Plot summary: Batman tries to prevent an impending mob war between Rupert Thorne and The Penguin.

1. Elseworlds
2. Batman: Caped Crusader
3. Notes and Trivia
4. Recap
5. Episode Ranking
6. Best Performance
7. Rogues Roundup
8. Title Card

Elseworlds

So obviously this site exists with the intent of reviewing the DCAU, but naturally I enjoy many of the DC movies and shows from other continuities. I’m absolutely not going to cover EVERYTHING, but anything I do decide to write about will be collected under this Elseworlds banner, starting with Batman: Caped Crusader due to its obvious BTAS DNA. I won’t be giving these quite the full treatment, keeping pictures to a minimum for instance, but still plenty of sexy, sexy words!

Batman: Caped Crusader

If you’re anything like me you’ve spent the last 20 years wondering why there isn’t a Batman cartoon on the air with the same kind of positioning and resources devoted to it as BTAS. Heck, the last Batman cartoon to even air was 2013’s Beware The Batman (sorry, Batwheels), which seems utterly insane in an era where superheroes and streaming have dominated.

When HBOMax launched it seemed a no brainer to get the band back together, and WB execs clearly felt the same way as they approached Bruce Timm about doing more BTAS. He declined as he has historically been against treading old ground, but did see it as an opportunity to emphasise some elements he didn’t get to do originally, whether due to clashes with writers or the network, landing on a pulpy noir aesthetic with more emphasis on mysteries. Matt Reeves and JJ Abrams are also attached as Executive Producers, presumably due to the former helming a series of Batman films and shows while the latter… is I don’t know, just a fan of BTAS and is in his ‘it would be cool if…’ era?

The series was announced in mid 2021 and then went dark for almost three years, to the point you may have spotted numerous comments from me in my BTAS/Beyond reviews joking that it may simply never come out. Turns out that was closer to being a reality than I thought, as new head of WB and demon-in-a-skin-suit, David Zaslav, no longer wanted the show for either HBOMax or Cartoon Network, but did allow them to shop it to interested parties, with Prime eventually picking it up for a two-season order.

Sadly there’s no Paul Dini, as it seems he and Timm don’t get along, but comics legend Ed Brubaker served as head writer for the first season, so that’s neat!

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 1 (S1.E1)

Original Air Date: August 1^st, 2024

Directed: Christina Sotta (1)

Written: Jase Ricci (1) (story & teleplay) & Bruce Timm (1) (story)

Animation: Studio IAM (1)

Music: Frederik Wiedmann (1)

There ARE title cards, but for whatever reason (my guess is Bruce Timm is a grump) they weren’t included within the episodes themselves. See the bottom of each of my reviews.

The map of Gotham on the translucent board in the middle of the Bat Cave is the same as the one from Batman ’66

Bruce Timm chose to gender-bend The Penguin due to (in his opinion) a lack of quality female Batman villains. And yet Poison Ivy is nowhere to be seen this season!

Penguin sings ‘(Won’t You Come Home) Bill Bailey’, fitting for a nightclub catering to shady men trying to escape their families.

‘Iggy’ is almost certainly intended to be their take on Ignatius Ogilvy aka Emperor Blackgate, a lieutenant and later rival to Penguin.

Recap

While targeting a Rupert Thorne smuggling operation, Batman learns Thorne businesses are being blown up, with The Penguin paying off the fire inspector to rule them accidents.

Oswalda Cobblepot murders her own son, Aaron, after Thorne implies he is the rat in her operation feeding him intel, even though it is actually her other son, Ronnie, who seeks protection from Jim Gordon.

Penguin realises the truth and despite being defeated and captured by Batman, she successfully blows up GCPD with a military-grade cannon.

While the building was evacuated in time, Bruce realises he’s handed Penguin’s empire to Rupert Thorne and has thus failed on two fronts.

Episode Ranking

I would call this a serviceable if not overly compelling debut episode. Meat and potatoes if you will. They certainly hit many of the recognisable BTAS notes early, from heavily stressing lighting and shadow (cool shot of Penguin in silhouette), to an orchestral soundtrack, to starting off with a classic ‘Batman fights the mob’ sequence. It’s reminiscent of Mask of the Phantasm, albeit far smoother, as well as the equivalent scene in Batman Begins, which makes sense as all 3 of these are borrowing from Batman: Year One. It’s a pretty decent ‘one of those’, with Batsy using darkness, smoke, bolas and generally using stealth to pick off goons one at a time. His combat is simple but brutally effective (there are a lot of stories where Batman is the master of all conceivable martial arts, but I personally prefer this model where he seems to win as much by force of will as fancy training), and this all takes place seconds after the thugs claim he doesn’t even exist. You simply have to do this scene, and it got them off to a far stronger start than I think the full episode made good on.

Where the opener is obligatory but good, what follows is obligatory in a more negative sense. For example the conversation between Barbara Gordon and Harvey Dent is entirely expository, informing the audience of their respective stances and that Harv is running for mayor. It’s not the clumsiest exposition in the world, but it’s still more about delivering information about the series than it is about telling a story or just being entertainingly written. Batman hanging somebody from a rooftop to get them to talk has been done to death and there’s no new spin on it.

The party scene is mostly fun, with Penguin doing show tunes, Bruce Wayne trying to the same joke on multiple women, open hostility between mob bosses, and some ‘oops, murdered the wrong kid’ villainy. However you’ve also got yet more matter of fact conversation between Dent and The Gordons, and while they get a joke out of it, Bruce ultimately fails to achieve anything while he’s there. Oh, and then in his next appearance he just hits 3 Penguin goons with his fucking car! They survive, but it feels a bit much, even for the ‘darker, less human’ Batman they’re going for.

I also think there was a bit of a leap in logic by the heroes that Penguin would definitely blow up GCPD just because she theoretically could. The audience knows Flass & Bullock snitched, but Jim Gordon doesn’t, so I wonder if we could have gotten there another way. Batman finding out for sure and getting a message to them, perhaps? In fact, I don’t think they should have left the Iceberg Lounge at all; I would have preferred Bruce’s snooping uncovering both the murder and the cannon, and everybody having to abandon ship while Batman tried to prevent it being used. Nothing of value was achieved in between these two scenes anyway. The final couple of minutes are relatively exciting, and they nailed the downer-ending, but I can’t help but wish we got to play with Penguin and the Iceberg Lounge more along the way.

I enjoyed the episode more on a rewatch, but it’s still not a banger. But hey! Default number one for now!

1. In Treacherous Waters (NEW ENTRY)

Best Performance

I like Minnie Driver, truly I do, but I thought this was an uninspired performance as Penguin on her part, which perhaps contributes to the episode lacking ‘oomph.’ I appreciated her providing the singing voice too, but aside from that, it doesn’t really stand out like it perhaps should. There’s a fine line between trying to sound cold and coming across as disinterested, and I think she unfortunately landed on the wrong side, especially as many of her readings in the final fight are stilted.

I will always have a soft spot for good old ‘Bender Bending Rodriguez’ himself, John DiMaggio, whose fire inspector got scared half to death by Batman. It’s really just high-pitched and frantic, but what I liked about it was him repeating “It was the freakin’ Penguin!” after Batman had already left, which struck me as quite human. Or maybe the TV/Movie version of human. Either way! Oh, and he’s Harvey Bullock for like three seconds.

But ultimately I have to go with Paul Scheer as both of Penguin’s idiot fail-sons. They’re both pathetic man-children, but in slightly different ways, with Aaron a little more heightened, while Ronnie hits on Barbara in cringe fashion. Scheer nails both aspects, as well a the ranting and raving when each fear for their lives, and every time these adult men say “mama” I shudder a little, so congrats!

Rogues Roundup

The Penguin (Minnie Driver) (first appearance)

While the worst people in the world would have you believe gender-bending The Penguin is a crime, I thought it was a perfectly solid attempt to do something original with a character that for me they never really did enough with in BTAS. Making her an all-singing, all-dancing, party-host who also runs a crime empire and callously murders her own children is certainly a new direction to go, and there’s definitely something to her ‘winning’ despite being captured.

But introducing such a big character and then having them captured and never seen again in the first episode sure does hurt their standing. I suppose it had to be somebody, and better a name-brand foe than a generic mobster, but I think they could have done more with Oswalda. Perhaps Minnie Driver being a little blah hurt her. Maybe she just needed more screen time. I don’t really know.

Rupert Thorne (Cedric Yarbrough) (first appearance)

Rupes pointing the finger at the wrong Cobblepot son, resulting in his death, and then telling the actual informant he’s on his own is good stuff. He also gets the better of the tense public exchange with Penguin, and ends up positioned as the main mobster by the end of the episode, somewhat subverting expectations for the more colourful characters to usurp the traditional gangsters.

Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader) (first appearance)

I mean… he’s more of a series regular until you-know-what happens, but he is also positioned to be a little more weaselly from the off, so why not? I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I appreciate that they went for a more literal interpretation of Harvey being ‘two-faced’, as he’s self-serving, conniving and has political ambitions that lead him to speak in double-talk.

Him offering to decide the fate of Barbara’s client via a coin toss with his famous two-headed coin is a cute moment, because he thinks he’s being charming and decent by showing he would never actually push for the death penalty, but Barbara shuts the entire thing down before the… punch line, I guess?… because she takes her job seriously, so he ends up looking worse than if he’d just kept his mouth shut.

1. Rupert Thorne (NEW ENTRY)
2. The Penguin (NEW ENTRY)
3. Harvey Dent (NEW ENTRY)

Title Card