I don't know why, maybe it was a different team doing the animation for this one, but it is a lot choppier visually than the other episodes, like it's dropping frames. I thought it was an issue on my end at first, but no, just S3E2 for some reason.
Oh hey, Nightwing was played by Guillermo! Didn't catch that while watching. Anyway, this was a great episode! I loved it
[7.7/10] There is a lot going on in this one! You have all of Harley’s crew dealing with Ivy’s first attempt at being a leader. You have all of the Bat Family dealing with Nightwing returning and wanting to be a loner. And on top of that, you have a comical Bane revenge subplot. And you have all three storylines converging at various points in the narrative.
But honestly, it’s pretty brilliant! While a bit chaotic (as befits the show’s title character), there’s some Arrested Development-esque clockwork plotting going on here, which I appreciate. Having both the hero team and the villain team struggle with group cohesion given the (relatively) new addition who’s not used to being a team player, only to have to work together, is good stuff!
I like both sides of it. On the villain side, we get more of Harley being caring and supportive, but in an over-the-top way that treats Ivy like an object of worship than a real person with flaws and foibles. At the same time, I like Ivy as someone who is used to being on her own as a baddie, and so struggles with thinking of others in the midst of schemes and escapes and when plans have to change on the fly. We’re used to seeing Ivy be the level-headed and more thoughtful member of the Harley/Ivy duo, so seeing her step up to the leadership role and screw it up pretty badly for different but still comprehensible reasons is good stuff.
The Bat Family business is great too. Again, the comical destruction when Batman and company have a well-organized Plan, only for Nightwing to completely wreck it with his lonewolf attempts to do it all is great. Dick and Barbara have a great dynamic out of the gate which is nice to see. And not for nothing, it’s fun to see the whole Batfamily in action.
There’s a comic absurdity to both groups not only deciding to do an escape room to build group cohesion, but ending up in the same one at the same time (spurred by The Riddler, no less). It’s a nice excuse to mix and match people from both groups. Reuniting Batgirl and HArley Quinn leads to some wholesome and cute moments given their enthusiasm at the coincidence. And pairing up Ivy and Nightwing as the two loners forced to work together pays real dividends, both comedically and dramatically.
It’s a little on the nose, but Ivy fending off the escape room’s traps by deliberately losing the chess game against the Mechanical Turk is a sharp way to dramatize the notion that it’s okay to try something and fail, so long as you can try again tomorrow. After two seasons focused on character growth for Harley, it’s nice to see more of that delivered for Ivy.
Plus, the comedy here was outstanding. I got such a kick out of Nightwing (voiced superbly by Harvey Guillen!) playacting as a Batman-style loner only to break down crying when things go pear-shaped in the escape room. Ivy planning for all reasonable contingencies, only to have her plan go to pot when the exact absurd scenario involving a guard’s convoluted backstory that Clyaface asked about comes to pass made me laugh out loud. And the writers are clearly paying attention to the gags and memes that proliferate online! The joke about Nightwing declaring “fuck the Macaroni” a la his live action Titans counterpart is hilarious. And Batman himself complaining about the constant recreations and reimaginings of the fateful moment in crime alley is a big laugh as well.
But as usual, the champion of humor is Bane. The list of his impulse purchases at the bank, his corny but sincere monologue about being depressed; him showing up to blow up Harley and Ivy’s hideout only to find that Ivy’s inadvertently done it for him, are all just fantastic. He’s mostly a side dish here, but every bite is outstanding.
Overall, this one is funny, smartly written, and develops Ivy (and even Nightwing) in worthwhile directions. The only peculiar thing is how choppy the animation was for some reason. I wonder if a different studio animated the episode or something.
A fun unintentional team up between the baddies and the bats. Emo Nightwing is a character designed pretty intentionally for me it feels like.
loving all the batfamily content we will get this season
The worst parts of the episode were Harley and Ivy.
The best parts were everyone else (especially Nightwing, Batman and Bane)
Shout by AeronBlockedParent2022-08-05T06:15:48Z
This version of Batman & Co. needs to be a whole separate series.