[9.8/10] I’m usually a little skeptical of stories that start in the middle and then flashback to the beginning, especially when everything’s all topsy turvy. Usually, it’s a way to mortgage some excitement from later in your story. That sense of a cheap ploy is all the more present when the opening chapter makes things seem crazy or backward, in a way that usually promises some quick-fix resolution or reveal that it’s all just some kind of trick or misunderstanding to where the show was intentionally misleading the audience.
And you could still plausibly accuse “Over the Edge” and B:TAS super-scribe Paul Dini of that here. After all, the ultimate answer to all the show’s mysteries turns out to be, “It was all a dream.” But that’s part of what’s so masterful about this episode. It breaks so many rules, about how to structure a story, about wiping away the consequences of your characters’ choices, and yet it still soars because it makes those moves feel earned despite that. It’s a hell of a feat, and it results in arguably the best episode ever of Batman: The Animated Series.
The episode opens with just that sort of “what the hell is happening?” misdirect. Batman and Robin are racing through the batcave while pursuers rain bullets down on them. Only this time, its not the Joker or some other supervillain. It’s Commissioner GOrdon and the rest of his crew from GCPD.
The chase itself is fantastic, conveying a real sense of stakes and danger through how close the police come to winging the dynamic duo. The fact that Jim Gordon is calling the shots adds instant stakes to the showdown, but even without that, there’s excitement and tension throughout as our heroes come close to escape but are thwarted at every turn.
Befroe they can get to the Batmobile, a GCPD officer blows it up with a rocket launcher. Batman rolls his famous giant coin toward the cops to buy them a little time, only to find Officer Montoya waiting for him at the Batwing hanger. It takes a death-defying leap, a drop into the batboat, and a save from Nightwing for Batman and company to make it out alive. Separate and apart from the craziness of Batman’s erstwhile allies hunting him down, the sequence itself works at a nuts and bolts dose of action to kick things off on a high note.
But it gets at a central question that nobody’s explicitly asking the audience: what in the world could have Batman and Commissioner Gordon at each other’s throats like this? Gordon refers to his adversary as Bruce Wayne! The police found the Batcave! They’re not only shooting to kill, but shooting to obliterate! What in god’s name could have led to this.
It’s where you expect everything to be a training simulation or crazy misunderstanding or something along those lines. Instead, ti’s something emotionally powerful. As Batman’s flashback tells us, it’s the death of Barbara Gordon. In a skirmish with Scarecrow, he knocked her off the roof and, with bitter irony, sent her crashing down onto her own father’s police car.
It is both devastating and satisfying. I teared up when Barbara reached out for her father and Jim realized that his little girl was dying in his arms. It’s an unimaginable loss that the show, and Bob Hastings in particulars, plays perfectly. But it’s also roundly satisfying because it’s the one thing that could drive Batman and Jim Gordon apart, the single thing that could create this kind of wedge between their rock solid relationship. The earlier scene has power because it flips the script on what’s normally been an unshakable partnership, but the ensuing scene has power because it justifies what could set them so at odds -- the loss of someone both care about deeply.
That’s what makes so much of this episode work. It’s essentially a “What If?” story, destined to be wiped away by the end of the hour. But Dini treats each event with an emotional truth, to where it lingers with you like a bad dream. No, this isn’t really happening (which, granted, you don’t know at the time), but that doesn't feel like a cheat because this is, with a few exaggerations, what would happen. Rooting the episode in the emotions of Gordon and Batman gives it a psychological force independent of the reality of the story.
It all comes spilling out from there in compelling fashion. The drama of both Alfred and Nightwing getting arrested works to explain the seriousness of the situation. Batman’s rogues’ gallery demanding financial restitution once it’s discovered that Batman was Bruce Wayne (replete with another appearance from Johnny Cochran) is a laugh. Batman telling him that it’s over and Tim needs to give himself up speaks to the severity of things. And Gordon being forced to step down because the embarrassment of not knowing his daughter was involved is the kicker.
Better yet is the sentimental fall out for both Jim and Bruce. Jim is angry and remorseful. He blames himself for Barbara’s death as much as he blamed Batman, viewing himself as an enabler who now thinks that The Dark Knight not only betrayed him for hiding this information, but who created the monsters the two of them have fought. For his part, Batman understands and in his own taciturn way, acknowledges that Jim might be right to feel betrayed. You can feel his exhaustion, his resignation, his sorrow at where all of this has led.
And you can tell that Jim is at his wits end and desperate because he’s willing to turn to Bane to take out The Bat, and force the confrontation at Barbar’s funeral. The scene that follows is tense and exciting, beyond the usual fisticuffs. Bane is out to kill, Jim is on it and wants to collar his ally-turned-enemy, and Batman himself seems sanguine about the prospect of death or imprisonment, declaring that it doesn't matter anymore. There’s a moment of detente, a rescue for old times’ sake, that still ends in a mutual demise for The Bat and The Commissioner, the punchline of so much misery that spawned from a single awful event that shattered a years-long friendship.
Until Barbara wakes up. The whole thing turns out to have been a nightmare spurred by The Scarecrow in their initial encounter. That reveal should rob this story of any punch. And yet, it still has power because it reveals that Barbara’s biggest fear is hurting the people she loves with her secrets, and real or not, it motivates her to act in the here and now. The dream twist works within the context of the story because it’s not just a big undo button -- it’s a warning for Barbaara, that changes how she acts in the real world. Batman’s “I understand” when she declares that she has to reveal it to her father, is the icing on the cake.
The scene that follows between Barabara and Jim is even better, because it suggests that fear was unfounded in the first place. Jim can’t come out and say that he already knows Barbara is Batgirl, given his position and desire for plausible deniability. But he hints strongly at it, and not only affirms his trust in his daughter and the way he values her agency and ability to decide things for herself, but also reassures that the worst case scenario she imagines will never come to pass. He is proud of her and loves her, no matter what, and that’s as strong an emotional conclusion to this episode as any we could get in the dreamworld.
What makes “Over the Edge” so great is the way that it takes little moments like that, ones that speak both to long standing character relationships and their psychological connections to one another, and uses them to test but ultimately reaffirm those relationships. Dream or not, borrowing action from later in the story or not, the players and their feelings seem real and have real consequences. That elevates this episode, and all its What If bona fides, to the top of Batman: The Animated Series’s considerable heap.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-04-15T22:16:06Z
[9.8/10] I’m usually a little skeptical of stories that start in the middle and then flashback to the beginning, especially when everything’s all topsy turvy. Usually, it’s a way to mortgage some excitement from later in your story. That sense of a cheap ploy is all the more present when the opening chapter makes things seem crazy or backward, in a way that usually promises some quick-fix resolution or reveal that it’s all just some kind of trick or misunderstanding to where the show was intentionally misleading the audience.
And you could still plausibly accuse “Over the Edge” and B:TAS super-scribe Paul Dini of that here. After all, the ultimate answer to all the show’s mysteries turns out to be, “It was all a dream.” But that’s part of what’s so masterful about this episode. It breaks so many rules, about how to structure a story, about wiping away the consequences of your characters’ choices, and yet it still soars because it makes those moves feel earned despite that. It’s a hell of a feat, and it results in arguably the best episode ever of Batman: The Animated Series.
The episode opens with just that sort of “what the hell is happening?” misdirect. Batman and Robin are racing through the batcave while pursuers rain bullets down on them. Only this time, its not the Joker or some other supervillain. It’s Commissioner GOrdon and the rest of his crew from GCPD.
The chase itself is fantastic, conveying a real sense of stakes and danger through how close the police come to winging the dynamic duo. The fact that Jim Gordon is calling the shots adds instant stakes to the showdown, but even without that, there’s excitement and tension throughout as our heroes come close to escape but are thwarted at every turn.
Befroe they can get to the Batmobile, a GCPD officer blows it up with a rocket launcher. Batman rolls his famous giant coin toward the cops to buy them a little time, only to find Officer Montoya waiting for him at the Batwing hanger. It takes a death-defying leap, a drop into the batboat, and a save from Nightwing for Batman and company to make it out alive. Separate and apart from the craziness of Batman’s erstwhile allies hunting him down, the sequence itself works at a nuts and bolts dose of action to kick things off on a high note.
But it gets at a central question that nobody’s explicitly asking the audience: what in the world could have Batman and Commissioner Gordon at each other’s throats like this? Gordon refers to his adversary as Bruce Wayne! The police found the Batcave! They’re not only shooting to kill, but shooting to obliterate! What in god’s name could have led to this.
It’s where you expect everything to be a training simulation or crazy misunderstanding or something along those lines. Instead, ti’s something emotionally powerful. As Batman’s flashback tells us, it’s the death of Barbara Gordon. In a skirmish with Scarecrow, he knocked her off the roof and, with bitter irony, sent her crashing down onto her own father’s police car.
It is both devastating and satisfying. I teared up when Barbara reached out for her father and Jim realized that his little girl was dying in his arms. It’s an unimaginable loss that the show, and Bob Hastings in particulars, plays perfectly. But it’s also roundly satisfying because it’s the one thing that could drive Batman and Jim Gordon apart, the single thing that could create this kind of wedge between their rock solid relationship. The earlier scene has power because it flips the script on what’s normally been an unshakable partnership, but the ensuing scene has power because it justifies what could set them so at odds -- the loss of someone both care about deeply.
That’s what makes so much of this episode work. It’s essentially a “What If?” story, destined to be wiped away by the end of the hour. But Dini treats each event with an emotional truth, to where it lingers with you like a bad dream. No, this isn’t really happening (which, granted, you don’t know at the time), but that doesn't feel like a cheat because this is, with a few exaggerations, what would happen. Rooting the episode in the emotions of Gordon and Batman gives it a psychological force independent of the reality of the story.
It all comes spilling out from there in compelling fashion. The drama of both Alfred and Nightwing getting arrested works to explain the seriousness of the situation. Batman’s rogues’ gallery demanding financial restitution once it’s discovered that Batman was Bruce Wayne (replete with another appearance from Johnny Cochran) is a laugh. Batman telling him that it’s over and Tim needs to give himself up speaks to the severity of things. And Gordon being forced to step down because the embarrassment of not knowing his daughter was involved is the kicker.
Better yet is the sentimental fall out for both Jim and Bruce. Jim is angry and remorseful. He blames himself for Barbara’s death as much as he blamed Batman, viewing himself as an enabler who now thinks that The Dark Knight not only betrayed him for hiding this information, but who created the monsters the two of them have fought. For his part, Batman understands and in his own taciturn way, acknowledges that Jim might be right to feel betrayed. You can feel his exhaustion, his resignation, his sorrow at where all of this has led.
And you can tell that Jim is at his wits end and desperate because he’s willing to turn to Bane to take out The Bat, and force the confrontation at Barbar’s funeral. The scene that follows is tense and exciting, beyond the usual fisticuffs. Bane is out to kill, Jim is on it and wants to collar his ally-turned-enemy, and Batman himself seems sanguine about the prospect of death or imprisonment, declaring that it doesn't matter anymore. There’s a moment of detente, a rescue for old times’ sake, that still ends in a mutual demise for The Bat and The Commissioner, the punchline of so much misery that spawned from a single awful event that shattered a years-long friendship.
Until Barbara wakes up. The whole thing turns out to have been a nightmare spurred by The Scarecrow in their initial encounter. That reveal should rob this story of any punch. And yet, it still has power because it reveals that Barbara’s biggest fear is hurting the people she loves with her secrets, and real or not, it motivates her to act in the here and now. The dream twist works within the context of the story because it’s not just a big undo button -- it’s a warning for Barbaara, that changes how she acts in the real world. Batman’s “I understand” when she declares that she has to reveal it to her father, is the icing on the cake.
The scene that follows between Barabara and Jim is even better, because it suggests that fear was unfounded in the first place. Jim can’t come out and say that he already knows Barbara is Batgirl, given his position and desire for plausible deniability. But he hints strongly at it, and not only affirms his trust in his daughter and the way he values her agency and ability to decide things for herself, but also reassures that the worst case scenario she imagines will never come to pass. He is proud of her and loves her, no matter what, and that’s as strong an emotional conclusion to this episode as any we could get in the dreamworld.
What makes “Over the Edge” so great is the way that it takes little moments like that, ones that speak both to long standing character relationships and their psychological connections to one another, and uses them to test but ultimately reaffirm those relationships. Dream or not, borrowing action from later in the story or not, the players and their feelings seem real and have real consequences. That elevates this episode, and all its What If bona fides, to the top of Batman: The Animated Series’s considerable heap.