For my birthday, Dave gave me a complete DVD set of Batman: The Animated Series, Season III, of which I have only today finished watching all 29 episodes. First off, let me say that I grew up loving this show (it really was one of the best cartoons of all time), and I had even had a resurgence of interest in it during my Bloomington years (from whence Dave knows me) when I purchased Season I on DVD. Unfortunately, I have lent out this set to one of my friends and wasn't able to get it back prior to watching Season III, nor did I feel like going to the store to buy Season II to prepare me for whatever plot points might lead up to Season III, but I don't think this really affected my viewing much at all.
Of the 29 episodes, I saw all sorts of villains from Batman's Rogues' Gallery: Rupert Thorne, Two-Face, The Penguin, Ra's Al Ghul, Maxie Zeus, The Ventriloquist (and Scarface), The Mad Hatter, Killer Croc, HARDAC, Poinson Ivy, The Terrible Trio, The Joker, Harley Quinn, Clock King, Catwoman, Bane, Baby-Doll, The Riddler, Red Claw, Scarecrow, Lock-Up, Mr. Freeze, and Roland Daggett. Although this seems like a pretty exhaustive list, somehow Clayface and Man-Bat managed not to be included, even though I know they were featured in other seasons of the show. In general, I find Robin's presence in the shows he's in to be quite annoying (although, not as bad as Batgirl), but Batman's great in this series, so no complaints there.
Some of the best episodes were those that featured Ra's Al Ghul (although they pronounce his name "Raysh" for some inexplicable reason), The Ventriloquist (whom I had never heard of before but eventually found really intriguing), Harley Quinn (isn't this series where she got her start?), Catwoman (so hot!), and Mr. Freeze. Easily the best episode was that which featured Lock-Up, an ex-chief of security for Arkham Asylum who insanely believes the flaws in the bureaucracy, media, police force, and psychologists of Arkham have led to Arkham being a "revolving door" for lunatics, therefore taking it upon himself to remedy the situation by locking up the leaders of these organizations without trial. This episode was easily the most thought-provoking of the lot, despite having an obscure villain I had never heard of before.
Overall, it was really fun watching this season, and it's only made me want to get my Season I DVDs back even more so I can watch them too. Thanks for the gift, Dave!
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3 comments:
glad you liked it bro. i should probably netflix some of those. i really enjoyed some of the justice league unlimited series that i watched.
regarding ra's and pronunciation, that's pretty close to what i would say. despite looking like "raas," i usually hear it said as "race." how did they say it in batman begins?
Hey Dave,
In Batman Begins, it's "Roz" (typing phonetically). When spelled, it's "Ra's", which is hard not to see as a possessive.
Even still, the animated series pronounced it "Raysh", and although I can understand the long "a", there's no justification for the "sh". In that case it should just be "Raze", still sounding possessive.
This of course only applies if my assumption that it's a possessive (like "of the Egyptian god Ra") is correct. Perhaps in some other language I'm not familiar with the apostrophe makes the "s" an "sh".
Whatever.
I had a feeling you might comment on this. Glad you did. =)
the name is not english; it is arabic, or at least a fictional comic adaptation of it.
so i suppose this gives them carte blanche to do some confusing things...
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