In the Dark Reviews

For our Halloween review, I'm going back a couple of months to a streaming series on Amazon Prime Video, that's suitably dark for the holiday, and legitimately clever, even though it contains some nagging flaws.

"Batman: Caped Crusader" is 10 half-hour episodes of a Dark Knight who's styled more closely to his original appearances in the comics, albeit with a much broader diversity in the character's supporting cast.

Artist Bruce Timm had co-created the original "Batman: The Animated Series" during the 1990s, which he developed with writer Paul Dini, and while Timm again lends his appealing sense of visual design to "Caped Crusader," its writing bears the signs of Timm developing this new series without Dini as his creative partner.

It's fun to watch a series set during an era whose fashions and technology are largely grounded in the 1940s, because it simplifies and streamlines many of Batman's crime-fighting methods and gadgets, which in turn forces him to rely on his wits and a relatively realistic level of hand-to-hand combat abilities.

At the same time, I appreciate that the cast, from Commissioner Gordon to the new Harley Quinn, is more racially diverse, which actually works well with Gordon, who's cast as the lone honest law officer in a sea of crooked Gotham cops. The unspoken racism against Gordon, for being Black, can be perceived as yet another factor that's holding back his attempts to root out police corruption.

I also like that Bruce Wayne is shown making mistakes here, and eventually learning from them, however grudgingly, with perhaps the most notable example being his relationship with Alfred, whom he treats like much more of a manservant to begin with, before finally acknowledging that he's more than just "the help."

A number of Batman's villains also benefit from being reverted to forms more faithful to their roots, particularly Clayface, who loses something, to my mind, when his power-set is expanded to being a huge shape-shifting monster, as opposed to a man who can merely alter his physical features to impersonate other people.

Two significant revisions of existing characters that I've especially enjoyed have been the Penguin and Harley Quinn, starting with the fact that I always welcome seeing Minnie Driver in any role, so I loved hearing her voice a gender-flipped Penguin, bringing a Mae West sass to her performance as a showgirl who runs her own floating casino.

The Penguin has always been a bit of a ridiculous character, so while Max's "The Penguin" streaming series portrays Oswald Cobb as driven to prove himself by his simmering resentment over not receiving enough respect, "Caped Crusader" casts Oswalda Cobblepot as intentionally adopting a comedic persona, to lull her opponents into not taking her seriously.

Harley Quinn is more radically reinvented for "Caped Crusader," which reimagines her as having no ties to the Joker, and foregrounds her keen psychiatric insights, as we see her manipulating some of Gotham's most powerful men by getting inside their heads.

Dr. Quinzel even gets to analyze Bruce Wayne, after a rare public outburst sends him to a brief stint of court-ordered therapy, and it's neat to see her correctly identify how much of his civilian identity is a shallow mask.

"Caped Crusader" introduces several of relatively obscure comics characters, reminding me of the early 21st century's "Batman: Brave and the Bold" cartoon, and while Onomatopoeia remains a deeply dull and oversold antagonist, I did not realize how much I needed to see the Gentleman Ghost recast as a class warfare allegory until this show.

However, "Caped Crusader" is brutal in burning through Batman's adversaries, and not in a good way, because it's wasting what could have been a far richer pool of recurring players.

The obligatory Catwoman episode was amusing, and earned points for using her great Golden Age costume, but I felt disenchanted by how vapid Selina Kyle was.

And I feel like an entire doctoral dissertation could be written about how "Caped Crusader" frustratingly missed the mark in portraying prosecuting attorney Harvey Dent, even as it ultimately delivered an intriguing take on Harvey's eventual descent into the disfigured villain Two-Face.

I get the temptation to "dirty up" Harvey, in a show as noir as "Caped Crusader," by depicting his crusading streak as being politically motivated, and ultimately compromised by taking money from mob boss Rupert Thorne, but from the first time we see him, "Caped Crusader" reduces Harvey Dent to such a smarmy glad-handler that his downfall hardly seems tragic at all.

I'm still on board for this show's second season, teased by the final moments of this first season's 10th episode, but I hope Timm finds another Dini to compensate for his shortcomings in storytelling.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
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