My Review of Batman: Caped Crusader: "The Night Of The Hunters"

 

Written by Ed Brubaker

Directed by Christina Sotta 

Flass (to Gordon): "Let me guess, was that about us?"

You know, the great thing about Batman media is that every once in a while we're reminded just how awful his grounded antagonists can truly be and with Detectives Bullock and Flass, this show has outdone itself. Four episodes in and both of them are absolutely vile in their corruption.

Frustrated with the Batman's presence, Mayor Jessop (William Salyers) opened the episode by publicly condemning Batman and also tasking Gordon in order to take Batman down. That also meant that Renee Montoya had to come up with ideas to smoke the Caped Crusader out in the open.

Unfortunately for Montoya, her tactics of getting officers to fake crimes didn't work and Batman easily saw through them. However a suggestion about using a freak by Harleen Quinzel came with some consequences and rather big ones. On the other hand, at least we got another rogue added to the mix.

This time, it was Firebug (Tom Kenny), aka not Firefly. Bullock and Flass sprung him from prison under the pretext of sending him to Arkham and then allowing him to escape. Firebug then unwittingly played his part by torching an apartment building on the rough part of Gotham.

Now, I think this episode conveyed a complexity with Firebug. Yes, he was dangerous and caused the big fire of the episode but he was set up by Bullock and Flass. Ultimately, he was also brutally killed by the pair,vwho then used his death to get into Mayor Jessop's good graces and undermine Gordon.

While this episode went to lengths to display Bullock and Flass's corruption, we were also reminded that Commissioner Gordon, Barbara and Renee are the good guys. I'm glad that Jim got to see Batman's heroic side with the latter saving children and I'm glad he's determined to fight back against the corruption in the GCPD.

- O'Brien is actually Eel O'Brien (Tom Kenny) aka Plastic Man. He does seem to be more pro Batman than GCPD. We also saw Jack Ryder (Corey Burton) and Jim Corrigan (Roger Craig Smith)

- Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen appeared in this episode while Harleen mentioned her mentor being Dr Crane and she was flirting with Renee.

- Harvey Dent continued with his mayoral campaign, going out of his way to publicly criticise Jessop.

- Chronology: A month since the start of the show.

The Night Of The Hunters was better than expected. I'm not a big Firebug fan in general but this episode was a rather tragic tale with real consequences felt. Now this is how you make an adult animated show.

Rating: 8 out of 10