Two nights in Porto and one last one in Lisbon

So, yeah, Porto was generally a better experience than Lisbon, even for a day-and-a-half. Like I said, we were staying right downtown, so there was much more energy around our locale. That energy included repeated entreaties from the tchotchke shops to come in and check out the wares that were the same as any other shop that almost invariably appeared within a half-dozen storefronts, if not less (We were proudly told by one owner that he owned two other shops in that area, including one within 100 meters, so if we didn't find the size we were looking for, he'd just run over to the other shop.) It's like being on Decatur Street in the French Quarter; same shit, different door. The other popular locale was shoe stores. On St. Catarina Street, there were more shoe stores in a three-block stretch than I've seen in some whole towns. It was insane. Almost literally every third shop along the several blocks that we walked was a shoe store.

The big event on Tuesday was a river cruise on the Douro River, which is what runs right by Porto to the Atlantic. Porto is entirely on the north shore and the city of Gaya is on the south shore. There are a half-dozen bridges running between the two, some modern and steel, some medieval and stone, and a couple that are multi-level. But the follow-up to the cruise was a port tasting on the Gaya side. Now, as noted, our experience with port was not great, either in Portugal or outside it. The stuff we tried at the local market the night before was also not something I'd go after again (The olives, OTOH, were great.) But we had a tasting with local distiller, Calem, and this stuff was fantastic. I was mistaken when I thought that tawny port was rosé. It's just the most aged of port that changes color with the aging process, with ruby and white having less time in the barrel. That also gives tawny the most barrel character, as you might expect. After a tour of their distillery, where they tried to impress us with the size of their barrels, we tried a tawny and a white, both of which were excellent. They had balance. They weren't overly sweet. They had depth. We were immediately smitten and thought about shipping a couple bottles home... only to be brought up short by Michigan being one of the two or three states in the Union dumb enough to still forbid shipping alcohol, which I was hoping there might be a way around, but there isn't. I thought we were the only ones, but those new friends we met on the tour are from Rhode Island, which also doesn't permit mailing booze. It's just simple-minded protectionism for the local distributors; not even producers. One last, great example of legislatures (and attorney generals) that are effectively bought and paid for. That same problem is what prevents us from shipping home a bottle of ginjinha, which we'd become increasingly fond of while we were there.

We went from there to a restaurant down the street where I finally snagged a francesinha, which is a toasted sandwich of pork roast, ham, bacon, and linguica, over which is cheese melted by a super hot tomato-and-beer sauce. It sounds amazing. It was, in fact, excellent. Would gladly have again, except for the absolute calorie bomb that it is. (Even so, next time we come, I'm making room for one.)

Walking back to our hotel (A-cross the ri-ver!), uphill, in the high 70s, on cobblestone, and hauling 20 pounds of liquid (and glass) that we could get into carry-ons since each item is less than 3.5 oz... we came across a student band from the U of Porto. They were all young women and were all in uniform (white shirts, black ties, black knee-length jackets and skirts) and played a variety of instruments while also doing some mild dance routines and chants that sounded like something you'd associate with European students. I was struck again by the prevalence of traditional dress, right alongside the far more casual look that is emblematic of American students. They were great entertainment and we donated to their instrument fund. I was cramping up by the time we got back to the hotel. We definitely should've called an Uber.

Speaking of which, I forgot to mention before that the dichotomy(!) of cars we've experienced in both Lisbon and Porto is hilarious. The first three Ubers that we called were all driving white Teslas. Not just Teslas, but white Teslas. Every, single car we've had since those first three has been a standard transmission. It's like a step back in time from the modern, electric era to the 70s, since you almost never see standards in the US anymore unless they're full-sized trucks. It also highlighted once again the driving skill of most of them. We had a great dinner at 17, a restaurant on the 17th and top floor of a hotel a couple blocks from where we were staying that, as you might expect, gave us a great view of the city.

There's definitely a sense of rivalry between the capital and Porto, with the latter having a great example of that Second City sourness that Chicago exhibits towards New York. Our tour guide, a Lisbon native and resident, when confronted with the opinions of many in our group who cited how much more dynamic Porto was in comparison, were replied to with: "I am glad you like it. Porto, I am not a fan of." There was no explanation as to why. It was simply that she was on Team Lisbon.

In the morning, we got on the bus back to Lisbon, but made a stop in Aveira on the way; known as the "Venice of Portugal" for its many canals and salt pans, out of which it still produces a substantial amount of the domestic salt production of the nation and has been doing so for a couple thousand years, given the nearness of the ocean and the water that seeps into those pans. It's a pretty cool town, although we didn't see much of it. We took a boat tour of the canals and our guide was a great example of Western European language aptitude, switching easily between Portuguese with our pilot, some French tourists in the boat with us, and English for us; the latter two with no struggle and a near-perfect accent (or at least one not overwhelmed by his native Portuguese.) He was a Benfica supporter and, as I sat down in the boat in my Liverpool hat and Liverpool hoodie, asked: "So, you're a Liverpool supporter?" Me: "How could you tell?" We talked a lot about the game as the boat moved along, between his programmed descriptions of what we were passing by (including a public park with exercise machines, which was kinda cool.) It's always refreshing to find someone that really knows the game and can bring their own perspective to it.

We made it back to Lisbon and immediately set off for the Quake museum, about the 1755 earthquake (and consequent tsunami and fire) that basically destroyed Lisbon, leading to a public inquiry that was not only the first example of seismology as a science, but also modern urban planning. Of course, the most impactful result was the beginning of the Enlightenment (Why did the loving God destroy the capital and kill thousands of devout Catholics in devout Portugal on All Saints Day? "Mysterious ways", my ass.) Anyway, the museum is interesting and quite interactive. Then another solid dinner and a ride with a Bolt driver who was genuinely aggressive in his approach to traffic (and still with a stick shift), which was kind of entertaining. Still drove completely within the law, though.

2.5 hours after I wrote this, we left for the airport to catch our early morning flight to Paris and from there to Detroit. It was a really good scouting trip vacation and we even looked at home prices around Coimbra. Unlike our friend, I don't think I'd do the tour thing again. I just found it too restrictive and with too much time spent in front of things that weren't particularly compelling. We also ran into a couple Trumpers on our bus that I made a couple pointed comments to who then gave us something of a wide berth, which was fine by me. Fuck'em. In contrast, our new friends from Rhode Island were a ton of fun and we may try to arrange another meeting across the pond with them (or the other pond) at some point in the future.

Three days in a few small towns, part II

We spent that night in Fatima, which is the town in which a vision of the Virgin Mary apparently materialized to three children in 1917, telling them that World War I must stop and they needed to deliver her message of peace and life. Said message didn't sink in to two of them, since they died of the Spanish Flu a couple years later (the third lived on into her 90s) but it was apparently enough to attract hordes of Catholics to see the place of the miracle, if not the miracle itself, so there's a colossal basilica in town and they do processions all the time around various buildings/sites and whatnot. The hotel we stayed in was kinda podunk and the town is very, very dead when it comes to entertainment, so if the opportunity comes up when you visit the country, I'd skip it. All of that said, we didn't see a whole lot of said town, since we stopped at a giant gift shop for some reason, which was selling images of Mary and other religious tchotchkes, plus general ones. Most of the 45 minutes that we spent there, I was trying to keep track of Liverpool playing Arsenal, but if there had been anything else to do, I would've kept my head out of my phone. (As it is, we ended up with a 2-2 draw.) We did find a solid bistro with a guy who made really good burgers (again, catering to tourists), though.

The next day, we left Fatima and headed to Tomar, which is the locale of a massive Templar fortress/monastery complex that produced some of the best pictures of the trip. Sitting in the bistro the night before, Tricia had to suffer through a 15-minute lecture about just whom the Templars (and the Hospitallers) were and what happened to them. Our guide did a similar, albeit much shorter summary the next day when we arrived at the fort. On the one hand, she brought up the one fact I'd forgotten about the Templars essentially being the world's first bank. OTOH, she didn't say anything about the Hospitallers or the Crusades, in general, so if you want actual context with your history, I guess that's my (boring) role. I, at least, will not spare you the fact that the Templars were, in many instances, the equivalent of brigands in the Levant, and the Hospitallers were pirates in the last decades of their existence. Opportunists, all.

Nevertheless, as you can see, there was some cool stuff inside. Also, we had a bit of an experience with a woman who was outside the exit, selling dried fruit and other things from a cart to the by now hungry tourists. I didn't know that dried grapefruit is naturally bright green because of chlorophyll. I'm not normally a huge grapefruit fan, but this stuff was great.

Then we continued on to Coimbra, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. Coimbra is the former capital of Portugal and the home of its oldest university and one of the oldest in Europe. We had been looking hard at Coimbra in terms of landing spots because it's a college town, which both of us appreciate (both the one we live in and the much larger one next door) for the energy and dynamism that young people bring to local life. That vibe was more than evident in this particular college town from the moment we set foot in it. Not only can you see college kids running around all over the place, including many wearing the traditional cloaks/capes for being part of their various honor societies (which most of the people in our group immediately squealed about "because they look like Harry Potter-!"), but the town is almost equally dependent on their business as it is on hordes of foreign tourists. In other words, this Portuguese town had both the feeling of being oriented toward the Portuguese but also toward the wider world, as most university towns tend to be.

Like Obidos and Nazare, it's also still largely made up of twisting, medieval roads that gives the place part of its enormous character. The architecture of the university is accompanied by similar medieval and post-earthquake 18th-century constructions that still seem to fit right in alongside the modernist apartment and commercial buildings. Speaking of which, our tour guide pointed out some of the government buildings present in town as being built during the Salazar era and having the brutalist nature of Soviet architecture, so authoritarianism doesn't really change much from place to place and culture to culture, whether fascist or Stalinist. (Keep that in mind when it comes to voting on Tuesday, if you would.)

As with most of the major towns and cities in Portugal, there's also a fantastic river that flows right through Coimbra, separating the old town (north) from the new town (south.) We had some great food here at another hole-in-the-wall that we found (duck-and-orange salad with not typical oranges, pica pau (stewed pork)) and just generally loved every minute of it, including while we were marveling at a police van that rolled up right near our meeting spot, spilling out 8 or 10 polícía in vests and kneepads, with batons in hand, looking like they were going to make a bust. Turned out they were just going to get coffee(?) Our tour guide looked at me when they first emerged and said: "What did you do?!" I said: "I don't know. Be a Marxist? I thought you told me Salazar was dead!"

We did miss out on one thing that we were both really interested in, which is the famous library of said university of Coimbra. We know that it was available, because some new friends we met at the fado show who were on the adjoining tour were planning to stop in and had asked us about it in Nazaré. (We ran into them in almost every location we stopped, as you might expect.) Our guide didn't let us know it was an option until we got into town and, by then, there were no time slots open before we were scheduled to leave. So, something to see on the next trip, I guess.

Then we headed up to Porto for the next couple days. Where we're staying in Lisbon is apparently the "old town" which is heavily residential and feels more like many areas of Detroit, where you wouldn't be surprised to not worry about bumping into other people on the sidewalks, despite it being a huge city. We stayed in proper downtown Porto, which meant it had much more of a "big city" feel, even on a Monday night when we arrived. We couldn't walk 20 feet without having to dodge someone else and the city was very alive and lit and still working while we were out. The Mercado do Bolhão, a market similar to the Time Outs, was a couple blocks from our hotel, so we headed there to get something to eat. We tried some port for the first time since we'd gotten in-country (we were waiting to reach Porto) and it was still way too sweet, but not bad (This would change when we tried some genuinely good stuff...) Unlike my usual taste in wine, I liked the white port we had more than ruby (red) or what I thought was a rosé in tawny port. (I was wrong, as I'll explain.) Still can't find a decent porter anywhere in this country, though. The US is still far, far ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to beer. The best we were able to find throughout most of Portugal was a brand called Super Bock which doesn't actually produce bocks, but instead has your bog-standard lagers and an average stout.

Three days in a few small towns, part I

We set off from Lisbon for Sintra, which is a UNESCO site around a massive mansion formerly inhabited by Freemasons and not a whole lot else. We arrived before a road rally made up of "old cars", many of which were cheap 70s models like Pacers and Vegas, along with a couple old-school, gas-guzzling Mustangs and so forth. Having zero interest in automotive festivities, it continues to fascinate me how and why someone would obtain and restore a crappy 70s hatchback and then use it to run a road rally. But, y'know, everybody's gotta have a hobby.

Anyway, said massive mansion does have some interesting parts, like a well that goes down a couple dozen meters and was never used for water but for initiation to the club. But it was also a tour through another ornate mansion that has never really been my thing (I don't know shit about interior decorating) and we were there for several hours and about two too long. We ate at this local tapas place (they don't call them "tapas" here; it's "petiscos." Why are tapas restaurants in the US labeled as Portuguese? Probably because "petiscos" is too complicated/foreign-sounding for most Americans.) and it was good but it was here that four straight days of seafood were starting to wear on me a bit, too. I mean, I get it. Small country, formerly one of the greatest seafaring nations on Earth and with abundant resources in that respect. But variety is the spice of life, yo.

The people in Sintra were accustomed to tourists (the unending line of tchotchke and pasteis shops was sure enough sign of that) and certainly are happy to have that steady stream of income. But there's a certain expression of resigned endurance that appeared there and in later towns that's probably universal to most tourist spots and Portugal, like Iceland, depends on tourism for its economy to function. I don't think it's the #1 revenue source, but it's pretty close, not least because of the insane number of tour buses that we saw everywhere we went and the fairly astounding skill of the drivers of said buses when it came to maneuvering not only past each other, but also through the roads of medieval towns that are only barely wide enough to accommodate them and which are still part of the complete lack of urban planning and design that never thought about anything larger than a horse-and-wagon.

After Sintra, we briefly stopped off at the westernmost point of continental Europe (during a driving rain squall), Cape Roca, and then moved on to Cascais, the former beach resort of the aristocracy, which kinda still is. Our tour guide was only too proud to inform us that Cristiano Ronaldo had a house there and so did many other players from the Primeira Liga and other leagues in Europe. My impression is that it's kind of a low-rent Ft. Lauderdale, in that there's obvious money around and the town has been reshaped to serve not only that money but the legions of tourists who come to see it. There was a distinct commercial element to pretty much everything and I was kinda repelled. Needless to say, this day wasn't going as well as the others. This was one of the obvious downsides of being part of a tour, too, since if we had encountered this kind of situation on our own, we would have quickly departed for something more interesting.

We returned to Lisbon and headed down to the Time Out Market to eat, since Bourdain had spoken highly of it, as had some friends. It's a venture by a British company which also has locations in Miami and Chicago apparently and, like the food courts in Iceland, is a hotspot, even on a Saturday night. Food was decent. Drinks were solid. We had some more ginjinha, which I failed to mention last time. It's a liqueur made from a type of sour cherries that's incredibly sweet but still not repellent as most things like that would be to me. Part of it may be that I like cherries. We went to a small shop on the edge of one of the plaças that Bourdain (of course) had visited. The proprietor was just finishing up a new bottle that had the berries in question sitting in the liquid, a couple of which landed in each glass and each of which provides kind of a powerful ending punch to the drink. The couple we tried after that lacked berries and kind of paled in comparison until we got to Obidos. A lot of people like it in chocolate cups, which I'm kinda meh on. The stuff at the Market was OK. While it initially struck me as too sweet, the more we tried it, the more comfortable I was with it.

The next day we piled on to the bus to leave Lisbon for a few days, The first stop was Obidos. It's a town that's largely contained within its original medieval walls. You can walk the whole circuit of them and we did. This was a town that was also beset by its original medieval layout, which meant that only residents could have cars within the town itself. That presents some interesting situations wherein said residents know that their living place is utterly dependent on the legions of tourists that pack its streets and make driving on them with a car quite difficult. But, just like the Uber drivers in Lisbon, they just accept it and patiently crawl through crowds that don't really know what a "Peugeot" is or why they should move out of the way of one. 

In addition to the genuinely impressive castle walls, Obidos claims to be the origin place of ginjinha. No one can verify that (and the EU apparently hasn't confirmed it, since the drink is made everywhere in Portugal without issue) but I will say that it was the best we've had so far, outside of that little hole-in-the-wall that Bourdain visited in Lisbon. There was an extra layer of flavor there somewhere and it tempted me again to try to find a way to ship a bottle home (which, of course, isn't possible thanks to Michigan's inane protectionist law.)

After that, we went to Nazare, which is the Portuguese name of Nazareth. This is not really a religious site, despite the name, unless you're into worshiping Poseidon. Nazare apparently has the largest waves in the world striking its two large beaches (mostly the north one.) But that happens only if the wind is coming from the southwest, rather than the northwest as it was on the day we visited. It's also the home of what seems to be an impromptu museum on said beach of Portugal's formerly mighty fishing industry; another casualty of the EU. Nazare would formerly have been one of the centers of major export production, but now just has a bunch of cool-looking boats on the beach with permanent placards talking about who owned them and how they were used, with some of that implicit fado longing in those words about what used to be and now no longer is with the shrug of the shoulders of much of the surrounding residents.

Unlike Cascais, however, Nazare has its own character that has little to do with commercialism, but still a lot to do with tourism. I found the place to be very pleasant and seemed like the prototypical experience of "small Portuguese fishing village" albeit one that no longer really fishes and is known far more for the surfers who come to try the biggest waves in the world (there were placards with the names and faces of several of the more notable figures of that sport also present about 100 yards from the boat museum.) This last pic was from a fort at the end of a peninsula that separates the two beaches and which was quite the hike down and even moreso back up at something like a 40 degree angle. I don't think either of us gained any weight on our vacation... More towns in the next post.

Three days in Lisbon

We were in Portugal. I don't think either of us had ever had it really high on our list of places to go, but it kind of showed up on the life radar recently. Part of it was just wanting to take a trip to a place that neither of us have been before and part of it was thoughts of retirement. There's a large expat community in Portugal, based on the decent climate, the seriously low cost of living, and the easy access to the rest of Western Europe, so we've been giving it some serious thought and figured we'd take the equivalent of a scouting trip to see what's what. A very well-traveled friend of ours has been to Portugal before and recommended linking up with a reputable tour company to avoid the apparent legion of scammers and to simply ease the burden of planning and scheduling and all the other logistics that go with traveling. We did so and ended up with mixed feelings about the results.

We landed in Lisbon at 8 AM on Thursday and dropped our bags at the hotel and took off across town to visit a highly-Google-rated breakfast place called Seventh Brunch. All of the talk online is about how Portugal, like many places, is a non-tipping culture and most workers don't want tips because they feel like it will encourage employers to pay them less because of what they'll potentially make in tips, similar to how the US works. But we discovered that this place clearly catered to Americans because the check had "Suggested Tip" automatically printed at the bottom. Over the course of our eight days, we found only a couple other places that did this, but the (ahem) typical function still appears on Uber and Bolt, which we used quite a bit to get around both Lisbon and Porto. Hard to tell what the mindset is or if it may be changing or if it's just particular businesses that cater to Americans and feeding off the greater wealth of the expat community (and tourists like yours truly.)

In riding with said Uber and Bolt drivers, we got a decent education in current Portuguese and Moroccan hip hop and grime. Most of the drivers weren't that talkative, but it's possible that most of them don't know much English even though it's every bit as common otherwise among service workers as it is in Germany (and, y'know, Liverpool...) We didn't find a single food service worker who doesn't speak at least some level of English and most of them spoke it quite well and we've went everywhere from streetcarts to what many consider the best restaurant in Lisbon, Cervejaria Ramiro.

We went there because of Anthony Bourdain. He went to Portugal no less than four times across three different series, so most people knew that he loved the place. Across those four episodes, the only place he returned to was Ramiro, which is kind of a high-end seafood place that presents as an old school, family restaurant, with different parties seated at the same tables and so forth. We went with some obvious suggestions (shrimp and clams in garlic) and less so (barnacles, murex straight from the shell.) I've never had either of the latter. Any conch I've had before has always been deshelled and in some sauce. These were in the shell and you just hooked them out and tossed them down. Decent. The barnacles were a bit less so. They're fried and then you have to chew off the dried and fried husk before getting at the meat which tastes something like oyster. Not horrible, but not worth the effort, IMO. The tiger prawns grilled over salt were excellent, though. This was also our first direct experience with that cost of living that we were hearing about, in that a multi-dish fresh seafood meal at the restaurant that even our Uber driver recommended as "the best in Lisbon", was probably half the price I would've expected in the States.

The other thing about many of the Uber drivers is that they drive like maniacs (slamming the accelerator down to go two blocks before hitting an intersection and/or stoplight) but they're also scrupulously observant of traffic laws. If they see a yellow light, they actually slow down and then stop, unlike 90% of Americans. Turn signals are always used and, just like in Germany, they're incredibly courteous to everyone else on the road and those other drivers are, in turn, also courteous to them. If someone puts a signal on to move in to a packed lane, someone slows down and lets them in(!) They also make adjustments during traffic and in some of Lisbon's stranger intersections that go from two lanes to five in three different directions and vice-versa. If people make a slow turn or stop in the middle of the road to let someone out or do something else that most Americans would react to with outrage, these drivers just shrug and accept it as part of traffic in Lisbon.

Over those three days, we spent time in both the main city on our own and in a couple "suburbs", which are really more like the continuous sprawl of American cities. As with most large and old cities, there are different qualities to various areas, defined by the concept of "quarters." The pace of modernization has reduced those geographic personalities a bit and I think that's been accelerated by the influx of tourists. Only a couple times throughout our trip did we walk into an area that lacked the presence of American, British, German, or French types with their cameras and little radios to keep an ear to what their guide was saying. Those moments were typically when we walked into what would be considered a Muslim neighborhood, as the stores advertising halal products would suddenly appear and just as quickly dissipate when we walked another block.

We tried the famous bacalhau (salted codfish; the national dish of Portugal despite cod not being present in Portuguese waters) four different ways and found it to be seriously lacking. Traditionally, it's roasted over a bed of potatoes and topped with onions and peppers and a butter sauce. We tried it that way twice and also mixed in a stew and as part of a sandwich and still had no moment where our eyes would light up. Only one section of one of those fish had anything resembling what you would consider SALTED cod. Otherwise, it tasted like anything you'd find breaded and fried in the US (aka frozen fish sticks.) It also seriously lacked flavor precisely because it lacked salt(!) Meanwhile, the couple times we had octopus, it was excellent (and even better when we got to Porto, where it's more of a specialty) and we've had the pasteis de nata a couple times and they're pretty solid. They're sweet but not overly so. But they're still sweet, leading me to wonder why anyone would douse them in powdered sugar. Cinnamon does add a lot to them, though.

Our tour guide has been good enough and has filled us in on not only what we're seeing but the Portuguese mindset in a lot of ways. They're one of the red-headed stepchildren of Germany-... excuse me: the EU, but unlike others such as Greece, who've reacted to being dictated to by Berlin and Paris in terms of economic output with outrage, the Portuguese have kind of shrugged their shoulders at it and accepted their lot. Most people recognize that the upsides of the EU probably outweigh some of the economic downsides. But there's a cultural part to it, as well. As one of our tour drivers put it: they're a small country with an incredibly rich history that most of the world will never know about. A brief examination of said history will prove that to be spot on. They're very proud of their identity as the people brave enough to explore what was the 15th-century equivalent of trying to get to the moon, but also aware of all of the downsides that went with that (colonialism, slavery, etc.) Being under the boot of Antonio Salazar for almost 50 years but now 50 years past has been enough time for reflection that ripples through the national outlook in many ways, too, I think.

On that note (quite literally), we went to a fado show on one of our first nights in Lisbon. Fado is the national music of Portugal; short songs of longing for something often undefinable and accompanied by strings. Despite it being their version of the blues, it's not solely traditional blues (slow paced, mournful) but instead, like modern blues, has embraced all kinds of tempo and often amusing topics, even as it maintains the sonorous delivery and message of unfulfilled desire. We saw a trio on fado guitar (higher pitch than typical acoustic), regular guitar, and stand-up bass with alternating male and female singers. It was great. I'm interested in digging into more of it and apparently so is the rest of Europe, as a couple of performers in that style have become massive stars in the EU in recent years (Ana Moura, etc.) Next up are Sintra and then some smaller towns that we visited on our way north to Porto.

Origins

OK. One detour before the next episode since we're starting up again. One of the features on the Blu-Ray set is the inclusion of the original promo reel that Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski created as the official pitch to the studio for The Animated Series. This is the general concept of the storytelling and visual styles that they planned to use and you can see why the studio, already eager to begin a Batman project by recruiting Timm, were convinced that they had found the right person to do it.

This video has been around in bootleg form for quite some time, but ordinarily the sound file isn't connected to it and that's the case on the Blu-Rays, as well. But this user on YouTube found the soundtrack and synced it properly so we're not just listening to the theme music, but the actual delivery of the moment as Timm and Radomski first presented it. You can see all of their main visual themes in this two-minute clip: the darkness of the overall picture, the red skies of Gotham, the menacing portrayal of The Batman, including the painted still at 0:59. There's a bit of variation, in that the moments immediately following that still showing our hero dodging gunfire uses a more "toony" approach than the rest of the series did, with The Batman showing Bugs Bunny-like agility in his motion. But the moment where the camera pulls back to show the literally larger-than-life combat between The Batman and the gangster at 1:25, as their shadows on the wall display the Caped Crusader's effort for the entire city to see, is every bit the kind of story that Timm and Radomski meant to tell. Speaking of Bugs, the full orchestra behind the music of the series is also something that the producers wanted in order to get closer to that cinematic effect, just like those Warner Bros. classics.

It was Radomski who came up with the idea of painting all of the backgrounds on black paper in order to maintain that darkness. In fact, some of the early episodes were so dark that they apparently hit the technical limit for broadcast, since it affects the overall picture. And you can see that in the case of the first episode they worked on and released, which is the second episode I reviewed: On Leather Wings. That one has it all: the red skies, the darkness, the elaborate animation style that is evident in the promo reel above. There's also a highlight where the Man-Bat, with The Batman in town, flies along the length of one of those police airships. Timm said the shot was so complex that they were afraid the director, Kevin Altieri, wouldn't be interested, since it would be easy for a lot of viewers to lose the flow of the action. But Altieri signed right onto it, which confirmed to Timm and Radomski that they had a guy who would go on to become a key member of the team in a lot of different functions.

That also meant directors that were flexible, since most of the scripts for the episodes were shorter than typical TV animation scripts, which map out every action and camera change. These scripts were done in more "Marvel style", echoing the rival comic publisher's approach to comic scripting, in which the writer sends a detailed plot and leaves the pace and camera angle up to the artist, before returning to script (dialogue) the action. The studio hated it, because there was less detail for them to object to, so they didn't know what was coming. But that's what happens when you don't know where the Darknight Detective will appear next-! One other detail that Timm revealed about On Leather Wings is that it's the first and last time that The Batman appeared in the series with blood on his face (from a rough landing.) That's one thing the censors objected to and which wouldn't happen again.

OK. Next time for sure: See No Evil.

Batman: TAS episode #33: Christmas with The Joker

[Editor's note: I'm going to stick with the numbering system that I started with, which is based on HBO's arrangement. until I get to disc 4 of the Blu-rays, where I can begin following the arrangement that is presented on the discs and simply move on from there.]

Unlike the previous episode (Beware the Grey Ghost), Christmas with The Joker is presented as a very "standard" Batman adventure and, in truth, kind of like a "standard" Christmas period TV show, where the basic premise is subsumed in the holiday timing and theming that one assumes was foremost on the minds of the viewers, with Consumerist Extravaganza (aka the holiday season) looming large, so Batman and Co. were following suit. This was originally the second episode of the series broadcast on November 13th of 1992 so that does become one of the themes of the episode, in which Robin insists that it's time for them to kick back and take a break during the holidays, while Batman is determined to keep their normal routine, not least because the Clown Prince of Crime has just escaped from Arkham and our hero knows he'll be a problem. It's a pretty standard plot in that respect and follows it to the letter, so there's very little innovation here from a screenplay perspective. In some respects, that's fine, because anything involving The Joker is going to be just as entertaining, if not moreso, than any of the other regular villains that we'll encounter. That's reemphasized here by the reminder that Mark Hamill is perhaps the best choice ever made as the voice talent behind the deadly harlequin, as his mildly deranged cackle gives us the air of menace we needed behind the character's otherwise goofy exploits and schemes. With Commissioner Gordon, Summer Gleeson, and Harvey Bullock held captive as "the Lawful Family" whom The Joker threatens to kill if the heroes don't get there in time to save them, the producers not only generated a regular Batman adventure with Christmas trappings but also dropped in the people who would be part of the regular series cast for years.

The episode was also an acknowledgement of the greater cultural context that would be attached to the series, as it begins with the schoolyard rhyme that would never have been approved of by DC Comics but which most children of the era would've been familiar with:

Jingle bells, Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
Batmobile, lost a wheel
Joker got away-hey!

This was a Batman for the 90s, in which society has become refamiliarized with the character as an essential part of the culture and not just a costumed superhero known only to children. Again, the dual nature of good cartoons- funny pictures and adventures for the kids, more mature even subversive messages for the adults akin to the best of Warner Bros. productions, rather than the basics of something like Disney -is evident here. These are the lessons of Marvel ringing true in DC presentations and a tip of the hat to how Batman has greater appeal than almost any other character in the DC stable for many, many reasons. A further example of that appears in the discovery of a "Betty Blooper" doll; an acknowledgement of Betty Boop, a classic character of animation history who had just been reintroduced to moviegoers and animation fans everywhere with the recent production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? in 1988. Here was also a chance to insert the usual Jokerisms (a menacing Joker-in-the-box and the dolls produced by LaffCo as a clue for the heroes to find where the villain was hiding), as well as an opportunity to bring in Danse Macabre as a musical overture to the action. As the second episode of the new series, it doesn't stray too far from the old reliables, which is both understandable and acceptable, even if it seems rote, 30+ years later (and kinda did, then, too.) Speaking of which, Robin being used to spit out expository elements of the plot ("We gotta stop that train-!" after they discover that The Joker has detonated the nearby railway bridge) is also SOP right from the 60s TV show, alongside a typical pun line when our hero dispenses with some of Joker's threats in the most direct way possible ("They don't call ya Bat Man for nothing!") I will say that the writers missed a chance to make the cream pie that covered The Batman some kind of dire chemical, but we'd reached the end of our half hour episode running time by then. Ah, well.

Anyway, a solid return to our examination of the series with the greatest foe The Batman has ever had or ever will, even if it was about as bog-standard as you can get for a plot. Next up, we revert to a more mundane challenge for the Darknight Detective when he encounters a moral quandary that is a more pointed example of the series' direction toward younger viewers in See No Evil.

Picking up where we left off

Three-and-a-half years ago, I posted my last review of a Batman: The Animated Series episode. I had made it to what HBO (now (ugh) Max) had represented as episode #32: Beware The Grey Ghost. What I didn't realize in the passage of some 30 years since the series had been first aired is that most of what HBO had on their service was just the first season of B:TAS and not only were there many more episodes to watch, but there were also the films that had been associated with the series at various points. Thankfully, in perusing the retail overlord that is Amazon a few weeks ago, I discovered the complete series, including specials, films, and behind-the-scenes stuff for just a few dollars. The reason that was probably presented to me by the all-powerful algorithm is that I'd been watching the latest effort by producer, Bruce Timm, which is Batman: Caped Crusader; Amazon's own production that is a mild reworking of B:TAS, oriented away from the kid-friendly lessons that Fox and censors had demanded and more toward actual psychological exploration of the characters and adult storylines of relationships and society. It didn't do anything spectacular, but it did give the canon a healthy dose of modernization (for example, it has the best rendition of Harley Quinn ever presented, a character who was created in B:TAS.) But after watching that series of 10 episodes, I remembered that I had let my exploration of B:TAS run aground and gave some more thought to picking it up and seeing if I could complete my original attempt at watching and writing about the whole project. So, here I am.

As noted, I made it through 32 episodes of season 1, which leaves me another 33(!) to write about here, plus 20 more in season 2 and 24 in season 3, plus a few insider/background/bonus features and the two films Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Batman & Mr. Freeze: Subzero. It's, uh, going to be a long road and by the time I finish this, perhaps the second season of Caped Crusader will be out... Regardless, we'll be slightly shifting tack just based on the medium at hand. Since there's only one episode of season 1 that I haven't covered left on disc 1 of the set that I have, I'm going to look at that one and then probably the pilot that's also on that disc (The Dark Knight's First Night) and the one remaining on disc 2 (See No Evil) before finally moving on to the originally planned Cat Scratch Fever, which is on disc 3 along with 5 other episodes of season 1. So, next up is Christmas with the Joker. It's probably best to get back into the whole thing with the Clown Prince of Crime, anyway.