TNBA reviews: Old Wounds

When one thinks of strong female characters in the DCAU, the list only really extends to Lois Lane, Harley Quinn, and possibly Hawkgirl of the Justice League. Most of the others run into some trouble, tending to be of secondary importance to the male characters, or in some way dependent on them. Some don’t even earn the privilege of secondary status; they are sex objects, plot devices, or embodiments of generic female character traits. Even a character as long-lived and iconic as Wonder Woman could not acquire a third attribute after her amusing stranger-in-a-strange-land exoticism and exaggerated masculinity.

Batgirl is the worst example of the series’ perpetual marginalization of women. She began in B:TAS as a naïve, idealistic upstart who dived into costumed heroics when her father needed her and came to be characterized by her romantic longing for Batman. The seeds were planted for character development, but they only bore fruit belatedly. Come TNBA, her character would be a literal-minded sidekick sporting the occasional nudge of comic relief and the voice of Tara Strong, who assisted in the minimizing of the character’s dramatic importance by lacking anything distinctive in her impassive vocals that have since become a dull standard for femininity in animation.

Old Wounds transports us to the temporal gap between B:TAS and TNBA, where we learn about why Dick abandoned one mantle to take up another and why Barbara Gordon decided to fill his shoes as Batman’s plucky sidekick. Even though Barbara is in a relationship with Dick and her new partnership with Batman is posited as one of the reasons for his departure, she seems dispensable to the larger goings-on. Dick and Bruce are interlocked in a father/son clash of cosmic proportions. Barbara can be nothing more than moral support, a damsel in distress, or a supplier of reaction shots. Her role should be of primary importance, not sidelined.

The actual catalyst for the breakup, provided after a mere one or two minutes of laying the groundwork with Dick’s college graduation and Bruce’ relative indifference, is a heated incident in which Dick’s disillusionment is brought directly to the surface. Batman has pinned a hoodlum named Connor to the wall of his apartment in front of his family. Connor’s small child looks on in disbelief, echoing Dick’s own bewilderment at Batman, who exhibits plain disregard for the man’s family as he unnecessarily brutalizes him. This effective showstopper ends the first act with plenty of time to spare, most of which pertains to a negligible plot by the Joker that has more to do with deflecting the story’s accumulated angst than with posing an actual threat.

The tendency for television to turn every chunk of programming buffered by commercials into a self-contained narrative with its own climax turns damaging here; Fogel can’t help but make the first act the tensest and most suspenseful of the three, and the actual second-act cliffhanger comes off as simpleminded by comparison. Dick rescues Barbara from falling off the highest point in Gotham, single-handedly combining one of the oldest superhero clichés with Barbara’s objectification as a helpless woman in need of a savior.

The moment that Dick finally walks away comes well after we get the gist of things. The dramatic impact is further deflated by Batman’s inability to act as Dick’s dialectic counterpoint. Dick flings accusations and telegraphs his intentions from the get-go, and Batman seems adrift in his own ultra-pragmatic world of overturning the latest Joker scheme. It can possibly be argued that Batman’s seeming disinterest in anything that transpires is further fuel for Dick’s anger, and yet the ending seems to nullify all of the charges leveled against him.

To contextualize: Old Wounds is structured as a flashback. The old Robin has just finished explaining this story to his replacement. And so naturally one expects the ending to construct some kind of relationship between the events of the past and those of the present. At the same time, one would imagine that the can of worms opened by this story, the uncomfortable moral light in which it places the series’ eponymous hero and the dialectical split between two costumed crime-fighters, each possessing the same willingness to do right, would not so quickly be shut. After all, what is the point of a tale with such visibly long-lasting reverberations if not to stand as a near-permanent alteration in the lives of those involved?

As it stands, the ending seeks to destroy the moral ambiguity that the narrative has taken so long to explicate. Dick and Tim stumble upon Connor, who explains that the joint efforts of Batman and Bruce Wayne have helped him turn his life around. Though it is a heartwarming scene when taken on its own terms, Fogel regretfully exaggerates its importance, positioning it as the end-all penitence for Batman’s sins and restoring Dick’s faith in his old mentor to the extent that the last few shots imply a jolly reunion.

So much of Old Wounds rings true, and yet it is told with such ham-fisted artifice, hollowed out characterizations, and moral grandiloquence that the whole enterprise ultimately crumbles. As a half-successful, faintly convincing telling of an essential tale, it provokes only the most lukewarm of responses from me.