Review: Beware the Batman “Darkness”

With Batman in the clutches of Ra’s al Ghul, who will save Gotham from impending doom?

Man, “Darkness” was pretty good. I think I need to start a tally of the nods to the Batman comic. This week, we have Barbara Gordon trying to help hack into the Ion Cortex, and Batman shows her the backdoor to get in. What was the password? It was Oracle. That’s what Barbara Gordon went as for years after Joker paralyzed her in The Killing Joke. Kudos to the writing staff for a pretty badass reference.

Going through “Darkness,” I got the feeling that James Gordon had the look and feel of a stereotypical television cop from any 50’s comedy. I think it kind of demeans the importance of Gordon, and his daughter. Actually, it seems that Barbara may have become more integral if the series was able to get into a second season.

Normally, Beware the Batman flows really well. This week, however, had a rather choppy feeling to it. “Darkness” had a bunch of really awesome scenes, like the fight in the .gif. The fight scenes were awesome. It’s an ongoing theme of this show: make the fighting as badass as possible. It worked for Batman: Arkham Asylum, why couldn’t it work for a short animated show on Cartoon Network?  There are many universal truths when it comes to TV, and kick ass fighting scenes make for good television. And the use of Silver Monkey, and his sense of honor, was a nice touch to get the story rolling somewhat.

But that’s it. In between the fighting, there was useless interludes. Watching Silver Monkey fight was awesome, because he fought like a monkey trained in martial arts. Shocking, right? I wanted to see more of him fight Lady Shiva, but they cut away to the Gordons arguing about Barbara helping out. This happened a few times. I was disappointed to see so little of the stand-off between the Ghosts and the Gordons, because James was rather desperate to stay clear of them on their way to the cortex. The main plot of the mini-arc seemed lost in the shuffle. And thanks for telling us that Gotham is going to shit, but why can’t we see it?

There was a big revelation tonight with Alfred and Katana, and if you missed it, you haven’t been watching the show very well. This seems like it could be a game changer going down the road. I have a feeling Katana will defect to Ra’s, but Batman will probably kick some sense into her near the end of the next episode.

That leads to Katana, Alfred, and Batman being in the exact opposite positions than they were last week. Batman escaped before he was able to contact Katana and Alfred, and that led to them being captured by Ra’s al Ghul. Now, if you know anything at all about Batman, you know that he will come back from where ever he is being held captive. Alfred and Katana just walked into the liquid plot pool.

Overall, “Darkness” felt like a bunch of great fight scenes that are interrupted by an inconvenient plot. A blacked out Gotham could be a hot bed of great moments as I wanted to see Gotham fall into anarchy with a blanket of darkness. But this episode is the Amazing Spider-man of the series: it’s nothing but wasted potential.