(10/02/09)
We begin with Rupert Thorne’s capture by the GCPD. After a squad finds him tied up, Gordon blatantly makes a remark to Gil. A barrage of televised news reports on the tremendous effect that Gil Mason is having on the force immediately follows. So when Gil shows up at Gordon’s door to present him with an arrest warrant, we know, by nature that he is a new character we have never seen before, that he is responsible.
This is one of the most perplexing TV tropes because it interchanges suspense with impatience. Predictability is not always a bad thing, but enjoyment of a mystery episode is contingent upon not knowing up until the last few moments of the plot. But I suppose that this otherwise rich noir story, with multiple strands of action developing simultaneously, needed to be dumbed down for the target audience. It’s a shame too, because otherwise I found this to be a solid introduction for a major player in the animated Batman mythos.
I’ll start with structure and then proceed from there. Shadow of the Bat is structured so that we glimpse the operations of several facets of Gotham City. That this is not only a two-part story but also a mystery, in which scenes unfold gradually, means that we can pause and observe the operations of the police and the mob. Whenever city factions are clearly defined as they usually are in Batman’s rather oblique morality, I immediately think Fritz Lang’s M. However, rarely are these clear boundary lines exploited for social commentary; more commonly they are convenient givens that efficiently promote plot progression.
In Shadow the Bat the line blurs ever so slightly, and while stories about dealings between the police and the mob are hardly original, they add a dimension of corruption and uneasiness to Gotham City. As much as I find it grating that the writers incriminate Gil from the start, I also commend them for making him so good, both in voice and in design. When Gordon says that at least he can see Two-Face’s bad side, he has a point. Every villain in Batman, from the more obvious rogues to the common thug, has the look of a conniving crook or a sinister mad man. Gil is played against type, and it is at once unusual and intriguing.
Though the storytelling leaves something to be desired, I see this more as a series of set pieces than as a story I expect to be seriously involved in. Batgirl appears at the police rally. Batman investigates as Matches Malone. Robin and Batgirl have a first encounter on a rooftop. The trio is trapped in the subway. Batgirl fights Gil on a motorboat that explodes when it reaches the Gotham statue. These are individual scenes that don’t necessarily need to be bounded by contextual story information for me to enjoy them, because they are skillful in character interaction, in pacing, and in action dynamics.
And of course when the show is cluttered with set pieces, there will always be design elements that catch my eye. Is that a Bat Cave background I’ve never seen before, this time more mechanized than usual? Is that the first appearance of The Stacked Deck, with its on-the-wharf shadiness? And how stylish that Two-Face’s headquarters would be condemned on one side and in perfectly good shape on the other. To narrow one’s focus to only the by-the-numbers story is to lose sight of these visuals that add texture to the world these characters inhabit.
I am now delighting in tracing the growing stylishness of Dong Yang’s animation. I now find fluctuations of frame-rate that make character motion a spontaneous exciting affair. I see individual frames flicker briefly in my memory, as I note their complex texturing of lines and shadows. Was it a matter of layouts or did Dong Yang simply grow accustomed to animating for the series? I’m not sure, but I don’t believe there is any doubt that the studio started really hitting its stride at this point in the series.
What bothers me any more than the episode’s contrivances or predictabilities is Melissa Gilbert’s almost prototypic gung-ho young girl voice. It sounds synthetic to me. It does not help that she says many of her lines to herself, thinking aloud and whatnot. It’s very off-putting and hard to swallow. And to be honest I am also not a fan of Tara Strong’s polished and impassive voice of The New Batman Adventures either.
Shadow of the Bat is a dynamite way to kick of the last third of the series. It is not without its faults, but I enjoyed it, and at times even admired it. And regardless of narrative adeptness, one cannot overlook the importance this outing has for the DC Animated Universe’s expansive continuity.
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The first part begins with Gordon, with his new partner Gil Mason, going after Rupert Thorne, who has finally lost his untouchable position as a crime lord. So things seem to be going smoothly: Gordon has a great new assistant commissioner, Thorne has finally been taken down, and Barbara’s relationship with her father seems stronger than ever. Of course, that all comes crashing down when Gordon gets arrested for allegedly taking bribes from Rupert Thorne. At this point it’s clear that someone is framing him and that it’s obviously going to be up to Batman (and eventually Barbara) to find out the culprit.
Now, I’m the kind of guy that hates frame-up stories. The reason is the dramatic irony that attaches itself to such tales. Everyone who watches the episode knows that Gordon is innocent, so it always feels to me like a matter of waiting for a predictable resolution. This episode is no different. Not only is it obvious that Gordon is innocent, but it’s pretty easy to deduce who the real culprit is. In the episode that just happens to introduce a new character that just happens to be so close in status to the commissioner, the commissioner ends up being framed for bribery. So now that the thinking viewer knows who did it (especially since the episode shows Mason talking to someone whom we already know is a criminal), there’s not much else to do than wait and hope that the episode can remain entertaining until the end. Unfortunately, at least for me, this isn’t the case.
The entire first part of the episode lacks any real excitement. Sure Barbara has a run in with a few crooks at a police rally, and we see Batgirl, but the rest of the episode is one big police drama, consisting of a whole lot of dialogue and very little action. Now I don’t clamor for action because I’m superficial and can’t handle depth of story, but sometimes it is necessary for stories that have a big emphasis on intricate storytelling to have some breaks for fight scenes and such. I personally don’t feel there’s much depth of story to the episode anyway. It’s a bunch of dialogue and detective work, much of it unnecessary. I remember not taking any interest in this episode as a child because of how down-to-earth and realistic it felt, but now that I’m older it’s just as boring due to the story's predictability.
As the story progresses through part one, Barbara grows suspicious of Gil after seeing him talking to one of the criminals at the police rally, pretty much affirming in the most blatant way that Gil is the villain. The story couldn’t even settle to keep the mystery going into part two. At least the episode pulled off a competent cliffhanger, ending the episode with Barbara in her Batgirl mantle and Batman captured by Two-Face. Now about Two-Face, I have to say that I’m disappointed by the fact that his character never retained the level of depth and sympathy after ‘Two-Face’ (except for in ‘Second Chance’), but he really does come as a relief here. As bland a villain as he’s become, his visage, together with Richard Moll’s voice acting, are still far more entertaining than Gil Mason and the rest of the characters we’ve been forced to suffer through during the episode. And yes, that includes Barbara, as I’ve always found her to be a fairly poorly designed character with a weak voice actress.
Now, as I’ve already explained, part one, in its attempt at being a hard-hitting crime drama, got rid of the mystery early on. Knowing that Gil Mason is the obvious perpetrator, the hope is that part two at the very least surpasses part one in terms of excitement. Thankfully, part two is a tad better, but only because there is more fight scenes and more dangerous predicaments. We see a lot more Batman and Robin, and Gil finally gets brought to justice, thus restoring things to the status quo as we’ve been waiting for since it became obvious in part one who the villain was.
Don’t get me wrong, part two is still very similar in tone to part one and continues along as a layered crime story of sorts, which is why I don’t flat out love this episode nor find it a massive improvement over part one. The first act of the episode still wanders through a bunch of boring and unneeded detective work and some rather poor attempts at character interplay (the Robin/Batgirl relationship is entirely expected and fails to elevate itself above childish clichés), and there’s a really extraneous scene showing Gordon getting broken out of his holding cell by more of Mason’s thugs. The big climax is the only part of this episode to look forward too. Unfortunately, that is no greater than the sum of its parts either.
Batgirl, Batman, and Robin encounter Gil and Two-Face, who are with Gordon, and a big fight ensues before Batgirl gets her final revenge on Gil. The fighting is of the most generic sort, as if often the case with this series, and the only thing that I actually enjoyed was seeing Batgirl get her revenge on Mason. The thrill of that soon fizzled out, however, when Mason’s comeuppance is cut short by an explosion that puts him into a coma and a very rushed status quo ending that concludes on the possibility that Batgirl is more than likely going to return later in the series.
The animation was typical Dong Yang fare, which is a bit of a letdown after the studio’s great work on ‘Harley and Ivy’. In fact, everything about this episode was average, including the direction and the musical score, which on occasion delivers the thrill that the episode so desperately needs. Part of the reason this episode is so consistently sub par from part one to part two is that the technical merits stay just as bland the whole way through. Just as the much as the story fails to engage me, so do the visuals fail to bewilder me; the episode settles for generic settings and environments and the most basic of character designs and musical cues. It’s worth noting that while none of these aspects are very good, they’re also far from horrible. So as a whole, the episode is really one long showcase of mediocrity.
‘Shadow of the Bat’ is far from horrible, and despite my many complaints, it’s still a competently told story with little plot holes or truly terrible moments. But it puts so much of an investment in being a tightly told detective story that it fails to achieve the true brilliance that the best of ‘Batman: the Animated Series’ has to offer.
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