Batman fans it's been nearly two months since I last talked about anything from the classic Batman: The Animated Series. Well I thought that i'd rectify that by taking a look at another episode from the show but choosing just one episode from a see a solid episodes was a hard choice and so I chose an episode that I honestly have not seen and after watching it i'm kicking myself because such a good episode and so here is my review of the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Pretty Poison" enjoy.
The plot of the episode is after Harvey Dent is poisoned while in a date Batman has to find out who the culprit is and why they did it. I will say that even tho I had this originally written this part of the review to not include who the culprit is it quickly came to me that it would to hard to do the review with all the images and the cast list which have the character listed but I will say that the plot of the episode is so freaking good that you should watch it anyways.
Starring in the episode is the great and only voice of Batman in my opinion Kevin Conroy as Batman / Bruce Wayne and Richard Moll as Harvey Dent. Also starring in the episode Richard Moll as Harvey Dent , Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Alfred Pennyworth , Diane Pershing as Poison Ivy / Pamela Lillian Isley , Ingrid Oliu as Officer Renée Montoya , Lloyd Bochner as Mayor Hamilton Hill , Robert Costanzo as Detective Harvey Bullock and Bob Hastings as Commissioner James Gordon.
As to be expected from this show the acting in the episode is top freaking notch which is something that I wouldn't usually say but for this show it really does deserve it. All of the actors in this episode do such a good job and it helps that the script for the episode is so good with all of the characters having alot of personality and so all the actors have to do is just say the lines and they'd have a great performance , I honestly can never praise the acting in this series enough because it really is so freaking good it's in my opinion the best acted as well as best written Batman show animated or not that's out there that's how good it all is.
Now then boys and girls this series had a different animation studio working on each episode as such the animation for this episode was done by Sunrise. I don't think that this needs saying but i'm going to say it anyway the animation in this episode is so freaking good every background and every character movement leaps of the screen it really does go to show that Warner Bros threw alot of money at this show.
Speaking of the backgrounds I freaking love them not only in this episode but in the show as a whole simply because they add to the atmosphere of the show. This show is filled with tension in every scene and the backgrounds help with that because how gothic they look to out it bluntly the backgrounds in this show could almost be seen as works of art they are that good and that stunning to look at and i'm surprised that people haven't talked much about them.
In case you couldn't tell by the episodes name or the fact that I listed the character when listing the actors but the main villain of this episode is one Poison Ivy. Yeah I really liked how they did her in this episode they made her out to be this femme fatale type of character with her using her charms to get exactly what she wants and that to me is perfect for the character of Poison Ivy since she is someone who hates the race f men for what there doing to the earth and so she would have no issue with using her charm to lure her male suitors to there death if need be.
This episode I believe is one of many that let's us get to truly know the character of Harvey Dent as played by Richard Moll. I honestly believe that letting us get to know Harvey before he becomes Two-Face is such a smart move because the origins of Two-Face is a tragic one and you can only really feel that tragedy when you've really gotten to know the man behind the monster as such this honestly works because when doe does eventually become the villain we really do feel it because we've had all of this time to get to know him.
Now sadly this episode isn't perfect because it does fail on a few things the first of which being the most important thing for any batman product and that's the mystery. This isn't really a fault of the episode itself but the name of the episode gives away who did it and so there's no more mystery because we know who did it and so all we have to do is find out the why and it also means that we are ahead of the main character which should never be the case at all in my opinion.
The other thing that I thought the episode did wrong was the fact that this was a single parter to me this episode would have had much more of an impact if it was at least two episodes. This way you could have that cliffhanger of if Harvey is going to make it out alive or not , doing this in one episode means that any suspense that you could build up you now can't because it has to be resolved in twenty two minuets.
Now then since this is an action show and there is some action in this episode that does mean that we have to talk about the action that's in this episode. I honestly feel that the action this episode while it was indeed pretty good that's all it was which for a series as good as this is not a good thing whatsoever and the fact that there's very little action to me just makes a great episode feel boring because we already know who the culprit is and so there's nothing that interesting to keep us watching the episode in my opinion.
Overall like I said this is a well written episode which shouldn't come as a shock since the writer of this episode Tom Ruegger also created and wrote Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures. That being said the episode does have it's fair share of problems all of which keep the episode from being as good as we know this series can be but with that said this is still an rather enjoyable episode as such it gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.
All images used in this review were gathered from either the official Batman fandom wiki page or the official Batman: The Animated Series fandom wiki page. I'll admit I wasn't expecting these images to be anywhere close to high definition and apart from the poster which is very HD I got exactly what I expected as such I cannot recommend either website because the quality of the images is the about the same on either one.