same microvirus. The man's name was Penthor-Mul, a Gatherer of the Lornak clan who raided an Acamarian outpost but was captured and died before his trial. Data immediately makes the connection: Volnoth was also of the Lornak clan, as is Chorgan. Riker realizes that this microvirus is indeed targeted against Lornak clan members and wants to find anyone who might have a grudge against the Lornaks.

Crusher notes that the microvirus is transmittable in several different ways, and so finely tailored as to be perfectly harmless to the carrier, so long as he does not match the Lornaks' DNA signature. Data locates a record of a massacre eighty years ago, when the Lornaks were believed to have annihilated their rival clan, the Tralestas, from existence. Data cannot find any information on the Tralesta clan but locates an image of Penthor-Mul before his execution. Data points out a half-obscured face behind him. Riker orders the computer to extrapolate and reconstruct the face. The face belongs to Yuta. Crusher, Data, and Riker are in disbelief: Yuta has not aged at all in 53 years.

But it is love that brings about the downfall of House Stark, namely that between Robb and Talisa. Forgoing the marriage pact made to one of Walder Frey's daughters, he now returns to the Twins in the hope of salvaging an alliance against the Lannisters, not knowing that Walder Frey is a man to hold a grudge. Whilst a clear sense of unease exists around David Bradley's wonderfully repugnant Walder, writers David Benioff and Dan Weiss cleverly play the opening exchanges for laughs, as line after line of the Frey lord's offspring are revealed for the young wolf to apologise too.

The sweet match of Edmure and Roslin, the wedding and the bedding all lull us into a false sense of security before the shocking betrayal. Series stalwart David Nutter expertly directs the shift in tone, as shots alternate between Catelyn's astute perspective of noticing first that the doors have been locked, and then that the band have begun to play Lannister song 'The Rains of Castamere', with close-ups of her slowly realising the horror that is about to happen. 041b061a72