What They Say:
On the anniversary of the death of Bruce’s parents, Batman expresses doubts.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The exploration of the foundations of what made Bruce become Batman is something that we’ve seen covered in an neverending way in comics and through other media. But it’s an area that gets touched and tweaked upon with a lot of these looks and sometimes something new is added that becomes part of the big picture. This series got to play with a few different aspects of his origins and I really liked that this one went to explore how Bruce feels about what he’s doing now, years after the loss, and if it’s truly the right path. He puts the weight of the world on his shoulders and the medium of animation means you get to explore it a little differently as there aren’t thought balloons or narration to delve into the mood.
The general aspect is that everything seems endless as there’ll always be more crime, more criminals, and justice won’t always be served for a variety of reasons in the realm of the courts. Bruce’s weariness is quite visible to Alfred early on and he makes it clear that it’s definitely his spirit that’s sagging at this point, not anything physical. Part of what’s driving this is that it is the anniversary of his parents’ death and he’s meeting Leslie Thompkins in Crime Alley where it happened, leaving a rose as he’s done for years. But even this quiet moment can’t go undisturbed as a young man gets accosted by some thugs. We’d seen him earlier, scamming a few people and having a disdain for all things Batman he came across in the better part of town. Having Batman show up amid paying his respects to his parents has him in a no-nonsense mood for taking down the thugs but even the young man is disrespectful over this, fronting big before Batman and Thompkins.
Making matters worse is that all of this makes Batman late for an assault the GCPD were setting up to go after a mobster. Bullock wasn’t pleased that they were waiting for Batman and Gordon realizes the whole thing was a setup, causing the police to be pinned down. That goes badly for Gordon, who is injured and spends the episode at death’s door, but it puts Bullock in an even bigger adversarial role toward Batman than usual. It is, quite simply, one of those nights where everything goes wrong when you’re already feeling terrible and it just gets worse. It’s no surprise that it seeds more doubts into Batman’s mind, even as you get some like Barbara making it clear that she doesn’t blame him. Enough do but Batman does a lot of the blaming himself. There’s a lot of plot going on with the mobster that caused a lot of this, Jazzman, but it’s just secondary to everything else, which is all working toward making it clear to Batman that he’s necessary and that they all must keep fighting the good fight.
In Summary:
The episode does a nice job of tapping into several different characters to bring it all together, including Dick, and that works well. Exploring Batman during a crisis of faith moment in what he’s chosen to do makes for a grim episode and one that’s problematic for some who don’t like the caped crusader doubting himself as so much of what we see presents him as hardly ever doubting. But during this time and in this medium, it was a welcome window for viewers, young and old alike, to see that the man that always has a plan, can struggle just like everyone else. It ups the bonds nicely with Gordon and his family, Dick gets some welcome time along with Alfred, and the mix of Batman/Bruce scenes hits a sweet spot. The only downside is that most of what we get with Jazz just feels forced as it’s there to largely present some action scenes to work with.
Grade: B+
