Hourman and Dr. Mid-Nite – Director: David Straiton/Writer: Melissa Carter
This one starts nine years ago, with Rex and Wendi Tyler leaving Blue Valley in a hurry. They’ve signed over their house to Wendi’s brother (Matt Harris) and left him $50,000 to look after their son, Rick. Obviously, this has something to do with the Injustice Society, who Rex (aka
Hourman) was investigating. Rex has already mailed all his findings to Pat Dugan in Los Angeles and Rex and Wendi are so worried about the Society that they’ve legally signed over custody of Rick to Matt so the Society won’t know he’s their son. They say goodbye to Rick and take off, but don’t even make it out of Blue Valley before they’re smashed by a giant humanoid monster … obviously Solomon Grundy.
In the present, Rick has acquired his dad’s dream car (a 1966 Mustang) and is apparently a pretty good mechanic. Unfortunately, his uncle Matt turned 
out to be a complete scumbag, selling Rick’s car parts and knocking him around. (I’m betting that fifty G’s didn’t last too long either.) On the way to school, Rick stops by the place where his parents died. He thinks they were killed in an accident and punches the tree in frustration, not knowing that his dad was a superhero who was murdered by the Injustice Society. At the Dugan house, Courtney’s mom almost finds her Stargirl costume in the closet, so she decides to take all the stolen JSA artifacts to school to hide them there … but she accidentally leaves Dr. Mid-Nite’s goggles behind. Pat tells Courtney his suspicions about William Zarick being the Wizard and admits she may be right about the Injustice Society being in Blue Valley. Courtney tells him about Anaya
Bowin’s late night visit to Brainwave and Pat gives her shit for putting herself in danger. (He also dismisses her idea that Bowin could be the Fiddler, since the original Fiddler was an old Irish dude.) At school, Courtney and Yolanda hide the JSA stuff in a locker but don’t notice Beth Chapel—who figured out their secret last episode—following them and listening to their conversation. They consider recruiting Artemis Crock (the best athlete in school) to the new junior JSA, but Courtney thinks she’s a bit too intense to be a hero.
Gambler meets with someone who gives him info on a truck that’s hauling 
something very valuable near Blue Valley tomorrow night. Gambler gives him his payment, plus a chocolate coin wrapped in foil as a bonus. On the way home, Pat’s car dies and Rick Tyler happens by to give him some advice on fixing it. When Rick mentions his dad having a yellow ’66 Mustang, Pat gets an inkling as to who he might be. Courtney is startled when Hourman’s hourglass starts glowing and realizes it’s because of Rick. Courtney follows him and he’s not too happy about having a shadow. She shows him the hourglass, but it doesn’t glow this time and he thinks she’s nuts. Beth Chapel stops by Courtney’s place and drives
Barbara crazy with her incessant chatter. Beth sneaks upstairs to Courtney’s room and takes the Dr. Mid-Nite goggles away from the dog. She puts them on (without even wiping the dog slobber off them!) and gets a shock when they turn out to be very high-tech (Wikipedia on rocket fuel is Beth’s term), inhabited by an A.I. version of Charles McNider, the original Dr. Mid-Nite.
When Courtney finds Beth in her room, she’s not too happy but Beth overwhelms her with info … including the bombshell that Rick is the son of 
the original Hourman. Pat goes out to Rick’s farm to give him a carburetor for the Mustang and runs into Matt, who’s an asshole as usual. Meanwhile Rick is making some money by selling kegs to some guys from school, threatening to break their arms when they suggest not paying him. Courtney, Yolanda, and Beth track Rick to a Halloween party at Cindy Burman’s house. Yolanda doesn’t want to go in since Henry is there, so Courtney and Beth head inside to find Rick. Courtney steals a mask from a drunken guest to keep Cindy from recognizing her. (Courtney’s mask is Gizmo from Gremlins; Cindy is
dressed as a sexy vampire, naturally.) Henry’s telepathic powers seem to be kicking in, as he has trouble with the overcrowded party and “hears” Yolanda thinking what an asshole he is when he goes outside. Courtney finds Rick and brings in the others to talk to him. She gives him the hourglass, which actually does imbue him with super-strength. But Rick has no interest in joining the new JSA and takes off.
Courtney and Yolanda go to put on their costumes before going after Rick, telling Beth to stay behind because it’s too dangerous. Rick sees Matt 
sexually harassing a waitress and smashes Matt’s truck with one punch. He goes to the site of his parents’ death, followed by Courtney and Yolanda (as Stargirl and Wildcat). Rick admits that he’s so full of anger he feels like it’s poisoning him, but he doesn’t know any other way to live. Courtney doesn’t want him to keep the hourglass in his current mood, but before they can start fighting over it, Beth shows up to tell Rick how his parents really died. Using the goggles, she projects a 3-D recreation of the “accident” showing Solomon Grundy smashing the car into the tree. Courtney tells Rick about the Injustice Society and he agrees to join her team, but admits he’s in it for revenge, not
justice. Elsewhere, the Injustice Society hijack a truck hauling satellite equipment and we see the guy who gave them the info on the route is dead from eating the poisoned chocolate given to him by Gambler. When Pat sees Matt’s smashed-up truck, he puts two and two together and goes to see Courtney, finding Green Lantern’s power lantern hidden in her closet and realizing she took the artifacts from JSA headquarters.
This is a pretty good episode, giving us two more recruits for the new JSA. 
Neither of them is ideal superhero material though: Rick is consumed by anger and Beth isn’t exactly a bad-ass, getting squeamish just from seeing the re-enactment of the Tylers’ deaths. But Beth having the goggles works, since she seems like someone who values knowledge, and the goggles do work for her immediately. It seems like the JSA artifacts are choosing the heroes instead of the other way around, which makes more sense than the random accidents or inventions that empowered the original JSA.
Noticeable Things:
- Pat’s California address is shown as 1941 Siegel Way, which I assume is a reference to Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman.
- Beth’s birth date is given as 2004, which makes her 16 years old.
- Charles McNider was born in 1914 and died in 2010, but no explanation is given as to how he was so active in his later years at over a century old. In the comics, the JSA aged more slowly than normal people because of magical energy absorbed during a fight with Ian Karkull, so maybe the same thing happened in this
continuity. - We see that the Red Bee is canon and died in 1959, apparently because he was too cavalier about protecting his secret identity.
- Yolanda refers to Dr. Mid-Nite as Captain Midnight, who was a secret agent-style hero on the radio in the 1920s and 1930s.
Favourite Quotes:
- “You should stay on your meds.” Rick to Courtney after she tries to give him the hourglass the first time.
- “Congrats. You just made the biggest delinquent in school an unstoppable beast.” Yolanda letting Courtney know it might have been a mistake to give Rick super-strength.
- “Careful. There are dragons in the water.” Justin, the mysterious janitor, saying something so weird that even Beth finds it strange.