Plot summary: Barbara Gordon and Batman struggle to keep Harvey Dent safe from Rupert Thorne, who is determined to prevent the former DA from testifying.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 10 (S1.E10)
Original Air Date: August 1st, 2024
Directed: Christina Sotta (4)
Written: Ed Brubaker (3)
Animation: Studio IAM (6)
Music: Frederik Wiedmann (10)
The shot of Batman looking menacingly at Rupert Thorne as lightning strikes behind him is an obvious homage to the opening titles of BTAS.
Some sources identify Joker’s voice actor as either John DiMaggio (who has voiced him before) or even Hamish Linklater, but I can’t find any confirmation of that. Some like when a hero and villain are played by the same actor. They might very well be doing that, but it seems far more likely it’s a placeholder and they’ve yet to actually cast him.
Batman’s secret phone number is 555-0127. Batman’s first (01) appearance was in Detective Comics Issue 27. Look they stuffed a ridiculous amount of trivia into Episode 5, so what do you want from me?
Recap
Barbara Gordon uses a trick coin to convince Harvey Dent to let her be his lawyer, though she and Bruce struggle to get Dent on board with the idea of helping his case.
Flass and Bullock abduct Harvey en route to his hearing on orders of Rupert Thorne, but he’s able to break free. Thankfully Barbara was close behind and handcuffs herself to him.
Dent dies taking a bullet to protect Barbara, Bullock & Flass are caught and Jim Gordon allows Batman to escape before more cops arrive.
Batman sends a message to Rupert Thorne… while elsewhere The Joker conducts twisted experiments in a creepy shack.
Episode Ranking
I don’t love this as an isolated episode of television, even if there are some decent ideas. I just don’t think it stands on its own two feet… but it does do some nice things for the season in general.
The most gimmicky of these is Bruce finally called his indentured servant Alfred for the first time after a full season of sticking to “Pennyworth.” I think that was sliiiightly too much, but I do think they’ve had a nice slow-burn relationship throughout, with ‘Night Ride‘ doing a lot for them. I also prefer it as a more general softening of Bruce, with Alfred pointing out he’s been warming up little by little and even sort of making friends. That’s been a good arc.
Batman chose to reveal himself to Barbara Gordon in the first episode when few people believed he was real. They had an impromptu team-up and he wanted to comfort her but did not in episode 5. And then the season ends with her anticipating his surprise appearance in her office and him giving sincere advice on how to help Harvey, as well as giving her his phone number. I assume this will lead to Season 2 being more of an ensemble.
Harvey Dent has been a season-long recurring character, with his and Bruce’s relationship established in the first episode, theoretically making the audience invest in him so that his transformation into Two-Face is more tragic. We’re beyond the pale now, and Bruce visits him in Arkham where we get one of the more intriguing moments for our protagonist of the season; Harvey accuses Bruce of being a great pretender, suggesting he knows that his friend’s playboy socialite routine is exactly that, an act. Dent’s lack of desire to help himself genuinely stumps Bruce, which is a nice card to play… but then the plot has to happen and everything ends up ‘resolving’ itself.
There’s also something to the moral dilemma of whether Dent deserves a plea bargain because he definitely did kill people. The show has frequently given a few lines or more per episode to social commentary on the criminal justice system, so this ties into that nicely. On the one hand Harvey could do Gotham good by ratting on the corrupt, but on the other he hid all of that in the first place and as he points out, others would not be offered such a deal so he’d be abusing privilege. But again, we never get an outcome to that because the plot has to happen.
That’s twice I’ve mentioned the plot happening and taking the air out of ideas. So let’s talk about that plot. Killing off one of the biggest villains in the Rogues Gallery, and one of the more famous members of your cast, and then having Batman empty a gun into same crates to scare Flass is… a set of choices. I’m not quite as bothered about the latter as some claim to be, as I don’t think every iteration of Batman has to be SO anti-gun he’d never even touch one, and he does chuck the thing into the sea. But killing Dent felt like a cowardly way to avoid dealing with everything I mentioned above. There’s also no ‘main’ antagonist for Batman to fight, and he’s instead just punching out goons one at a time, which I don’t mind in a normal episode, but a finale should have something a bit sexier in my opinion. EVERYTHING was tied to the intended gut-punch of Harvey’s death, but the character just didn’t hit the heights required for that to make it all work.
And that’s my biggest thing with this episode, to me it should have been the first episode of the second season, tying up the loose ends of the first and then moving on to new business, and just lacked the oomph for a finale. The BTAS tribute shot and teasing Joker do their best to correct that, but fundamentally I wasn’t overly thrilled with the game of cat and mouse at the docks with the heroes and villains. I should be, because I like when Batman emerges from the shadows (and fog in this case) and picks dudes off one by one. But as I said above, even that feels like a run of the mill episode thing, and not the big action set-piece to close the season.
- … And Be a Villain
- The Stress of Her Regard
- Kiss of the Catwoman
- The Night of the Hunters
- Night Ride
- The Killer Inside Me
- Moving Target
- In Treacherous Waters
- Savage Night (NEW ENTRY)
- Nocturne
Best Performance
Biiiiig shrug on this one. Nobody was bad by any means, but absolutely nobody stood out to me. I’ve never not picked someone before and it feels weird to start now so uhhh…. Krystal Joy Brown? She’s been solid but not amazing throughout the season and while Diedrich Bader gets to do more flashy highs and lows, he started to annoy me before the episode was over, so I’d rather give it to the constant voice of reason and empathy.
I did think Gary Anthony Williams and John DiMaggio were pretty good too, but not quite good enough. This might unfortunately be Hamish Linklater’s worst outing, which isn’t ideal for a finale that centres around the death of one of his only friends, while finally warming up to Alfred.
Rogues Roundup
Two-Face (Diedrich Bader) (eighth appearance)
Harvey’s duality continues to be somewhat interesting, while still somehow not being an overly compelling version of the character. Moving from rage to sadness now he’s been caught, Dent goes from wallowing in self-pity from his ‘good half’, to more venomous self-loathing that he turns on Babs for not grasping how worthless he is.
The problem is this starts to get more grating than interesting as the episode wears on. You can predict most of what he’s going to say and he becomes little more than a nuisance while Barbara tries to keep him alive. They almost make it work again when he tries to convince Babs to let him go so that they’ll all survive… but then the plot has to happen (see above).
Rupert Thorne (Cedric Yarbrough) (fifth appearance)
I do understand that Dent’s survival would be a loose end for Rupes, and the pair are intrinsically linked in BTAS, but part of me wonders if Thorne had no business having such a huge rule in the finale. Not only is he the one to set everything in motion, he’s the one Batman stares down to end the season (before the Joker scene of course.)
I think he’s a perfectly serviceable stand-in for all organised crime, and the dialogue and vocal performance has elevated him, but they’re going to need to do a lot of work next season if his role is going to grow.
Harvey Bullock & Arnold Flass (John DiMaggio & Gary Anthony Williams) (eighth appearance)
These two flitting between borderline comic relief to active villains who endanger lives and even kill the innocent has been somewhat jarring, but unfortunately they’re good at both. Seeing them attack their fellow cops (albeit in disguise) was somewhat surprising, as corrupt cops in fiction generally draw the line at their fellow pigs.
I think the biggest issue is it isn’t overly interesting to see a wedge driven between them. Yes, Flass has been characterised as more overtly evil vs Bullock’s opportunism, but it felt a little lazy to me. Also ostensibly the point of that differentiation is so that Bullock can be softened and reformed… but he murdered Firebug and was happily planning to to do the same to Barbara, which even if he didn’t pull it off is a line that can’t be crossed if you want to redeem somebody later. And Jim Gordon catches them both in the act too, so it’s not like he can just get away with it and change his ways.
The Joker (Unknown) (first appearance)
You know how it was really cool that they did a full season of a Batman show without feeling compelled to go to The Joker? Including Harley Quinn getting her own unique identity? Well surprise, fuckers!
Listen. I’m not actually anti-Joker. I think Joker is one of the greatest villains in fiction. It was inevitable he’d show up eventually (though my preference would be to tease him at the very end of the final episode!), it’s just nice to demonstrate the depth of the Rogues Gallery by not giving him an outsized role. We have no idea what they’re going to do with him, and this tiny appearance says absolutely nothing.
But that also means he’s going straight to the bottom on account of not actually doing anything.
- Clayface
- Harley Quinn
- Catwoman
- Two-Face (–)
- Firebug
- The Gentleman Ghost
- Flass & Bullock (↓)
- Rupert Thorne (–)
- The Penguin
- Onomatopoeia
- Jim Corrigan
- Nocturna
- The Joker (NEW ENTRY)
Title Card
The Matt Signal 
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