“I was the cat who walked by herself, and the city was my hunting ground.”Retired from a life of crime, Selina Kyle, the former Catwoman (Adrienne Barbeau), finds herself unable to fit into Gotham high society. One gala event ends when she butts heads with Veronica Vreeland (Marilu Henner), apologizing to their mutual flame Bruce Wayne for her struggle to blend in. Outside, though, Selina receives a tempting offer from Scarface and The Ventriloquist (George Dzundza) – a way to play to her strengths and stick it to the Vreeland name. But even the best robberies have a catch, and soon the feline felon finds herself in a cat and mouse game between Scarface and Batman.
Not only had I forgotten entirely about this episode, I was equally amazed to (re)discover that Paul Dini was its author – he of the greatest episodes Batman: The Animated Series has ever seen. So “Catwalk” is something of a double treat, or perhaps even a triple when we consider the wildly unexpected team-up of Catwoman and Scarface. As good as Scarface’s debut episode, “Read My Lips,” was, this episode might even be better; moreover, it’s far and away the best Catwoman episode thus far, remaining faithful to this incarnation’s animal rights activism without losing sight of the cat burglar core of the character. Dini doesn’t give her cat fever or turn her into a literal cat-woman but rather plays up her flirtatious rapport with Batman and her weakness for shiny things.
That a Paul Dini script is unbearably clever is no surprise by this point. As ever, Dini gets right down to the nugget of his characters and bounces them off each other in unforeseen ways. “I needed a dummy to keep the cops busy” is a fantastic line when you put it in the mouth of a ventriloquist dummy, and the idea that an enraged Catwoman might see Scarface as a “scratching post” is the kind of gag that’s obvious in hindsight but takes a special kind of mind to put together. The opening and closing narration, in which Catwoman likens herself to something out of Rudyard Kipling, is perhaps too clever by half, especially for a show that has largely eschewed voiceover narration, but it does remind one of the best bits of “Tyger, Tyger,” in which Kevin Conroy was called upon to read some William Blake poetry. But Dini keeps it light, including one of his many riffs on Looney Tunes when Scarface growls, his unique speech impediment giving an even better impression, “I t’ought I taw a puddy tat.”
I mentioned that this is Catwoman’s finest episode, and it’s because Dini is careful to give her an arc that takes stock of her history on the show but doesn’t bind itself to that odd batch of storylines. (Remember, in her debut, Catwoman fought international terrorism in order to save some mountain lions, because apparently there are wild mountain lions in Gotham City.) Even just within the boundaries of this episode, Dini manages to give Catwoman an arc that’s better than anything she’s had to date: she’s a criminal trying to go straight for the man she loves, but she can’t escape that part of her that wants to punish the morally bankrupt and line her own pockets in the process. The temptation Scarface presents is all too apparent, and Dini ably scripts the nuances of their first meeting, in which Catwoman first scoffs at taking orders from a “log” before realizing that his plan might be mutually advantageous. Her fury in the third act and her impatience with the simpering Ventriloquist gives her the kind of dynamic range Dini has always brought to villains like Harley Quinn, The Mad Hatter, and Poison Ivy.
It’s hard not to fall in love with an episode that features the memorable line, “Could you please give me a hand? This dinosaur seems to have fallen on me.” It’s equally hard to fathom that there was a forgotten Dini gem in the pile. But for handily the best Catwoman episode since “Almost Got ’Im,” “Catwalk” is one that shouldn’t be missed.
Writer: Paul Dini
Director: Boyd Kirkland
Villains: Catwoman (Adrienne Barbeau) and The Ventriloquist and Scarface (George Dzundza)
Next episode: “Bane,” in which the show does its strongest anti-drug episode yet.
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
No comments:
Post a Comment