Plot summary: A luxury spa seems a little too good to be true… likely because it’s secretly run by Poison Ivy who wants to turn anti-environmentalists into trees!
(Originally published on The Reel World October 17th, 2020)
Notes
Original Air Date: September 23rd, 1992
Directed: Kevin Altieri (9)
Written: Beth Bornstein (1)
Animation: Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (7)
Music: Lolita Ritmanis (3)
If you own the show on DVD you’d be forgiven for thinking this is the first episode of season 2.
Maggie was supposed to stick around as a recurring love interest for Alfred but this was instead her one and only appearance. Sorry, Al.
A rare example of Batman setting foot in the non-cave portions of Wayne Manor while still in costume.
Kevin Altieri wasn’t over-impressed by the script so added the giant tree at the end to spice it up.
Recap
‘Mrs. Thomas’ frantically flees the grounds of a fancy spa resort (not the one from the previous episode) while an unknown red head in a green outfit pursues…
The chase continues until the escapee collapses in the woods, allowing ‘Definitely Not’ Poison Ivy to catch up with her and turn her into a tree!
Elsewhere, Bruce tells off one of the directors of his company for trying to make a dodgy deal in the Amazon. Seriously, he’s very angry. Like top 5 angriest outings in the show.
Alfred sorts his mail and after a quick joke about him winning $10,000,000 (hahaha eat the rich) they pop in a promotional video from Eternal Youth Spa. Two employees, Violet and Lily invite him to spend a free weekend there.
They’re interupted by a visitor, Maggie, a “friend” of Alfred’s, who plants one on the indentured butler and invites him to join her on a morning jog.
Bruce tells them to go to the spa in his place as his weekends are fully booked (punching people). “Alfie” is reluctant, but Maggie browbeats him into it as he’s been promising to take her away for ages.
Violet and Lily ask their boss what to do about the substitute guests and they just… fully show Poison Ivy sitting by a waterfall admiring a flower. I don’t even know if they’re trying to hide it anymore. Ivy says they’ll make do, as somebody has to pay for the sins of Wayne Enterprises. Fair, tbh.
Greeting the pair as “Dr. Demeter”, Ivy continues to tout her miracle anti-aging product, ‘Demetrite’, which is in the food, water and even the air of the resort. Alfred makes many sarcastic quips but after tasting a green cookie he is 100% on board.
Over at the GCPD, Jim Gordon is at a loose end over missing industrialists. Batman pledges to look over Mrs. Thomas’ penthouse, not sticking around to hear Jim say they already did that.
Sure enough, he immediately begins to unravel a part of the mystery the police missed, spotting an Eternal Youth Spa video. I should mention that each of these tapes contains a personalised greeting to the addressee. Creepy AND costly!
Alfred puts Bruce at ease, but our hero is suspicious of his servant sounding happy. It’s super messed up that this instinct is proven right!
Returning home, Alfred smooches Maggie goodbye and sets to work sprucing up the Batcave with a plethora of plantlife. Bruce is none too pleased, but rolls with it until Alfred downs a glass of green liquid and then passes out…
Batman gets to work analysing Demetrite, discovering that when combined with enough human plasma, rapid plant growth ensues. Terrified for Alfred’s safety, he frantically looks for him, unaware he left at sunrise with Maggie to return to the spa.
‘Dr. Demeter’ welcomes them back, offering an “ultimate treatment” but Violet and Lily instead gas them with the same stuff used on Mrs. Thomas. Poison Ivy then reveals herself in full costume. I for one am shocked!
Batman infiltrates the complex and confronts the femme fatales, but they capture him almost immediately.
Ivy reveals a haunting gallery of wooden statues, including Alfred and Maggie in the place of Bruce Wayne. Luckily she over-explains that it will take months of dosing to make the transformation permanent.
Having heard enough, Batman spews metaphorical venom at Ivy, earning himself a blast of triple strength Demetrite that has no effect beyond corroding the ropes they tied him up with.
Revealing that he coated his suit in a herbicidal antidote, Batman sets to work tying up Violet and Lily before giving chase to Ivy. A quick game of hide and seek crossbow later, and Bats finds himself pinned against one of the trees.
Thinking fast, he tosses a bucket of the enzyme towards Ivy and it… causes an ENORMOUS tree to sprout from the ground, trashing the entire complex. Seriously, it’s hundreds of feet high, and it sure does look like it slams Ivy into the glass ceiling, but we don’t see a corpse, so…
The next day, Bruce visits Alfred and Maggie in the hospital, sharing the good news that everyone is going to recover. Maggie comments on the insensitivity of Bruce bringing a plant as a gift, calling him stupid. Burn!
Best Performance
A strong trio of performances here, firstly from Paddi Edwards as Maggie. She made for a fun foil to Alfred, embarrassing him as best she could, while also looking out for his best interests and dunking on Bruce a little. Deserved.
Diane Pershing is excellent in her second outing as Poison Ivy, to the point I had to make sure it was the same actress. Not to say she was bad last time by any means, it just had a different energy. She gets a lot more lines than in ‘Pretty Poison’, which probably helps.
But as boringly repetitive as it is, I’ve got to hand it to Kevin Conroy once again. We get plenty of Bruce and Batman, with the distinction between them as clear as it will ever be. Both get a moment of intense rage, but they’re entirely different. A lot of actors struggle with this, with their voice work bleeding together when getting shouty, but Conroy nails it.
Ranking
This episode is a lot of fun and at times seems like it’s going to become one of the greats, but it just doesn’t quite stick the landing.
The premise is sound, with Poison Ivy using a luxury spa to murder business people who harm the environment. I actually think the spa itself makes for a great location, with the brighter colour palette making for a nice change, while also housing an eerie little forest biome for the final encounter.
Speaking of that final encounter, I could have gone for another minute or so of Ivy hiding in the undergrowth and firing her crossbow at Batman while he desperately tries to locate her. That was dope. Real Predator shit. Unfortunately that action was offset by some pretty weak sauce detective work.
I’m sure some people immediately roll their eyes at Alfred having a girlfriend, but those people are children… Actually, to be fair, children generally DON’T like romance plots and this is after all a show for children… What was I talking about?
Oh! The failings of the episode are less to do with cooties and more to do with the out-of-nowhere ending and half-hearted attempt at secrecy with Poison Ivy, which takes up a lot of time that might have been spent on some more satisfying investigation scenes. One that sounds better if described vs actually watching it.
- Heart of Ice
- Two-Face Part I
- Joker’s Favor
- Feat of Clay Part II
- Beware the Gray Ghost
- Mad as a Hatter
- Vendetta
- Appointment In Crime Alley
- Feat of Clay Part I
- On Leather Wings
- Two-Face Part II
- Pretty Poison
- It’s Never Too Late
- See No Evil
- The Clock King
- Eternal Youth (NEW ENTRY)
- The Cat and the Claw Part I
- P.O.V.
- Christmas with the Joker
- Fear of Victory
- Be a Clown
- The Cat and the Claw Part II
- Nothing to Fear
- Prophecy of Doom
- Dreams In Darkness
- The Last Laugh
- The Under-Dwellers
- The Forgotten
- I’ve Got Batman in My Basement
Rogues Roundup
Poison Ivy (Diane Pershing) (second appearance)
I’ll say it again: Poison Ivy is a criminally underrated Batman villain. After a gloriously petty multi-year revenge scheme against Harvey Dent for helping bulldoze land where a rare flower grew, she’s massively expanded her horizons by opening up a murder factory. More specifically, a beauty spa offering youth treatments that actually turn people into trees. Excellent stuff.
Better still, she has continued to act almost exclusively in the best interests of the environment, luring industrialists to the spa to get revenge. It does kind of suck that she’s willing to kill Alfred and Maggie in place of Bruce, especially as Maggie doesn’t even work for Wayne Enterprises, and Alfred’s employment status with the larger company is tenuous at best, but I suppose if she wasn’t occasionally actually evil she wouldn’t be a villain at all.
It’s also important to note that Bruce’s level of guilt is debatable. He’s just innocent enough to remain the protagonist of a children’s cartoon, but it’s still his name on the company. Some iterations of Batman see Ivy treated as a lunatic for caring about the planet, with Bruce and others dismissing her concerns, so it was nice to see him passionately arguing against the “slash and burn” deal, making it more about her not realising he’s actually a nice person.
Oh, and it’s VERY funny how long they try to pretend the mysterious redhead isn’t Ivy.
- Joker
- Mr. Freeze
- Two-Face
- Clayface
- Poison Ivy
- Mad Hatter
- Catwoman
- Clock King
- Killer Croc
- Rupert Thorne
- Lloyd Ventrix
- Scarecrow
- Roland Daggett (and Germs & Bell!)
- Red Claw
- Arnold Stromwell
- Mad Bomber
- Man-Bat
- Nostromos (and Lucas!)
- Harley Quinn
- Penguin
- Sewer King
- Boss Biggis
The Matt Signal 
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