Batman: TAS, episode #42: Joker's Wild

As noted in every instance prior, the Joker episodes are almost always high points in the progression of the series. Similarly to how The Batman is the best and most enduring superhero character of DC Comics, his primary opposition, The Joker, is a vastly superior villain to any of the other classic opposite numbers of DC's stable (Lex Luthor, Cheetah, Sinestro, etc.) Inasmuch as most would consider someone who runs around in a bat costume beating up criminals to be "crazy", The Batman is an exercise of control within the story framework. He's the cork in the bottle of Gotham City. The Joker, of course, is the polar opposite of that control, with chaos being his calling card at all times, whether to his advantage or not. This episode is also built on the framework of the idea of DC's intellectual properties. Not only does casino owner, Cameron Kaiser (voiced by Harry Hamlin, of Perseus in Clash of the Titans fame) "steal" The Joker's image to establish his casino, but the producers do their own little nods to other Warner Bros. properties. Our main villain enters the scene at Arkham whistling the coda to the Looney Tunes theme and other characters at Arkham (Poison Ivy, the Mad Hatter) are seen watching Bugs Bunny do his thing at the end of this episode.

The Joker's interactions at Arkham are once again presented inside his larger worldview. He and Ivy squabble like children over what's on the TV ("He started it!" "I know you are, but what am I?") and he demonstrates that, once again, he only tolerates imprisonment at Arkham until he becomes inspired. Once he observes Kaiser's "theft" of his image, it's a matter of minutes before he sails out of the asylum. It's obviously a way to serve the plot of the episode, but I think it's also a larger statement on the way he views the world. Something has to catch his interest or he's willing to simply cool his heels in confinement. Once that interest is activated, he can go where and when he wants. It's a perspective that I think Heath Ledger perfectly captured in his interpretation of the character in The Dark Knight. This is also an episode which dovetails neatly with my overall theory about The Batman being the antagonist in his own stories. The hero is absolutely a secondary character in this story. Despite taking a few minutes to observe Bruce Wayne's interactions with Alfred and his eventual actions to bring act 3 to a close, we spend most of our time observing the antics of The Joker and the epilogue is in Arkham with no Batman in sight. Again, he's that element of control that provides boundaries for the color and chaos that his villains otherwise provide. The scenes on the casino floor are emblematic of that, as we watch The Joker execute all manner of card shuffling tricks to entertain both us and presumably other people within the story while Bruce Wayne sits calmly, the grounding rod to the lunacy.

That's not to say that our hero isn't capable of some tricks of his own. The use of the grapple to both encircle the framework of a skylight and to grab a bouncing grenade and propel it directly into the machine that's about to kill him are both uses that hadn't been presented to date in the series. It's that kind of dynamism that The Joker brings out in his nemesis, as well. But on top of the other intellectual properties, we also get a good look at a classic Jokermobile, which reminded me of the Mego toys from the 1970s, but with this version later being produced by McFarlane Toys (of Spawn and Image fame, just to bring us all the way around back to comics.) But that seems natural in an episode that fully engaged the Jokerisms, from the ending of act 2 occurring with a a shot of The Joker in full-on cackle which extends into the fade-to-black and commercial break to the villain declaring that: "I'll settle my score with Kaiser, man to clown!" Those elements mesh with the overall plot as smoothly as the moment of our hero on the Bat-glider, soaring past a building that shows someone parting their drapes in their apartment just before The Batman goes by. This feels like an episode that was fully within the grasp of writer, Paul Dini, from the first moment to the last, which included an exciting back-and-forth round of classic superhero fisticuffs between hero and villain in a helicopter. It had all the elements of the 1950s-era DC that I normally decry, but told in a manner that elevated it beyond that target audience of eight-year-olds, while still visually interesting enough for them to embrace. Again, it's really one of the high points of the series that encapsulates several of its core principles and not only because it contains the best villain.