Batman, Again

Why exactly do we, as a culture, need more Batman stories? This isn’t the question that Batman: Caped Crusader is trying to prompt, but I couldn’t help but find myself wondering this the longer the animated series went on. Strictly speaking, Batman: Caped Crusader has an unimpeachable pedigree. Bruce Timm of Batman: The Animated Series frontlines the project, and it’s little exaggeration to say that Batman: The Animated Series is the single most important influence on the Batman as the modern zeitgeist understands him. The grim 40s noir vibe? The oddly sympathetic villains? Stories with moral depth that even children can parse? All of this traces to Batman: TAS despite that series’ own genesis as a toyetic interpretation of Tim Burton’s Batman, and Batman: Caped Crusader just expands on this vision.

In a weird way, that actually manages to be the ultimate downfall of the Batman: Caped Crusader. There just isn’t anything new, or relevant, or even that interesting in the story’s execution. The animated series certainly starts strong. Batman exists as a superstitious legend- and one of surprisingly little relevance. It turns out that the real animal-themed persona of note is the Penguin, in this iteration a buxom, gender-flipped cabaret performer using secondhand military hardware to declare war on Rupert Thorne, a more classically designed mafia boss.

Diagetically, Caped Crusader presents all of this as a plot twist of the first episode, but mentioning it spoils nothing, since the twist never actually goes anywhere. Despite the Penguin having more characterization than the mob boss Rupert Thorne with only a small fraction of the screentime, she only shows up in the first episode, where Rupert Thorne ends up defeating her mostly by sheer dumb luck. As villains go, Rupert Thorne isn’t a very interesting one. I’m not at all exaggerating when I write that the closest Batman: Caped Crusader gets to distinguishing him from any other random mob boss you’ve ever seen in any other random piece of media is that he enjoys watching baseball with his son.

What makes Batman: Caped Crusader so frustrating is that it’s very close to having a novel interpretation of Batman. In this more tech-limited setting, the show strongly implies that gang warfare and police corruption is the main obstacle Batman faces in obtaining justice for Gotham City. There are also hints that Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, is genuinely mentally ill, yet smart enough to evade the questioning of Harleen Quinzel as his court-appointed psychologist. That Harleen Quinzel will turn out to be Harley Quinn is inevitable. But it’s interesting why she turns into Harley Quinn, and Batman: Caped Crusader almost pulls it off when we learn that Quinzel is so disgusted by the genuine lack of empathy in her most high profile clients that she enslaves them into performing good works against their will. Could this be the woke Harley Quinn for whom we’ve all been waiting?

The very next episode answers that question very much in the negative, the villain being a ghost who steals from the poor but doesn’t bother the rich, who Batman defeats through magic. This isn’t the only supernaturally themed episode that goes entirely against the core appeal of the premise. In another one Batman does battle with an evil little girl who can absorb souls. In Batman: TAS such a one-off story might not have seemed so off-brand. But with only 10 episodes that from the beginning we can see will lead to Harvey Dent turning into Two-Face, it’s a little odd that all the exposition we get as to why Harvey Dent is feuding with Rupert Thorne in the first place localizes entirely at a traveling carnival repurposed as a charity event.

While Batman: Caped Crusader is banking heavily on being able to appeal to existing Batman: TAS fans, the more I think about it, the harder it is to justify why anyone else should even care about this show. The Rupert Thorne storyline, boring as it is, doesn’t even get a real resolution. The show just promises us that Batman will get around to it next season.

Batman: Caped Crusader also promises that if it gets a second season, it will have a new version of the Joker. This blatantly pandering move on its own kills nearly all of the goodwill of the Harley Quinn episode. I mean this not so much in the sense that the Joker’s existence cheapens Harley Quinn as a character, but that this particular version of Harley Quinn is very much about interrogating what kind of world inspires people to become costumed nutcases in the first place. Caped Crusader is evidently not interested in this question, as the token good cops/good attorneys go from anti-Batman in the first episode to pro-Batman in the final one solely because all other attempts to improve society have failed in very broadly defined philosophical terms.

That’s just Batman culture in a nutshell. Sure, it’s not good that Batman exists, but nobody has any better ideas. Maybe it was naive of me to think that Batman: Caped Crusader could be anything more than that, given how constantly our culture monetizes the mythos. Just on merit, though, Batman: Caped Crusader simply isn’t worth the effort.