The stage has been set. After the lengthy first season of BTAS took its sweet time establishing the world and villains of Gotham, Season 2 is where the series really starts to flesh everything out. Despite an attempt at executive meddling, this is an even better season than the first!
For the second season of BTAS, Fox Kids wanted to give a greater focus to Robin, likely to appeal to the kids. Thus, we got The Adventures Of Batman & Robin, which really tried to shoehorn Robin into every single episode. This could've been a pretty bad limitation on the series, but thankfully, the writers never let Robin overshadow the focus of every episode. Granted, that does mean he tends to stand around making quips a lot of the time, but I'd much rather that than have him repeatedly steal the spotlight from everyone else. And that's a good thing because this season's greatest strength is easily the characters. As mentioned above, Season 2 of BTAS doesn't really have to introduce anyone anymore. There are still some great new antagonists, like Baby Doll, Lock-Up, and especially the Condiment King, but the majority of episodes focus on developing the already existing antagonists like Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Killer Croc, and Riddler.
There's a common thematic thread within this season about whether or not Batman's rogues gallery is able to reform. Season 1 tried this out with the Penguin in Birds Of A Father, but Season 2 is filled with these kinds of episodes that explore why Batman's villains are the way they are, as well as which ones (if any) would be able to eventually reform. There are also plenty of episodes that deal with why Batman's villains aren't able to reform, from the poor management of Arkham Asylum (Lock-Up) to the effect of Batman himself on the villains (Trial). I'm not entirely sure how intentional this thematic thread was, but it really works for the season's benefit. In theory, it feels like it should get repetitive seeing every villain go through the same conflict, but it manages to shed new light on characters I originally thought to be under-developed pretty much every single time. And maybe it's because of this approach that this season also does a much better job at letting its villains crossover. There are way more episodes with multiple villains, but even the ones that don't tend to have other antagonists get name-dropped or even make cameos. Gotham feels more like a connected place than last season, a big step in the right direction.
Highlights:
A Bullet For Bullock: Bullock is one of my favorite characters. He's a walking talking New Yorker stereotype, and I love him for it, so it was cool to see him get an episode to himself. A Bullet For Bullock does a pretty great job at exploring the character, showing how he affects the people around him, but even better is the atmosphere. This episode has a hard-boiled feel to it, with the snowy Gotham vistas and chill jazz score giving the episode a moody vibe. I love those sequences where Bullock is just going about his day, secretly paranoid that the person after him can jump him at any time.
Trial: You should know by now that I love these kinds of villain crossover episodes, so it should be no surprise that I loved Trial. It does such a great job at capturing the personalities of most of the villains it shows off in such a short span of time, even giving us a bunch of cute Harlivy moments. But even with all the villains, the true star of the show was Janet Van Dorn, not only having a great character arc but proving herself to be an attorney so good she can dissuade a kangaroo court.
Harlequinade: Harley Quinn is one of my favorite Batman characters because she isn't just pigeon-holed into being the Joker's partner. She has interesting dynamics with other characters like Poison Ivy, the majority of whichever Suicide Squad she ends up joining, and even Batman himself. Harlequinade makes the decision of pairing Harley and Batman for a mission and it really works. I like how Batman is visibly annoyed and frustrated with Harley, but also aware of her abusive relationship with the Joker and subtly sympathetic and protective because of that awareness. And she comes so close to piecing it together this time too...
Baby-Doll: I was not prepared for just how depressing this episode would be. Everyone talks about Heart Of Ice as the emotional high point of BTAS but I spent the entirety of Baby Doll hiding in my blanket out of sheer discomfort and sorrow. The titular character, Mary Dahl, is just such a tragic figure, watching her desperately try to recapture the magic of her show Love That Baby is so hard to watch. The writers really didn't pull their punches with this too, Baby Doll delves into the trauma child actors face and the struggle to reclaim past glory as if it wasn't even a kid's show, and the suicidal implications of Dahl's character kinda shocked me. There's so much more I could rave about too, like Alison LaPlata's voice acting, the execution of the "adult who looks like a kid" trope far surpassing any anime that's attempted the trope, the fact that Baby Doll parallels Batman like all good villains do, the heartwrenching ending, and the amount of compassion Batman shows to the poor thing. Seriously, this might be my favorite BTAS episode, nothing else floored me quite like this one.
Batman & Mr Freeze: SubZero: Okay, I'm gonna be perfectly honest here, this isn't a highlight. Rather, I mostly just wanted to cover all my bases, and since SubZero takes place between Seasons 2 and 3, I wanted to talk about it here. SubZero was a perfectly solid watch, with some fun action, a surprising amount of great Batgirl moments, and a great resolution to Mr Freeze's story as well as a solid farewell to this era of BTAS as a whole. However, it doesn't really work as a movie like Mask Of The Phantasm did. MotP is flat-out a great story that works on its own merits, while SubZero only works as a continuation of BTAS built off the hard work done by Heart Of Ice and Deep Freeze, and thus feels more like a TV special than an actual movie. Also, the CGI is really bad.
Overall, despite an obvious attempt at executive meddling, BTAS manages to solidify its voice by focusing on what works. Season 2 is a fun, consistently well-written, and at times experimental season of BTAS that takes the time to really flesh out Batman's iconic rogues gallery and their relationships to each other.
5/5 Stars
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