Batman: The Animated Series - "Pretty Poison"

“Bruce runs around with a high class crowd, but he still manages to get his kicks.”

After rounding up the usual suspects one evening, Bruce Wayne meets district attorney Harvey Dent for dinner and finds that his friend is newly engaged to botanist Pamela Isley. Shortly thereafter, Harvey collapses, poisoned, and the police are stymied for leads. In a brilliant piece of observational deduction, Batman realizes that Harvey Dent is the target of one Poison Ivy, Gotham’s latest green-thumbed ne’er-do-well (voiced to sultry perfection by Diane Pershing).

With this episode, we say hello to Paul Dini, who has his first writing credit so far. When I go back at the end of these reviews and rank my Top Ten episodes, you can reliably expect to see Dini’s name on a fair percentage of the list. (I’ll conservatively estimate four of the ten being Dini-penned.) Dini has a flair for writing iconic and definitive one-and-done episodes that distill the Bat-mythos to a core tenet and present it with an unironic and infectious enthusiasm. And after a bit of a mixed bag in Batman: The Animated Series, “Pretty Poison” is just what the doctor ordered.

You might know Poison Ivy from 1997’s Batman & Robin, which I’ll venture to say wouldn’t exist as we know it without this episode and “Heart of Ice” stripping its villains of the taint of camp and reintroducing them after a languishing period in the comics. Unlike Mr. Freeze, though, a flamboyant caricature of himself in the hands of Arnold Schwarzenegger, this Poison Ivy is somewhat of a piece with Uma Thurman’s seductress, albeit rather less risqué in animated form (though the Freudian implications of the Venus flytrap are nigh inescapable). For the show’s first supervillainess, she’s a sign of good things to come from the show that literally invented one of today’s most popular ladies. (Hint: You’ll meet her in episode 22, “Joker’s Favor.”) Poison Ivy has a clear motivation, a deadly serious way of getting what she wants, and a tongue-in-cheek awareness of the inherent absurdity in valuing plants over human life.

Surprisingly, for an episode that has to introduce Poison Ivy and remind us that Harvey Dent is still a clean-faced agent of good, “Pretty Poison” has without a doubt the best Batman moments since “On Leather Wings.” We get a brilliant montage of Batman taking down some common thugs while Harvey Dent gives wry commentary about his playboy friend Bruce Wayne; if humor is the collision of the expected with the unanticipated, this is its finest form, joining Batman’s fierce dedication to Bruce’s aimlessness. Then there’s the moment of detection, one slight observation that propels the investigation forward to a fun and thrilling third act (although it’ll be interesting to see – how many Paul Dini episodes end with [spoilers] a scene of the villain in their cell? I can think of at least two now).

I’ve been of two minds about some of the bizarre and unsatisfying episodes in this early part of Batman: The Animated Series, wondering I’m too old now to love the show as I have all along. But with “Pretty Poison” I get a glimpse of the show I remember so fondly, see just what the series is capable of doing. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, the episode cautions, but heaven hath no joy like a Bat-fan getting the episodes he deserves.

Original Air Date: September 14, 1992

Writer: Paul Dini, Michael Reaves, & Tom Ruegger

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing)

Next episode: “The Underdwellers,” a strong contender for the bottom ten episodes of all time.

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