[Episode 06]

I'm actually pretty sure that the voice actress for Martha is the same for Leslie. The only upside to Martha's bland and unexplored character is that, seeing as how she hasn't properly been fleshed out, there is a whole lot of potential for Martha to become interesting and/or important in stories to come.

[Episode 06]

Okay, I'm back to the podcast and am listening to the animation criticisms on 'Eternal Youth'. Right on with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. praise.

Ha, Ras Al Ghul gone retarded.

Another edit: Starting up 'Perchance to Dream'. Can't wait.

I've been listening to James' love of the episode (and I completely agree) up to the issues with Martha Wayne's apparent insignificance, and I'm very interested by the complaint that Martha is a very flat character (I'd list Thomas too, but that isn't what's being discussed at the moment, although it very well could be in a minute) in Bruce's dream world. At least Thomas gets a few words of conversation in with Bruce during the episode, but seriously, I think Martha's only line is 'Bruce!' when Bruce runs out of the house after smashing the TV. Even those who love the episode to death, I've found, aren't able to argue around the fact that Bruce's parents are poorly represented as being anything other than people who loaf around and play golf. Okay, this is kind of rambling so I'll resume listening.

I'm probably not the comics buff that you guys are, but I've come across two very interesting Martha Wayne moments in recent memory. The first is in a famous Elseworlds tale, 'Arkham Asylum', which I think James mentioned on an earlier podcast which portrays Bruce as having an Oedipus complex, which means basically that he was sexually attracted to her and her death turned him into a sexually repressed maniac. The other is, I'm pretty sure, in Jeph Loeb's and Tim Sale's 'Haunted Knight', which is an anthology of three Batman stories. I forget the context, but I remember a flashback dealing with Bruce's insistence that his mother wear pearls to the Zorro movie, which of course was the central object of desire for the gunman. So basically, even if there's not much insight into Martha Wayne's importance to Bruce, it's definitely an interesting way of conveying Bruce Wayne's guilt at his parents' death.

>Gasp< Yoda (can't remember you're actual name at the moment because I'm so used to your username) has complaints. Well, so far I agree that the animation is very sub-par, but as for the fact that Bruce shouldn't look on in awe at Batman's capabilities, I think it's pretty cool and completely believable. Even if he knows what he can do, this is still a once in a lifetime moment to see himself in action from his Bruce Wayne persona (which, as the episode somewhat argues, is something of a separate entity from his Batman persona). I can see your problems, but I personally think it's a neat little moment. Oh crap, missed out on your complaint that Bruce wouldn't be distracted by ANYTHING if he's determined to find out what kind of conspiracy is going on here. Okay, now that makes you complaint a whole lot more valid and hard to refute. Never thought about that myself.

Okay, now about you're complaint about Bruce blaming Batman. Well, I'll probably just turn to my idol Jay Allman again for his incredibly deep and psychological commentary on this episode and put in bold the part where he justifies Batman's blaming himself. Here goes:

"Perchance to Dream" is interesting in the same way that Vertigo is interesting. Vertigo is also just a "trick mystery"--a fact emphasized when you remember that Hitchcock originally planned to end it with a scene of Scotty and Midge listening to a radio report about the arrest of Elster in Europe for the murder of Madeline. The truckloads of commentary about Vertigo all deal with the implications of what we've seen: what it tells us about Scotty's psychology and about the nature of obsession and domination and voyeurism. If PtD is not "interesting" for its implications, then neither is Vertigo.

I've said all of this on my website, but let me go over it again step by step.

"Perchance to Dream" reveals very surprising things about Bruce Wayne. Start with the fact that Tetch's dream machine does not manufacture a ready-made simulation for Batman. Instead, it can only take what is already inside him--his hopes and dreams and desires and fears--and turn them into a fantasy life that is meant to appeal to him at his deepest and most personal level. Hence, what it shows us in that fantasy life must be what is deeply true about him. That is why it is not merely a "trick," but an exploration of his psychology. ("For the Man Who Has Everything" does the same thing to Superman, but I don't think it reveals anything nearly as surprising about him.)

First, it splits Wayne in two: there is Bruce Wayne, playboy heir, and there is Batman, crimefighter. This is already a surprise, because most people interpret Wayne as having only a single "true" personality: he is Batman, and "Bruce Wayne" is just a mask. But if Wayne's fantasy materializes both personalities, then we ought to conclude that there really is a duality within him. There really are two "personalities" or psychologies. Otherwise, his fantasy life would either be one in which Bruce Wayne exists in a world without Batman, or in which Batman exists in a world without Bruce Wayne.

Second, there is the point of view that the dream subject adopts. Why is he "Bruce Wayne" instead of "Batman"? Why isn't he Batman, crime fighter, puzzled to discover that he does not have a separate existence as Bruce Wayne? Why isn't his fantasy life one in which he can devote all of his time and energy to fighting crime without having to worry about being "Bruce Wayne"? If this is what he really wanted, wouldn't the dream machine manufacture a fantasy in which he didn't have to be Bruce Wayne? That is the second surprise: apparently, our hero thinks that "Bruce Wayne" is the real personality, the root psychology, and so that is the perspective it adopts even though it doesn't get rid of the Batman figure altogether. (Why it doesn't get rid of the Batman figure is a topic I'll tackle below.)

My conclusion: The episode argues that Bruce Wayne is the man, and Batman is the mask.

(Side note: Notice the scene where Wayne questions Alfred about his life; it takes place with Wayne reflected in mirrors, which symbolicallly represents his doubling. I don't know if b.t. remembers enough about the making the ep to confirm that this was intentional; if Boyd Kirkland is reading this thread, maybe he could comment.)

Now, what do we learn about "Bruce Wayne"? That this part of the personality is very much a dilettante. He parties; he doesn't take his business responsibilties that seriously; he is bored with his WE duties; others have to run the company for him. That the fantasy does not develop anything interesting about him suggests that there isn't anything very interesting about him. You can say the same thing about his parents. Maybe he doesn't remember enough about them to give the machine enough material to develop them interestingly; or maybe it's that Wayne himself doesn't imagine that they would be very interesting people. (I know that this observation is offered as a criticism of the episode, but if the episode is canon I think we have to take its implications as canonical, too; and though it's doubtful that Thomas and Martha Wayne were that boring in real life, it's still an interesting discovery to find that Bruce apparently has this kind of picture of them.)

That the dream machine can't give Bruce Wayne an interesting life might suggest that the machine isn't very good at its job. Or it might be (what I sense) that Bruce Wayne does not have a very high opinion of himself; if he thinks of himself as a shallow playboy, is it any surprise that the dream machine would give him the "ideal life" of a shallow playboy? In essence, he sees himself, at bottom, as being the kind of person who would not enjoy the kind of life that the person he sees himself as would enjoy. Bruce Wayne, the person he thinks he is, would lead a life that he himself would long to escape.

This ties in with the very interesting discussion he has with "Leslie." She diagnoses his problem as a lack of self-esteem. (Further evidence for my diagnosis above.) Bruce Wayne, she says, feels that everything has been handed to him, and he resents it, so he has identified himself with an "ideal" life in which he has earned self-respect. Because "Leslie" is only a figure in the dream, basically she is another part of his mind diagnosing itself; his session with Leslie is a moment when he analyzes himself. And he endorses her conclusion: He is, he happily concludes, a spoiled layabout who daydreams of doing great things. And instead of being repulsed by this, his immediate reaction is one of relief and an almost giddy acceptance of his situation. This confirms that "Bruce Wayne" really is a dilettante, a dreamer.

And then he has his bad encounter with a newspaper. There are two ways to follow and interpret that bit. The first is to interpret it literally: The dream machine has a flaw, and our hero has caught it. The second is that the newspaper bit is just a part of his dream. I'll follow the first interpretation for the moment and come back to the alternative in a bit.

Wayne's immediate reaction is one of bewilderment and anger. What's interesting is that he doesn't immediately announce that he is "really" Batman and that everything is an illusion. He says that it is all unreal, but he he lashes out at Batman as an independent figure (when he screams at the TV), which suggests that he has not fully come back around to accepting his memories of being Batman but is still struggling to find himself and the truth about himself. He know that "Batman" is somehow mixed up in it and sets off to confront this figure.

That he sees "Batman" as being somehow outside of himself--again, as a personality that is "outside" his "Bruce Wayne" persona--is further supported by the fact that he confronts, accuses and physically attacks Batman, even though he "knows" Batman's routines as his own. Why does he do this? There are several possibilities, none of which contradict the others. It could be that Bruce Wayne is jealous of this superior side of the personality--as established earlier, he certainly has grounds for jealousy. But there is also the suggestive "You did this to me!" accusation he hurls at the cowled figure. Bruce Wayne knows that he is in a mess; apparently, he thinks that Batman got him into it. Well, he did, didn't he? Wayne not be in this predicament if he weren't chasing Tetch and out fighting crime in general. This is basically the cry of a man who, in some sense, doesn't want to be out there fighting crime. That's another interesting surprise. And why does he find the Hatter underneath the cowl when he rips it off? The revelation could have occurred by having him push Batman off the tower and then have the Hatter step out of the shadows. The implication must be that Wayne sees Batman as some kind of adversary: the enemy of the life of ease and privelege that Bruce Wayne would, in some sense, like to live.

I pause here to pick up the second thread mentioned above: perhaps the dream machine is not flawed. Maybe the mixed up words are just another part of the dream. Our hero has two dueling personalities: and at the moment that one seems to triumph in its deepest desires, its world crumbles in a way that can't be rectified. I would interpret it as the Batman persona fighting through and destroying the fool's paradise that Bruce Wayne would prefer to live in. That, then, would be the meaning of Wayne's "You did this to me!" in the church tower: his life would be a perfect dream except that his Batman personality keeps interfering. The Batman figure, after all, insists that "You're not well, Mr. Wayne," which implies a rejection in the strongest possible terms of Wayne's desires: they are diseased. And when Batman turns into the Hatter, it is the Batman personality's way of showing Bruce Wayne who is true enemies are: Gotham's gallery of rogues.

At this point I need to make a serious detour into some deep and very perplexing philosophical territory; since The Matrix films came out, I suppose most people are familiar with the problem of global skepticism: What if everything I see and believe is false, and reality is radically different from what I take it to be? The question sounds plausible, but it actually leads to a serious conundrum: If everything is a lie, then so too is the evidence that everything is a lie, because that evidence is, by hypothesis, part of the lie which is being presented to you. Hence, there can never be good evidence that everything is a lie. Worse, if you accept the hypothesis, then you can never trust any evidence that would say that you had escaped into the "real" reality. Because that evidence itself might be a lie.

In "Perchance to Dream" this conundrum is illustrated by "Leslie" and by "the Hatter"; if what the Hatter says is true, then both he and Leslie are figments of Wayne's imagination. But if that is true, then Wayne has no better reason to believe the Hatter than he has to believe Leslie. That is, his reasons for believing that the world is an illusion is no better than his reasons for believe that he is mad. (Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason, in part, to argue this very point. And, if nothing else, I've now saved you the trouble of deciphering the "B" Deduction of the Critique ) Wayne can only accept the Hatter's claim because he prefers to believe that his present "life" is an illusion. Put that insight together with the disappearance of Batman, and it suggests that Wayne has now re-integrated the two sides of his personality: He has chosen to be Batman. And he seals that choice by deliberately leaping off the tower. There is an unremarked ambiguity in this act: It is either the act of our hero trying to escape from the dream machine by using the "wake before you hit the ground" device, or it is an act of suicide: In either case, it is our hero demonstrating that he wants to depart any world in which he is not Batman, whether that means waking or dying. And there is nothing wrong with saying that it is both. It is Bruce Wayne committing suicide so that Batman can live; it is the inferior "Bruce Wayne" part of the personality finally getting out of the way of the Batman part.

(There is also an deeply disguised reference to Alice in Wonderland in the act: at one point in the book, Alice, reflecting on the tremendous physical changes she goes through, remarks that after she gets back home she would probably "think nothing of falling off the roof," an observation that the narrator admits is "probably true." That's a bleak pun on Carroll's part: if Alice fell off the roof, she would probably not be alive to think at all!)

Put it all together, and "Perchance to Dream" should probably be taken as one of the fundamental turning points in the inner life of the animated Batman: it's the moment in his history when the "Batman" of the later BTAS, TNBA, BB and JL/JLU episodes is fully born, because it's the moment that "Batman" becomes the man and "Bruce Wayne" really does become the mask.

That is, unless we accept the bleak logic of the non-malfunctioning "dream machine" hypothesis. In that case, there is no good evidence to suppose that Batman really has woken up. Instead, his "waking" would simply be the machine recalibrating the illusion so that Batman gets the life he has chosen--to be Batman--and given him a plausible way to "escape" into that life. (As the Hatter mischievously remarks, "There's no way out of this!" and he's right: once you become convinced that the world is a sham, you can never convince yourself that it is not. You can only forget that you ever thought it was a sham.) Even that ambiguity is captured in that final (often-maligned) line that Batman delivers at the end. If the machine is "the stuff that dreams are made of," then it is composed of "dream substance." But the substance that makes up the machine Gordon is handling is the same substance as everything else is made up of, which implies that everything else is "dream substance" too. Which implies that everything is still a dream. Batman's quiet delivery of the line could be taken as his rueful admitting that maybe he really hasn't escaped at all.

----------------

It's easy enough to reply to all of this that none of the writers/producers/directors had any notion of this in the episode they fashioned. But it's also pretty clear that Hitchcock wasn't the least aware of all the implications of Vertigo. Whether creative intentions should be taken as decisively refuting this interpretation is an entirely different subject. But at this point I can only wait for you to announce that none of this is "interesting."

My explanation is that Batman is the only thing that doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, just assume that his parents never died and everything makes sense. That is what life would be like for Bruce in an alternate reality, right? But in a world such as this, why would Batman even exist? It's the one thing that doesn't fit, so that's why I think Bruce targets him.

[Episode 06]

Finally! I've been waiting forever for this. Reading this thread, I'm assuming 'Perchance to Dream' is pretty well-liked but pretty harshly nitpicked (:smile:), but 'Laughing Fish' is getting some dislike (), but I'll just have to wait and see.

Starting on 'Eternal Youth' right now and right off the bat I'm glad this is getting some negativity. Post will be edited as I get deeper in, as usual.

Oh yeah, I'm psyched that the movies and 'Teen Titans' is getting covered. Glad you're going all the way on this.

[Episode 05]

Well that's sort of the thing. I do use A-F on a regular basis, so whenever numbers come up as a means of scoring I automatically equate them with their A-F counterparts, which would be 7 as average and so on.

[Episode 05]

Appointment in Crime Alley

Daggett's plan is obviously flawed.

First, he's willing to kill the citizens of Park Row / Crime Alley. Right there, his altruism is exposed as being bogus.

Forgetting that, let's say he moved the citizens out before leveling and rebuilding Park Row. Those people will now be homeless and will be forced into other, nicer neighborhoods. With no money or homes they'll continue their criminal ways, thus leading to the downfall of another neighborhood. That's the flaw in gentrification. I mean, look at what happened after Hurricane Katrina (okay, not quite gentrification, but you'll see my point in a second). Crime rates skyrocketed in the cities the lower class Louisiana citizens moved to. In Houston alone the homicide rate rose by 28% from the previous year.

Cleaning up an area is all well and good, but either do it for the current crop of citizens or make sure the displaced citizens have skills / jobs / educations that can be put to use so they don't resort to crime once they move. But therein lies the problem. If they had skills and jobs and educations they wouldn't be resorting to crime in the first place, and their neighborhoods wouldn't have fallen apart.

So do we help the unskilled, unemployed and uneducated rise up so they can take pride in their own towns and clean them up? Or do we swoop in, clean up the towns and push all of those people aside for overpriced condos? For every compassionate soul who helps the unfortunate better themselves, there's dozens of people willing to step on them and take what they want for themselves. Daggett falls into the latter group. He isn't helping these people; he's helping himself line his own pocket by charging astronomical rent.

While the leveling / rebuilding of an area can be a good thing, it isn't unless you help the displaced find jobs and homes. Otherwise you're simply pushing your troubles onto someone else.

Yeah, I completely understand Daggett's flaws, but the fact that he is completely flawed makes for an uninteresting dilemma and missed potential. If Daggett was portrayed with more ambiguity, like most Batman villains, the plot could have made for an interesting conflict by asking the question, 'is Daggett right or wrong? Does the end result of what he is trying to accomplish justify the selfish means by which he does so?' I'm all for Daggett eventually coming out as the villain, but it would have made for a far more dramatic episode had a real heavy moral weight been involved like that. I'm not saying Daggett was right, but the fact that he is so wrong really kills what could have been a really interesting choice between, as in the quoted review, the preferences of the community and the prescription of the developers. The latter will obviously turn out wrong, Batman will prefer to leave Crime Alley as it is and expose Daggett for what he was established as in 'Feat of Clay' and everything will return to the status quo, but it would end up being far more ambiguous and thus interesting predicament, as is the case in most episodes ('Heart of Ice', 'Feat of Clay', 'Two-Face', etc. come to mind); I'm aware that an episode doesn't need to have some big conflict and can end up being very effective good vs evil fare, but with such a serious matter at hand in the episode, it would have been nice to have seen something not so completely one-sided and opinionated, even if I do agree with the stance myself.

And as for the long-term effects of removing the citizens to reestablish the community, true, the area would be cured of a few symptoms, but the street crime would most likely continue elsewhere. If we can assume that the realistic world of Batman continues along such realistic logic, and take into account all sorts of real-world statistics, and even the whole intention of doing good for a community, selfish corporate benefit aside, is exposed as futile, it is a pretty good comparison to Batman, whose entire goal of crime eradication is futile in and of itself. He knows that the crooks he locks up will get back out and the cycle will continue, which is the same predicament with Crime Alley. Remodeling and everything could appease a few symptoms, but the plague of crime in Gotham will always continue despite.

Maybe I'm wrong to judge something not by its own criteria, but simply by how I would have preferred the way it turned out, but still, Roland Daggett complaints aside, the episode itself isn't very interesting (which is probably why I'd rather a more intense dilemma) in my opinion. It takes a few needless walks down Batman's past, all of which we already know, features a horribly cliched ticking time bomb, and the whole ordeal is pretty badly plotted, with most of the episode being Batman's dealing with excessive distraction before any real plot progress is made. Batman's inability to touch a legally clean but obviously morally bankrupt man like Daggett (almost a pseudo Superman/Lex Luthor kind of affair) is what gives the ending some juice, but seeing as how Daggett's scheme is foiled and Crime Alley is never really bothered in the future, you don't get the sense that Daggett's slipping away from punishment is an ominous affair that gives Batman any reason to be enraged. All the other crooks Batman locks up, as is commonly noted throughout the comics, end up escaping prison anyway, and the cycle always ends up repeating itself. It seems that Daggett's evasion of punishment really only means that Batman will have to avoid that cycle. After all is said and done, Batman saved the day, but it ended up being a seriously long and drawn-out affair in an episode that had more room to fill.

Mad as a Hatter

It isn't just that Tetch become a "typical Batman villain" (as I think I called him on the show), it's that the story falls apart once he does. As soon as the walrus and the carpenter jump Batman, the episode dies a sad death. It isn't until the end, when Jervis sees Alice with Billy, that it regains a little bit of its heart. But it's too late by then. The third act is so bland that it takes away any emotional impact that final moment could (and should) have had.

I guess it's simply a case of 'agreeing to disagree'. I personally find the entire case of over-the-top Wonderland hide-out and instantaneously suited up Wonderland lackeys to be excusable; it's all meant to convey Tetch's descent into madness and how far he's gone to construct his own little world, so I'm willing to accept it as necessary to Tetch's full transformation into the Mad Hatter.

Thank you for the kind words. What makes WFP so fun for me is that, as you said, James and I are just fans. Sure, we'll talk about plot and character development, but it's all about reliving our youths and being two fanboys (fanmen?) who still enjoy the universe BTAS created.

Exactly what I was getting across. Me being pretty young and all, my memories of 'Batman: The Animated Series' all come from watching the Cartoon Network reruns during the mid-90's at the age of 5 or 6. So I'm all for sophisticated analysis, but when it's all said and done, the reason I ever got hooked on the show was because I loved how cool and awesome it was to see a superhero fight the bad guys. Your reviews pretty much mirror how fun and nostalgic the show is, which is why it's such a refreshing experience.

Concerning the scoring system, five being average makes sense to me because it's in the middle. I can't say "that was average" and then give it a seven out of ten, because seven isn't average. Seven is a really respectable score. But that's how my mind works. Other sites and other people see it differently and that's cool, but I can't wrap my head around those scoring systems.

I see the system as being reflective of the school grading system, which has it so 7-10 is a D to an A, and anything below is an F. So by that logic, I see 7's as being average and 6's as being moderate failures.

[Banish one character]

Juggernaut to DC. Seeing as how, to my knowledge, Xavier is the only one with the mental powers to take down the Juggernaut, it'd be awesome to see all the DC heavy hitters trying to stop the Unstoppable without having the means to really take him down (unless of course there's a DC character with mental powers good enough as Xavier's, which I doubt).

[Episode 05]

Finished it up today. Thoughts:

'Apointment in Crime Alley'- I'm starting to get adjusted to your rating system (I always go by 7 as being average whereas you have 5 as being average, so when normally a 6 would mean below average for me, it'd be above average for you), and I'd probably rate this one a little less, mainly because the episode could have easily made for an interesting dilemma if Daggett was to be taken more seriously than 'generic evil mastermind'. Daggett does have a point; rebuilding Crime Alley could pave the way for a drop in crime, and what I find pretty ironic is the way the episode portrays Crime Alley itself. For a place notorious for street crime, I find it interesting that it's portrayed as a victimized neighborhood; despite all the dramatized talk of thugs and muggers, all you see are the defenseless residents being hurt by the lackeys of an evil corporation. Surely, Daggett's means of helping Park Row regain its footing are criminal in and of themselves, but I don't see how Batman could possibly deny that there's a chance that Daggett is onto something. There's such a potential for ambiguity, but it all ends up being nothing more than 'evil madman vs the good of the underclass'. Basically, this excerpt from one of my favorite B:TAS reviewers sums my thoughts up best:

All praise to Batman for never forgetting the lives and dignity of the underclass, but Daggett, with his plans for urban renewal, also has a point. Leslie Thompkins is full of kind words and noble intentions, but only Daggett has a vision that goes beyond palliatives toward something like a cure. The causes of systemic poverty are complicated and obscure, but they clearly have something to do with the bad habits that viciously regressive communities (like Crime Alley) instill in their members. The destruction of the neighborhood and the scattering of its inhabitants, in the long run, might be the only cure for their dysfunction. Instead of dramatizing this difficult choice between the (possibly misguided) preferences of the community and the (possibly mistaken) prescription of the developers--the choice, that is, between the dignity of the individual and the health of the community--the story plays Daggett for all the oily malice it can summon. As with "The Forgotten" and "Lock-Up," "Appointment in Crime Alley" winds up preferring theatrical evil to serious drama.

Let's see, 'Mad as a Hatter' is a favorite of mine. I don't mind at all the way it turned out. Yes, Jervis became a madman born of his own insecurities, when once he was a nice and empathetic man who simply wanted someone to love him. But that's what makes it such a tragic episode and what makes the Mad Hatter such a perfect Batman villain. Just like most of the others, Tetch starts out with an envisioning of what he wants his life to be and it's nothing more than having a romantic relationship with a woman. However, he can't have life that way were he to go on living the way he does. Instead of accepting his beloved's choice and moving on, Tetch refuses to accept life if it's not on his terms, under his control (so mirrors the moment in 'House and Garden' when Poison Ivy state something along the lines of, "All I wanted was a family, as long as it was on my terms." So does Mr. Freeze when he refuses to give his wife proper medical treatment in 'Sub-Zero', instead stating that he wishes to treat her his own way). And thus he goes mad, cheating a woman out of her life so as to adapt the world to his own ideal and personal Wonderland. And that's when he loses sympathy; he could have been sympathetic had we seen him accept his loss for what it is and sadly walk away, but instead he becomes despicable in his actions, which I find to be an almost perfect mirror to Batman. We like Batman for doing the right thing in the wake of a tragedy, and thus we have nothing but sympathy when he reminisces over his parents. But we end up despising Tetch for doing the entirely wrong thing in the wake of a (lesser) tragedy.

Anyway, I suppose the main complaint was with the over-the-top set pieces and cartoon action thriller the episode became. Yes, I understand, but it's probably mandatory that every episode have some fight scenes to please the kiddies. But then again you could say that the ridiculous third act undermined the serious nature and the tragic element of the episode, which was probably what you were getting at in the podcast. Well in my opinion, the Hatter's final lines when crushed by the Jabberwock, 'would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance' completely hits home with retaining the tragedy and sympathy of the beginning. There' s so much you can take out of it: it's obviously sad, with Tetch coming to terms with the fact that his relationship with Alice was meant to crumble, but what makes it so great is the fact that it's a line from 'Alice and Wonderland', which means that the line both shows us Tetch's sadness, but reminds us of his new insane persona by conveying his sadness by means of a line from the book around which he built his fantasy life. It's also ironic that he initially used the line to charm Alice on their first date, and yet now is meant to mark her departure from his life. It's a perfect ending that more than compensates for the cartoony third act, I think.

'Dreams in Darkness' is an episode I don't make much of. It's just a fun, twisted episode that really lacks a lot of substance; Scarecrow really has no motive and the potential for deep exploration of Batman's character was far less carried out than in 'Perchance to Dream' and other such great episodes. But hey, the dream sequences look really cool and are very stylistically rendered even if there's not much underlying meaning to them (Batman constantly relives the moment he lost his parents and he's afraid of being consumed by the other crazies he locks up; not much new info there). And Scarecrow's escape from his heavily guarded cell is most certainly a plot hole which never got any type of explanation. Personally, I prefer 'Fear of Victory' as a Scarecrow episode, but at least this was better than 'Nothing to Fear'.

Closing thoughts. What I like about 'World's Finest Podcast' is that it isn't so much about intense analysis about character development and plot structure and the like, which is what I'm accustomed to. It's more of a fun and refreshing place where two fans just spew out random comments about the little things that are so often overlooked in most critical reviews; you guys are more inclined to make comments like 'But if you notice here; Batman is slowly getting more ticked off...' or 'I don't really think Batman should have assumed it was just a tranquilizer dart. The Batman I know would always be more careful' or 'This is obviously a Bill Finger reference', etc. I think it's a whole lot of fun.

Great job and can't wait for the next episode; it's got three of my all time favorites: 'Perchance to Dream', 'Robin's Reckoning', and 'The Laughing Fish' (best Joker episode ever).

[Episode 05]

I'm in the middle of the 'Fear of Victory' review and I don't think the point of the fear toxin (at least in this particular episode) was to bring fears to the surface. Since it builds on adrenaline and therefore excitement, I saw it as taking what would normally be fun and exhilarating for a person and subverting it into fearfulness, so I didn't see it as contradicting Robin's usual comfort around heights and his childhood as an acrobat; I personally thought the episode was trying to allude to his experience with heights. Seeing as how Brian Rogers (I'm pretty sure that was his name) is incredibly skilled at football and has no real fear of it, he still ended up being nervous and afraid of the other players (the monsters thing was goofy, but what the hey) because that's when his adrenaline rush would kick in, so the same with Robin, who is normally comfortable and exhilarated around heights, would end up having the excitement of heights transformed into fear.

Now, it's obvious that the fear toxin worked differently than it usually does, but I think it is a bit more grounded in reality for it to feed off of adrenaline than for it to magically penetrate the human psyche and bring fears to life. But whether you prefer one version of the toxin or the other or find one as being more true to the comics, I think that it was pretty clear that the toxin in this episode was not the same as usual and was not meant to exaggerate already existent fears but rather change excitement to fear. Personally, I think it's pretty neat that Scarecrow would have variations on his toxins as opposed to simply one version.

Honestly not trying to be a nitpicking jerk, just offering my interpretation to see if it could possibly sway you from disliking the episode's fear toxin portrayal. Loving the other comments so far.

I'll probably post more as I get deeper in to the episode.

Edit: On 'Clock King' now. Completely agree that Fugate shouldn't be able to know Batman's fight speed. But I think what's even more ridiculous is that even if he knows how fast Batman punches, that doesn't ensure at all that he'd be able to dodge something that fast. It's like saying, 'I know exactly how fast the Batmobile is; that means I'll be able to outrun it.' I mean, knowing the time of something doesn't automatically mean that you should be able to overcome it. It sort of ties in with what you were saying about Fugate's impossibly keen physical skill.

[Episode 04]

Disappointed by Vendetta getting sixes, but otherwise quite satisfied.

[Top 5 DCAU moments]

Anyone remember 'Maid Of Honor', when Batman interrogates the Kaznian mercenary?

The criminal speaks in Kaznian with the subtitles:

"You can't understand a word I'm saying, and even if you could I wouldn't say anything."

Batman starts speaking Kaznian with subtitles:

"I can...(Face becomes incredible dark)...And you will."

One of my favorite Batman moments ever.

Surprised no one's mentioned Dan Turpin's death in 'Apokalips...Now! pt 2'. Easily one of the top five most heart-wrenching moments of the entire DCAU.