It's the noble cops vs the corrupt cops, who'll win?
Last time on Batman: Caped
Crusader, Harvey Dent had an extremely rough night. Harvey Dent, his face
horribly scarred after acid was thrown on it and is dealing with a lot of anger.
Bruce arrives and takes Harvey out to eat. He claims it’s to get him out of his
apartment, but Batman’s goal is to grill him a little on what happened. Harvey
has a paranoid breakdown, feeling like everyone is mocking him for his melted
face, rips the bandages off and shows his damaged face to everyone. He runs off
and decides to get payback after burying the thoughts that considered he might
have done a few things to deserve being attacked. He cuts a bloody swathe
through Gotham, beating up gangsters, shooting muggers, and paying off
girlfriends to find the man that threw the acid, Tony Zeto. Batman is trailing him
the whole time but arrives too late at each pitstop to stop Harvey. He catches up
to Harvey just after killing Zeto in an apartment fire, but Harvey loses him in
the chase. Batman finally corners him as Harvey attempts to murder Rupert Thorne.
They struggle for a bit, but Batman is able to get through to the better half
of Harvey, ironically represented by his scarred face, who sobs over what he’d
done and turned himself in. After, he’s introduced to his lawyer, Barbara
Gordon. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 10: Savage Night
The episode begins at GCPD and
Harvey refusing to have Barbara represent him. The refusal is about half
stubborn pride, not wanting to be represented by someone he’s butted heads with
so often, and half self-pity, that he doesn’t deserve to be helped by anyone. Barbara
being her father’s daughter, refuses to just walk away and pulls out a coin, saying
heads she’s his lawyer, tails she leaves. She flips it and gets heads. Immediately
she tells Harvey that she’s going to get him transferred to Arkham for a psyche
evaluation and that he shouldn’t talk to anyone without her until then. She tosses
him the coin, as it was his that she got from lockup, and it’s revealed to be
his two headed coin.
We shift to Rupert Thorne speaking
to Flass over the phone. He wants an update on where Dent’s at. Flass says he’s
being moved around tonight to Arkham for the evaluation and then to court.
Thorne orders him to take care of Dent, as the man is dangerous to his business
and the business of other powerful men in Gotham. Turns out that Dent has been
cutting deals for a while and knows where a lot of metaphorical and probably a
few literal bodies are buried.
At Arkham we see an inmate start
screaming as Barbara gets checked in. He only stops when Harvey brings him the
pig stuffed toy he dropped. Barbara goes to speak with Harvey. She asks how he’s
doing, he says not well but he’s better off than some other inmates. Barbara
says that he won’t be there long, as the evaluation will be tomorrow and the
court case the day after. She thinks she can get him some lenience and then
into a private hospital for treatment. Harvey is much less optimistic,
believing his murder spree guarantees he’ll be sent to prison forever. Barbara
suggests that they might get some leniency if he squeals on some of the corruption
he’d dealt with as Gotham’s DA for the last decade, but Harvey asks if a man that
knew about that stuff but did nothing deserve help. Barbara pleads with him to give
her anything to work with. Harvey’s anger gets the better of him and he starts
screaming at her about how he’s a spineless coward. He pulls back and
apologizes for screaming. She says it just surprised her, and he apologized again,
saying surprise is his favorite trick. His other side doesn’t get a nickname
like Two-Face or Big Bad Harvey like in Batman: The Animated Series, but
that seems to be who he’s talking about.
Later, Barbara reviews Harvey’s case
in her office when Batman slips in. He asks about Dent, and Barbara says, “not
much.” She wants to help but she can’t get him to help her. Batman suggests that
while Harvey tipped the scale a little as DA, he cares about justice and that
she should put pressure on that part of him to get his help. She’s not certain
he’ll listen to her. Batman goes to leave, and Barbara asks for some means to
contact him, rather than have her wait for him to break into her office again.
He gives her his private number before slipping away.
Batman visits Harvey as Bruce
Wayne. Guess he figured he could reach Harvey. He apologizes for taking Harvey
out earlier, as he thought that pretending everything was normal would make
Harvey feel better. Harvey bitterly calls Bruce the ‘great pretender’ but then
apologizes, saying he’s just angry sometimes. He says it’s not Bruce’s fault
this happened, and Bruce points out that it’s not his fault either. He begs Harvey
to let his lawyer help him cut a deal, but Harvey points out that anyone else
in his position couldn’t cut a deal. Bruce shifts to Batman a little and tells
Harvey to not waste time and grow a conscience now. He tries the “Harvey Dent
never gives up” line but Harvey says that was just a campaign slogan. Alfred
drives Bruce home and asks him what he’s going to do now, but he’s not sure.
Later, Barbara escorts Harvey to a prison
van to take him to his hearing. When they open the door, someone throws a tear
gas grenade at them. They take out the guards and drag Dent away. Barbara is
able to cover her mouth in time and then follows them, seeing them take Harvey
away in a car. She gets in her own car and follows. It’s revealed that his kidnappers
are Flass and Bullock. He wonders what this rescue will cost him, but the two
corrupt cops say they’re not saving him but executing him. Barbara follows
them, pulling out her gun. Harvey tries to play the sympathy card with Flass
and Bullock, saying that he thought they were friends, but they tell him that he
should have kept his head down and played it safe. A man doesn’t get his face
melted off for now reason, after all. Flass directs Bullock on where to go and reminds
him to just drop Dent off with Thorne’s men and go. Harvey, sensing weakness,
says he’s surprised that Flass is the one calling the shots. And that it’s so
brilliant of him to use Bullock as the guy doing the actual dirty work to keep
his hands clean. Flass tells him to shut up. But Dent keeps talking, rightly
guessing how their partnership has operated to now, with Flass giving orders
and Bullock doing the crimes. Flass turns around to shut him up, but Dent dodges
the grab, kicks Bullock in the back of the neck and causes him to crash.
Harvey pulls himself from the wreck
and Barbara arrives to get him out of his cuffs. She says she’s going to get
him to the cops, but Dent rightly points out that it’s not like he’s safe with
them either. Case in point the two cops that were going to hand him over to the
mob. She says she’ll take him to her dad. Dent says that he’s going to do
things his way and pay Thorne a visit. But Barbara isn’t having that and
handcuffs them together to get him to comply. Harvey’s annoyed by this but can’t
really do anything about it so they drive off. Flass and Bullock wake up and get
out of the wreck. Bullock thinks they’re cooked but Flass points out they’re near
Thorne’s men already, so they’ll find them.
Barbara stops them to use a
payphone to call her dad. She tells him that Dent was kidnapped and needs help.
As she’s talking, Thorne’s men pass and clock thee back of Two-Face’s head. She
makes a plan to meet with her dad and then she calls the… other number. Batman’s
phone starts ringing, and Alfred picks up, transferring her to Batman a moment
later.
Harvey and Barbara arrive at Gotham
Docks and Harvey mocks Barbara for believing that there’s a happy ending for
him tonight. Flass, Bullock, and Thorne’s men arrive, Flass orders them to not
take chances and to shoot Dent on sight. Bullock points out that that’s Barbara’s
car. Flass says that he must have seen them with Dent, so she can’t leave here either.
When he asks if Bullock gets what he’s saying, Bullock rather annoyedly says
that ‘it’s time to do the dirty work.” Looks like Harvey got under Harvey’s
skin. Sorry, Dent got under Bullock’s skin, had to.
We shift to Montoya and Jim waiting
for Barbara and Harvey. The fog is thick tonight so that’s definitely going to
complicate tonight. Batman arrives, telling them that 15 men are on the docks
tonight, and two of them are theirs. Jim guesses he means the gruesome twosome
and Montoya says they thought they’d be involved. Barbara and Harvey arrive,
and Batman leads them to the south exit as it’s open for now. Dent is still pessimistic
about their plan, realizing that it’s just to keep him alive long enough to
testify against half of city hall and then that’ll somehow change things. Jim
Gordon thinks so, but Dent laughs at him. He says that one hundred other
monsters will replace anyone they take down. Batman, angry, grabs Harvey by the
collar and tells him that you don’t bend with the world when it goes bad, you
push back. Jim adds that he knows the system is stacked against them but he
will get Harvey in front of a judge. Batman batarangs one of the goons as he
walks up, telling the others to run while he handles them.
Batman takes out three other goons
in quick succession. While they run, Harvey grabs Barbara and pulls her aside. He
tells her to let him go, as Thorne is only after him. He’ll lead them away and
the others can live. Barbara refuses. Their talk is interrupted by a goon, who
they close line with the handcuff chain and then Harvey stomps repeatedly. Barbara
gets him to stop but he begs her to let him go. She pulls her gun and starts
shooting more goons. Montoya and Jim take out a few more goons and only then
notice Barbara and Harvey are gone. Flass and Bullock are still standing,
Bullock pointing out that other cops will be here soon due to the gunfire.
Flass tells him to just let Flass handle the talking if it comes to that.
Batman takes out a few more goons,
tricking two into shooting each other before fist fighting and throwing a third
into the water. He’s almost shot by a shot gun, but Jim and Montoya arrive and
take him out. Batman learns that Harvey and Barbara got separated from them and
so grappling hooks away to find them. Harvey and Barbara get spotted thanks to
an angry dog and Harvey gets winged in a firefight. He begs Barbara to just
leave him, as someone like her shouldn’t die for him. Barbara says she’s not
dying tonight, and then notices they ended up near her car and tries to drag
Harvey to it. Batman, Flass, and Bullock all start to converge on Barbara and
Harvey. Harvey tells her that she’s wasting her time with him, but she refuses to
leave him. Bullock gets a bead on them, but Jim pulls his gun on him and makes
him back off. Barbara and Harvey make it to her car, and she starts to undo the
cuffs when Flass arrives and shoots at them. Dent gets in the way of the shot
and saves Barbara.
Batman rushes over and knocks the
gun from Flass’s hand. He grabs it and threatens Flass with it. Flass tries to
talk his way out of it, saying that was a righteous shoot. He gets angrier as
Batman points the gun at him, saying that he’s a damn police officer and Batman’s
just a lousy vigilante. We hear several gun shots, only for it to be revealed
that Batman shot around Flass’s head. He knocks Flass out and then throws the
gun into the harbor. Dude, evidence! Barbara asks Harvey why he did that and with
his dying breath he says, “damned if I know, Barbara.” Jim tells Batman that if
he’s still around when the cops arrive, he’ll have to take him in, and Batman grappling
hooks away.
Later, Batman is in the cave looking
at one of Harvey’s mayor buttons. Alfred comes in and Batman tells him that he saw
some of himself in Harvey after he snapped. Alfred tells him that while there
probably is some of him in Harvey when he lost it, at the end of the day,
Harvey lost himself in that dark place while Bruce Wayne did not. He says that he’s
seeing more and more of Bruce in Batman every day, and that he’s even made
friends, in a manner of speaking. Batman points out that it’s four on an
endless tied. They’re terrible odds but he’ll take them. He heads to the
Batmobile to go on patrol, beings to thank Alfred by calling him Pennyworth,
but stops and thanks Alfred. He drives off. At Thorne’s mansion, he tells his
men to tell Bullock and Flass to just keep their mouth shut and his lawyers
will handle it. He says a bullet in the back is what Dent deserved. He suddenly
gets cut by a Batarang being thrown through his window and we see Batman in the
distance.
We then cut to a shack in the
middle of nowhere. We hear a man laughing hysterically before we’re shown a
line of corpses laid out and strapped to chairs. The laughing man dies of the giggles,
and we see a man standing before him with a syringe. We get a close up look of
a pale white face as he says “perfect.” Oh, something wicked this way comes next
season.
I think this was a fairly solid way
to end the first season of Batman: Caped Crusader. While I’m a little
sorry to see Harvey Dent go so quickly, I do like the implied message here that
the final boss of season one isn’t Harvey Two-face, but the corruption of Gotham
itself in the shape of Arnold Flass. Flass has been the face of the GCPD’s
corruption to the audience for a while now. He moves Bullock, he comes up with
most of the plans, and he executes them with efficiency. I like that this was
only the second time that he attempted to get his hands dirty and this was the time
that ruined him, if only for a little while. I have relatively little doubt
that somehow Flass and Bullock will be on the force again by the time season 2
rolls out. The whole scene on the dock is intense, with the fog making it hard
for us to see who is coming next. It works to Batman’s advantage because he’s a
ninja, but that advantage is lost when he’s worrying about other people. You
know who he could have used tonight? A sidekick. Or a partner. Maybe a young acrobat
with a lot of skills and training or a street tough. No? No Robin for Batman? Fine.
Deidrich Bader was great in this last performance as Harvey Dent. He did a good
job showing off how conflicted Harvey was at having all these people working
hard to save him and now much anger he’s repressing. I’d have liked to see more
of him progress, but his presence really would wrap up the Gotham corruption a
bit too quickly and, again, that’s one of the main villains of this series. It
was nice that they gave him the noble sacrifice to go out on. This Dent was far
from the white knight of Gotham, but he did deserve more than he got. The tease
about Joker was nice. Though I have to say we seem to be in a trend of starting
out Joker free and then teasing him in the following installments. The Chris
Nolan Batman films, Batman v Superman, the Matt Reeves Batman films, all
promise the Joker later on. All I’m saying. I’m curious to see how he’ll fit
into this noir setting and if/how he’ll interact with Harley Quinn. But we’ll
have to wait and see for that one. Have a good night, everyone.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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