The Top 10 Batman Animated Episodes (As Written by Paul Dini)

If there’s one thing on which we can agree after two years and more than one hundred episodes (beyond the indomitable, indispensable powers of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill), it’s that Paul Dini was the show’s finest writer. As I said back in July, Dini is “arguably the show’s greatest writer, a man who fully understands Batman and his world, who can craft tales therein unlike nearly anyone else.” As master of his craft, Dini deserves his own Top 10, and with a new crop of episodes under our belt, it’s time to see how this shakes out.

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!

The Worst 10 Batman Animated Episodes

A reminder of the words of Anton Ego: “We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.” As good as Batman: The Animated Series and its follow-up The New Batman Adventures could be, they had a commensurate propensity to disappoint. I had initially struggled to come up with ten bad episodes, settling for eight bad ones with a forgettable flop and a two-thirds bad episode. Now, however, I’m proud to say I’ve gotten ten worst-of-the-worst.

Just like last week’s “Top 10” redux, 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!

Remember, nobody’s perfect.

The Top 10 Batman Animated Episodes (Not Written by Paul Dini)

It seems hard to believe that it’s been more than two years since we began this journey through Batman: The Animated Series and its follow-up The New Batman Adventures. Back in July 2018, after eighty-five episodes of BtAS, I took time out to rest and re-view, sorting episodes together into “Best” and “Worst” lists, giving writer Paul Dini his own special list in recognition of his standalone achievements in the field of Gotham narrative.

Now, at the end of the road, it’s time to check in with those lists one more time to see how twenty-four episodes of TNBA changes the calculus of the rankings. In the interest of being definitive, 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!

Batman: The Animated Series - "The Lost Episode"

“Yowza, yowza, ladies and germs! Let’s have a big Land O’ Laffs welcome for your pal and his – Batman! Hee hee! I’m delighted to see you made it this far, but then I knew those other losers couldn’t put you out of action... at least, not like I can. Ah hahahaha!”

After apprehending Poison Ivy during a bank robbery, Batman discovers that his foes have all banded together to run the Dark Knight through a gauntlet. The Riddler has captured Commissioner Gordon, while The Joker and Harley Quinn are holding Robin hostage at (where else?) an abandoned amusement park. As Batman races to free his friends, he learns that he’s heading for a confrontation with the architect of this insidious plot.

The Adventures of Batman & Robin debuted on Sega CD in July 1995. While the game existed in several different versions released across various platforms (a Super Nintendo version loosely adapted episodes like “What Is Reality?”), the Sega version has gone down in the annals of fandom as a “lost episode.” It resurfaced on the Internet a few years back but got a signal boost when Mark Hamill tweeted about its existence in December 2018. As a “lost episode,” this collection of video game cutscenes is remarkable for uniting the voice cast from Batman: The Animated Series in a story written by the show’s top scribes, Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. That’s an impressive assembly of talent for a forgotten video game on an obsolete gaming system.

“The Lost Episode” is not, however, a lost treasure or even a missing link. It’s by definition a little choppy, since the playable levels – all driving, by the way, with Batman never exiting the Batmobile for any gameplay – have all been extracted and frankensteined together in this seventeen-minute compilation. But despite making for unconventional viewing, there’s actually a good deal to like in here, leading some (Hamill included) to lament that it wasn’t included in some form on any of the DVD sets. The cutscenes play like a “greatest hits” compilation, with each villain getting a new variation on a classic gimmick. They’re familiar premises but new riffs, almost like hearing Eric Clapton’s acoustic version of “Layla” for the first time. Poison Ivy debuts a new plant monster, while Riddler devises a scheme to prove his own mental and technological superiority; Joker orchestrates a carnival gone mad, and Clayface morphs and smashes like no other. Best of all, it’s all our favorite voices, including Arleen Sorkin as a giddy Harley Quinn.

There are two surprises in “The Lost Episode,” both of which make it an interesting change of pace from the standard BTAS fare. The first of these is the violence, which is not particularly graphic but is certainly shocking in comparison to the tamer material that reminds us that BTAS was, first and foremost, a show aimed at kids. Verboten by the television censors were guns, drugs, breaking glass, alcohol, smoking, nudity, child endangerment, religion, and strangulation – all of which Bruce Timm infamously sketched into one Batman image. (Also off-limits were vampires and most depictions of blood.) Unfettered by the censors, though, “The Lost Episode” includes a shockingly protracted sequence in which Batman takes a fire axe to Poison Ivy’s plant-based beastie. Batman’s face is splashed with green goo before the scene warps into a riff on “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” all splinters and shadows as Batman dismembers the creature. After 100+ episodes of network standards, “The Lost Episode” feels a little edgier – not necessarily for the worse, but definitely enough to give even a seasoned viewer a moment’s pause.

The second big surprise is the master villain – the final boss, if you will. And it’s spoiler warning time, because I can’t talk about the twist without talking about the double twist. At first, it seems that the true mastermind of the plot is Rupert Thorne (John Vernon), and I observed aloud, “Well, that’s disappointing.” Though Vernon is delightfully smarmy as crime boss Thorne, he’s hardly the archrival Batman – or a videogame – deserves. But “The Lost Episode” does an unexpected about-face when it’s revealed that, actually, Clayface is masquerading as Thorne to unite Batman’s rogues against him. It’s a bit of an intellectual stretch for Clayface to become a criminal mastermind, but it’s a fun change of pace and would seem to lend itself to a nifty boss fight – if the game weren’t comprised exclusively of driving and flying levels. (Clayface meets a classic “haven’t seen the last of him” fiery end when his plane is shot down over the Gotham River.)

All told, “The Lost Episode” is a strange bird, an odd viewing experience that does not quite yield the concealed greatness its mysterious name implies, but it’s just shy of required for any fan of Batman: The Animated Series. If nothing else, it’s seventeen “new” minutes of Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and the rest of the gang. After twenty-four hit-or-miss episodes of The New Batman Adventures, “The Lost Episode” is that rare treat which reteams Bruce Timm and Paul Dini for as authentic an experience as you can get. If nothing else, it’s a fine auguring of future, better Bat-games likeBatman: Vengeance and the Arkham series, both of which would continue to reteam Conroy and Hamill in the roles they defined (with the latter scripted by Dini).

Original Release Date: July 1995

Writers: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm

Director: Bruce Timm

Villains: Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing), The Riddler (John Glover), Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin), The Joker (Mark Hamill), and Clayface (Ron Perlman)

Next episode: There are no more episodes! Stay tuned, though, for two more bonus reviews before we revisit the Top and Bottom 10 episodes. Up next, “Knight Time,” in which Bruce Wayne treats himself to an impromptu vacation.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

The Top 10 Episodes of "Batman: The Animated Series" (As Written by Paul Dini)

Next week, The Cinema King is proud to present full reviews of The New Batman Adventures, following on the heels of our eighteen-month tour through the eighty-five episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. But before we do that, there’s one bit of business left over from this month’s debrief on BtAS. Last week, we looked at the “Worst 10” episodes of the show, after a ranking of ten top episodes.

Those “top ten,” though, were notable for their significant exclusions. Not only did they not contain the unequivocal best two episodes of the series, the list altogether lacked the work of Paul Dini, arguably the show’s greatest writer, a man who fully understands Batman and his world, who can craft tales therein unlike nearly anyone else. (And for those keeping score, eight of these ten are Joker episodes or at least Joker-adjacent.) There’s a reason the DC Animated Universe is sometimes called “the Diniverse,” so important was one man’s vision to the success of the whole shared playground.

For this reason, then, we conclude our tripartite postmortem with “The Top 10 Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series (As Written by Paul Dini)!”

The Worst 10 Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series

In advance of August 1 and the beginning of our tour through The New Batman Adventures, we’re in the midst of a few debriefs on Batman: The Animated Series. Last week, we went over the Top 10 episodes not written by Paul Dini. Arguably the best scribe on the writing team, Dini gets his own list next week.

But as the great food critic Anton Ego once noted, “We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.” And so, this week: the bad news. As accomplished as the show was, as masterful as its first-rate episodes could be, nobody’s perfect. The very funny thing about this list is how many episodes just don’t feel like BtAS episodes at all. We present, then, “The Worst 10 Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.”

The Top 10 Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series (Not Written by Paul Dini)

For the past eighteen months, we’ve been reviewing each episode of the masterful Batman: The Animated Series week by week. Beginning in 1992, this animated program began life as a follow-up of sorts to Batman Returns but grew to become an iconic portrayal of ostensibly the greatest fictional character of all time, definitively outlining his adventures for generations of viewers, even to this day.   

Eighty-five episodes aired between 1992 and 1995, with twenty-four more following between 1997 and 1999 under the name The New Batman Adventures. And we’ll get there, dear readers, beginning August 1 (appropriately enough, for a new beginning of sorts). For the next three weeks, though, the promised postmortem in the form of a few Top 10 lists.

In recognition of his unparalleled achievement in outstanding writing, Paul Dini gets his own Top 10 list in two weeks. Dini wrote ten of the best episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, and so he’s broken off into his own list so that we can get more of a sense of the heights of greatness this show achieved. (Next week, of course, it’s the Bottom 10, the curdled cream of the cartoon crop.) Without further ado, we present, “The Top 10 Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series (Not Written by Paul Dini)!”

Batman: The Animated Series - "Batgirl Returns"

“You’re smart, and you’re fast. I thought maybe you’d like to work together. After all, against the two of us, whoever took the jade cat doesn’t stand a chance.”

Taking a break from studying for her midterms, Barbara Gordon (Melissa Gilbert) takes on what seems to be a fairly open-and-shut Catwoman case. But why would Catwoman (Adrienne Barbeau) return to the scene of the crime? Protesting her innocence, Catwoman proposes an unlikely alliance with Batgirl; Robin remains suspicious, but Batgirl sets off in search of the real thieves.

Taken as the final episode of Batman: The Animated Series, “Batgirl Returns” is a curious bird. Batman appears not at all, save for a cutesy dream sequence, while Bruce Wayne is relegated to Paris, handling a Wayne Enterprises business deal on which the fate of the entire European economy seems to lie (“This WayneCorp merger is vital for the European common market,” he says). So it’s a shame that we don’t get a proper sendoff for Kevin Conroy. We do get brief appearances from three of the show’s greatest villains – The Joker, Two-Face, and The Penguin – but they too appear in said fantasy sequence, wordless yet nevertheless menacing. It’s a nice moment when the stellar designs are trotted out once more, allowing us to appreciate how effortlessly iconic this show could be.

This opening fantasy, though, is a very strange place to begin this episode, hinging as it does on Batgirl’s fantasy of rescuing Batman and wooing him over. Put another way, now I see where Bruce Timm gets it. For an episode that ought to be about the empowered women of Gotham, there’s an odd tendency of the episode to try to put Batgirl “in her place,” as when Robin’s efforts to protect her usually come off as condescending and perhaps even a little toxic. Indeed, the very notion that Batman needs Robin to watch over Batgirl seems needlessly paternalistic, given how well she acquitted herself in “Shadow of the Bat.” It’s quite a shame, then, that BtAS never gave Batgirl more than two episodes to breathe; seeding Barbara Gordon’s journey toward the cowl was one of the great slow-burn long games of the show, but I can’t help but feeling there was more here. (The New Batman Adventures would ultimately prove me right, with Batgirl joining the cast more or less full-time, including in one of the best episodes of the series.)

As a finale, though, perhaps it’s for the best that BtAS doesn’t go for a predictable wrap-up but instead reminds us that the show has often been less about Batman and more about the world he inhabits. Without Batman, we see the budding romance between Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon, who remain delectably unaware of their alter egos and the simmering tension there. That dynamic could have comprised its own episode (and though the show never quite got there, the tie-in comics had a good bit of fun with it). We also see a new side of Catwoman, still smarting over her treatment in “Cat Scratch Fever” (me too, Selina, me too); her opportunity for revenge is classic Catwoman, as is her inimitable way of keeping her promise to Batgirl to turn herself in. The extension of the cat-and-(winged)-mouse game to the wider Bat-family leaves Catwoman in a fascinating place, a perfect note on which to part with her.

Furthermore, “Batgirl Returns” ties up one more loose end on the show when it revisits Roland Daggett and his bid for control of the Gotham underworld. With characters like Daggett and Rupert Thorne, this show had an extensive subplot about the class of criminal who would come to rule the city, with Two-Face putting in his own bid in “Shadow of the Bat.” With Thorne appearing largely retired in “Second Chance” (after his last-ditch effort in hiring the titular “Bane” to kill the Bat), Daggett reaches his absolute zero here – circumstances brought on by his own doing, as distinct from the more interesting villains being victims of circumstance – and having Catwoman twist the knife at episode’s end puts a fine button on that plotline. The city, it turns out, belongs even in absentia to the Bat. 

A good finale should leave us wanting more, and this episode really does. Fortunately, The New Batman Adventures to come would fulfill much of that promise – more Batman, more Batgirl, more Gotham, and even more unlikely team-ups like this one (Catwoman allies with Nightwing, while Batgirl gets a “super” visitor from out of town). “Batgirl Returns” is, however, Melissa Gilbert’s swan song as Batgirl; she’d be replaced by Mary Kay Bergman for the SubZero film and ultimately by the definitive Tara Strong in TNBA, but I always appreciated the way Gilbert gave Barbara wisdom beyond her years, a kind of playful adultness to match Loren Lester’s youthful trying-too-hard attempt to be a grown-up. But this interpretation of Batgirl was always someone who refused to believe she had something to prove; rather than the full-fledged member of the family we’d meet in TNBA, this Batgirl was content merely to take inspiration from a team that never quite embraced her as it should have. We did, though; it’s hard not to read a Batgirl comic without hearing Shirley Walker’s orchestral swell, so suited to her swooping dives into action.

Original Air Date: November 12, 1994

Writers: Michael Reaves and Brynne Stephens

Director: Dan Riba

Villains: Catwoman (Adrienne Barbeau) and Roland Daggett (Ed Asner)

Next episode: That’s all she wrote for Batman: The Animated Series, but stay tuned for a few end-of-series debriefs, Top Ten style. But Batgirl returns, and so will we, old chum, as we charge headlong into The New Batman Adventures.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Deep Freeze"

“Look at me, Mr. Freeze, I’m an old man. I’ve created wonders in my lifetime, but there is still so much to do! I want to change as you have, to become like you—a being of blessed, eternal cold!”

Mr. Freeze (Michael Ansara) has escaped from Arkham Asylum, but Batman suspects this was less a breakout and more an abduction. After a visit with old associate Karl Rossum (William Sanderson), Batman follows the trail to Grant Walker (Daniel O’Herlihy), a theme park mogul with designs on introducing a new park – one to fuel his coldhearted utopian ambitions. His plans for Mr. Freeze are equally chilling, as he extorts the doctor with his cryogenically-frozen wife Nora as leverage.

I’ve seen this episode a few times, and once I get over the initial disappointment that “Deep Freeze” can’t compare to “Heart of Ice,” I usually come around to confessing that it’s a pretty good continuation of the redemptive reading of Mr. Freeze as a man of science tortured by his inability to save his wife. Put another way, it’s about as good a Mr. Freeze episode as you can do with a version of the character who is not unrepentantly evil, who leans more toward tortured than torturer. And in the same way that Mark Hamill’s Joker is so definitive that his very presence elevates any episode, Michael Ansara is killing it on every level as Mr. Freeze. His deadpan monologues nevertheless convey an acute sense of pain and loss.

“Deep Freeze” finds Mr. Freeze not in opposition to Batman but as his begrudging ally in battle against a more dangerous ideological foe. It’s striking to see Mr. Freeze terrified at the prospect of his involuntary exit from Arkham; his fear suggests that he’s apprehensive about his unknown ostensible rescuers, yes, but it also seems to imply that on some level he believes he deserves his incarceration. “I failed you,” he had said at the end of his debut episode; “I can only beg your forgiveness.” If he cannot find absolution in the arms of his wife, he will find his penitence in a penitentiary.

As I write this review, I find I’m talking myself more and more into liking this episode. It’s a Paul Dini/Bruce Timm joint (among the pantheon of the platonic ideals of Batman storytellers, if ever there was one), so perhaps that should come as no surprise. As ever, this episode of Batman: The Animated Series does a masterful job opposing its dichotomous images; Mr. Freeze postures as emotionless but demonstrates a profound care for his wife and fellow man, while Grant Walker pretends to be avuncular and welcoming but proposes instead a tyrannical world where his will reigns supreme. Batman, interestingly enough, is given fairly short shrift, providing the compulsory detective work but absent much else to do beyond encourage Mr. Freeze to reexamine his priorities. 

One thing, however, needs to be said, and that’s the strange case of Grant Walker – namely, why is he a Walt Disney allegory? Between theme parks, imagineers (here, visioneers), and what feels like an extended reference to the urban legend that Disney was cryogenically frozen, this episode really pushes the comparison in a way that never feels insulting, but feels so on-the-nose that its specificity is downright peculiar. This is a peculiar axe to grind, but it would seem that there’s no malice behind the parallel. What, then, is the point of this? Dini was always more of a Looney Tunes guy than a Disney man, right down to his previous job as a writer on Tiny Toon Adventures. Its ultimate end, then, is mostly as a cranky curious footnote to the episode – and a distracting one, at that.

Perhaps sensing that Mr. Freeze didn’t get a full shake from appearing in only two episodes (though Clayface also received only a pair of stories, one was a two-parter), the showrunners and powers-that-be selected him as the primary antagonist for Batman and Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero. It’s a fine enough animated film, far beneath the status of Mask of the Phantasm and still never quite living up to the perfect crystalline promise of “Heart of Ice,” but we must remember, as the show says farewell to him, that BtAS did give us this particular iteration of Mr. Freeze. And that in itself is a finer feat than many shows manage to accomplish in their entire run.

Original Air Date: November 26, 1994

Writers: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm

Director: Bruce Timm

Villains: Mr. Freeze (Michael Ansara) and Grant Walker (Daniel O’Herlihy)

Next episode: “Batgirl Returns,” in which a dynamic duet closes out the series.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Make 'Em Laugh"

“Funny thing happened to me on the way to the theater last year. It seems three no-talent hacks tried to stop me from winning. But guess what? I’m back!”

Gotham City trembles before the might of the Condiment King (Stuart Pankin), who’s summarily dispatched by Batman and revealed to be stand-up comedian Buddy Standler. Shortly thereafter, another comedian winds up on the wrong side of the law when Harry Loomis (Grant Shaud) makes his criminal debut as The Pack Rat. With the annual “Laugh-Off” competition just around the corner, Gotham doesn’t seem so funny anymore, yet Smilin’ Shecky Rimshot is still grinning, despite losing last year’s “Laugh-Off.” As if you couldn’t guess, Batman and Robin discover that Shecky is actually The Joker in disguise, readying his final punchline.

“Make ’Em Laugh” is the final Joker episode of Batman: The Animated Series, and while it’s not the Clown Prince’s best outing it’s a fine finale for the fiend. The episode does well to focus on Joker’s desperate need to perform and to be applauded, his deep insecurities manifesting as a conspiracy to win a trophy and a title; moreover, the episode is chock-full of Mark Hamill’s laugh, which is so infectious that it ought to be investigated by the CDC. Hamill gets one last crack at most of his great laugh styles, from his hearty guffaws to his bubbly giggles, and not a one of them is a letdown. And without Harley Quinn by his side, it’s fascinating to see once more what happens when Joker is on his own, without someone to enable him or to remind him how sick he is (both of which, Harley fulfilled).

It’s a real wonder that BtAS has one last original character to bestow upon us, and it’s quite amazing to think that The Condiment King carried over into the comics (and film, with The Lego Batman Movie) in a way that Baby-Doll and Red Claw never did. I have no idea why this is the case – other than Red Claw is lame and ketchup guns are, frankly, unspeakably awesome – but it’s worth noting that I remembered this episode first as the Condiment King episode and second as the Joker’s swan song. Somewhere between pickle puns and his exclamation of “Horseradish!” we fell in love with this strange beast of a bad guy, who demonstrates that the greatest strength of this show has always been its ability to distill a character to a diamond absolute. Whether it’s the underutilized Mr. Freeze (who we’ll see next week) or the Batman himself, BtAS knows what works about its characters and always gets there (at least, in the case of Catwoman, eventually).

What works so well about the Condiment King does not, however, translate quite as effectively to Joker’s other two creations, The Pack Rat and Mighty Mom (Andrea Martin). Pack Rat never takes off as a concept, juxtaposing machine guns with stealing junk in a way that doesn’t resonate as much as it needs for being the entire second act of the episode. Mighty Mom, too, isn’t alchemically successful, reminding one more than a little of a broom-wielding Stompa from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga. What’s more, after last week’s oddly topical prefiguring of Donald Trump, there’s no getting around the fact that Mighty Mom is a deliberate caricature of Roseanne Barr. Were it not for the short-lived reboot of Roseanne over on ABC, this is the kind of joke that would not have aged well, much less recognizably, but even with a new season of the Conners, Mighty Mom is nowhere near as effective beyond a throwaway gag.

“Make ’Em Laugh” does, however, begin and end with a bang, and any episode that includes Hamill’s Joker has an uphill battle toward being unengaging. And if this episode is only remembered as the one that gave us the Condiment King, I really don’t think that’s such a bad thing. The world needs more offbeat Bat-villains like the Condiment King and Mister Toad and Kite Man (“hell, yeah”); Gotham may be a worse place for them, but our world is all the better with them in it. “Make ’Em Laugh” remembers to leave us with a smile, and the “just another night in Gotham” atmosphere takes the sting out of this being the antepenultimate episode of the show.

Original Air Date: November 5, 1994

Writers: Paul Dini and Randy Rogel

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: The Joker (Mark Hamill)

Next episode: “Deep Freeze,” in which Mr. Freeze returns for his only other episode.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Lock-Up"

“Before I came here, Arkham was a revolving door for every maniac in Gotham. I kept them in. Me! Now I realize I was wrong to punish those pathetic miscreants! They’re only symptoms! You’re the cause!”

A generous grant from the Wayne Foundation allows Arkham Asylum to hire a new chief of security. But Lyle Bolton (Bruce Weitz) is proving to be something of a tyrant, scaring the inmates with his brutal tactics. A panel convenes to dismiss Bolton, who swears revenge on all the soft-hearted types who enable the villains of Gotham. Six months later, Bolton rebrands himself as Lock-Up, out to imprison those who expelled him from Arkham. 

We try not to get too political around these parts, but I had to do a double-take that this episode was from 1994 and not this year because I can honestly say I was not expecting Donald Trump to show up in this episode. No, the current president doesn’t appear in any physical or wholly recognizable form, but there are a few beats in this episode that felt very prescient these fourteen years later. It starts with Bolton’s vocal critique of “the permissive, liberal media” – a sneer that I didn’t know existed that long ago – and continues through Lock-Up’s invitation that he and Batman “can make this city safe again.” Coupled with Lock-Up’s hardline attitude against criminals and those he believes enable them, there’s just something oddly timeless about this episode.

Adding to the odd familiarity of this episode, I had only just recently read the comic book issues that took Lock-Up from the animated series and brought him into the comics continuity. It would seem, then, that Paul Dini came up with another winner of a character. What works in this episode is the way that Lock-Up serves as a dark reflection of Batman himself (a key component of all Bat-villains); his fanatical devotion to incarcerating criminals matches Batman’s drive to clean the streets of Gotham, but his willingness to serve as both jury and prison warden is a line Batman must never cross. Batman here possesses a healthy respect for the institutions of Gotham, which Lock-Up casts aside as soon as he is discovered to have transgressed the ethical lines of those systems.

Lock-Up serves as a good reminder to Batman that he needs those systems to curb his own vigilante impulses, but it’s not a lesson he particularly needs to learn. This episode wisely begins with the revelation that the Wayne Foundation has been financially supporting Arkham Asylum, and there are two ways to look at this. Either Batman is subsidizing a prison to hold his prey, or Bruce Wayne is genuinely invested in helping rehabilitate the asylum’s inmates, and I prefer to think it’s the latter. Once he gets wind that Bolton is terrorizing his charges – even, in a particularly Dini point of irony, the Scarecrow – Bruce steps in and investigates. He doesn’t unilaterally dismiss Bolton; he waits for due process to determine his guilt. There’s a beautiful beat where Bruce realizes the witnesses are lying out of fear, but he doesn’t say anything because he believes so ardently in the process. To me, that’s beautiful because I want a Batman who believes in law and order, who knows the sad irony that his nightly activities must step outside the law he’s sworn to protect because, at some point, he knows he has to step back and let the system at least try to do its work.

Harvey Bullock knows it too, and this episode was smart to include him in the conversation. Robert Costanzo continues his underrated run as the definitive Bullock (though over on Gotham, Donal Logue is giving him a run for his money), and as the show winds down, there’s a sobering sense that this might be the last time we see any of these people (barring, of course, The New Batman Adventures). While it might seem like a waste to introduce a brand new villain when there are so many other toys in the toybox, Lock-Up lets us see one more time how all these toys fit together. Bullock gets a wonderful sequence with Batman where he begrudgingly enlists Batman’s help, a pleasant reminder of the long road these two men have traveled together; Bullock was never all that crazy about Batman, but he’s come a long from the openly hostile man we saw blame Batman for his own mistakes in “P.O.V.”

Robin, too, gets a moment to shine in this episode, which is extremely helpful to a character who has too often felt like an ancillary sidekick for a show that was at least nominally marketed as “The Adventures of Batman & Robin.” Here Robin serves as a light in the darkness, gently ribbing Bruce for accidentally funding Bolton’s mania, but more importantly, he serves as a kind of face for Batman’s crusade. While Batman tussles with Lock-Up, Robin rescues the hostages, directing them to safety. This is what Robin should be – the smile that Batman can never wear, the helping hand while Batman tackles the physical threats, the kid-at-heart who reminds us everything is going to be all right. It’s the same function Robin serves for Batman himself.

I admit I didn’t remember this episode very well, but structurally there’s a lot going on that makes “Lock-Up” more successful than one might expect. I’ve no doubt that much of that is due to a Dini story, but the careful scripting and the inclusion of a number of BtAS faces (including an all-star panel of witnesses at Bolton’s inquest) remind us how full this universe is and how many storytelling opportunities exist in a playground as rich as this one.

Original Air Date: November 19, 1994

Writers: Paul Dini, Marty Isenberg, and Robert N. Skir

Director: Dan Riba

Villain: Lock-Up (Bruce Weitz)

Next episode: “Make ’Em Laugh,” in which we meet the Condiment King.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Harley's Holiday"

“I tried to play by the rules, but no! They wouldn’t let me go straight. Society is to blame. Back off, rich boy – I’m armed!”

In a staggering development, Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin) is released from Arkham Asylum, declared competent and crime-free. What’s a girl to do with her newfound freedom? Go shopping, naturally, with her pet hyenas in tow. A little snafu with a security tag, however, turns a simple shopping trip into a night of larceny, kidnapping, and explosions as Harley digs herself deeper and deeper, pursued by what seems to be a relentless Batman.

In the final hours of the show, it’s only appropriate that Paul Dini gets the last word on Harley Quinn (though it won’t be his last word, since he writes or co-writes all but the last episode from here on out). Harley, his finest creation, has been without fail the shining light of this show, an impeccable manic pixie partner for The Joker, matching his madness and mood swings with her own daffy brand of demi-sanity. Brought to fine life by the practically irreplaceable Arleen Sorkin, Harley might be the only character on this show not to appear in a bad episode. And her swan song, “Harley’s Holiday,” is a note-perfect capstone on her wacky run; I’ve spoken about this as the ostensible third part in a trilogy comprised of “Harley and Ivy” and “Harlequinade,” and the good news is that this isn’t a trilogy of diminishing returns.

One is immediately struck by the madcap logic that governs this episode, a crystalline reflection of Harley’s own demented way of looking at the world. Right around the moment when the tank rumbles down a Gotham bridge, driven by a spittle-flecked army general, I stopped and said, “Wait, all this over a security tag?!” And yet, as Emily Dickinson once noted, “much madness is divinest sense / to a discerning eye,” and Dini’s eye is nothing if not discerning. The escalating consequences stemming from a basic misunderstanding and the sheer amount of stuff packed into this episode might seem out of place and out of hand, but so too should a psychiatrist falling in love with her homicidal patient; this whirlwind is how a Harley Quinn story should work. As a result, the episode’s intended pathos works extremely well. We feel immensely sorry that Harley has found herself in the middle of this great big mess, and we want to see her resolve what should be a fairly straightforward mix-up. Even if we don’t buy into the idea that any governing body would declare her sane (although if any institution would, it’s Arkham, where – recall – the doors are literally not locked), we accept her earnest desire to reform. Her heart’s in the right place, even if the marbles aren’t all in the bag.

I can’t oversell what a delight Sorkin is. Her unique voice aside, a veritable godsend for an all-audio cast, Sorkin has always walked the line between effortless comedy and repressed tragedy, a four-color Judy Holliday with a nasty temper. Like Anthony Hopkins, in the space of a breath, Sorkin can slip between great rage and pleading despair, between a romantic swoon and a proud one-liner. She’s helped, of course, by Dini’s clever-as-ever dialogue (“Talk about grasping at straws! Oh well, at least I’m going out on a joke”), but it takes a special kind of performer to sell the sorrow behind “jiggety-jig.” Clearly Sorkin was a kind of muse to Dini, and neither is quite as good alone as when they’re together. (See also the Arkham Asylum videogame, which gave us “Nurse Harley.”)

And as ever, Dini finds ways to make his Gotham seem larger than life, paying tribute to the subtle continuity being drawn into this series. The episode begins with Scarecrow’s latest arrest, while Veronica Vreeland, late of “Birds of a Feather,” makes her least contemptible appearance here as a victim of circumstance and a bewildered straight man caught in Harley’s vortex. Boxy Bennett, meanwhile, returns from “Harlequinade” and remains the quintessential midlevel Gotham gangster, snarling his way through dropped vowels and elided consonants. We even get a good dose of Harvey Bullock thrown in for good measure (“You ain’t got nothing on me!” “I’m sure I can find something. Move it!”).

Like the past few episodes, “Harley’s Holiday” is one more story about a rogue’s inability to reform, and consistent with the others Harley proves to be her own worst enemy, her temper and rash judgments coloring the world as perpetually against her. Like her puddin’ himself in “Joker’s Wild,” Harley proves unable to recognize Batman out of costume, but where Joker had no interest in Bruce Wayne, Harley is consequently unable to recognize her greatest supporter. Joker wants only to joust with the Batman, but Bruce Wayne genuinely wants to help Harley, wants her to find peace. “I had a bad day too, once,” he tells her, with that heartbreak that only Kevin Conroy can leaven into the subtext. But because it’s one of Dini’s clown episodes, he makes sure to leave us with a laugh, a reminder that Harley isn’t all bad, even if she is a little nutty.

Original Air Date: October 15, 1994

Writer: Paul Dini

Director: Kevin Altieri

Villain: Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin)

Next episode: “Lock-Up,” in which Arkham finally hires a new chief of security.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Second Chance"

“Good old Bruce. He’s never given up on me. Always been my best friend.”

An experimental procedure promises to restore Harvey Dent (Richard Moll) and rid him of his Two-Face persona for good. But as the former district attorney goes under anesthesia, he’s abducted by a gang of ne’er-do-wells, who threaten that their boss wants to “teach him some respect.” Bruce Wayne was funding the procedure, but it falls to Batman and Robin to catch the crooks – with Rupert Thorne and the Penguin as top suspects in the abduction.

On the occasion of Two-Face’s final appearance in Batman: The Animated Series (and with only five more episodes in the entire run), it’s an appropriate time to begin to think about the overall arcs of the show, and so these reviews may start to feel a bit final as the showrunners close up their bibles and move toward The New Batman Adventures. With last week’s episode, “Second Chance” is one of three episodes in a row that deals with a villain’s efforts to go straight, and BtAS remains in its final hours deeply pessimistic but equally empathetic about the impossibility of a rogue’s reform. If you haven’t seen the episode or figured it out yet, spoiler warning – the episode’s third act turns on the revelation that it was Two-Face himself who kidnapped Harvey Dent, a painful psychological break that was as much madness as it was self-defense.

In this way, “Second Chance” is a worthy sequel to the masterful two-parter “Two-Face” from the earliest days of the show, and this is something that BtAS has always done well; in the absence of long-running arcs, the writers often revisited standout episodes with remarkable follow-ups that built on the themes and characters. (See also “His Silicon Soul,” “I Am the Night,” and “Day of the Samurai,” to name a few.) In “Second Chance,” the writers pick up the tragedy of Harvey Dent and further explore this idea that Harvey’s worst demons have always been himself. From a clever use of flashbacks to the reappearance of Harvey’s psychiatrist, “Second Chance” picks up the baton from “Two-Face” in giving us a painful exploration of a man whose scars run so much deeper than the cosmetic fix his doctors pursue.

Usually on episodes like this one, with three distinct writers and a director, I’ll wonder why so many cooks got involved with the broth, but in this case the three writers work together pretty seamlessly. There must have been some division of labor between the Two-Face bits and the search for Harvey, but I think it’s evident that the Paul Dini bits are the ones that make this episode feel like one day in a vast tapestry of Gotham nights. Continuity with “Two-Face” aside, it’s quintessential Batman to discover that our Dark Knight has a readymade list of suspects even before the abduction. Moreover, the scene with Penguin (featuring Paul Williams at his Burgess Meredith best) introduces a lengthy backstory and rivalry between Penguin and Two-Face. In the hands of a less capable craftsman, that sort of brute-force exposition might feel hamfisted, but the writers here have a way of working those words into conversation, helped perhaps by the fact that Penguin’s syntax is more circuitous than the long way through a thesaurus.

The only sour note struck in this episode is at the very end, when the episode plays through its denouement and one last somber reminder of the sad state of Harvey’s psyche. It’s the kind of melancholy beat this show usually grasped in its best episodes. Here, though, the writers pivot toward a schmaltzy retread of the final shot in Casablanca, in which Dick and Bruce remind each other that, goshdarnit, life is grand because they’re such good pals to each other. I actually had to rewind the episode to make sure that’s where it ended because it’s a tonal catastrophe with the rest of the episode’s serious interrogation of split-personality. It’s also a reminder that the show was attempting to move into a more visibly kid-friendly mode (note the increased appearances of Robin as the show went on), which was never why it gained prominence in the first place. We came for the earnest exploration of the Batman and his world, who he was and how his enemies came to be; we stayed for stories like this one, that remind us that these stories matter because they are about superhuman figures who remain, at the end of the day, failingly human.

Original Air Date: September 17, 1994

Writers: Paul Dini, Michael Reaves, and Gerry Conway

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villains: Two-Face (Richard Moll), The Penguin (Paul Williams), and Rupert Thorne (John Vernon)

Next episode: “Harley’s Holiday,” in which the going gets kooky, and so the kooky go shopping.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Riddler's Reform"

“Now, now, I know what you’re thinking. But those silly riddle crimes are a thing of the past. Ancient history that’s gone now. I’m a new man. But you probably won’t figure that out until it’s too late.”

On their nightly patrol, Batman and Robin bust up what they think is the latest heist by The Riddler (John Glover), only to discover that Edward Nygma’s gone legitimate, licensing his image to a toy company. But has he? Batman’s unconvinced and believes Nygma is still dropping clues. Whether The Riddler has truly gone straight may prove to be the toughest riddle yet...

As fine an episode as Riddler’s debut remains, “Riddler’s Reform” always has a soft spot for me because it feels like a truer Riddler episode. Don’t mistake me – “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” is a bang-up episode and transparently one of the best in the whole run of Batman: The Animated Series. But its reliance on the computer game angle always felt, even in the 1990s, a little dated, like someone felt that The Riddler needed to be “hipped up” for a modern crowd. It’s a minor quibble, to be sure, but “Riddler’s Reform” doesn’t come with any of that baggage. It’s a straightforward story, with no technological frills on its riddles; here, The Riddler is just an intelligent guy trying to prove once more that he’s smarter than everyone else. 

The Riddler is at his level-best when he’s walking around with a haughty air of self-assured confidence that he’s the smartest man in the room; indeed, it’s probably his defining characteristic. This episode really gives John Glover a lot of material for his smirking arrogant Riddler, beginning with the poised opener in which Riddler knows he’s legally untouchable. I’ve praised the character animation on The Riddler before, but there’s something just effortlessly polished about the Riddler in his dapper suit, perched on a shipping crate and waiting for Batman to discover his mistake. Glover continues to be one of the best-cast villains in the already overqualified pool of applicants from this series, with one of those voices I can’t help but hear in my head when I read the comics. 

It’s just a shame that the Riddler didn’t make more appearances on this show, because this episode reminds us what a great villain he makes for Batman. The rhythm of this episode is classic Riddler – a riddle inviting challenge, Batman’s efforts to solve the riddle, pursuit and combat, lather, rinse, repeat – but “Riddler’s Reform” takes the formula into new territory by sowing doubt in Batman’s mind. Is Riddler really leaving clues, or is Batman just paranoid in his skepticism that Nygma might be going straight? (I almost wish the writers hadn’t resolved this subplot so quickly; a dark knight in doubt is a very intriguing premise, but then again they do only have twenty minutes.) Riddler’s frustration at being outwitted, then, is matched by Batman’s frustration with his own sense of being outsmarted (perhaps by himself).

I have said that “Ra’s [al Ghul] is the Professor Moriarty to Batman’s Sherlock Holmes,” and in the sense of a criminal mastermind with a vast network of ne’er-do-wells, I stand by that claim. But there is something admirable about the purely cerebral level on which Riddler challenges Batman that makes him a kind of Moriarty to Batman’s master detective. There’s no chance of a physical confrontation with The Riddler, nor should there be, because for him the game is all. Killing Batman only represents the final outfoxing, and in a moment of dark maddening irony the ending of this episode presents the perfect defeat of the Riddler (far better, at least, than the brain-mushing of “What Is Reality?”). If only we’d gotten more episodes as clever as this one; I’d trade a dozen “Terrible Trio”s for just one more Riddler episode.

Original Air Date: September 24, 1994

Writers: Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, and Randy Rogel

Director: Dan Riba 

Villain: The Riddler (John Glover)

Next episode: “Second Chance,” in which Two-Face gets a shot at singularity.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Showdown"

“Right nice sentiment, ma’am. But I never cotton much to luck. I like to make my own.”

When Ra’s al Ghul’s Society of Shadows abducts an elderly man from a nursing home, Batman and Robin are baffled before discovering that Ra’s (David Warner) has left them a recording. But the truth about the missing old man stretches back to 1883, a time when the Transcontinental Railroad was forging forward, with a bounty hunter named Jonah Hex (Bill McKinney) in hot pursuit of the fiendish Arkady Duvall (Malcolm McDowell) aboard a dirigible of death.

It’s very difficult to review “Showdown” as an episode of Batman: The Animated Series because, to state it plainly, “Showdown” is not an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. It is instead a weird hybrid one-off, only tenuously connected to the rest of the series and more of a piece with the anthology-esque Justice League Unlimited, which juxtaposed a grab-bag of characters from the DC Universe with unlikely counterparts. Summary notwithstanding, Batman and Robin are barely in this episode, which plays out much more like a backdoor pilot for Jonah Hex: The Animated Series.

One senses that this episode exists purely because the writers – three of whom you don’t even need to look up to recognize (the fourth, Joe R. Lansdale, penned “Perchance to Dream”) – clearly wanted to do a Jonah Hex episode set in the Old West. While Hex has endeared himself to me a little by his appearances on Legends of Tomorrow (another series governed by bonkers mash-up plotting), I’ve never wholly shared the enthusiasm on display for the character. But gee whiz, do the writers love Hex. His dialogue is populated with smirky one-liners, and his relentless pursuit of Duvall puts us in mind of an antebellum Batman. Indeed, Hex is practically Batman by proxy, with a dash of Indiana Jones for good measure, and in that sense, “Showdown” feels at least resonant with the attitude and style of BtAS. 

Strangely, “Showdown” puts one in mind of “The Forgotten,” one of the worst episodes of the entire series. You’d be forgiven if you too had forgotten “The Forgotten,” in which an amnesiac Bruce Wayne is forced into a slave labor camp, but “Showdown” seems almost to remember the episode and apologize for it, showing what could have been done with the Western setting, all Arizona sunsets and lush golden deserts. The scenes of Ra’s al Ghul’s airship recall Alfred’s ersatz efforts at flying the Batplane toward the camp, only the animation is better and the plotting receives more careful construction. And in Arkady Duvall, we have a much more loathsome slave-driver than the bloated Boss Biggis, with as sadistic a bent as one can imply in a cartoon nominally for children’s afternoon programming; of course, it helps that McDowell is a masterful talent, and his voiceover work next to David Warner’s is like a masterclass in “Accents on Parade.”

My kneejerk reaction to “Showdown” is that it’s probably the worst episode of BtAS but only by dint of not really being an episode of BtAS. It does contribute some interesting ideas to the BtAS mythos – namely, Ra’s al Ghul’s regrets about his own past, which has come to bear on Gotham in striking ways – though the show never managed, in its final episodes, to circle back around to those concepts. With a tenuous link to the rest of the show, “Showdown” does feel like a last-ditch effort by the writers to crowbar in their favorite character. And while I can’t quite see Jonah Hex the way they do, I can recognize their passion and admire the craft that goes into this strange, unique little one-off.

Original Air Date: September 12, 1995

Writers: Kevin Altieri, Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and Joe R. Lansdale

Director: Kevin Altieri

Villains: Ra’s al Ghul (David Warner) and Arkady Duvall (Malcolm McDowell)

Next episode: “Riddler’s Reform,” in which The Riddler is puzzled.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "The Lion and the Unicorn"

“And people wonder why no one takes Britain seriously anymore.”

Stalwart butler Alfred (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) receives a call from his “cousin” Freddie (Roy Dotrice), who’s found himself in a spot of bother across the pond. In his manservant’s absence, Batman realizes that Freddie is actually Frederick, an old British Secret Service chum from Alfred’s days with the spy agency. By the time Batman and Robin reach London (“There is only one,” Alfred cautions them drolly), they learn that the two retired secret agents have been kidnapped by familiar foe Red Claw (Kate Mulgrew), who hopes to use them to gain access to Britain’s nuclear arsenal.

Things were going so well. Having just come off a marginally better “Baby-Doll” than I remembered, I was willing to set aside my boredom with Red Claw and give her another chance. Yet she and Baby-Doll, unlikely virtually every other character created for Batman: The Animated Series, never migrated over to the comics because, simply put, they’re dull. The last time we saw Red Claw (and the first, for that matter), she was menacing Catwoman in a real headscratcher of a two-parter, where her motive was as muddy as the unnecessarily long two-parter she headlined. Here, she’s still the same nebulously defined terrorist with goals that seem horribly generic (extort money from London). I’ve said before that Batman works in just about every story imaginable; such continues to be the case here, but Red Claw doesn’t seem a likely match for Batman on any count. (Wonder Woman, though, maybe…)

This episode is all the more bizarre when we consider that it’s ostensibly the series finale (though not the last in production value), the last episode aired by Fox before the show rebranded as The New Batman Adventures, with an updated art style and paired with Superman as The New Batman/Superman Adventures. As such, all we can ask is, why? Why end the show with an episode that’s barely about Batman? Why end the show outside of Gotham City, with one of the only episodes not set there? Why for the love of all that’s holy do you end the show with Red Claw? (To this last point, there may actually be a good answer – the first episode to air was, you guessed it, “The Cat and the Claw.” Fearful symmetry, indeed.) Perhaps most importantly, how did this episode require the strengths of three writers?

“The Lion and the Unicorn” should have been a slam-dunk in the sense that it’s an episode focused entirely on Alfred, one of the richest and underused characters in the Bat-mythos. It’s incredibly easy to take Alfred for granted – the unfaltering support system, ever at the ready to aid his Master Bruce in his undying quest for justice. He’s the voice of reason, the conscience, the emotional weight of the whole story. He’s the father Bruce Wayne never had, or rather tends to forget he always already had. And he’s an unmitigated badass, equally at home on the stage, in a surgical room, or behind enemy lines. Instead of distilling all the best parts about Alfred into twenty minutes, though, “The Lion and the Unicorn” relegates him to the role of hostage, who crumbles under torture despite convincing his captors (somewhat cleverly, I grant you) that he hasn’t. He breaks a vase over a goon’s head, yes, and gets a great one-liner in the process (“A Louis Quinze: what a pity”), but that should have been the whole episode. 

And for being an episode set in London, the writers don’t take anywhere near full advantage of the new setting. We have a pair of goons who sound like their dialogue coach was Dick Van Dyke as Bert the chimney sweep, and we have a room full of British spymasters devoid of any personality at all. Red Claw isn’t a good fit for London (is she supposed to be Russian? – to wit, “Red”), but Batman’s been to London before. The 1966 television show introduced loose analogue Londinium, which could have appeared here with its rogues Marmaduke Ffogg and Penelope Peasoup (okay, maybe not). The comics even have a British Batman & Robin (from 1950, dubbed Knight & Squire, because of course they are), who could have made Alfred feel right at home and who might have lent a superheroic air to this whole thing.

Instead, we get an episode that is very basic, very conventional, and very safe. It’s not unwatchable, but there’s nothing in it to invite a second look. Contrary to “Baby-Doll,” which had a few surprises in it that I had forgotten, “The Lion and the Unicorn” was exactly the episode I remembered, and I didn’t like it then, either.

Original Air Date: September 15, 1995

Writers: Diane Duane, Peter Morwood, and Steve Perry

Director: Boyd Kirkland

Villain: Red Claw (Kate Mulgrew)

Next episode: “Showdown,” in which a certain scarred cowboy tangoes with an immortal terrorist.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Baby-Doll"

“Everybody loved Baby-Doll until you came along. You made them forget me. Now Baby’s gonna get evens.”

“Love That Baby” was the hottest sitcom on television. But when its star Mary Louise Dahl (Alison LaPlaca) tried to go legitimate, the show was cancelled. Years later, the stars of the show begin disappearing, leading Batman and Robin to Dahl, suffering from physical and mental ailments, held together only by her warped desire to reunite her “family” back together – and take revenge on the former child star she blames for destroying her career as Baby-Doll.

Most of the time, I forget that “Baby-Doll” is an episode ofBatman: The Animated Series, and when I remember, I never recall that Paul Dini is this episode’s author. And if I’ve ever said that Paul Dini has never written a bad episode of BtAS, it was a consequence of momentary aphasia, because “Baby-Doll” is unreservedly one of the least successful episodes in the show’s long history. It’s strange, it’s unsettling, and it doesn’t funnel its weirdness into anything productive other than to say that show business is a cruel place – a lesson that never quite fits into the morality of BtAS.

Perhaps more so than “Fire From Olympus,” “Baby-Doll” walks the uncomfortable line of presenting a villain who is quite obviously suffering from mental illness, and the discomfiting problem is exacerbated by the fact that Baby-Doll looks like a small child. Batman can’t physically attack a toddler, so the optics of the moments when he comes close are just bizarre. Never mind all the ways the episode tries to remind us that Baby-Doll is actually an adult (including the peculiar way LaPlaca plays her baby-talk voice as a deliberate put-on), Baby-Doll still looks like Elmyra Duff from Pinky and the Brain. To top it all off, the character is just plain irritating, squeaky and diminutive, with a plotline that pales in (unfair) comparison to the much stronger “Beware the Gray Ghost,” which similarly presented a dangerous nostalgia for a television series. Baby-Doll is one of only two new characters not to make the move from this show into the comics; we’ll spend time with the other one next week, but it seems apparent that I’m not the only one vastly underwhelmed by Baby-Doll.

And yet... despite this episode largely being rubbish, Paul Dini manages to turn in a deftly competent third act, though to be fair it does feel airlifted in from a better version of this episode in which Joker would have been the villain, echoing the better parts of “Be A Clown.” (Maybe Joker kidnapping the stars of his favorite sitcom because nothing else on television makes him laugh anymore?) Once Baby-Doll goes from the kidnapping plot to fleeing Batman through a nearby carnival, the episode swerves through a number of really successful moments, like the matter of Baby-Doll blending in with a crowd of children. Dini taps into a key Bat-insight when all the actual children run toward Batman, while Baby-Doll runs away; it takes the childlike innocence of youth to recognize that Batman is, despite his fearsome appearance, a force for good. And when Baby-Doll darts into a hall of mirrors, I may just be feeling the residual effects from similar scenes with The Joker, but I had a strongly emotional reaction to how Dini humanizes Baby-Doll as she confronts her own monstrosity.

That said, even though the third act is quite strong, I can’t say it’s an effective counter to an otherwise dismal episode. “Baby-Doll” is a rare misfire from a creator who’s otherwise always in full command of his craft. Then again, perhaps there isn’t anyone who could have turned this stinker of a story into a strong episode, and Dini’s third act is the best he could muster. It is a bit like asking Dale Earnhardt to drive a clunker – he can only take it so far before his tools fail him.

Original Air Date: October 1, 1994

Writer: Paul Dini

Director: Dan Riba

Villain: Baby-Doll (Alison LaPlaca)

Next episode: “The Lion and the Unicorn,” in which the villain I guarantee you’ve forgotten turns up to spoil what could be an otherwise enjoyable Alfred episode.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Bane"

“I will observe the Bat in action. And when I understand how he thinks and fights, I will break him.”

After Batman closes down another of his illegal operations, Rupert Thorne (John Vernon) decides he’s had enough and hires the assassin Bane (Henry Silva) to rid Gotham of its Dark Knight. As brainy as he is brawny, Bane studies his opponent carefully, knowing that defeating Batman could be the key to taking the city for himself.

At a brisk twenty minutes, this episode feels much like a whirlwind. “Bane” introduces us to the eponymous criminal mastermind (himself only introduced a year and change earlier in the comics). The show largely preserves the character’s visual design from Graham Nolan’s original concept – the massive bulk, the stylized luchador mask, and the tubes of Venom running into his skull – but I feel it shortchanges the character by making him a gun for hire, twice removed from the ostensible main villain of the episode. “Bane” is an episode that could have really benefited from the two-parter treatment, giving the titular villain room to breathe in a plot that does him fuller justice. One could imagine, for example, a “Bane, Part 1” in which Bane roundly thrashes Batman and defeats him in a cliffhanger ending before the Dark Knight recovers and gathers himself for a second chance against his adversary. 

There’s a persistent internet rumor that the producers of Batman: The Animated Series didn’t much care for Bane and regarded him as gimmicky. I’ve never been able to source that claim, but there’s circumstantial evidence in that he only appeared once more, on The New Batman Adventures (and, to be fair, once on Superman: The Animated Series), and never again as the lead villain. It’s possible that this lack of enthusiasm for the character speaks to the disappointing way he’s depicted in this episode. There is much about the character that is, however, the direct opposite of gimmicky; he’s a far cry, for example, from Doomsday, who was created roughly around the same time and for largely the same reason (to incapacitate his heroic rival for a time). Bane is among Batman’s smarter adversaries, able to plan methodically his nemesis’s downfall, but he has a specific code of honor that prevents him from becoming a wanton force of destruction. For my money, turning Bane into a contract killer cheapens him, because I like the idea that Batman represents not a job but a personal challenge for Bane. This episode approaches that concept, but it’s again devalued when Bane takes the idea from Thorne’s assistant Candice, herself caught in a halfhearted seduction plot. (And if you want to talk about characters who never got their due, let’s hear it for the ever-capable, ever-cunning Candice, who matched wits with Two-Face and Bane and still came out on top.)

It’s a shame that this episode didn’t hew closer to the “Knightfall” storyline from the comics, particularly since it’s quite obvious that writer Mitch Brian had read them. Brian includes the obligatory “Bane lifts Batman over his knee” shot, maintains the language of “breaking” him, and even pits Bane against Killer Croc as a first foray into Gotham’s underworld. Hats off to Croc, by the way, for a great first act in which he, astonishingly, does not attempt to throw a rock at Batman and Robin; he does, however, become the butt of a surprisingly effective Bat-joke when Batman dismisses him with a droll “Later, gator.” What’s missing, though, is the sense that Bane is a player in his own game; here, he’s just a pawn in someone else’s.

I’ve spent the bulk of this week’s review diminishing the episode for what it isn’t. In the moment, however, “Bane” is exactly the whirlwind I mentioned earlier. The episode proceeds briskly and ably, doing well what it sets out to do – tell a kid-friendly version of the “Knightfall” story inside of twenty minutes and within the constraints of the universe established by BtAS (that is to say, in deference to the mobster underpinnings of Gotham’s underworld, never wholly supplanted by the more theatrical supervillains). It’s only on further reflection that the episode emerges as something of a disappointment, because in the moment it was enough to make me want to dig out my Bane action figure, who could hoist aloft another figure and (with the aid of a switch on his back) throw them to the ground. Luchadors, indeed – there is something elemental about a big guy taking on Batman, and this episode manages to walk the line between the philosophical weight of Tom Hardy’s Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and the heroically lunkheaded version we got from the late Jeep Swenson in Batman and Robin. 

Original Air Date: September 10, 1994

Writer: Mitch Brian

Director: Kevin Altieri

Villains: Bane (Henry Silva), Rupert Thorne (John Vernon), and Killer Croc (Aron Kincaid)

Next episode: “Baby-Doll,” in which I recall Paul Dini turning in his first and only clunker.

🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇

Batman: The Animated Series - "Catwalk"

“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.

Original Air Date: September 13, 1995

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.

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Batman: The Animated Series - "Time Out of Joint"

“If it’s any comfort, my revenge will encompass more than just you. I intend to pass a most timely sentence on the entire judicial system.”

In retrospect, it should have been obvious, but Batman and Robin are shocked when Temple Fugate – the Clock King (Alan Rachins) – steals an antique timepiece at auction by using a device that allows him to slip between seconds and freeze time. The Dynamic Duo rightly assumes that Fugate is about to continue his quest for vengeance against Mayor Hamilton Hill (Lloyd Bochner), but stopping a man who can stop time is an entirely different sort of challenge.

This episode tickles a lot of my fancies, beginning with the title’s reference to my favorite Shakespeare play (though it’s a real shame we never hear Alan Rachins deliver that line in this episode). Moreover, the episode challenges our conception of what a Batman story can do while simultaneously proving the elasticity of the character in his ability to accommodate something like this episode’s far-out science-fiction concept of altering the passage of time. You’re probably sick of hearing me say that Batman stories can go anywhere in a way that other characters can’t oblige, but this episode proves just how effective Batman’s detective skills can be when faced with an adversary whose modus operandi defies the very laws of physics. Simply put, Batman has to imagine himself into another universe in order to stop the Clock King.

And hello to the Clock King, the maestro of minutes, the sultan of seconds, and – I will go so far as to assert – the most underrated villain in the rightly well-regarded canon of BtAS episodes. At only two episodes, the Clock King leaves me screaming for more, more, more – more of his unique elitist snobbery, more of his pinpoint precision, more of his clever crimes, and more of that astoundingly elegant costume design. In this episode, he trades in his brown suit for a sleek black one, though he retains his clockface spectacles and minute-hand cane. He also clings to his single-minded desire for revenge on Mayor Hill, a drive that puts all of Gotham in danger through that particularly comic book form of metonymy (e.g., you have wounded me, ergo the city you lead must suffer). I had previously described Rachins’s performance as “an arrogant nasal clip of a voice, a perfectly irritated how-dare-you quality that can’t believe Batman would interfere with his perfect plans,” and I haven’t come up with a better descriptor. Now that we’ve met The Riddler (we hadn’t by the time of Fugate’s debut in “The Clock King”), it’ll forever be a tremendous sorrow that this show didn’t pair them up for the ultimate battle of wits.

Though I recalled liking this episode, it presented a few surprises. I was pleasantly surprised to see this episode riff on “See No Evil,” an episode which I had assumed no one else remembered. “So we don’t have another invisible man running loose,” Batman muses, a nod to another episode which strained the limits of believability but which was nevertheless ably carried by Batman. (Both “Time Out of Joint” and “See No Evil” were, incidentally, directed by BtAS mainstay Dan Riba.) I was also delighted to hear Roscoe Lee Browne in a small role as Dr. Wakati, the unwitting inventor of Fugate’s chrono-device. Browne has a long and illustrious pedigree as an actor, but this reviewer will always remember him as the definitive Wilson Fisk on the mid-90s Spider-Man cartoon, which shared a curious number of its alumni with Batman: The Animated Series (including, most bizarrely, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., as Doctor Octopus).

The Clock King’s pair of appearances stands as a great example of fine episodes that you wouldn’t expect of this show but which display the level of craft, thoughtfulness, and entertainment that made this series so much more than a kid’s cartoon. Back to back, “The Clock King” and “Time Out of Joint” are a case study in how to introduce and develop a villain in two distinct single episodes, a fine golden moment for a supremely underrated villain.

Original Air Date: October 8, 1994

Writers: Alan Burnett and Steve Perry

Director: Dan Riba

Villain: The Clock King (Alan Rachins)

Next episode: “Catwalk,” in which two unlikely villains have a team-up I can’t believe I didn’t remember.

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