Plot summary: Sigh. It’s finally time to meet Farmer Brown and his giant mutant animals…

(Originally published on The Reel World July 11th, 2021)

I started The Matt Signal one year ago today and am both surprised it’s been that long (COVID sure isn’t going away, huh?), and still daunted by how much is left on my schedule spreadsheet.

Tentatively it should all end in April of next year, but given they announced that Bruce Timm produced cartoon to tie in to the new movie… and a second volume of Paul Dini & Alan Burnett’s comic book continuation of BTAS has just started… I just might end up doing this forever.

[2024 Edit: lololol to both the Covid part and The Caped Crusader being no closer to seeing the light of day 4 years later!]

Notes

Original Air Date: September 19^th, 1998

Directed: Dan Riba (15)

Written: Steve Gerber (2) (story) & Joe R. Lansdale (4) (teleplay)

Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD (11) & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (53)

Music: Shirley Walker (44)

As mentioned in my recap of ‘The Ultimate Thrill’, there was a truck with Farmer Brown’s logo on it in that episode. Dan Riba directed both and received the script for this episode while he was working on the other, so decided to add the truck.

Joe R. Lansdale is the only non-producer to write an episode of both BTAS and TNBA. He was handed the script because the legendary Steve Gerber outlined the story but elected not to write a script.

Bruce Timm & Paul Dini thought the episode sounded dumb but Alan Burnett talked them into it. The art team actually really like it despite fan backlash.

The giant chicken was originally meant to fall into a vat of hot oil but this was deemed too violent so it was switched to barbeque sauce… which makes it look like it’s covered in blood. Nailed it!

Another rare instance of Batman being willing to kill. Giant mutant animals are living creatures too, Bruce.

Recap

At an agricultural expo, ‘Farmer Brown’ claims he has a solution to world hunger: an experimental growth hormone that he shows off in the form of an enormous sheep… which immediately escapes and has to be subtly taken down by Bruce Wayne.

Brown is issued a cease and desist by a judge, effectively ruining him as he invested millions of dollars into the research. Naturally, he vows menacing revenge.

One year later, Bruce is on a date with a girl who looks exactly like Barbara Gordon whose name he can’t even remember. Shockingly that’s not the worst part of the dinner though, as a swarm of enormous mantises begin rampaging!

Bruce makes a quick costume change and attempts to take the gargantuan insects out with pesticide but it has only limited effects. He does manage to kick one so hard its head and limbs fall off… and then all the others spontaneously fall apart as well.

Bruce and the kids analyse the creatures’ DNA back in the Batcave, where they determine they were engineered to drop dead and are in fact immune to all conventional poisons. So Bruce did nothing.

Shockingly, it turns out Farmer Brown was responsible, and he follows up on the incident by unleashing a giant bull and cow on Gotham, as well as some ‘chickens’ that attack a police blimp!

Barbara and Tim are almost trampled to death in the Batmobile, but manage to cause the cow to fall over into wet cement and trick the bull into charging into a brick wall.

Meanwhile Batman leads the hideous birds away with his jetpack/glider. He takes a couple of them down with nets, and then causes the last one to smash into a huge vat of barbeque sauce, which drowns it.

Batman reports on the incident to Jim Gordon but they’re interrupted by… a talking goat. It demands $50m or the insects return without the self-destruct feature. This… is quite an episode.

Harvey Bullock is entrusted to make the drop-off but immediately finds himself a hostage of Farmer Brown and his superhumanly strong daughter, who tosses him effortlessly into the pen of a titanic warthog!

Brown scolds Emmylou for not checking the money, as it turns out to be fake. Sure enough, our heroes rescue Bullock from the warthog with the help of tranquiliser darts.

They battle the Browns, but between Emmylou’s super-strength and Farmer Brown’s laser-powered pitchfork, Batman & co. are easily defeated and locked inside a silo with Bullock.

The silo turns out to actually be a rocket full of mantis eggs, but Bruce tricks one of the hatchlings into smashing them an escape hatch. He then drives the armoured money truck into the rocket just as it’s taking off, sabotaging the launch.

The Browns are arrested off-screen and led away by a smug Harvey Bullock, but the sounds of their surviving animals can be heard on the wind as the episode closes.

Best Performance

Gosh this is a weird one. None of our principal cast really do enough talking to snag the top honours, even if they all get some fun lines. Barbara’s mockery of the Browns’ redneck accents and Robin’s bad animal puns are highlights, but you can’t win this prestigious award for one line.

So I guess I feel compelled to give it to Peter Breck, who slid deeeeep into a yokel accent. He’s not the best of actors, but he probably has the most lines, and it’s something a little different. Dina Sherman isn’t bad as Emmylou, either, but like our heroes, she barely gets a chance to talk.

Episode Ranking

This is one of the more infamous episodes of the show and for good reason, as it’s so ridiculous even the Batman ’66 team would raise an eyebrow. I actually quite like Farmer Brown’s weird fake farm inside of a giant laboratory, complete with a glass elevator that seemingly takes him up into the sky, only to reveal the ‘sun’ is a giant lighting rig. I would have liked to have explored that mysterious facility and his roided-up daughter more, rather than spending so much time with the runaway monster farm animals.

If said animals aren’t silly enough visually, they lead to far too many cheap gags like a literal bull in a china shop (which Robin calls Ferdinand), and a chicken covered in barbeque sauce. Tim says “holy cow!” at one point. It’s all just too much given the usual tone of the show. Again, I don’t object to campy Batman, but I do think you need to have stylistic consistency within the same project. If Batman ’66 had a grimdark, super-serious episode in the middle of the series, I’d object to that too.

Batman vs kaijus isn’t really my bag, so if it’s yours, you might enjoy it a little more, but the episode feels too slapdash. All of their energy went into the spectacle of the creatures (which presumably look so monstrous to appease censors when they’re violently murdered), and little to no concern was paid to structure, pacing or character work.

A reaaaal clunker, and the first outright bad episode of The New Batman Adventures in my opinion.

1. The Laughing Fish
2. Mask of the Phantasm
3. Over the Edge
4. Almost Got ‘im
5. Heart of Ice
6. Harlequinade
7. The Trial
8. Riddler’s Reform
9. Double Talk
10. Shadow of the Bat Part I
11. I Am the Night
12. Robin’s Reckoning Part I
13. Baby-Doll
14. Sins of the Father
15. Batman & Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero
16. The Man Who Killed Batman
17. Perchance to Dream
18. Two-Face Part I
19. Torch Song
20. You Scratch My Back
21. Bane
22. Batgirl Returns
23. A Bullet For Bullock
24. Joker’s Favor
25. Read My Lips
26. Feat of Clay Part II
27. The Ultimate Thrill
28. Catwalk
29. The Demon’s Quest Part II
30. Harley and Ivy
31. Robin’s Reckoning Part II
32. House & Garden
33. Beware the Gray Ghost
34. Mean Seasons
35. Growing Pains
36. Holiday Knights
37. Second Chance
38. Mad as a Hatter
39. Heart of Steel Part II
40. Appointment In Crime Alley
41. Two-Face Part II
42. Pretty Poison
43. Deep Freeze
44. Harley’s Holiday
45. Lock-Up
46. Shadow of the Bat Part II
47. Feat of Clay Part I
48. Cold Comfort
49. His Silicon Soul
50. Off Balance
51. Vendetta
52. Birds of a Feather
53. Joker’s Millions
54. Heart of Steel Part I
55. Never Fear
56. On Leather Wings
57. Love is a Croc
58. See No Evil
59. The Clock King
60. It’s Never Too Late
61. Make ‘Em Laugh
62. Joker’s Wild
63. Eternal Youth
64. The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy
65. The Cat and the Claw Part I
66. Zatanna
67. Day of the Samurai
68. Avatar
69. The Demon’s Quest Part I
70. The Mechanic
71. The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
72. Terror in the Sky
73. P.O.V.
74. Christmas with the Joker
75. Fear of Victory
76. Be a Clown
77. The Worry Men
78. What is Reality?
79. Fire From Olympus
80. Night of the Ninja
81. Mudslide
82. The Cat and the Claw Part II
83. Nothing to Fear
84. The Lion and the Unicorn
85. Prophecy of Doom
86. Tyger, Tyger
87. Blind as a Bat
88. If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
89. Dreams In Darkness
90. The Last Laugh
91. Cat Scratch Fever
92. Moon of the Wolf
93. Paging the Crime Doctor
94. Time Out of Joint
95. Sideshow
96. The Under-Dwellers
97. The Forgotten
98. Showdown
99. Critters (NEW ENTRY)
100. The Terrible Trio
101. I’ve Got Batman in My Basement

Rogues Roundup

Farmer Brown (Peter Breck) (first appearance)

Despite all my complaints about the episode in general, I actually think there was something here that with refinement could have been a fun little original creation. Characters that look and sound like him don’t often get to be brilliant microbiologists, and like I said earlier, the picturesque farm actually being a huge scientific facility kind of ruled. I’d also have liked to have spent more time with him to explore if he felt any remorse about injecting his daughter with ‘beef steroids’.

Speaking of his daughter, she barely has any character so won’t be getting her own ranking, but much like her father, it’s nice to see some subversion of stereotypes, as the Daisy Duke-esque ditz is actually superhumanly strong and mops the floor with Batgirl.

It’s just a shame that these two weren’t developed further and the episode around them wasn’t better.

1. The Joker
2. Harley Quinn
3. Mr. Freeze
4. Poison Ivy
5. The Ventriloquist
6. Catwoman
7. Two-Face
8. Bane
9. The Riddler
10. The Phantasm
11. Baby-Doll
12. Mad Hatter
13. Clayface
14. HARDAC (and Randa Duane)
15. Ra’s al Ghul
16. Calendar Girl
17. Roxy Rocket
18. Killer Croc
19. Firefly
20. Penguin
21. Scarecrow
22. Lock-Up
23. Lloyd Ventrix
24. Rupert Thorne
25. Count Vertigo
26. Clock King
27. Nivens
28. Roland Daggett (and Germs & Bell!)
29. Enrique el Gancho
30. Josiah Wormwood
31. Talia al Ghul
32. Sid the Squid
33. Queen Thoth Khepera
34. Maxie Zeus
35. Jimmy ‘Jazzman’ Peake
36. Tony Zucco
37. Man-Bat
38. Rhino, Mugsy and Ratso
39. Hugo Strange
40. Red Claw
41. Arnold Stromwell
42. Mad Bomber
43. Tygrus
44. Kyodai Ken
45. Condiment King/Pack Rat/Mighty Mom
46. Farmer Brown (and Emmylou!) (NEW ENTRY)
47. Grant Walker
48. Gil Mason
49. Nostromos (and Lucas!)
50. Cameron Kaiser
51. Dr. Dorian (and Garth)
52. Mad Dog
53. Ubu
54. Professor Milo
55. Romulus
56. Arkady Duvall
57. Sewer King
58. Boss Biggis
59. Montague Kane
60. The Terrible Trio