Plot summary: It’s a race against time as Batman tries to figure out who poisoned Harvey Dent. Spoilers: It was his new girlfriend Poison Ivy.
(Originally published on The Reel World, July 25th, 2020)
Notes
Original Air Date: September 14th, 1992
Directed: Boyd Kirkland (2)
Written: Paul Dini (1) & Michael Reaves (1) (story) and Tom Ruegger (1) (teleplay)
Animation: Sunrise (!)
Music: Shirley Walker (5)
This episode marks the debut of Renee Montoya, the other original character the show created who has become a mainstay of Batman at large.
Diane Pershing was originally only meant to perform additional voices, but Bruce Timm didn’t like Melissa Manchester’s work as Ivy, so they got Pershing to read some of the lines and she crushed it, so they swapped roles.
Paul Dini’s first writing credit on the show. He will go on to script MANY of the best episodes, as well as the Arkham video games, which saw Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprise their voice roles.
The producers felt Ivy’s ass-tastic walk wasn’t animated seductively enough for their liking, so they got one of thier storyboard artists to fix it. This is a cartoon for children.
The newspaper article with Bruce and Harvey at the prison was reused 18 years later in the background of an episode of Young Justice despite that being a different continuity.
Recap
Five years ago, Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent break ground on the future site of Stonegate Prison. A mysterious woman seems none too pleased due to the number of wild flowers and weeds that were growing on the land.
In the present a prisoner escapes Stonegate and boards a helicopter, not banking on Batman giving chase. Bats brings the chopper down and battles the escapee on foot. The GCPD re-arrest the unnamed criminal.
At the Rose Café, Harvey Dent and his sultry date, Pamela Isley, await Bruce Wayne. Harvey insists they order as Bruce is frequently late to engagements.
Bruce races home to swap his cape and cowl for the hideous brown suit he always wears, and the three yuck it up until Pam has to duck out, though not before kissing Harv for an uncomofrtably long time.
Harvey drops the bombshell that he’s asked Pam to marry him after only dating for a week, claiming love hit him “right in the face” the moment he saw her.
He then passes out in his desert. Bruce finds this VERY funny but does eventually realise his best friend is unconscious and calls an ambulance. Truly the World’s Greatest Detective.
Harvey is rushed to Gotham General and falls into a coma. Upon learning Dent was poisoned, Jim Gordon orders a full investigation. Bruce decides it might be a good idea to ask the doctors for more information before leaving the building, so compared to the GCPD he IS the World’s Greatest Detective.
A doctor casually states Harvey will die if they don’t find an antidote soon, and then leaves his blood work under the microscope and walks out, leaving a stranger alone in a medical lab.
While Bullock interrogates the poor pastry chef of the Rose Café, Bats analyses the blood sample, identifying the origin of the poison to an extinct genus of rose.
Pamela attempts to visit Harvey, but visiting hours are over. Bruce walks her to her car and promises to call if anything changes, but her overly tender embrace plants a seed… of an idea in his head.
Running a background check on his friend’s fiancée, Bruce learns Isley is a biochemist who helps develop perfumes, as well as being an expert in extinct plants. Racing to Pam’s enormous greenhouse, Batman observes her cultivating the plant in question.
Stopping just short of watching her undress, Bats infiltrates the greenhouse and almost immediately falls into a pit of aggressively spikey succulents. It’s out of the frying pan and into the comically yonic (google it) Venus Fly Trap, though.
Having changed into her Poison Ivy costume for unknown reasons, Isley mocks Batman’s predicament and laughs at Harvey’s condition, revealing she holds a grudge against him for Stonegate. She applies poisonous lipstick and smooches Batman, who is struggling to fight off an enormous symbol of womanhood.
Ivy taunts Batman with the antidote (nice touch to have her apply it herself as she’s just coated her mouth in poison), but he’s able to cut his way free using a hidden blade. Ivy is furious he harmed the plant and shoots at him with a badass wrist-mounted crossbow.
Things get really out of hand and he accidentally brings down some of the roof lights, starting an electrical fire that starts burning the place down. Ivy has Bruce dead to rights, but he was able to snatch the last of the extinct roses and trades them for the antidote.
Harvey wakes up and Bruce not-at-all gently breaks it to him that Pam is now locked up in the very person that started all this mess. Ivy vows revenge, nurturing some roses menacingly.
Best Performance
I wouldn’t say anyone massively stood out here. Everyone was good, right down to Robert Costanzo as Harvey Bullock being too heavy handed with the restaurant staff.
But I’ll go with Diane Pershing for her femme fatale style Poison Ivy. She sells the vapid sexpot façade effectively without it being unbelievable that she has a PhD and almost gets the better of Batman. Ivy has always worked better as… well not an old lady by any means, but slightly more seasoned and sophisticated than some of his more excitable young female foes.
I’m a fan of her faux concern for Harvey to mock Batman, and she manages to do the hysterical screams without it seeming overtly sexist too. The ‘I’ll have my revenge’ closer is a bit overkill, but what are you gonna do?
Ranking
The bar was set very low last time, and this episode easily clears that. The best episodes generally involve some kind of mystery for Bruce to solve, with a culprit hiding in plain sight. Ya know, like Scooby Doo. It’s also a great touch to feature Harvey Dent prominently and establish him as Bruce’s close friend given what’s coming in a few episodes. In particular I dug the back and forth editing between Harvey talking about Bruce to Ivy, and Batman doing his thing on the rooftops.
If there were more time I’d like to have spent longer in the flashback scene, as it’s generally fun to play around with the past, but I understand that it’s a 23-minute episode with a whodunit plot to untangle. Still, I really like the sardonic touch of ‘A Better, Safe Gotham – 5 Years Later’ when they move forwards in time after what Harvey promised, immediately followed by somebody escaping the prison. No better, no safer.
I don’t want to go overboard with praise, as I see this as more of an upper-middle-tier episode. I could go either way on if it’s better or worse than ‘Christmas with the Joker’, but it’s not ahead of the pilot.
[Note: This episode’s ranking was raised as part of taking stock after Episode 50]
- On Leather Wings
- Pretty Poison (NEW ENTRY)
- Christmas with the Joker
- Nothing to Fear
- The Last Laugh
Rogues Roundup
Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing) (first appearance)
Ivy is the type of character who can be fertile ground for nuanced shades of grey morality… or just be massively over-sexualised. I know some people are fans of Uma Thurman’s campy live action portrayal of the character, but I think this animated rendition is much better.
She has a solid motivation, executes her revenge plot, and has fun doing it, getting to flaunt her guilt in the faces of the mostly ignorant men. She would have gotten away with it if Batman weren’t so suspicious of sexual advances, and also ruthless enough to bargain a near-extinct plant for the antidote. Women, undone by having a shred of empathy as per usual.
Joker can’t really be topped (read that how you will), but she’s streets ahead of Scarecrow, and potentially the single most underrated Batman villain, given she frequently operates from a place of objectie moral truth. I have some memories of her being reduced to a mwahaha supervillain in later episodes, which may knock her down the list, but we shall see.
- The Joker
- Poison Ivy (NEW ENTRY)
- Scarecrow
- Man-Bat
The Matt Signal 
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