Into the Idiot Box (Episodes 50-57) PL 12

The heroes escaped the Vault, but Sophie had already gone, leaving Warden’s uniform behind. She had taken his place at some point during their time in the Dungeon Dimension. Not wanting to leave an ally behind, the FLD made their way to the Dungeon Dimension’s directory. They were able to track Warden to the Decommissioning Center from there, and they raced off to rescue him.

Unfortunately, it was a trap. The entrance to the Decommissioning Center was covered in gray TV static. The Decommissioning Center was a lie, it was in fact the DC universe.

The heroes stepped into the DC and found out it was actually a portal to the DC Animated Universe. They wound up in Arkham Asylum as imagined by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini. Trying to stick to the plan, they approached Doctor Hugo Strange asking to see the Warden. Dr. Strange for his part took them down to the cellblocks where they found a disheveled Bruce Wayne. Before they could clarify that wasn’t who they were looking for, Hugo filled the prison with gas, knocking everyone out.

The gang awoke in a cellblock full of a who’s who of Gotham criminals. Joker, Harley, Scarecrow, Solomon Grundy, Poison Ivy, and Scar-Face, also known as the doll guy next to Centuria. After conversing with Batman’s enemies, the annoyed voice of the all-powerful trickster, Quirk filled the prison. He said “I thought this was a super hero show, get to the punching, and set everyone free.” The heroes fought the villains and triumphed, however before they could enjoy their victory, Quirk moved them to a new show: Poppy’s Place; a Sesame Street inspired kid’s program.

There the new Muppet Freedom League Dark ran into little Suzie and Felix the Grump. Felix tried to say that there were no words that began with the letter C. Much to his chagrin, the costumed crimefighters charismatically challenged his concerns and conjured some cunning, candid collections of characters whose conception point was C.

Quirk said the show was too boring and spiced things up by sending out a massive letter C to come up with some more examples. After defeating the letter C our heroes found themselves channel surfing at the whims of Quirk.

Here are the shows they wound up in:

Contessa: A Bridgerton-inspired period romance piece where Bowman and Overdrive fought for the love of Centuria.
Tampa Heat: Miami Vice-inspired 80s cop show, where we met Calvin’s famous character Shep for the first time. The group overthrew a drug cartel in truly 80s fashion.
Battlespace 2000: Star Trek-inspired romp through a science fiction set. Our heroes acquired some bitumacite and stopped an intergalactic warlord.
Surreal Home Makeover: Extreme Home Makeover mashed up with Ghost Hunters. Our team cleansed a one-room school house of it’s scary ghost girl and turned it into a trendy new small house.
Infomercial Hell: Our heroes faced the struggles of everyone who tries to do any mundane thing in an infomercial.
Stay Tooned: 90’s-sitcom with a talking cartoon named Jaxx Jaguar. They helped him keep his year’s supply of anchovy pizza through deception and quick thinking.
Pawnography: Pawn Stars, mystic edition. The heroes pawned off the Leviathan Band, a magic belt they recovered in Broken Strings which allows its wearer to breathe underwater for 7 minutes.
Freedom’s Got Talent: American reality TV competition, with superheroes!
The Stag: The Bachelor meets American Ninja Warrior, with the Arctic Fox as the bachelor.

Rather than keep playing Quirk’s game the way he wanted them to, they subverted his expectations in true modern television storytelling fashion. Lady Annabella threw herself in front of Lord Raynald’s blade, letting herself die rather than give into her father and society’s expectations. It was truly dramatic.

Quirk tried to say he didn’t like that ending, but our clever heroes convinced him that it was in fact the perfect ending to the story of Contessa. On top of that smarty pants deception, they convinced Quirk to go test out his prison cell in the Dungeon Dimension to see if the wards were still down, inadvertently trapping the trickster once more. That probably won’t come back to bite the Freedom League Dark later.

From there the heroes exited the Dungeon Dimension and returned to Freedom City where they learned they had been missing for two weeks and some of their TV exploits were shown to the general public. Nothing incriminating for their secret identities, but enough that some of them were a little more famous than before they went in.

Noteworthy NPCs

Villains: Quirk, Television Tropes

Allies: Warden, Arctic Fox, Sallah