“I believe I've contracted a giant case of the giggles!”It’s April Fool’s Day in Gotham City, and The Joker has a real doozy for Batman – he’s gassed the city and plans to loot whatever’s left. It’s up to Batman, his Batboat, and his bat-gas-mask to save the day before faithful butler Alfred (in Efrem Zimbalist Jr.’s first appearance in the role that headlines his Wikipedia page) permanently succumbs to Joker’s laugh-inducing airborne poison.
With “The Last Laugh,” Joker is two for four in appearances thus far. Although Batman: The Animated Series will dig pretty deep into the rogues gallery, creating new foes and rehabilitating the public image of others like Mr. Freeze, The Joker is always the specter that looms over the whole series, even turning up in episodes that aren’t devoted to him. And while those of us who’ve seen the whole show know why, it’s a surprisingly bumpy set of false starts along the way – ultimately entertaining nevertheless, but far from the heights the show is about to hit.
Where “Christmas With the Joker” mismatched a thuggish Joker voice with a quintessentially Joker plotless plot, “The Last Laugh” sees Mark Hamill slip into his more polished Joker voice, but in a scheme that seems far too conventional for the Clown Prince of Crime: he gasses the entire city with his laughing toxin, only to rob stock exchanges, pick pockets, and loot storefronts. No, really, that’s the extent of it.
Then the episode does its level best to convince us it’s trash by setting most of the episode on a garbage ferry and then in a waste management facility. Except... well, it’s not that bad. Believe me, I’m passing up too many good puns about garbage to lie to you, folks. After a rocky first act (Batman: The Animated Series is structured tightly around three acts, separated by commercial breaks), “The Last Laugh” ducks back into the playfully bizarre, with a noirish bass soundtrack marrying an accordion for a score that’ll just make you scratch your head.
Ditto for Captain Clown, Joker’s surreal cybernetic crony. Why is one of Joker’s goons a robot? How did he come to possess Captain Clown? These aren’t questions about which the episode is terribly concerned. But I’ve found that the best answer to most questions about The Joker is, “Why not?” As a comics purist, that’s why the simplicity of the scheme bothers me – Joker’s always been much more complicated than the bottom line.
Then again, this is the second episode in a row where the villain has used toxic gas to accomplish his nefarious ends. But where “Nothing to Fear” asked us what scared Batman, “The Last Laugh” asks us what makes him laugh. It’s the funniest episode to date, and we get a rare look at Batman’s sense of humor and his undeniable delight in his tousles with The Joker, who ends up coming off quite well, despite the episode never quite knowing whether he’s a quintessential gangster or a jester to the end. (Psychologically richer episodes, mostly penned by Paul Dini, are coming down the pike.)
Little by little, the show is starting to find its voice. It’s not as fulfilling as “On Leather Wings,” which is the best of the four thus far, but there’s enough in this episode to save it from a “bottom ten” list. And as for who gets the last laugh? The answer may surprise you!
Writer: Carl Swenson
Director: Kevin Altieri
Villain: The Joker (Mark Hamill)
Next episode: “Pretty Poison,” in which the ladies get a chance to be the naughty ones.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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