B:TAS reviews: The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy

(7/30/09)

A man named Josiah Wormwood, an expert in interrogation via deathtrap, has intercepted a shipment of bearer bonds from an international courier. Bud Cort’s delightfully sinister voice intones a sense of perversity and suspense in this opening, wherein Wormwood has led the courier into a deathtrap at a golf-course. The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy thrives on such deliberate, tense confrontations between predator and prey, and naturally Batman is the man's next target. The idea is that Batman must find a way to incriminate Wormwood and retrieve the bearer bonds, all while Wormwood is under order to obtain for his client his cape and cowl.

The scene transition of the most importance is that between Batman’s apprehending Baron Jozek and Jozek’s commissioning of Wormwood to obtain Batman’s cape and cowl. This crucial instance means everything, and in hindsight might be where the episode falters. It fools the viewer in that we are not in on Batman’s game from the start, and therefore we assume that Jozek is Jozek and this is yet another straightforward criminal scheme. And yet more observative viewers may catch on instantly. Jozek has just been made a fool of and from Gordon's report we have inferred that he is not a high class of criminal by any stretch. Suddenly Batman charges into each death trap not with the stated motive of obtaining the information on the bearer bonds, but of defending himself from Wormwood's prying schemes.

But alongside the story’s iffy structural components is its content; some scenes are not subservient to their context. Viewers can be bemused by the deathtraps, point out with a smile that this is the bat-signal's first appearance, and smirk in response to Batman's supercilious dialogues with Gordon, whose snappy lines that come straight out of pulp detective fiction are not always welcome.

The worst part of the whole thing is the physical confrontation at the end. Wormwood is not a physical threat, and when he is in the role of the combatant and not in that of the schemer his appeal declines exponentially. The story had been mildly clever up until this point so that the tacked on fight scene shatters the mood; following the big reveal that is sure to make the viewer grin with surprise and satisfaction with a flubbed fight that feebly tries to sustain the climax is an unfortunate choice that diminishes the fun of the catharsis and conclusion.