After a police sting goes awry, an Internal Affairs investigator has detectives Harvey Bullock (Robert Costanzo) and Renee Montoya (Ingrid Oliu) in the hot seat with a new rookie, and all of them have different takes on what went wrong – Montoya accuses Bullock of rushing, but Bullock says Batman’s to blame. What really happened that night, and is there any chance of salvaging the bust?
This episode is very clearly Gotham City by way of Rashômon, and I’ve got to say it works pretty well. It’s understandably a little watered down from the Kurosawa film – I mean, hey, the target audience was kids like me back in the day – and while I would have appreciated an episode that leaves a little more nuance when it comes to where the truth really lies, I have to say that “P.O.V.” takes a very interesting tack to the very idea of what an episode of Batman: The Animated Series can be and is allowed to be.
For starters, Batman is barely in this episode. That’s the kind of bold move I applaud from the occasional Batman story – a look at his supporting cast of characters and how they interact with a world in which their most prominent citizen dresses like a nocturnal flying mammal. In “P.O.V.,” you can see seeds of Gotham Central, the must-read comics series by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka, which treats Gotham City like NYPD Blue. It’s the kind of genius “why didn’t I think of that?” idea with which the Batman mythos seems rife, and “P.O.V.” is a wonderful example of how creative and how fun these unexpected ideas can be.
What’s particularly interesting, as previous episodes have hinted, is that the Gotham City Police are somewhat divided on the question of Batman. Gordon’s in his corner for sure, and Montoya seems assured of his benevolence, but Bullock isn’t a fan and seems to resent the Bat; meanwhile, rookie Wilkes is convinced that Batman’s a supernatural force of vengeance, which plays out to great comedic effect. It’s the episode’s best visual gag, a wonderful way of juxtaposing truth with misinterpretation, something Rashômon does in a different direction but no less engagingly.
If the villain is undercooked, it almost doesn’t matter. We have Ron Perlman in what amounts to a cameo as a henchman with a power tool fetish, but it’s far from his leading role to come as Clayface. There are moments when I thought it’d be interesting to see this as a Penguin episode or a Rupert Thorne plot, but I think those villains have such titanic presences that it would take away from the bigger questions about how a legitimate police force reacts to the presence of a vigilante in their midst – one on their side, to be sure, but one whose very presence destabilizes our notion of an objective legal center. “P.O.V.” ultimately asks whether we can trust or rely on a traditional police force when we have a Batman in our belfry.
The answer is unsurprisingly affirmative, even in the case of Bullock, ever the old softie when it comes to his partner and his costumed counterpart. “P.O.V.” goes a long way toward humanizing Bullock away from the bullying donut addict we’ve seen thus far, and it’s on the shoulders of episodes like this one that Bullock’s comics persona got rehabilitated, to say nothing of this show introducing Renee Montoya concurrently with her debut in comics. “P.O.V.” gives life to the GCPD beyond Commissioner Gordon, and the show is a richer experience for it.
Writer: Mitch Brian, Sean Catherine Derek, & Laren Bright
Director: Kevin Altieri
Villain: Driller (Ron Perlman) and The Boss
Next episode: “The Forgotten,” in which Batman’s version of Cool Hand Luke is anything but.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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