Batman: The Animated Series - "The Terrible Trio"

“Ah, therein lies the problem. After all, what do the rajahs do when there are no more tigers to hunt?”

I’m at a loss on how to summarize this episode. Usually I try to retell the plot in an exciting way, giving a full summary of the first act and teasing what’s to come, but there is really no way to make “The Terrible Trio” exciting or interesting. The eponymous threesome are a band of spoiled rich kids who dress like a fox, a vulture, and a shark to rob from the rich and give to themselves, and it takes far too long for Batman and Robin to catch them.

Bruce Timm has notoriously apologized for “The Terrible Trio,” decrying it as “my nomination for all-time worst dcau ep[isode].” I’d have to take that under advisement, perhaps in the form of a “Bottom 10” list – we’ve had some real stinkers in the bunch – but this episode is surprisingly, disappointingly, basic. The plot is something much closer to the less scientific bits of a CSI episode, and aside from the fact that it takes place in Gotham, nothing about the scale of this case ought to draw Batman’s attention. For all the high-stakes action we’ve seen Batman undertake – for heaven’s sake, next week’s episode literally threatens Gotham with an atomic bomb – a trio of privileged fraternity brothers seems laughably under-menacing.

Then again, maybe I’m reacting to the fact that this episode essentially stars the Terrible Trio, with Batman in a minor supporting role, and these characters are so deplorable in their very essence that spending any amount of time with them quickly becomes unbearable. For all their faults, the villains of Batman: The Animated Series have often been the best part of the show because of their entertainment value, their tortured souls, or their Shakespearean flaws. But the Terrible Trio is just, well, terrible. They’re grotesque caricatures of the affluent, with nothing redemptive or even entertaining about them. Their voices are nigh indistinguishable, a rare misfire from casting director Andrea Romano. But I don’t know that it’s fair to lay any of the blame at her feet, especially because everything else about the episode is so bland and uninspiring that the voice cast weirdly fits into that atmosphere.

As I usually do with lackluster episodes, I can point to a few pieces of gold in “The Terrible Trio.” The visual design of the animal masks is a good starting point, particularly the unsettling way we can’t see any moving mouths; however, the episode biffs that touch because we can see the wearer’s mouth beneath the mouth of the mask, and that’s not always moving either. Some of the best moments in “The Terrible Trio” belong, unsurprisingly, to Kevin Conroy, who gives the necessary humanity to this episode. When one of the trio asks snarkily if Bruce Wayne stoops to thanking his garbageman, Conroy gives a strikingly heartfelt “If I happen to run into him.” There’s a reprise of one of my all-time favorite Batman gags, in which Bruce admits slyly, “Well, I do have a nightlife.” Finally, Conroy gets one of his heavyweight champion moments of righteous indignation when he fumes, “Scoundrels like these are worse than the Joker. At least he’s got madness as an excuse.” Conroy’s Batman is at his best when he’s shouting with all the divine rage of his vigilante alter ego, and seeing a set of characters who ought to be his precise opposite number puts Batman in a position of furious integrity.

That’s the thing that disappoints me most about “The Terrible Trio” – it’s objectively bad and its creators have distanced themselves from it, but there’s a nugget of something quite good at hand. That’s an old chestnut in this review series – Batman: The Animated Series almost never missteps with everything it’s got – but this episode might be the most boring misstep in the show’s long and storied catalog.

Original Air Date: September 11, 1995

Writers: Alan Burnett and Michael Reaves

Director: Frank Paur

Villains: The Fox (Bill Mumy), The Vulture (David Jolliffe), and The Shark (Peter Scolari)

Next episode: “Harlequinade,” in which Batman sponsors a jailbreak, Harley croons a tune, and The Joker considers buying a goldfish.

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