2x02 Cult of the Cat

One of the best episodes in the entire show

Utterly fantastic episode that most people seem to have missed.

Fantastic lighting, direction, choreography, scene design, character moments, dialogue, pacing.

Since it's so underrated, i'll have to do a deep dive on it.

We start with Catwoman with one of her usual escapdes. She's stolen from a gang we later learn is a cult, but we already know this gang is kinda like a cult already with their attire and their actions. This is good visual storytelling.

Catwoman escapes, but not before making friends with the pet attack beast, which we know from her paranormal ability she can disarm or make allies of cats and cat like creatures (at least i think it's her ability). Good scene and callback to her ability.

Catwoman escapes and does her usual things that are like staples of her character, like the flirty kiss goodbye, and we get a look at the villain.

She gets cornered in an alley, and we see one of the bad guys holding a gun, which is an ecalation in tension and potential threatening violence against Catwoman. Then she skillfully incapacites the one with the gun first, and as she's battling the others, one of them rips through the whip, taking out her main weapon. This is all good choreography, and Catwoman uses her acrobatic skills to escape.

Then we see Batman doing his usual thing of apprehending a villain quite casually, and off he goes, nice. He arrives at his car to find Catwoman who we saw sitting through the windshield, nice on both counts, then she flirts a bit. He's helping her, which she asks about, and then he says straight to jail, brilliant. They're having a nice chill cozy flirty session in the car. Then they get attacked and Batman gets dragged into the situation and gets Catwoman to agree to deal for him to help her but she has to give up what she's stolen, brilliant.

Then they learn about the cult. Sure, the cult isn't explored much in the episode, and neither are the main villainous characters, but it's enough, and it's great for 20 minutes.

Then snipers are literally targeting them, and Batman being the genius he is saves Catwoman again and then uses smoke bombs to disguise them. Brilliant.

Then there's the tense sequence of their escape through the furnace which they narrowly survive, and Catwoman is taken. Batman immediately captures the last criminal and the way he gets him to talk is brilliant.

Catwoman uses her skills of guile and deception to become free enough to plan more. We also see more of the villain's nature and how he really wants Catwoman sexually, and Catwoman bats him away, while the other villainous woman is jealous and suspicious of Catwoman.

Catwoman begins stealing once again, even though she's still kind of a hostage, and even after all the trouble stealing from the cult got her in. Batman interrupts and tries to stop her and convince her to stop.

Then something very interesting happens. Catwoman breaks down in a moment of tears, baring her soul in her uncontrollable urge to steal. It's here we might think she's a kleptomaniac, and she might be one, it would explain her behavior, her urge to keep stealing even in the face of great danger. She breaks down in total honesty and embarassment at what she's doing.

But what adds another dimension to the moment is the uncertainty of it due to her character and usual behavior. Is she being truly honest? Or is this just another game, another ploy, another misdirection from her? What if it's all of the above?

She lunges at Batman and kisses him, thanking him for trying to help her. Then Batman turns to leave with her, and she whacks him over the head making him unconscious because she wants to keep stealing. Brilliant.

It's an understandable move this would happen, but what gives it even more reasoning in my mind is that Batman was actually quite flustered by Catwoman's sudden kiss and he let his guard down, adding more to Catwoman being able to get the drop on him like that. The kiss an intentional ploy by Catwoman to fluster and distract him. It's all so damn good.

Then Catwoman doesn't want Batman to actually get hurt and killed by the cult, so she actually drags his body and tries to hide him. It's an actual point of the scene to do that, to think about this, and to add more depth to her character that she does actually care about him, care about him more by doing this.

Of course she is discovered, and plays the situation to her advantage, and Batman is captured.

Accidentally deleted the whole portion of the arena and unfortunately i was typing on trakt at the time and the undo button wasn't working. You should probably make sure to type your comments in notepad++ which autosaves what you're typing constantly, and the undo and redo buttons work flawlessly.

Then Batman is in an arena, and the scale of it is really good, large and imposing. The arena has some warrior equipment on the walls and human or animal bones are strewn across the ground. The villain holds Batman's utility belt in his hand and then makes a speech about the cult doing experiments in splicing dna. Then the result of that is unleashed upon batman. The pacing here is great, from the villain holding Batman's utility belt showing his lack of options now, to the villain's speech and then to the beast being unleashed on Batman is all good tension and buildup and climax.

Then Batman tries to tussle with the beast and quickly finds he's outmatched, the beast too strong and heavy, and he gets injured. Then Catwoman breaks her cover and shows another compassionate and brave moment and jumps down to help Batman. Even the way she jumps down is her signature style.

Now with help, we see Batman able to get the slight upper hand on the beast and partially manage to defeat it, until Catwoman uses her ability to turn the beast to her side, the ability of which circles back to the beginning of the episode when she used it. Brilliant. Then she uses the beast to attack the cult.

The scale of the arena is once again emphasized with no dialogue as Batman and Catwoman look at how tall it is and that they will need each other's help to get up it. They flirt and Batman helps her up. Then there's a bit of tension as to whether Catwoman will help him up, and then the relief comes through as she does, showing another compassionate moment.

Bruce and Selina are running away, and this has been a great episode, when surprise! The villain strikes at Batman's back with the claw, so now we have a boss fight, awesome. Batman punches the guy again and again to my delight, as Selina defeats the jealous villainess. Batman defeats the guy who is then attacked by the beast, and Batman leaves. We later see Batman chilling with the police, and we see the beast inside a cage which a nice tiny bit of continuity and acknowledgement of the beast itself and that it's not just disappeared. Batman and Gordon talk about what is going to happen to such a creature, along with other things. I like they are having a little chat. Then we go back to Catwoman and we see she has stolen the jewels from the cult, and talks about how nice it was to be on the "good side" for a change, as she lays in a bed of jewels after having fed her cat. Brilliant.

I love this episode, i think it's great.

[4.4/10] This may be the worst and dumbest episode that B:TAS has ever done. I kept waiting for there to be some kind of twist, some element of tragedy, or some unique wrinkle, or some additional detail that could elevate this episode above the slop. But no. This is just some super smart but evil farming scientist making giant farm animals to terrorize Gotham. OK. Sure? I guess?

The thing that kills me is that the parts of this that aren’t actively bad are boring. The various puns about barnyard animals are the pits, the various homespun saying from Farmer Brown are annoying, and the little fiddle stings are eye-roll-worthy. (And that’s before you hit the talking goat.) But take away that stuff, and this is just a generic, “Batman fights big bad things” episode.

The design of the mutated farm animals isn’t especially memorable. Farmer Brown and Emmy-Lou have zero personality apart from their cornpone gimmicks. And the threat isn’t even memorable. At best, you can see this episode going for a sort of 1950s monster movie vibe, which I can appreciate in principle, but the delivery of it is either dull or straight up poor.

I don’t know what else to say. A giant mutant chicken is defeated with a tank of barbecue sauce. A gigantic bull is felled when he’s made to run into a china shop. Bullock sends the baddies off by tweaking them about the possibility of a prison farm. That’s the level of thought and cleverness that went into this one. The best you can say for it as that at least it’s a one-off, standalone effort, that can be consigned to the scrap heap of B:TAS with all the other random, stupid larks the show did (mostly in the early going).

Overall, this is a definite recommendation to avoid, unless you just love large mutated farm animals for some reason.