Just like the preceding reprises, this list reproduces the July 2018 text where relevant, adding TNBA episodes where appropriate; removed from the immediacy of watching these episodes, commentary addenda will appear in blue. With that said, on with the show!
“Dini’s best episodes remind us that crime doesn’t pay (and in this episode, boy doesn’t it) and that villainy always defeats itself with the most punishing irony, but it’s equally viable to see in these episodes the infectious fun that tempts so many to the dark side.”
“Dini understands that Joker ought to be equal parts deadly terrifying and genuinely, if uncomfortably, funny.”
In some ways, this episode serves as a trial run for #3 [now #4] on this list, as a deep dive into Gotham’s underworld and the acute terror evoked by the presence of The Joker. Ed Begley Jr.’s guest role as clammy accountant Charlie Collins is a fine example o the first-rate voice talent this show could recruit, even for bit parts (lest we forget, Mark Hamill played the smarmy Ferris Boyle before taking on the role of The Joker). As with most Dini episodes, this one’s got a doozy of a punchline, and its historical value for introducing Harley Quinn ought not go unacknowledged. [I genuinely could not choose between these episodes, and when I realized that it was a question of which would be bumped from the final list, I copped out and left them both. They’re two sides of the same coin – one a terrifying portrait of Joker as phantom, the other a rollicking romp through Joker as the ultimate clown – and both end with Joker getting his ironic just desserts. It’s Dini at the height of his powers, penning the villain with whom he is clearly the most comfortable.]
“Dini has long since proven himself the master of misrule, an expert hand at the till of insanity; no one writes The Joker like Dini does, but more importantly I’d say no one has ever written Harley Quinn with the pinprick precision and deft navigation that Dini did.”
As we round the corner toward the Top Five of this list, the gaps between the rankings is increasingly narrow, and we enter into the territory of the perfect episode. While the show introduced Harley Quinn in “Joker’s Favor,” it redefined her in this episode by pairing her with Poison Ivy as an ersatz mother figure. You’d be forgiven for forgetting Batman is even in this episode – I certainly did! [The agony of a list like this, an embarrassment of riches, is that I feel ashamed to rate an episode as transcendent as “Harley and Ivy” at #9. But Dini’s episodes are in a stratosphere all their own. Few episodes are as idiosyncratically Dini as this one, redefining Harley Quinn from gangster moll to benighted gal pal. Dini did such extensive work inventing and reinventing this character that she appears on ten of the eleven episodes on this list.]
“First of all, this episode really captures the feeling of a kid playing with a box of action figures. All your favorites are in this episode, hanging around and waiting for their moment to shine.”
Some of the best episodes of BtAS should have been two-parters, but in the case of “Trial,” I’d have loved to have seen it as the direct-to-video feature film it was intended to be. The episode behaves like a best-of reel, with each of the show’s unforgettable characters saying their piece about Batman, but it goes beyond resting on its laurels to say something profoundly touching about the very nature of Batman. [This episode is good clean fun, and as tightly constructed as “Harley and Ivy” is, I still think there’s a giddy toybox enthusiasm about “Trial” that aligns nicely with my #2 choice on this list. Like most episodes, you wish this one were longer.]
“Dini has found a way to take an imaginary story and give its revelations significant weight in the ‘real’ world of the story. Moreover, he manages to craft an episode in which the bad guys, despite being largely imaginary, nevertheless do not win.”
I had always loved this episode as a kid, appreciating the clever twist ending and the way it gave us an impossible Gotham for twenty minutes. But now that I’m older, I love the episode all the more for its emotional resonance, a tale of two fathers who lose their daughter and each other in a self-destructive quest for revenge. The criminally underrated Bob Hastings does some of his best work here, giving us a broken Gordon holding himself together with hatred, but his performance redeems itself at the end in a moving conversation with Barbara.
“Never mind that the episode debuted in September; it’s a modern Christmas classic.”
I watch this episode every New Year’s Eve because it’s a perfect capper to the evening and a fine reminder of how well this show could balance quick fun and genuine pathos. The show flirted with the anthology format here and there, but never was it deployed more successfully than “Holiday Knights,” adapting a modern classic comic with the best voice cast in animation. It’s hard not to get a little choked up at the end, in which Batman and Commissioner Gordon reaffirm their friendship over an annual cup of coffee, a small moment sold by the intimate setting and quiet camaraderie between Kevin Conroy and Bob Hastings.
“Perhaps more than any episode before, Arleen Sorkin really shines as Harley Quinn, a role quite literally written for her and which she owned in ways no other performer has quite accessed.”
Where “Harley’s Holiday” saw her try to go straight after an inexplicable pardon, here’s a stronger take on that plot in which Batman drafts Harley to stop The Joker from nuking Gotham City. You’re never quite sure where Harley’s allegiance lies, but playing her against the straightfaced Batman as the embodiment of anarchy is a stroke of genius. [Harley’s tentative reform is pure character gold, especially since neither Batman nor the audience is entirely sure that she’s genuine in her efforts at atonement. Arleen Sorkin revels in the character, especially her song and dance number, and it ends with a pitch-perfect encapsulation of her relationship with The Joker – “Baby, you’re the greatest!”]
“The episode reaches a crescendo with Joker’s ersatz funeral for the dearly departed Dark Knight, a two-minute tour de force through all the power of Dini’s alliterative prose wedded to Hamill’s wild oscillation between blind fury and dark comedy.”
When I want to hook someone on this show, I present this episode (or any of the Top Three) as a case study in how smart the writing of the show can be. Case in point: Batman barely appears in this episode, but the episode is so engaging that you don’t even have time to think about the fact that Batman surely isn’t dead. His ostensible funeral, though, is as fine a sendoff as Hamill’s Joker can provide, and it’s worth the price of admission just to hear Joker’s eulogy. [Each of these lists ends in a place where the top entries are virtually interchangeable, and it starts here. This is a perfect episode, full stop, a great story even removed from the trappings of Gotham City. Reminiscent of Will Eisner and high noir, it’s top Dini with Bruce Timm on directing duty.]
“Put another way, it’s at once a high note and a mic drop for Paul Dini and Bruce Timm.”
Harley Quinn’s probably the great success story of comics in nearly thirty years, and for a medium that prides itself on reimagining and reenvisioning, it’s striking that Harley and her origin have remained largely untouched. Adapted from the seminal prestige-format graphic novel, with a title plundered from a Peter Lorre riff on Pygmalion, “Mad Love” is impeccable, doing justice to Batman and The Joker right alongside the indisputable star, Ms. Quinn herself.
“One can almost hear Paul Dini crack his knuckles over the title card, getting ready to show us how it’s done.”
It’s a breezy episode, and on any other show it’d be handily best in show. Like a condensed crystalline “Trial,” it’s four of a kind as Batman’s finest villains swap stories of close encounters. There are so many gems in this episode, so much good giddy fun, that Dini never strikes a false note; it’s a fine example of finer writing beyond the narrow box of “good Batman stories.” It’s a great story, full stop. [This is a perennial winner; while some episodes are a chore to rewatch and others feel like they need the right amount of ceremony, “Almost Got ’Im” can be played at any time, in any mood, and you’ll leave the episode a happier individual. The show’s greatest strength – its cast of villains – is on perfect display, and the episode feels like a diamond absolute distillation of the entire series.]
“‘Heart of Ice’ is without a doubt the single greatest episode of Batman: The Animated Series, probably the greatest episode in the entire DC Animated Universe, and perhaps even hyperbolically the greatest episode of any television show ever.”
It should come as no surprise – I called it back in March 2017 – but “Heart of Ice” is a phenomenal episode that does more in twenty minutes than many franchises manage across years of storytelling. Dini rescued the aimless Mr. Freeze from comic book limbo (literally, if Grant Morrison’s Animal Man is to be believed), gave him a new and definitive origin, and managed to tell a bang-up Batman story in the process as the Caped Crusader faces a nasty head cold. It’s not just Paul Dini’s best work on the show; it’s the best work of the entire run. [I stand by this one. “Heart of Ice” is as good as the show ever got. It changed the course of Bat-history by “fixing” Mr. Freeze and giving him a new definitive origin. The fact that Mr. Freeze only appeared twice elsewhere in the show is a testament to how monumental this episode was – the writers were scared to follow Dini’s finest, Emmy-winning hour. It’s a standalone episode that proceeds with significance bleeding from every scene – no wasted moments, no throwaway lines, all building to an emotional climax rooted in its villain’s grief. It’s an all-time classic, one of my favorite pieces of storytelling in any medium.]
It’s been a long road to this point, so thanks for tuning in. To review the last two years and change, check out the index of Batman: The Animated Series. “This is Gotham Air One reporting in. Things are actually quiet for once.”
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