Crime
The Irrational
The Irrational finds a behavioral scientist asking questions about memory and the human condition while investigating murders.
We know the story.
It’s been told many times in many ways: Wealthy socialite moonlights as masked avenger, fighting to free Gotham City’s streets of crime and corruption. He lurks in the shadows. He drives a cool car. He may not pack heat, but he sure brings the hurt.
Batman isn’t just a comic-book character anymore. He’s part of American folklore. We know where he lives (Wayne Manor), who he hangs with (hey, Commissioner Gordon!) and even who he habitually fights. Joker? Riddler? Penguin? Let’s face it: Even Batman’s adversaries are more familiar to most of us than Supreme Court justices.
So if we know Batman’s story already, do we really need another retelling? What makes this one different?
Read on.
The Gotham City we see in Batman: Caped Crusader feels plucked from 1940s film noir. The cars are long and sleek. Men wear fedoras and fire tommy guns. People read newspapers and use rotary phones plugged into walls. Creator Bruce Timm—who was also behind the much-beloved Batman: The Animated Series in the ‘90s—feels as retro as a Humphry Bogart movie marathon.
And Batman himself? His aesthetic owes everything to the character’s first dark incarnation in 1930s comics—so much so that some original Batman panels land on the pages of the show’s newspapers. His outfit is dark as the shadows he prowls through. (No yellow target on his chest here.) His “ears” are set slightly askew, making the Dark Knight look a bit more like a bat—or a devil. People call him a vampire. And in the opening title sequence, Batman’s visage looms over Gotham like Chernabog, the demon in Fantasia’s “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence.
This Batman is the stuff of nightmares—at least for Gotham’s bad guys. And honestly, most of the police force isn’t so sure about him, either—if they even believe he exists at all. Corrupt cops (of which there are many) are naturally terrified of him. Good ones often see him as one more lawbreaker to bring to heel—even if he admittedly makes their jobs a bit easier.
But not everything feels like a throwback.
In this iteration, Penguin isn’t Oswald Cobblepot, but Oswalda—a female cabaret singer with a thriving crime operation and two rather disappointing sons. Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Jim Gordon’s daughter, is a steely defense attorney who regularly spars with Harvey Dent (the future villain Two-Face) in court. And while the stylistic vibe of the show is pure 1940s, sexuality is purely 21st-century. Even though women habitually wear skirts and high heels (sometimes even when they’re supervillains picking Gotham’s pockets), same-sex relationships are accepted and normal. (Two female characters have a brief romantic dalliance in episode five, for instance.)
And in the third episode, Bruce Wayne is forced to undergo some anger-management counseling sessions with one Dr. Harleen Quinzel—who isn’t buying Wayne’s “billionaire playboy” routine at all.
“This whole life that you’ve built for yourself, it feels so—obvious,” she says. “Almost a cliché.”
Batman: Caped Crusader tries to steer away from cliché when it can, even if the broad beats of the story don’t deviate much from Batman’s traditional mythos. It may be retro, but it feels fresh and resonant—perhaps one reason why it’s clocking in at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing.
But as that same-sex romance suggests, Prime Video’s Batman: Caped Crusader isn’t quite as perfect as that score would indicate.
Listen, there’s a reason why bad guys are so terrified of Batman—and it’s not because he treats them to tea and gives them a stern talking to. No, he beats them up. And even in this animated framework, the beatdowns can be plenty violent.
While the Dark Knight famously eschews lethal justice, he walks a pretty fine line here. In one episode, for instance, he dangles a bad guy in front of a speeding train, and then hits three more with his Batmobile. (We don’t hear from any of them again, but we’ll just a assume they were knocked unconscious.)
The bad guys, of course, have no qualms about killing. Though the action never gets overly bloody, we do see people shot, stabbed and (it’s inferred) blown up. Corpses can be found beneath floorboards and in morgues. Even the villains themselves can be quite grotesque.
Viewers can expect to hear a smattering of mild profanities in every episode. And addition to the occasional kiss (featuring both opposite- and same-sex couples) you might hear some light, provocative banter and see a bit of (animated) skin, as well. The content concerns are about on the same level as the original 1990s animated series—and certainly nowhere near the more risqué fare from the Gotham-verse (I’m looking at you, Kite Man). Still, this show is not made with little kids in mind.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Gotham gangster Rupert Thorne is concerned about a new crime lord horning in on his territory, and he’s not alone: Batman is, too. Worse yet, this new player is more than happy to blow up buildings to make a point. But turns out, this “crime lord” is a lady: a cabaret singer known as Penguin. And in this game of crime, she’s playing for keeps.
We witness a frenetic gun battle. A man is shot and killed. Another is locked in a chest and dropped into the sea. A couple of buildings are blown up (apparently without casualties), and we hear about a couple other explosions, too. A few people are hit by a car. Batman hangs a man in front of a speeding train as an “encouragement” to talk. Missiles are fired. Batman engages in several physical altercations.
Some animated women display a bit of cleavage. Revelers drink what appear to be champagne and martinis on a nightclub/yacht, with Bruce Wayne making several jokes about alcohol. Characters say “a–,” “d–n” and “crap,” and God’s name is misused at least seven times. We also hear f-word stand-ins like “freaking” and “frigging.”
Batman and Detective Renee Montoya both investigate the mysterious disappearance of a famous movie actress. But the missing persons case turns into murder when Montoya discovers the actress’ co-star, Basil Karlo, has been stabbed to death.
The culprit is not pretty. While we don’t see most of his face until the very end, the glimpses we do get depict the killer as a near-corpse with a disfigured face. We see several other dead bodies as well: One we see murdered (as he stands in liquid into which an electrical light is toppled); another stares vacantly as a spider crawls across his eyeball; a third lies in the morgue with a curiously squishy face.
Batman’s butler, Pennyworth, watches a movie featuring the missing actress, where she writhes on a stone slab, wearing a tight, cleavage-revealing dress, as a scythe slowly descends. (Later, that same scene is repeated with murderous intent.) People are punched. Two characters engage in a swordfight. Someone is injected with a syringe of something off-camera. We hear single uses of both “d–n” and “h—.”
The Gotham Museum is displaying some of the city’s most fabulous jewels, including some literal gems from the Wayne family. Selina Kyle, a mysteriously lucky jewel thief toying with the idea of creating a costumed alter-ego, is eying a particularly attractive set of pearls owned by Bruce Wayne. Batman certainly can’t have that. But when a reporter makes a crack about those pearls and their role in the death of Bruce’s mom, the normally mild-mannered playboy socks him one—which earns him a stint with a counselor to deal with his anger issues.
“Have you ever found yourself resorting to violence in other situations?” asks his psychiatrist, Dr. Harleen Quinzel. He denies it, but we know better.
In flashback, we hear the gunshots that killed Bruce’s parents when he was a boy, and we see the young lad transition from unremitting grief to an unrelenting desire for vengeance. As Batman we see him fight with a couple of corrupt police officers and wrestle a black panther. Kyle tangles with people, too—giving the face of one policeman some bloody clawmarks. She’s grazed in the thigh with a bullet, leading to a bit of animated bloodshed. Kyle socks Batman in the gut with electric brass knuckles and nearly runs him over with her car.
But Catwoman also kisses Batman rather leisurely. Kyle jokes with Bruce Wayne that she’s about the only single woman that Bruce hasn’t dated. Speaking of Bruce’s womanizing, Quinzel asks her patient if any of his myriad conquests has meant anything to him. “Is there even love there, or even lust?”
We hear “a–,” “crap,” “h—” and one misuse of God’s name.
Some of Gotham’s greediest tycoons have mysteriously given their money to charity, or mysteriously disappeared, or mysteriously … turned into deranged costumed third-tier villains. Both Batman and Barbara Gordon are determined to figure out why. But the evidence leads straight to the door of an eminent psychiatrist both know well: Harleen Quinzel.
Quinzel is revealed to be Harley Quinn, of course. In established Batman canon, she was an impressionable young therapist who was warped and ultimately broken by Joker, with whom she has a deeply disturbed (and mostly one-sided) romance with. But here, Harley’s romantic inclinations swing the other way: The smitten shrink asks Det. Renee Montoya out for dinner, and the two share a kiss before Quinzel runs out to take care of a bat in her belfry.
That belfry is filled with some very odd characters (at least some of which are D-listers in Batman’s traditional Rogue’s Gallery), and Batman ultimately tangles with all of them simultaneously. (People are hit and thrown, and one character sports a black eye.) Elsewhere, Batman also knocks out several policemen. A man tries to jump off a rooftop. One guy under the influence of Quinn attacks another with a sledgehammer (albeit off camera). Another man is tickled into submission. A couple of people fall victim to sleeping gas. A building explodes, and a great deal of its wreckage slides off a cliff into the sea—nearly carrying a few people with it. (A couple of characters indeed fall into the waters below, but both ultimately survive.)
Quinzel and Montoya drink wine during dinner. A character believes he’s the ancient Egyptian king Tutankhamun, and we see various Egyptian artifacts (many of which had religious significance in that ancient culture) in his secret lair. Characters say “d–n,” “h—” and misuse God’s name once.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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