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popculturebuffet · 5 months

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Batman The Animated Series: Christmas With the Joker Review (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Happy Holidays all you happy people! Christmas Season is here, and why wait to december when I can spread some holiday cheer now?

So to begin our holly jolly holiday coverage this year, i'm taking a look at a christmas classic i'm honestly baffled it's taken me this long to revisit. I grew up with this episode and fondly remember it being on the batman tape I had or rented back then. I just simply forget sometimes I have Batman the Animated Series right there and cant really take that for granted since the person in charge of Warner Bros thinks it's "brave" to burn down content for the insurance money.

For those who haven't experienced this holiday classic, Christmas With the Joker is the second episode of batman the animated series, though it aired later in broadcast order to line up with the timing. IT's also our first exposure to the magic that's Mark Hamill as joker, it certainly was mine thanks to aforementioned Tape.

Hamill got the role thanks to serendipity: The crew had initally cast Tim Curry, god on earth, to play the part. It SEEMS like perfect casting.. but it just didn't quite fit, as we can see from what footage of Curry as joker we have. Tim wasn't bad and I could see his joker working and him playing the part again sometime had he not sadly had to retire. The problem is his version didn't quite match what the team was going for with Mr. J. Curry's joker is one who jokes and what not, but comes off like a bastard who makes the bad jokes half heartedly as an excuse to do mayhem. The DCAU joker is the best of both worlds: he GENUINELY loves his bad puns, his craft: he lives in his own demented world where everything's a joke. When Curry's joker doe sa bit or a line, it feels like he's putting on an act, with Hamil's it's a PERFORMANCE. It's what he does. He's an entertainer, he's a comedian, he's a clown, he's going to give em a hell of a show and the death, horror and other mayhem that comes along with it is part of the act. It's key to it. It's the spice to him. Tim Curry didn't do BAD, he just didn't fit the bill. Hamill by contrast when auditioing for the now open part saw Joker's laugh as an INSTURMENT. You could tell what he was feelilng just by it's inflection. Hamill understood the character and tha'ts why he's the best at playing him: He gets just how to play Mr J, every nuance and fascet. Just as Conroy felt batman rise.. the joker's laugh escaped out of mark hamill and never went back until sadly, there just wasn't a batman to chase anymore.

The episode itself is something diffrent from the previous 3 batman the animated series episodes i've covered: I Am the Night and Two-Face were psycological adventures, the former going literally into bruce's head and showing the pain in his life, and the latter showing the gradual downfall of a man who simply needed help but wouldn't let himself get as much as needed, who put duty over himself.

Christmas With The Joker.. is a wacky christmas adventure. It has stakes and what not, but it's ultimately Batman and Robin not getting christmas eve off after the Joker decides to hyjack the airwaves with a demented holiday special. Yet.. it's still so damn good. Sometimes you need a fairly deep character study of batman or one of his foes.. and sometimes you just need the Joker deciding to do a holiday special with recurring characters as the hostages, and Batman and Robin on a deadline to stop him. Just let Mark Hamill ham it up, let Batman punch some people. BTAS has some truly stunning masterpieces.. but it also knew how to just have fun and lay back once in a while. This episode's just .. pure fun and i'll show you why under the cut.

We open at Arkham Asylum, the happiest crime against psychatric care on earth as it's Christmas Eve and Joker gets one of the best character entrances of all time. While I forgot a detail or too about this episode i've never forgotten this intro: the inmates are all singing carols, no one we'd know yet as most of Batman's Rogue's haven't been introduced. It's something I liked about Batman TAS and that seems to have stuck for the comics afterword: Anytime we visit arkham we usually see some of Batman's other rogues even if we're there for say the Joker finding out someone did a copyright infringment on him, so it's weird to see no one else present yet.

So the Joker enters the series singing that classic version of Jingle Bells. If you haven't heard it, there's only one proper way to introduce you to the best version of the song outside of this episode. TAKE IT AWAY ROBERT GOULET!

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That's brilliant enough... but then he hops on the christmas tree, turns it into a rocket, and flies off laughing all the way. AHAHAHHEEHAHAHAHAHAA. It's a perfect joker move: it's overly complicated, required a ton of prep work, a ton of money we don't know how he got..

Okay we know exactly how he got it we just can't talk about it on a children's show, and it's hilaroious. in less than a minute we know the Joker's a madman, he's clever, and his crimes are over the top because it's just more FUN that way. It's what seperates the joker from most other Batman TAS villians: the others are, with exceptions like Penguin or Rupert Thorne, sympathetic on some level: Mr Freeze just wants his wife back after a corrupt rich asshole tried to kill her and made him a popsicle, Poison Ivy wants to save the planet no matter who she has to kill, Two Face's DiD consumed him, Baby Doll was traumitzed by being stuck in a body she didn't want, Killer Croc is an alligator man, which sounds boss on paper but really isn't.

The Joker is diffrent in that we don't know WHY he does this. It didn't hit me till this watch that he's one of the few foes in TAS who isn't given a full backstory upfront. While I love the film, I honestly forgot for a second that Mask of the Phantasm revealed him to have been a plainclothes gangster before he became the clown prince of crime.. and even THEN we don't know what made him like this. Maybe he's always been this way, maybe some trauma shaped him, we don't know. And that's what works: that mystique: we dont' know why the joker is the way he is, he just.. is. It's what makes him the perfect counterpart to Batman: Bruce is a man trying to take a chaotic world and give it order, give it someone who can provide justice where the law can't or simply is outnumbered to, all in the hope that one day no kid will ever loose his parents like he did, even if the quest to eats him alive (and at least in this contiunity as seen with his older self it certainly has in some ways). Joker simply wants to have fun, to put on a show... it's just his show is chaos, death and funny only to him. What he finds funny is frankly disturbing. He's the only one in on his jokes and he's happy that way.

This episode emphasies that, as well as the contrast: Batman is worked up that christmas eve, worried the Joker will pull something. Robin, being less experinced with the joker and costumed punching people what good brushes it off, thinking no one would possibly work on christmas. Bruce gets that maybe the theatrical clown who escaped on a christmas tree rocket he smuggled into a psychatic hospital has other christmas plans and they aren't good.

While Bruce is on edge partly because he's a workaholic, to the point he nearly stops a guy returning a package to an old lady on suspcion he's a mugger, he's not WRONG: the Joker is flashy. The bigger the audience, the better the show. It's why he frequently hyjacks the airwaves in this show: EVERYONE has to watch. He's fine with a small audience , but it has to be carefully curated... i.e. he's fine if it's just bats as bats is the perfect straight man. The perfect grim brick wall to play off of and someone he knows will never end his shit entirely for a simple reason.

So he's not going to stop baiting him. Bruce's mistake.. is SEARCHING for the joker. See while Batman knows the Joker... the Joker knows Batman. He made an audacious exit so Batman would KNOW he was out there and sweat it out trying to find him... but he also knows Bats well enough to avoid detection right away. To wait till it's time to start the show. Then it's fair play and Brucey can have all the clues he wants, it's an even match. But to Joker nothing would be less fun than batman spoiling his fun ahead of time. It's part simply how the game works for him and part simply being the kind of person who HAS to control the game. It has to be played by his rules , it's his show, he planned this, batman is simply performing it.

So Bruce gives up, has a nice christmas dinner for once, and everything's fine.... until he and Dick sit down to watch it's a wonderful life. I like the joke of Bruce not watching it because of the title. It's not only a common problem, many assume the film is super cheery because of it's title, but the idea of one man being important enough to make a diffrence is bruce's whole life. Of course the idea of a film where someone doubts that wouldn't be something he'd go to voluntarily. To him it's all about control.

Bruce's first watch of It's a Wonderful Life is interrupted by a holiday special.. CHRISTMAS WITH THE JOKER! Live from.. somewhere in Gotham, Joker's doing a cheesy holiday special, the kind I haven't seen a lot of , but that caked the 70's, down tow earin ga sweater ala bing crosby. He taught joker everything he knows about being terrible.

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Naturally Joker needs a studio audience and while his awesome audience of cutouts, including batman and robin themselves, is fun and all, he needs some live hostages. Really ties the room together. So he kidnapped Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Bullock.. and Summer Gleason

Summer is Gotham's reporter. If you forgot her, huzzah! It means it wasn't just me... but it's also fair as she really is just there for exposition and dosen't have Kent Brockman's lunacy or Perd Hapley's mastery of the worm

So it's easy to forget she exists, and weird she's here instead of Renee Montoya. Maybe they wanted a civlliann with the cops, maybe they thought of doing the mayor as one of these but found Gordon and Bullock both too fun to let out. Maybe she was supposed to be bigger in the series and just never quite hit it with the writers. We don't really know, though if I had to guess it'd be the last one. It feels like they intended to have more for Summer to do as she shows up more in the earlier episodes.. but it became clear they didn't really need her for more than just the ocasional smattering of news exposition, and even then really didn't need news exposition THAT often as Batman often did his own research better and used newspapers more.

Joker's kindapped the "Awful Lawfuls" as his requisite hostages and plans to kill them if Batman dosen't find him by midnight. Batman does trace the broadcast.. but when Robin points out it's easy, Bats counters it's NEVER this easy with the joker.

The Joker.. dosen't let Bruce down, as while their headed to the scene they not only have to deal with the giant toys rampaging through gotham.. but also a train. The train .. is easily the weakest part of this episode. It just.. stops for a bit so Batman and Robin can save a train. That's it. I forgot this entire sequence and it's easy to see why: in an episode full of colorful joker chaos and him in the best christmas sweater ever, it's just... a train. I love me a good train, and most trains are good trains. Except Gordon he's an asshat. But this is just.. filler. It feels like the episode went under time in scripting so they added a set piece.

Thankfully the episode picks right back up from this derailment with our dynamic duo heading to the gotham observatory.. naturally.. this is a trap and joker has turned the observiatory into a canon.

So Batman distracts it while Robin battles some joker themed tin soldiers inside. overall it's fucking amazing as it is out of left field. But unlike the train not being really jokery as a crime, this fits him perfectly. Turning an observatory into a laser.. simply because he can.

While stopping it is rad as shit, it dosen't get our heroes anywhere closer to the Joker. Thankfully the joker throws Batman a Bone, as this just isn't fun if Batman entirely misses the deadline and isn't there to either save the hostages just in the knick of time.. or watch as they die horribly in person. It just isn't the same on tv it has to be life dammit. SO he holds up a doll that Batman instantly identifies and know's it's factory shut down years ago.

Batman's Doll Trivia saves the day though as our heroes arrive and we get an awesome bit as Joker plays the nutcracker sweet as he sends out an army of weaponized toy, a beautifully animated utterly awesome sequence.

Turns out though Joker was just waiting for his cue, revealing himself via curtain dropping, of course, to have all the hostages suspended over a vat of.. acid? lava? it's something what hurts bad is the point so he forces Bats to open a present. It's a pie to the face!

This leads to a chase as Joker naturally cuts the cord anyway, but Bats manages to rescue them in time and chases joker on rollerskates.. and saves him when he almost dicks himself into the generic murder vat.

With that Bats can actually enjoy christmas.. as much as Bruce can enjoy anything, with him genuinely loving i'ts a wonderful life and christmas with his grown man boy wonder. Meanwhile the joker sings to himself in Arkham, entirely happy to pick this up again another day.

Christmas With the Joker is mostly an action set piece, but it's a well done one: in one ep we get who the joker is, why he's a match fo rbatman and how this whole game of cat and also cat works for him. It's a wonderfuly demented holiday special and if you haven't seen it it's more than worth your time.

#batman #batman the animated series #christmas #the joker #mark hamill #kevin conroy #comissioner gordon #harvey bullock #summer gleason #christmas with the joker

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twistedtummies2 · 4 months

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Year of the Bat - Number 27

Welcome to Year of the Bat! In honor of Kevin Conroy, Arleen Sorkin, and Richard Moll, I’m counting down my Top 31 Favorite Episodes of “Batman: The Animated Series” throughout this January. TODAY’S EPISODE QUOTE: “Live from Gotham City! The show that nobody wants to see, but everyone will watch!” Number 27 is…Christmas With the Joker.

Our previous entry was the highly depressing “Growing Pains,” which many – myself included – consider one of the darkest and most disturbing episodes of the series. In stark contrast, “Christmas With the Joker” is widely regarded as one of the silliest…perhaps to a fault, many would argue. In all sincerity, I’ve always found it ASTONISHING that, apparently, not a lot of people actually like this episode! This includes the show’s creators: according to Bruce Timm, in particular, the creative team behind B:TAS had a really hard time figuring out their take on the Joker. His first two or three appearances, in Timm’s opinion, were sub-par to what came later. And of those three earlier outings, “Christmas With the Joker” – the Clown Prince of Crimes very first appearance – seems to be considered the worst of the bunch. I will never understand this, to be perfectly honest, because – in my opinion – this probably one of Mr. J.’s BEST outings, and is as traditional around Christmastime for me as any version of “A Christmas Carol” or “The Nutcracker” may be. I absolutely LOVE this episode. Is it dark or complex? Not especially. Does it really do anything to expand on the Joker as a character? Not really. Is it a lot of fun to watch? HELL. YES. Honestly, for a first outing for the Joker, a Christmas-themed story may seem like a bizarre choice, but the creative decisions made are just absolute and pure “Joker,” and help to establish this character and his whole persona beautifully. The premise is as follows: after escaping from Arkham Asylum via a rocket-powered Christmas Tree (oh, don’t pretend you don’t have one of THOSE kicking around somewhere), the Joker kidnaps Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Bullock, and reporter Summer Gleeson. He then hijacks Gotham’s TV station signals, to broadcast “the first annual Christmas With the Joker” holiday special! Via television, the Ace of Knaves poses the following challenge to Batman: if he can find the Joker’s hideout and save the hostages before midnight, the Joker will give him a special “Christmas gift.” Otherwise, the three victims will be dunked into the traditional Yuletide vat of acid. (Again, don’t pretend you don’t have one of those somewhere.) Batman must thus try to find the Joker’s lair, all while the Joker – as part of the “entertainment” for his Christmas special – starts causing chaos all around Gotham City and its environs. What I love about this whole thing is how “Joker” it all feels, as I said before. To make a long story short, if the Joker was going to put on a Christmas special, this is EXACTLY how I would expect it to go down. I also love the utter randomness of the villainy he perpetrates here: he doesn’t seem to have any particular REASON to do all this, he’s just causing chaos because…well…it’s what he does! He’s the Joker! I also love the twist about Batman’s “Christmas Present”: a couple times in the episode, the Joker teases that he’s planning to give the Caped Crusader a “special gift,” and of course, we’re expecting something horrible. Some kind of trap, an ambush, a bomb, etc. And what does it turn out to be? A pie in the face. Yep. Just…a pie in the face. It’s not even laced with cyanide, or acid, it’s…just…a pie in the face. I’m gonna be honest…that might the most Joker-ish thing the Joker does in the ENTIRE SERIES. He goes through all this trouble and does so many terrible things – kidnapping people, hijacking television signals, blowing up bridges, spraying bullets and rockets willy-nilly, creating giant killer robots, and so on – and all of this, ALL OF THIS, is just for the chance to hopefully bean Batman in the face with a cream pie. It does not get much more Joker than that: “I will cause mass panic and attempt to sew random death on a scale untold, and I am going to do it with style and panache…literally just so I can mess with you and get a few good laughs.” Again, why don’t more people like this episode? XD