Given all of my complaints about the previous Penguin episode and the character, in general, you'll probably be relieved to know that I won't spend this entire post complaining again, as The Mechanic, while not tremendously innovative in style or story, is still a solid entry for the series and well-told in terms of the action sequences, the believable danger for our heroes, and the threat posed by a villain who is often the least threatening of anyone who normally faces The Batman.
It's perhaps understandable that this episode features a more menacing Penguin (Paul Williams), because several elements of it were clearly taken straight from Batman Returns, Tim Burton's film which was the first medium to feature the character as anything other than a foppish rich guy. It was notably his first appearance as a mutant, with hands that looks like fins and so forth (unless you count the quite pointed nose that he's always had, I guess.) That feature was present from the beginning of B: TAS and now the attitude that Danny DeVito brought to the character came with it. It also inspired major elements of the plot, such as Penguin taking control of the Batmobile, and minor elements, like the giant rubber duck that sends Arnold Rundle (Steve Franken) presumably to his doom after he supplies the villain with the info by which to track down the title character of the episode, Earl Cooper (Paul Winfield), the mechanic. Winfield should be well-known to SF film fans (the lieutenant who tries to help Sarah Connor in The Terminator, among others) and he also wasn't the only SF star to be part of this episode, as John De Lancie (most well-known as Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation) voiced Eagleton, one of Penguin's henchmen.
The episode opens right into the action, with The Batman and Robin in hot pursuit of the Penguin's henchmen and with an acknowledgment that this kind of action is as routine as you'd expect it to be when Robin raises an eyebrow at one of them spraying the Batmobile with bullets ("Is he kidding?") and The Batman's subsequent response: "Maybe he's new in town..." Given that the plot centers around not only fixing the Batmobile and the parts involved, but also the hijacking of it, I found it extremely satisfying to watch the moment when Penguin's car drops off a bridge to a passing boat and how detailed and realistic the destruction of said car was (wheels flying off, etc.)m in contrast to usual Hollywood durability (or explosions that obviate that kind of detail.) In that same respect, I have to say that if they were trying to maintain the secrecy of Earl's workshop, driving the smoking Batmobile into one of the worst (and largely abandoned) neighborhoods in town is probably not the best way to go unnoticed. That leads right into the central plot, but kind of stuck out as a marked contrast to the otherwise fairly subtle element of that plot that leads the villain to the Batmobile. But that subtlety is kind of undermined by its circumstances, as well. As soon as Earl began ordering parts to repair the Batcar, my first thought was: "He's ordering parts from public suppliers? Wouldn't those normally come from Wayne Enterprises for precisely this reason?"
But most viewers probably wouldn't be thinking that much into it, either. What was interesting about Earl's setup is that it looked like an inspiration for the alternative HQ that Bruce Wayne adopts in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, after Wayne Manor is burned to the ground in his first film. Another atmospheric element that caught the eye was the billboard that announced: "Welcome to Gotham City. America's Playground." That's probably the first and last time that slogan was ever attached to Gotham City (and I'm not entirely sure when Las Vegas began using it) but the idea of a playground was in tune with, again, the high level of action in this episode. The opening scene was one aspect of it, but the entire third act was one long action sequence that was paced really well. The insta-gliders that both heroes were equipped with upon ejecting from the Batmobile were a really nice touch, especially since they didn't instantly disappear when they both landed, as would often have been the case in cartoons with lower production values. That menacing aspect to the Penguin also turned into actual murderous intent when he threatened Earl's daughter and assistant, Marva (Candy Brown.) His final moment on screen, in the prison license plate shop, was also a nice touch. The plate he tears apart says "Gotham - the Dark Deco State." Putting aside the fact that Gotham is a city, not a state, that moment was a nod by the producers, as "dark deco" was their label for the visual style of the series as a whole. So, all in all, a quite positive episode.
Next time, we get a two-fer of villains and the first example that may have set the tone for later villain series.
