Rewatching Batman the Animated Series

Let's talk Aguachile Alley

Postby Merciel » Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:50 pm

More quick ones:

-- "Mudslide": Clayface episodes are the best. I'm going to be so sad if he actually dissolved in the water. The body horror quotient in these things is through the roof and they give me all kinds of ideas.
-- "Paging the Crime Doctor": this was fine but it didn't really do much for me. I did like that even though Doctor Thorne is shown to be a good guy through and through, he still has to get locked up because Batman is all about everybody getting locked up for breaking the law, no matter what the circumstances are.
-- "Zatanna": also didn't do much for me, other than it was pretty neat to see Batman learning to be an escape artist under a fake name. The character of Zatanna was mostly boring though and the plot was whatever. I think I'm just not into one-shot disposable villains at this point, I want to see my recurring favorites.
-- "The Mechanic": pretty good. I liked seeing more backstory in the creation of the Batmobile. Also laughed at how obtuse Batman was in the face of the mechanic's attempts to warn him. Batman's brain power doesn't usually get dialed up or down that obviously to service the plot, but it did here, so that was a lol. However this isn't a top-tier episode because the mechanic's daughter is a one-dimensional damsel in distress until practically her last 20 seconds of screen time.
-- "Harley and Ivy": god I have so much empathy with Ivy finally just giving up and hitting Harley with things when she won't let go of her toxic relationship.
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Postby cartola » Fri Nov 03, 2017 10:56 pm

Clayface episodes are so emotional and visceral.

That mad hatter sode w the backwords words is my fav of all time thou.
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Postby Merciel » Sat Nov 04, 2017 12:04 pm

"Shadow of the Bat" parts 1 & 2: Seeing Barbara vault around in her gymnastics training makes it more poignant that she turns into Oracle later (I mean in my preferred continuity/the videogames; I don't think we're going to see that happen in BTAS). I also liked that she didn't actually know how to fight and got whonked every time anybody cornered her. I do kind of wish her tactics had reflected that a little better (running straight into a fight is a dumb idea when you don't know how to fight!) but whatever. Solid second-tier episode.

"Blind as a Bat": Batman turns into Daredevil! ...and it's kind of whatever. I fell asleep during this one (it's been a long week) so might have missed some good stuff, though.
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Postby Spoilt Victorian Child » Sat Nov 04, 2017 5:00 pm

I like how they say the plan is to provide input directly to his optic nerve, and you're like "wow, that sounds kind of messy for a Batman cartoon," and then he just puts on a helmet with glowing eyes and he's good to go.
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Postby Merciel » Sun Nov 05, 2017 3:36 pm

"The Demon's Quest" Parts 1 & 2: Batman does James Bond (sort of)! Actually I guess it's more like Uncharted what with the semi-magical (but arguably non-supernatural if you buy the "weird chemicals" explanation) ancient secret thing, but close enough.

I think these episodes suffered from lack of build-up in the BTAS canon before this point. We've only seen the Al Ghuls once before this, and so there isn't really that much weight or enormity behind them as antagonists (also, it is weird as hell that Talia is all "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BRUCE" when she's met him for all of like 30 minutes before this. Lady, you cannot expect me to take you seriously or think anything other than "good lord you have terrible judgment, what is wrong with you, I bet everything is all drama all the time 24/7 in your life" under those circumstances).

The episodes themselves are fine but there are basically no stakes here, like why do I give a shit that Ra's wants to kill 2 billion people when that's what everybody in this continuity wants and most of them are more creative about it.

I did really like hearing Jon Irenicus again though. I particularly love that David Warner doesn't even try to do different voices so it's seriously just Jon Irenicus the entire time.

I need to replay BGII.

"His Silicon Soul": This one of the most poignant BTAS episodes, maybe the most poignant. Robot Batman being in agony about how and why he's a robot, and begging everybody to fix him, is just searing. And then he gets dominated by his creator HARDAC and hijacked into doing evil, and then he takes the chip out and regains partial mastery of himself and suicides because he thinks he killed somebody.

so sad

but also, you'd think the duplicants would be a little better designed so they weren't so easy to short out all the time
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Postby Merciel » Sun Nov 05, 2017 3:38 pm

Incidentally hearing Jon Irenicus in another context was like hearing somebody you actually know really well, like one of your parents or a sibling, pop up as a voice actor in BTAS.

I realize this is because I play BGII waaaaayy the hell too much (and David Warner doesn't do that much voice acting) but boy howdy was that disorienting.
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Postby Merciel » Mon Nov 06, 2017 2:09 pm

"Fire from Olympus": Fun lightweight episode with some good burns on Batman ("Hades!" "Maxi, be serious, that's BATMAN"). I liked the epilogue where bonkers dude arrived in Arkham and thought everybody was a figure from Greek mythology, although I was a little surprised that being dropped three stories onto concrete with a really huge facefirst thud didn't cure him (since it can't kill him, this being BTAS, I figured showing us a thud like that meant he was going to have some sense knocked into him. I guess I'm gratified it didn't, since the powers of the curative blow to the head are greatly overstated in cartoons generally, but then I'm left wondering why we saw that).

Zeus fucking up his Intro to Ninth-Grade Mythology and quoting Ozymandias was hilarious too.

"Read My Lips": The Ventriloquist and Scarface is such a weird villain combo. BTAS does a good job of making them actually scary and the Ventriloquist's semi-possession seems almost like being... actually possessed! (versus him having multiple personality disorder, which has always struck me as a lazy gimmick, and which I've never liked as a plot device for that reason). I'll put that down at least in part to this being another Lansdale episode; a horror writer would know that implied possession is the better way to go with this character. (I think the pit of mannequin hands was a nice horror touch too, although it overlapped a little too much with the Mad Hatter's dummy-filled base in the next episode. Space them out, people!)

The reveal of the dummy re-creating itself at the end was pretty good too, and the last shot of the Ventriloquist futilely trying to stab the regenerating monster but succeeding only in re-creating its identifying scar is A+.

"The Worry Men": I liked that the Mad Hatter exploited the naivete of rich white people looking for curios here. Clever gimmick, clever plot, solid episode. It was a little weird to me that the indigenous craftsman was a buff dude in his 20s and not, like, a stooped grandmother in her 60s, but I guess you can't really have Batman punching the grandma version of that character and also it would give the twist away too quickly. So that was a little bit of a weak spot, but overall this was good.

"Sideshow": It never did make any sense that Killer Croc was in Arkham. He's not crazy and his persona isn't a gimmick. He actually is just a giant homicidal mutant half-crocodile. So I'm glad that this episode opened with him being transferred out of the asylum, although I suspect somehow we're going to find him in there again later.

I liked that Killer Croc gets a chance to redeem himself and live among people who won't criticize his appearance, and he can't do it because he is a through-and-through shit who isn't actually interested in the humble life, but he tries. He does make an earnest attempt at reformation before he goes "eh, fuck it, gonna kill Batman" instead.

The show is surprisingly good at considering motives and conflicts in its core characters. Even Killer Croc, who is just a moron who (hilariously to me, after "Almost Got 'Im") repeatedly did in fact try to kill Batman by throwing rocks at him.
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Postby Spoilt Victorian Child » Tue Nov 07, 2017 1:38 am

It's just a delight every time I rediscover that the Mad Hatter is Ratty from The Wind in the Willows.

I figured there would be a decline in quality around S3 but it hasn't happened yet.
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Postby Merciel » Tue Nov 07, 2017 7:16 pm

"A Bullet for Bullock": I liked getting a view into Bullock's extremely sad and slobby life, although I'm perplexed that eviction doesn't seem to be a thing in Gotham City. If the guy is really producing such awful garbage smells that the neighbors are complaining and his apartment is the source of buildingwide cockroach infestations, it seems like you should probably be able to give that guy the boot without too much trouble.

"The Trial": Oh hey what a surprise, Killer Croc's back in Arkham TWO WHOLE EPISODES AFTER WE DECIDED HE WAS SANE. Here is me being completely shocked.

All the villain interactions were of course superb, but I was a little baffled by how many normal people seemed to be in Arkham. What the hell are all those guys doing there?

I had a fair amount of sympathy for the DA in this episode. Batman cases must be a goddamn nightmare to prosecute. Half the time you don't have any witnesses to crucial events because Batman was the only guy who saw the defendant point a gun at the victim (since all these villains are forever getting the drop on their targets only to have Batman kick the gun out of their hands before the victim even knows what's happening), chain of custody's a disaster, and good luck proving a conspiracy on the basis that Batman tied these guys up together for reasons known only to himself.

"Avatar": Another Uncharted episode with Ra's Al Ghul! I guess Batman is in love with Talia too now, which seems a little out of nowhere, but then I guess they have known each other for over an hour at this point, so sure, run off to Vegas and get hitched, you crazy kids.

I think this is the first episode to give us a straight-up magical effect. Everything else has had at least some vague handwavy pseudoscience camo draped over its magic, but Batman's Adventures in Egypt are just magic and that's that. I can't decide whether I like it or not, but it's different.

What the fuck happened to the original explorer in the intro, anyway? Does that ever get explained?

"House & Garden": This was great. At first I was worried they were just going to do a straightforward body snatchers thing, which would have been terribly uninspired, but the sons growing into the fathers and then into monsters and death within a few days was fantastic.

Batman heedlessly spraying herbicide all over the place (and himself) seems like a dopey move though. That shit's poisonous, dude.
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Postby Merciel » Wed Nov 08, 2017 2:45 pm

"The Terrible Trio": I keep meaning to remark on how often Batman dives into water and goes swimming to rescue people with his cape and cowl on, like that would somehow not create massive drag and drown him instantly. I would bet this happens even more often than bullet + electrical wires = giant screen-consuming fire.

Anyway this episode was basically fine and in keeping with the running theme of idle rich people being jerks, but didn't strike me as terribly deep beyond that.

"Harlequinade": Harley Quinn has the most hilariously grating voice. It is so perfect for her character. Good funny ep but I don't have a lot to say about this one either.

"Time Out of Joint": I'm gratified that the Clock King's vendetta against the mayor continues unabated. The theft of the auction clock + toss into garbage can + "I already have one" = beautiful commentary on the triviality of the theft plots usually involved here.

I also like how people in this universe just randomly come up with physics-breaking wonder gimmicks in their basements and it makes sense because they are people who wear white coats at home.

"Catwalk": Bruce, you really need to decide who your girlfriend is this season.

Watching a Catwoman episode after a run of a couple Talia episodes really drives home why I like the Catwoman pairing much better. Batman and Catwoman have an interesting dynamic on a couple of levels: he knows her (no longer) secret identity but she doesn't know his; he refuses to forgive her (never evil, usually pretty trivial) lawbreaking so they can't have a relationship; he also refuses to confide his identity to her even though that would solve half their problems instantly and also put them on information parity. Basically the whole thing is a running example of how Batman's hangups and crazinesses prevent him from ever being happy even when there are NO OTHER OBSTACLES, and it's great.

Plus they actually flirt and appear to have some chemistry and have had a (relatively, in cartoon time) slow buildup of things, whereas with Talia it's like they've known each other for 15 seconds and suddenly it's all "BELOVED" and "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH" and like whaaat, where the hell did that come from.

As for the episode itself, it was fine, I liked that the big theft MacGuffin was a dead stuffed Tasmanian Devil and Great Auk. Catwoman's initial reaction to seeing the ventriloquist gimmick was great, and I like Scarface's messy deaths in every epsiode where he appears.

"Bane": love their dedication to making Bane a literally enormous badass who nevertheless keeps his luchador mask on the entire time and is completely un-imposing when they finally take it off. I also appreciated the BTAS team's trolling with the constant teases of Bane going "I will break you!" so you're left thinking "no way, they can't possibly do that storyline in BTAS" but you never quite know for sure, and then lol nope in the end it's the same Batman end fight as ever.

Bane overloading on his steroid juice was some solid nightmare fuel. I thought he might actually explode.
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Postby Riverchrist » Wed Nov 08, 2017 2:56 pm

Bane being revealed as all fucked up and wheelchair-bound due to the Venom drug was a memorable moment in Batman Beyond.
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Postby Merciel » Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:21 pm

"Baby-Doll": what the hell is this episode.

I think I know what they're going for with the pathos and grotesquerie of this Claudia-from-Interview-with-the-Vampire woman-trapped-in-girl's-body thing, but the artificial baby voice and deliberate grammatical mistakes are so grating that I can't feel anything for this character beyond a burning desire to punt her across the room. Also, how the hell did she afford all those henchmen (at least one of whom is apparently a lady ninja in high heels imported from a completely different anime series) when she's been surviving for the past decade-plus on residuals from a failing sitcom? ALSO also, how is she using a dilapidated teddy bear as a silencer without catching the damn thing on fire after every shot?

This was not a good episode.

"The Lion and the Unicorn": It's pretty interesting what they do with Alfred in this episode. On the one hand, of course he used to be a top-secret British government agent, because it is inconceivable that any major character in the Batman universe is not a secret badass. On the other hand, he was a desk agent and not a James Bond type, and while we see him being clever and heroic in this ep, his cleverness consists of recognizing his weaknesses and obfuscating them as long as he can, and his heroism largely consists of endurance and stoicism, i.e., the stereotypically English qualities of reserve and "stiff upper lip."

SVC felt that this episode was uncharitable to Cockneys. I suppose there's something to that, but then again it's the same two Cockney guys who show up in multiple cartoon universes (like didn't we just see these guys in 101 Dalmatians?), so maybe it's more just those two guys.

I laughed pretty hard at Batman saving the day by... exploding an explosion two feet over Big Ben. Yeah that's definitely not going to cause any damage. Well done Batman.

We both laughed pretty hard that Red Claw's henchmen bothered with the alcohol swabs before injecting people with an unsterilized truth serum gun that Red Claw just whipped out of a pistol case and then stuck right back in there without even pretending to wipe off.

"Showdown": this was a real weird one too. I don't even know what to say about the main story of Old West bounty hunter vs. Ra's Al Ghul and steampunk cannon airship, except between this and "Baby-Doll" I'm starting to get a sense that we might be on a downward trendline finally. Or not, I guess we'll see what the next few episodes bring.

It's interesting that Arkady Duvall appears to have no idea that Ra's Al Ghul is his dad and not just some random jerk ordering him around. Then again, I guess if you do know that Ra's Al Ghul is your dad, he still just acts like a random jerk ordering you around.
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Postby Poptone » Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:34 pm

Merciel wrote:"

"His Silicon Soul": This one of the most poignant BTAS episodes, maybe the most poignant. Robot Batman being in agony about how and why he's a robot, and begging everybody to fix him, is just searing. And then he gets dominated by his creator HARDAC and hijacked into doing evil, and then he takes the chip out and regains partial mastery of himself and suicides because he thinks he killed somebody.

so sad



was this a two-parter? they really brought their A-game for those ones
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Postby mystery meat » Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:36 pm

Showdown rules and House and Garden terrified me as a child
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Postby Merciel » Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:39 pm

Poptone wrote:was this a two-parter? they really brought their A-game for those ones


No, it's a single episode, although it does build off a previous one featuring HARDAC.
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Postby Merciel » Thu Nov 09, 2017 12:41 pm

The main thing I took away from "Showdown" was (a) this is in no way a Batman story and the frame device barely excuses it; (b) it's sort of interesting following a protagonist who has no compunction about killing people, given the great lengths that BTAS stretches to avoid killing anybody; and (c) whoa, they're doing a cut-up hooker motivation in a kids' cartoon.
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Postby Merciel » Sat Nov 11, 2017 12:33 am

"Riddler's Reform": I feel like somebody better-versed in Calvinist theology could make an interesting predestination discussion out of this episode, but that person is not me.

SVC and I spent a minute trying to decide whether the Riddler would be allowed to keep any of his toy-store money, given that arguably the only reason he got that contract was due to his notoriety as a criminal and you're not allowed to profit off your criminality (or, at best, you have to fork over all your gains to restitution for your various victims). But on reflection, I think the even more confusing question is why a toy magnate thought it would be a good idea to brand his stuff with the likeness and persona of an infamous maniac whose entire gimmick was making "games" that kill people. Why is that a thing you want people to associate with your brand?

"Second Chance" and "Harley's Holiday": I didn't post about these when they were fresh in my mind and I can't think of anything to say about them now. Oh well!

"Lock-Up": The psycho villain ranting about the "liberal media" and blaming them for criminals running roughshod over the city got a solid lol. Overall, proto-Punisher was a pretty good adversary, although it is a little weird to me that Batman cares about the humane confinement of villains that he's constantly kicking in the face and throwing off of buildings. The guy's not killing them and that's your red line, so as long as they're still alive it should theoretically be okay to do whatever, right? Because you're doing whatever when you want to ask them questions.

Then again, the ideological consistency of Batman is such a huge joke that even I know about it, so maybe not.

"Make 'Em Laugh": this was pretty good. SVC winced aloud when the Condiment King splorted ketchup all over some guy's expensive dinner getup. I thought Pack-Rat was a great gimmick, but dumping out a purse's contents to steal the bag instead isn't really that ridiculous. A lot of ladies' bags are worth more than what's in them.

I was not that into the female comedian turning into Mop Mom or whatever, especially since it seemed like part of the joke was that she was a single childless slob who got crumbs all over herself while vegging out on the couch, so OF COURSE she would turn into her polar opposite female stereotype, but... minor quibble, overall good episode.

(Incidentally, BTAS has turned out to be better on both gender and race than I expected from the first couple of episodes, so that's been nice.)

"Deep Freeze": I thought this episode was great. The show's usage of Mr. Freeze in general has been solid, and his discussion of the lousiness of deep-frozen immortality with the wannabe Bioshock founder guy was practically poetic, at least by the standards of early '90s cartoon dialogue.

"Batgirl Returns": Other than the opening daydream, which was excellent (as were all the times Batgirl dismissed Robin peremptorily because she had the hots for Batman and not him), this was good-but-not-great. I do appreciate how often they team Catwoman up with another female character and let them romp around whomping dudes who hassle them, though. It is surprisingly cathartic to see in a cartoon.
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Postby Merciel » Sat Nov 11, 2017 10:58 am

SEASON FOUR: Whoa, we're in a totally new animation style now. I do not like this!

Apparently S4 isn't actually S4 but is a change in series from BTAS to "The New Batman Adventures" and is now what aired on on WB instead of Fox, which is fine and all, but I wish there'd been some warning instead of Amazon Prime just showing them all in sequence as the same series, because THIS IS NOT THE SAME SERIES and I consider all these redesigns to be greatly inferior (except maaaybe the Joker, which I'm undecided on).

Everybody else's resdesign is bad though and kid Robin has a terrible voice actor and also it is super fucked up that Batman is allowing a 10-year-old to fight grown-ass adults with Tommy guns.

"Holiday Knights": Despite my dislike for the redesigns and ROBIN'S TERRIBLE VOICE ACTOR, this episode was pretty good. I liked Harley and Ivy's shopping spree (also I want Ivy's big fur coat), it was good to see Clayface back even if we never got any explanation for how he re-formed or why he can now control his body as four separate entities simultaneously when previously he struggled to maintain one shape for more than a few seconds, Bullock as surly slob Santa was solid, and the Gordon-and-Batman annual diner tradition was cute.

"Sins of the Father": SVC thought new Robin might be Jason Todd with this origin story, which apparently is pretty much Jason Todd's origin story (plus new Robin is a brat), but NOPE turns out new Robin is Tim Drake, a brat with an annoying voice actor.

I am not a huge fan of new Robin. I also don't like Two-Face's character redesign. The episode itself was fine but I'm all cranky about people going and changing things on me.

I'm old, let me have the things I like. I don't want these new designs. They are bad.
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Postby tgk » Sat Nov 11, 2017 11:26 am

have you watched mask of the phantasm yet?
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Postby Merciel » Sat Nov 11, 2017 3:58 pm

No, we'll do the movies after S4 (which ISN'T EVEN S4).
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Postby worrywort » Sat Nov 11, 2017 4:06 pm

the designs are definitely worse, but the show becomes maybe even more ambitious and there's increased serialization over the season. in lock-step with Superman TAS, and then into Justice League.
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Postby Merciel » Sun Nov 12, 2017 12:47 pm

"Cold Comfort": Whoa, Batman can bleed now.

I didn't love this episode because Mr. Freeze as emotionless amoral antagonist is great to me, and Mr. Freeze as raging bringer of despair is an okay extension of that persona (although not my preferred direction), but Mr. Freeze as dinosaur-destroying art vandal accompanied by miniskirted girls (??? where did they come from? why are they there? why don't they need pants?) is... weird.

I did like the spider head reveal though, that was pretty good.

"Double Talk": poor Arnold Wesker, they're really ramping up the possession themes on him this time. I liked this episode. This is where I started coming around on the greater flexibility that WB allowed the showrunners, even if I still don't like the character designs.

I appreciated that they showed a bit character (the landlady at the halfway house) with dwarfism, which is not something I think I've ever seen in a kids' cartoon before. The leprechaun who impersonates Scarface was pretty bad though.

"You Scratch My Back": why is Catwoman a short-haired brunette now? I mean it's fine, but it's a weird choice if we're otherwise supposed to be preserving the continuity of the universe and she still has the same voice actor and backstory and everything.

Catwoman is really intense about putting the moves on Nightwing. I'm going to guess there were a certain number of kids watching this who had weird feelings during this ep.

"Never Fear": this was great, loved the self-help huckster who was the face to Scarecrow's scheme. Batman insisting he wasn't affected (and being totally wrong) was also great, as were the various effects on disinhibited (and therefore idiotic) Gothamites. I was quietly amused that they were both guys, though (and that one of the guys was emboldened to commit blatant sexual harassment of a superior). I wonder whether that's more a comment on men's belief that they need to be bolder (owing to cultural pressures pushing men to be Aggressive Dudes of Action!), or the showrunners' unwillingness to consider what a disinihibited woman would look like in this world (and, perhaps, unrecognized awareness of the fact that a lot of women wouldn't even want to lose the fear that they need as protection in this world; they are too afraid to be fearless, and wisely so).

I don't know whether I like the Scarecrow redesign but it is at least interesting, which is not something I can say for most of the other ones.
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Postby Merciel » Tue Nov 14, 2017 2:53 am

"Joker's Millions": pretty good, not least because I was like "lol the Joker totally spent all his money already" and SVC was like "no way he spent anywhere close to $250M" and it turned out we were both right

"Growing Pains": the scope of Clayface's powers in this new series is really weird and poorly defined. Not a fan. The episode itself was kind of whatever, I'm not really into the ones where the central twist gets telegraphed from the beginning and nothing terribly interesting happens along the way.

"Love Is a Croc": I hate Baby Doll and was seriously hoping Croc might eat her, but watching the two of them make each other suitably miserable wasn't bad as a consolation prize. I do like the running subplot of Croc continually falling into situations where people treat him better than he deserves and then him fucking it up because he's a giant piece of shit.

"Torch Song": They already did the stalker thing with the Mad Hatter's origin story episode, plus that was an actually good episode and this one is just skeevy as hell. I think this might be the worst Batman episode in the entire run, largely because it's really gross in its treatment of Cassidy.

"The Ultimate Thrill": This episode sucked too, more Problematic treatment of female leads, bla bla. Incidentally I really dislike the Penguin redesign. Original Penguin was suitably monstrous and comical, this is just some boring short fat dude.

"Over the Edge": This is a super grimdark episode even though you know the whole thing's a fake Scarecrow dream from the get-go (even before they mention Scarecrow, it's obviously a Scarecrow dream just from how the opening sequence is blocked and shot), so I was pretty much just annoyed the whole time that they're torturing their gullible kid audience only to go "IT WAS ALL A DREAM!!" at the end. Nothing in this episode is clever or imaginative, it's just rote sadism directed at kids. Poor form, BTAS. We're on a real run of dud episodes here.

"Mean Seasons": I liked that we finally saw some dudes being objectified unnecessarily, but this episode also felt needlessly meanspirited to me, and that casting couch scene is a real bummer to watch post-Weinstein.

"Critters": this is the most fucked-up BTAS episode in the entire run of the show. On the one hand I applaud their dedication to just dumping tons of nightmare fuel into the brains of impressionable grade schoolers (the farmer's yellow eyes and yellow teeth, the banjo twang of the farmers' theme song, their weird affected fake country accents, the giant praying mantises self-destructing [this was a giant wtf, we couldn't believe they put that on screen], the nightmare chickens and nightmare cows and nightmare pig, the nightmare goat talking in its nightmare tongue, the mantis eggs quivering and hatching in the rocket, etc. etc.), but ON THE OTHER HAND this is all just super fucked up with no actual thematic depth or emotional resonance to any of it (you could almost get there with the introductory "this is what we must do to sate humanity's appetite for hamburgers!" spiel + the knowledge that ol' Farmer Enoch and his daughter Bare Midriff are presumably eating these things, but... even that never quite coalesces into anything coherent).

I would have liked that episode a whole lot more if any of it had actually had more thought put into it than "lol this is hilariously fucked up." I do admire the sheer chutzpah of putting all that shit in a kids' cartoon, but that only gets you so far.
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Postby Spoilt Victorian Child » Fri Nov 17, 2017 2:36 am

I must've never watched the new series because I don't remember the style change at all. The character animations are a lot more dynamic but it just looks kind of cheap in general. The main problem though is that the new Joker design just isn't funny. Also he looks like Roger from Doug.

I do wonder why they decided to give Tim Drake Jason Todd's background.
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Postby Merciel » Fri Nov 17, 2017 3:13 pm

"Cult of the Cat": Uh... huh.

"Animal Act": I spent most of this episode being sad for the animals trapped in those cramped and charmless cages. Circuses really were incredibly inhumane in their treatment of the animals. After reading _Animal Madness_ and the accounts of circus gorillas and elephants who literally died of depression or engaged in severe self-mutilation because of stress and trauma, I'm just going to be bummed forever by even animated depictions that don't recognize the awfulness of the animals' treatment.

"Old Wounds": this was pretty good. I like that the entire episode was about what an enormous dick Batman is, and how he can't recognize the costs that imposes on his ostensible friends because then he'd have to confront exactly how damaged he is himself.

"The Demon Within": what the fuck is this. yeah okay let's just have anime magic battles in BTAS, why the hell not.

"Legends of the Dark Knight": if I had watched this as a kid, it would have pushed every nerdrage button in my body. Watching it as an adult, I can appreciate the homages to vastly different tones and portrayals of Batman, but that doesn't actually change the fundamental problem, which that these are weird and ugly portrayals that are no fun to watch.

"Girl's Night Out": this sucked too. Livewire is a horribly grating character and Supergirl is super boring and I don't know what either of these characters is doing here. The BTAS continuity really isn't high-powered enough for either of the previous two episodes and neither of these crossovers worked at all for me.
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Postby FourLegsGood » Fri Dec 08, 2017 1:13 am

This show is the main reason I got Amazon Prime. On Ep. 7 already and have a long way to go but know I'm already gonna be sad when there's no more BTAS episodes left to watch.
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Postby Bartatua » Wed Apr 10, 2019 4:49 pm

Merciel wrote:SEASON ONE EPISODE TWENTY-SEVEN: "Mad as a Hatter"

I finally looked this up on IMDB and realized that Amazon has all the Season 1 episodes out of order. This is supposed to be ep. 24, between "The Forgotten" (which was way earlier for us) and "The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy."

Why does Amazon have the episodes out of order? You would never show any other series like this. Why did they reshuffle the episodes on BTAS?

Anyway the reason I looked it up is because I wanted to see who did the Mad Hatter. I thought it might be Pooh/Kaa but it is not, it's Ratty from Wind in the Willows. So I was wrong but pretty close.

This is a much better episode than the last one. I guess Paul Dini probably wrote a lot of the best ones.

This was a very satisfying proto-Jessica Jones storyline: good villain development, good stalker escalation from the excessively Nice Guy (who thinks nothing of abusing other people, of course, but insists that he'll treat his One True Love specially) --> direct relationship sabotage via mind-controlling the boyfriend --> just straight-up hijacking Alice's brain because he does not, in fact, value her as an independent person and just wants her as a possession. I liked that the Hatter (a) blamed Batman for "making me do this" and (b) blamed his homely looks for keeping him from happiness, when in fact what we hear from Alice is that he was just so quiet that she never even knew how he felt (hence the friend zoning, which of course the Hatter can't take).

So everything is (of course) down to the Hatter's own behavior, but he refuses to see that and blames externalities for all his own actions.

ain't that always the way with these guys

The Alice in Wonderland shout-outs were pretty good too. Making the boss the Red Queen was obvious but still good, and the appearance of the jabberwocky (plus the show trusting us enough to believe we'll get that it's the jabberwocky without having to be told explicitly) was solid.

good times


Rewatching this series because my kid likes it and the mad hatter is the most reddit of all characters in animation history maybe?
i broke somebody's ribs
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Postby coop » Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:28 pm

hell yeah
A number of beloved DC titles are moving from DC Universe to HBO Max on January 1st, including Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond.
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Postby kirito » Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:02 am

Shotfrog wrote:
Merciel wrote:SEASON TWO EPISODE TWO: "Perchance to Dream"

Huh, I did not realize Joe Lansdale wrote for BTAS.

This is a pretty wild episode. I liked how profoundly horrific the messed-up text in the books and newspapers was. It's a very Lansdale touch and it's super effective in conveying that kind of Lovecraftian dread where the world is subtly but profoundly wrong and you stumble upon that wrongness in a way that breaks your brain (at least if you're an adult; Stephen King observed in It that kids have more flexible minds and will just accept and work around the insanity that breaks adults, which I've always thought is a neat observation that I'd like to do something with. But anyway!).

I felt a little bad for the Mad Hatter here. He really was willing to give Batman his first-edition Matrix utopia. He could so easily have killed Batman, but he didn't. And this is the thanks he gets!

Overall this is a real weird episode that's heavy on atmospherics and makes zero sense plot-wise, which is about what I expect from Lansdale. Good times.

This is my favorite episode. It burrowed real deep into my psyche. I think about it all the time.

this episode unlocked lucid dreaming for me as a child because i wanted to test if i could read in a dream. turns out i can and i never would have escaped this scenario
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Postby Rainbow Battle Kid » Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:08 am

hm ive never seen Batman Beyond other than the movie, which i remember liking. i should probably give that a go sometimes
Much Honoured Lord Nefarious wrote:rainbow battle kid you can kindly get the FUCK out of this thread while the adults have actual STAR WARS discussions.
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