It could also be Never Speak Ill of the Dead thing.
Edited by windleopard on Oct 6th 2021 at 10:24:36 AM
The revelation just felt rather underwhelming to me, the big secret is that they killed a man? A man who we at least know wilfully worked with Eclipso to hurt hurt innocents.
Emphasising how the guilt weighed on the JSA is good and all, the psychological damage that killing a person does is a great thing to get to. But they really made it seem like Eclipso had required some really out there stuff for the JSA to stop him.
Barbara’s bit at least was solid, with her having the mental strength to recognise the illusion and getting help from Shade when she started to falter.
Also I agree on the old JSA being dicks. There’s maintaining a chain of command/hierarchy and then there’s being unnecessarily rude.
Edited by Silasw on Oct 6th 2021 at 10:10:19 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
I think it was mostly Sly. Note that Flash asked for Pat's opinion, and people like Hourman at least trusted Pat enough to give him that info in s1, with Charles asking for Pat earlier in this season. Sylvester is the worst about it though.
TBH I do feel it made sense for the secret. Pat and Barb don't want the kids to 1) be disillusioned in the people they look up to, especially since for Rick looking up to his dad has been helping him out and 2) Don't want the kids to feel they will need to kill Eclipso
My AO3Edited by Chariot on Oct 7th 2021 at 8:57:45 AM
I was mixing my points there. Pat being a less than stellar mentor and keeping the secret were two things that irked me and I put them together by accident. Because Pat doesn't do much as a mentor figure. He provides more history than expertise. He can't fight without the Stripe suit which has been benched, he can't stop anyone from going on missions or quitting nor is he able to help them. He can't provide much for sparring so the team can improve their abilities because he is a retired sidekick. Chuck the AI and Dr. McNider have been helping Beth and the others in the field more so as much as I want to respect Pat, he is losing appeal.
Hell, if Pat had been honest about what had happened he could have connected with Yolanda and helped her process her guilt around what happened with Brainwave. He knows the emotions she’s going through and he offered her no support.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranMy immediate take after just watching the ep is that Courtney getting pissed about Pat lying to her kind of falls flat, given that the specific lie he's telling has actually turned out to be irrelevant to their current situation. Courtney treats it as though he withheld from her the information that could've stopped Eclipso after he broke free but before what happened with Yolanda and Rick, but the specific thing Pat reveals here (that when possessing a person, if that person dies then Eclipso goes back into the diamond) doesn't change anything because Eclipso isn't possessing anyone and the diamond is broken.
That would be because Yolanda never told any one about what she was going through, except Courtney, until literally a day before her meltdown. IIRC, Pat literally found out about it the morning after Yolanda broke off ties with everyone.
It's very much a "Yoda gives Anakin general advice" situation. Could Pat have helped her through it? Yes. Would he have had to know about what she was going through first in order to offer that commiseration in the first place? Unfortunately, also yes.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 6th 2021 at 11:52:26 AM
If Pat had been open with the team earlier on then Yolanda might have opened up to him.
I think Courtney‘s anger is much more around the fact that Pat deliberately hid things from her, he didn’t not mention it due to lack of relevance, he conspired with Barbra to hide something from her.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranAnd for what reason would he have been obligated to do that, if he had no idea someone needed him to elaborate the point?
This conversation is predicated on the idea that the teens are just entitled to know everything about Pat's history, which they are not. I'm having a hard time sympathizing with Courtney on this because she kind of has a complex about getting up in people's business as if it were her own at this point, which makes her anger here come off as rather selfish. The framing of the episode doesn't help: the bulk of it is everyone except Courtney being tortured by Eclipso, which presents it as her responding to Pat being traumatized by his memories of being party to a murder by immediately, angrily, making the situation about her.
In short, there's a fair amount of Protagonist-Centered Morality going on here.
It's something that's always been part of this version of the character, and it's sometimes hard to tell whether the writers are intentionally setting it up as a character flaw or not. That Pat is outright being treated as denying Courtney something that could have saved her friends here - when he actually wasn't - would imply it's not, but it's a toss up because it's also part of the reason Yolanda falls out, and when that happens she and other characters criticized Courtney for it directly.
It's also kind of a thing with Pat, because they can never seem to decide whether Pat keeping secrets is a good or bad thing, or whether Pat giving in and bring the kids is a good or a bad thing. He's often "good dad protecting the kids from the horrors of his past," "bad dad not telling the kids what they want to know," "good dad helping Courtney follow her destiny," and "bad dad bringing kids into a dangerous field" all at the same time, and sometimes (like now) the show is shaky about picking a lane.
Again, in this particular case it would've made more sense if the thing Pat was keeping from her was something that she could've actually used to stop Eclipso. What Pat was keeping from her wasn't vital information, it was effectively just his tragic story of the worst case scenario.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 7th 2021 at 12:36:23 PM
I'm seeing it as both Courtney and Pat are human - Courtney being both a teenager who wants to know everything and thinks she's ready for anything, and Pat trying to strike a balance between protecting teens who are too young to be dealing with everything, and helping knowing that shady stuff may well follow them whether they're prepared or not and knowing Courtney may well go behind his back if he outright bans JSA stuff, and not always knowing which is better at the time.
Which is... kinda refreshing.
Yeah, I'm more on Pat's side- he didn't keep it a secret from anyone, he told Barbara and presumably they decided together. And the only time when that information would have been useful was when facing Cindy, which Pat didn't know about and when the Shade, who knew that information, was also there. I also don't see how that could have helped Yolanda, given the message was 'my friends killed when I didn't think they should have and it destroyed the JSA'.
My AO3I disagree. Pat knows that the JSA are going up against Eclipso. Even if it doesn't help them directly he still should've told them about that part of his past. I completely understand why Courtney is upset with her parents keeping that a secret from her. Hell, Pat shouldn't be keeping secrets in general when it comes to this sort of thing because it's an important part of his life and unless there's a good reason for it you shouldn't keep those sort of things secret.
I think Pat would have been perfectly justified if he’d said “The way the JSA defeated Eclipso wouldn’t work this time and I don’t want to discuss it further because the entire situation was very traumatic for me and the JSA”.
You can withhold information without lying. Just be honest about the fact that you’re not sharing and provide a rough idea of why.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI am more inclined to agree with Pat because Courtney completely ignores him any time he advises caution or asks her to do anything. If he said that they killed Eclipso's host, Courtney would be planning to kill them immediately. Even if it didn't work.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Yeah, Courtney is pretty much a Leeroy Jenkins most of the time.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianMurder was a solution for the five minutes they knew Cindy was a host. I'm not sure Eclipso even has a host right now.
My AO3I actually don't think Courtney would have considered it. I give her more credit than that.
But I do think Pat didn't even want them to entertain the issue, out of a desire to keep the kids from having to cross that line.
And ideally, if they could find the host and get the crystal away from said host, they could have also stopped Eclipso.
He of course, didn't know that Yolanda had already crossed that line, but that maybe further justifies it. Before she quit, Yolanda thought that they would need to kill Eclipso and that she would need to be the one to do it.
One Strip! One Strip!Thinking about it, couldn’t they just make the host unhand the diamond and break the connection with Eclipso that way?
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranInteresting stuff.
Are the names Louise Love and Dr. Bones important? Cause they sound like they are.
One Strip! One Strip!Weird how we can bring up the consequences of this show and then see the characters address them bringing up exactly our thoughts. Not sure if we're all getting played, we know these tropes well, or if the show just has good tight writing to address the problems right away. I get the sense that the season finale is coming up because this was episode 10 and they Put Jenny Scott and the Thunderbolt back in the story while healing The Shade.
Also, let me just add that the Shade pulled a massive dick move. Like, he just threw away any credibility he had. Unless this is further part of some kind of plan on his part, and even then, it still put Courtney at risk.
One Strip! One Strip!

I kinda hate it too.
It's a wonder that Pat is so reverent to them. Maybe he just hasn't realized it yet.
One Strip! One Strip!