1x08 Growing Pains

[8.7/10] One of the things that sets B:TAS apart from other superhero shows is that it carries a sense of tragedy with it. However badass Batman may be, the show never forgets that he’s someone who was born of tragedy and still carries it with him. Most of the show’s villains are not evil for evil’s sake, but people who were wronged by worse parties or sheer misfortune and have a sympathetic bent to them. So it’s appropriate, then, that this episode inducts Tim, who’s faced hardships of his own already, into the idea that, as Bruce puts it, not all of these stories have happy endings.

Before that, the show sets up a nice mystery. I love the basic noir framing of Tim running into a helpless girl who can’t remember anything, and having to protect her from a pursuing attacker. I’ll admit that I pieced together what was happening by the halfway mark. (My initial theory was Solomon Grundy.) The eyes in the surveillance footage were a big hint, and of all things, an episode of Ultimate Spider-Man involving Sandman pulled a similar trick, so I was primed for the big twist.

But I still loved it, partly for that sense of tragedy. For one thing, it’s just a sort of cool sci-fi premise. The notion of a life created out of nothing, wanting its own agency and stuck trying to figure out who they are whether they’re real, is a strange but sympathetic and intriguing one. The simple prospect of a seemingly cruel man chasing after his daughter conjures a certain image and emotional reaction that the episode plays into. And having Annie find solace in someone who treats her as a person, someone to be understood and defended, gives this one emotional stakes.

I also like that it’s a Tim episode. Giving the spotlight to the sidekick helps deepen him, and I like the way the show forges a connection between him and Annie over less than great dads. By the same token, I also appreciate the thematic connection between Annie as Scarface’s “child” who wants to run away and assert her own independence, at the same time Tim is bucking up against Bruce’s rules and authority, each wanting to make their own choices, motivated in part by the connection they share.

At the same time, this is just one hell of a visual showcase, as is typical for Clayface episodes. The body horror of the way Clayface moves still creeps me out despite having seen this trick several times before. Him launching walls of bars or bricks or scythes at our heroes is frightening. And there’s something genuinely disturbing about Annie trying to phyiscally break free of him after she’s put herself in harm’s way to save Tim.

The reveal of his existence, while nicely set up, is still a shock to us because it’s a shock to the character. It works well with the admittedly somewhat jumbled continuity (and connects nicely with him turning into kids in “Holiday Knights”). It also provides an avenue for Annie to be shocked at her own identity, questioning her very existence and providing a sympathetic persona for us, and Tim, to latch onto before she makes her heroic sacrifice.

That we know and care about their relationship before that sacrifice is what gives it meaning. Tim risks things for Annie and Annie gives up everything for Tim. That Batman and Robin save the day is a meager balm to that loss. The fact that, despite the bizarre circumstances of Annie’s birth and death, Tim considers Clayface a murderer, adds dimension and darkness to his own struggles.

With it, he learns that fights and adventures have stakes in the DCAU, to where sometimes you fail, and sometimes even when you win, you lose. That’s a lesson we’ve seen Batman learn time and again, and Tim gets his best episode of the show so far as he, sadly, gets to be haunted by the same epiphany, of what growing up and making your choices can bring.

The episode was a delight. Possibly the best directed so far, though Double Talk would give it a run for it's money. It's just so impeccably directed, and the script was really good throughout most of this episode. In the first half there was a mystery and horror-ish vibe that just worked so well. The story was interesting, the characters were so in-character and doing things that felt at their most realistic.

I guessed it was Clayface early on, and i thought when Batman found the "clay" that had confirmed it, but then later he said it was dirt, which felt a bit like a misdirect, because you would think of dirt from a shoe, so it was nice it was later revealed to be clayface, and we got great visuals from him in his scenes. Thinking back on the episode, some of the things the villain did make more sense now, like traversing great heights and going into a sewer grate.

I liked the dyanmic between Tim and the girl, and Tim and Batman this episode. There's a lot of cool and interesting little moments, like when Alfred calls Bruce after Tim gets out of the car to go after the girl. The talk from Gordon about teenagers and how that related to Tim throughout the episode. Even just Batman straight up saying "What?" to Tim's disobeying an order. The great visual of the black bat as he swoops down to defend Tim in his gruff voice. When Clayface throws Tim at Batman and he catches him while still standing, such a good realistic moment for Batman, whereas in another episode he probably would have been knocked over.

However, where the episode falls down for me is the ending. The reveal is kind of nice, but doesn't make enough sense, and the ending is too much of a downer.

I was thinking that the girl was a manifestation of a part of the guy's personality, that of his childhood and/or the feminine side within him (the psychological duality of the masculine and feminine in every human). So it kind of made sense like that... But then why is it a girl? Wouldn't it make more sense if it was a boy? Yes, it would. And then there's the matter of the girl having consciousness and her own kind of personality, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Why was she disconnected from Clay Face in the first place? Because he was too weak? Well no because he was connected to her, he was her, and he wasn't, i guess. Maybe Clayface wasn't conscious yet and his unconscious created this being, i guess.

So there's some silly things going on to try and make things more tragic, and i don't fully buy it because while i can suspend my disbelief, i won't break it. I won't accept that, and i'll judge, critique and rate it appropriately. That's why this episode gets a 7 instead of an 8. The lack of sense in logic or psychology in the reveal of who the girl is and how she came to be, and too much of a downer ending. A better ending would be you see a bit of the girls personality mix with Clayface, and you audibly hear that, which also ties back to the plot point of her supposedly having her own consciousness, but then at the end you have a disconnect where she was just part of Clayface and nothing more. What i just suggested would solve that disconnect.