Young Justice (2010) is known for being a very mature show grounded in reality. With that said, it doesn't always hit it out of the park when it gets a bit too serious. Here are the most notable examples that could be listed here.
- Seasons 1-2:
- Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are in a diner discussing Superboy and Clark's refusal to act as the father figure that the boy desperately needs. It's a fine scene... up until Clark leaves and angrily tells the waiter that he'll have the apple pie he just ordered to go. Pie is not well known for being appropriately dramatic.
- That entire scene could count for some. It's literally The World's Finest Bromance having an argument over custody. This exchange pretty much says it all.
Bruce: The boy needs his father.- Superboy's over-emotional feral screaming in a lot of the early episodes (especially in Bereft), while not being totally uncalled for given his pre-character-development personality, can become rather silly and over the top.
- The Punctuated! For! Emphasis! example at the end of "The Hunt" You're. Off. The Team may have been a bit overdramatic...
- From the same finale Superman's "good job kid" moment to Superboy may also be this, given the lack of characterization on the former's part, consequently causing the scene to fall flat and feel like an empty gesture.
- Superman trying to corral the ugly little alien invaders into their ship so he could fly them away from the exploding island in Alienated feels too forced (and comes too late in the series) to be genuinely convincing as an act of selfless compassion on his part. Superboy saying that Superman will be more upset to learn he couldn't save the ugly little alien invaders just makes it even more of an Informed Attribute.
- Where's Waldo? is known as "Where's Wally?" outside the US and Canada. When Wally dies, and Artemis' reaction is an anguished "Where's Wally?!", it can... undercut the drama.
- Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are in a diner discussing Superboy and Clark's refusal to act as the father figure that the boy desperately needs. It's a fine scene... up until Clark leaves and angrily tells the waiter that he'll have the apple pie he just ordered to go. Pie is not well known for being appropriately dramatic.
- Season 3:
- The dialogue and line delivery can feel awkward (ex. "You've got a baby in there!") and forced/on-the-nose (ex. Beast Boy's talk of starting a "revolution" with the Outsiders' debut and then Gaby also calling them a "revolution" by pure coincidence, the Call Backs to well-known Season 1 lines such as "Get whelmed.", etc.). Not helped with the more noticeable cases of characters sharing a single voice actor which can create some flat deliveries after repetitive use (as well as inaccurate attempts at accents for international characters) and the animation sometimes failing to properly convey the emotions behind these lines.
- Violet's shift from perfectly well-behaved to sudden misconduct after learning she is dying is a bit jarring, as it all occurs in the span of a single day/episode and she isn't even fully informed on the situation (specifically, the likelihood Jace could find a solution to fix it, which she mentions is possible). It would have been far less of an issue if it had been built-up in a previous episode.
- "I think my water broke just now". Granted, it's not an alarming experience for many women, but it's still a very casual thing to say.
- Granny Goodness's facial expressions and dialogue in "Unknown Factors" vacillate between this and Narm Charm. On the one hand, she gets weird fish eyes and stereotypical frowns and some of her threats are downright ridiculous coupled with some wooden actingnote ... and at no point do you lose the sense that she is a crazy, murderous, sadistic abuser.
- When Superboy discovers M'gann's involvement in the Anti-Light, he's uncharacteristically silent throughout the whole episode. When he and M'gann are later seen arguing telepathically, their argument is shown through Cyborg and Forager's perspective; they're both flailing and wildly gesturing, all the while without saying a single word.
- One plotline in the later parts of the season is the Outsiders getting into a war of public opinion with Luthor, each side trying to win acclaim through their heroic deeds to win the hearts and minds of the public. Fine on paper, but it is hard to take scenes like Luthor grinning evilly because his superhero team is getting more likes than the Outsiders seriously.
- The second half of Season 3 has used freeze-frame montages in place of proper animation multiple times. By the second or third time this happens, it starts to feel less like a stylistic choice and more due to budget constraints.
- While it is extremely cathartic to see Lex Luthor get some comeuppance and lose his position as Secretary-General, his attempts to push back on the (true) accusations by simply parroting well-known "arguments" and counterpunches of a certain prominent American figurenote can across as very silly (and downright nonsensical; 'international libel laws' are not a thing, libel laws are set by each country) and as a tad absurd given he's been shown to be far more intelligent than this. Simply put, they could've just let Luthor fail in his own defense and take the defeat without using pointless topical references.
- Indeed, Luthor throughout the entire season suffers from a severe case of derailment from his David Xanatos-esque personalitynote , to simply being a thinly-veiled caricature of said prominent American figure which reeks of Writer on Board, especially for those who were fans of his earlier character.
- The Outsiders's mantra, which gets repeated ad nauseam: "We are all Outsiders."
- Season 4:
- Onyx comparing her grandfather, The Amazing Man to Malcolm X. and Booker T.; now what would two African-American activists have to do with being a superhero?
- The Zatanna arc has a narrative device of each episode having backstory narrated. Each listener consistently expresses irritation of being told "what I already know", which otherwise takes away from the gravity of these scenes.
- Gets even more awkwardly phrased in "Og Htrof Dna Reuqnoc", when Nabu asks Zatara "Why do you tell us, what we have no need to know?".
- In the epic showdown against the Child, Mary harnesses multiple magical powers to destroy Flaw, the villain's golem, but she fails when the monster throws a rock at her. Needless to say, you'd be forgiven for laughing how easily their strongest magic wielder goes down.
