“Before I came here, Arkham was a revolving door for every maniac in Gotham. I kept them in. Me! Now I realize I was wrong to punish those pathetic miscreants! They’re only symptoms! You’re the cause!”A generous grant from the Wayne Foundation allows Arkham Asylum to hire a new chief of security. But Lyle Bolton (Bruce Weitz) is proving to be something of a tyrant, scaring the inmates with his brutal tactics. A panel convenes to dismiss Bolton, who swears revenge on all the soft-hearted types who enable the villains of Gotham. Six months later, Bolton rebrands himself as Lock-Up, out to imprison those who expelled him from Arkham.
We try not to get too political around these parts, but I had to do a double-take that this episode was from 1994 and not this year because I can honestly say I was not expecting Donald Trump to show up in this episode. No, the current president doesn’t appear in any physical or wholly recognizable form, but there are a few beats in this episode that felt very prescient these fourteen years later. It starts with Bolton’s vocal critique of “the permissive, liberal media” – a sneer that I didn’t know existed that long ago – and continues through Lock-Up’s invitation that he and Batman “can make this city safe again.” Coupled with Lock-Up’s hardline attitude against criminals and those he believes enable them, there’s just something oddly timeless about this episode.
Adding to the odd familiarity of this episode, I had only just recently read the comic book issues that took Lock-Up from the animated series and brought him into the comics continuity. It would seem, then, that Paul Dini came up with another winner of a character. What works in this episode is the way that Lock-Up serves as a dark reflection of Batman himself (a key component of all Bat-villains); his fanatical devotion to incarcerating criminals matches Batman’s drive to clean the streets of Gotham, but his willingness to serve as both jury and prison warden is a line Batman must never cross. Batman here possesses a healthy respect for the institutions of Gotham, which Lock-Up casts aside as soon as he is discovered to have transgressed the ethical lines of those systems.
Lock-Up serves as a good reminder to Batman that he needs those systems to curb his own vigilante impulses, but it’s not a lesson he particularly needs to learn. This episode wisely begins with the revelation that the Wayne Foundation has been financially supporting Arkham Asylum, and there are two ways to look at this. Either Batman is subsidizing a prison to hold his prey, or Bruce Wayne is genuinely invested in helping rehabilitate the asylum’s inmates, and I prefer to think it’s the latter. Once he gets wind that Bolton is terrorizing his charges – even, in a particularly Dini point of irony, the Scarecrow – Bruce steps in and investigates. He doesn’t unilaterally dismiss Bolton; he waits for due process to determine his guilt. There’s a beautiful beat where Bruce realizes the witnesses are lying out of fear, but he doesn’t say anything because he believes so ardently in the process. To me, that’s beautiful because I want a Batman who believes in law and order, who knows the sad irony that his nightly activities must step outside the law he’s sworn to protect because, at some point, he knows he has to step back and let the system at least try to do its work.
Harvey Bullock knows it too, and this episode was smart to include him in the conversation. Robert Costanzo continues his underrated run as the definitive Bullock (though over on Gotham, Donal Logue is giving him a run for his money), and as the show winds down, there’s a sobering sense that this might be the last time we see any of these people (barring, of course, The New Batman Adventures). While it might seem like a waste to introduce a brand new villain when there are so many other toys in the toybox, Lock-Up lets us see one more time how all these toys fit together. Bullock gets a wonderful sequence with Batman where he begrudgingly enlists Batman’s help, a pleasant reminder of the long road these two men have traveled together; Bullock was never all that crazy about Batman, but he’s come a long from the openly hostile man we saw blame Batman for his own mistakes in “P.O.V.”
Robin, too, gets a moment to shine in this episode, which is extremely helpful to a character who has too often felt like an ancillary sidekick for a show that was at least nominally marketed as “The Adventures of Batman & Robin.” Here Robin serves as a light in the darkness, gently ribbing Bruce for accidentally funding Bolton’s mania, but more importantly, he serves as a kind of face for Batman’s crusade. While Batman tussles with Lock-Up, Robin rescues the hostages, directing them to safety. This is what Robin should be – the smile that Batman can never wear, the helping hand while Batman tackles the physical threats, the kid-at-heart who reminds us everything is going to be all right. It’s the same function Robin serves for Batman himself.
I admit I didn’t remember this episode very well, but structurally there’s a lot going on that makes “Lock-Up” more successful than one might expect. I’ve no doubt that much of that is due to a Dini story, but the careful scripting and the inclusion of a number of BtAS faces (including an all-star panel of witnesses at Bolton’s inquest) remind us how full this universe is and how many storytelling opportunities exist in a playground as rich as this one.
Writers: Paul Dini, Marty Isenberg, and Robert N. Skir
Director: Dan Riba
Villain: Lock-Up (Bruce Weitz)
Next episode: “Make ’Em Laugh,” in which we meet the Condiment King.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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