Review: Caped Crusader

Short version: This series features a 1940s-era Batman in a film noir version of Gotham City. While it features some excellent storytelling and characterization, it’s not perfect. Some episodes are just plain silly.

(Part of my Reviews & Recommendations series.)

I’m not the only person trying to figure out what year Batman: Caped Crusader is set in (CBR has a fine analysis). My own estimate puts it at about 1948. Definitely post-war, but there are no computers (Batman uses file folders to store his case files), and I’ve not seen someone crank up a good Hi-Fi system (neither turntable nor reel-to-reel). Television is new enough that not many people have them in their homes; Bruce Wayne does, but this is still an era when passers-by on the street stopped to watch TV in a storefront window, and most homes only had radio.

So. A nice period piece! Film noir was popular in the 40s and 50s, so that’s a fitting vibe.

I wish everything about the series made sense, though.

My Basis for Comparison

Caped Crusader is the endproduct of the usual slew of production companies that’s common nowadays, notable among them DC, WB, and Amazon MGM. Translation: many hands on the project, which may explain some of my later issues with the series.

Yet … one of the executive producers, Bruce Timm, was responsible for the best animated series in the entire DC universe:

Justice League / Justice League Unlimited

I hold Justice League up as a masterpiece of the storytelling art. Take for example the “The Savage Time (part 1)” (Season 1, episode 24; decent review on AVclub). At the beginning, the Justice League is coming back from space. Twenty or so minutes later, John Stewart is about to be run over by a giant War Wheel in a 1945 that never should have happened. There are no jarring cuts; everything makes sense, each scene following logically from the first.

Now compare:

Justice League had essentially one production company (two different forms of Warner Bros.) and two executive producers.

Caped Crusader had five production companies and ten executive producers.

You’ll see how that plays out.

The Batman Comics

Of course, the ultimate basis for comparison is the comics. Batman started his run in 1939. The character has also appeared in TV shows, many movies, and a few excellent video games.

Certainly, that’s a lot of source material. And fans? Many times they have their favorite tropes. The loss of Bruce Wayne’s parents. The Joker as an agent of chaos. The distinctive dark and dangerous look of Gotham City.

You know, pleasing all of those fans can be difficult work. I think that’s where things went wrong.

Let’s handle the good parts first:

There are two seasons of ten episodes each. Season 1 appeared in 2024; Season 2 just came out this year (2026).

I do hate spoilers, and warning, once I get to the play-by-play in The Episode Minefield (below), there are plenty of them. I will just assume you’re immune at that point, so be warned. Here, though, let me j give you the gist of the BEST storylines, characters, and narrative elements.

• In Season 1, the Harvey Dent story arc is by far the best. Note that those of you expecting him to show up wearing a half purple / half tan suit and flipping a coin are going to be disappointed. This is a reimagined version, a character we see go from a self-serving, arrogant climber to brutal criminal who barely seems to be in control of himself.
• In Season 2, the Riddler makes an appearance, but he’s not some monomaniac obsessed with proving himself smarter than Batman. This one, in true noir style, is a criminal so violent he got his name from “riddling” his victims with bullets.
• Finally we come to the Joker. When this character first appears, it’s throughout many other episodes—always in the final minutes, and always maximum creepy. I called him “The Joker Who Doesn’t Laugh,” and indeed, he doesn’t. Until the very end. This version is probably the apex character of the show, but … ouch, spoilers. One element in the final Season 2 storyline is so silly it took me completely out of the narrative. See below.

And now … the rest of the story

So, I started watching this show at the recommendation of my long time friend, Keith Martin (LaFayette, GA). We go way back—7th grade, to be technical—and I count him as one of the world’s experts on movies, television, music, and pop culture. (I’ve hinted he should write a blog, but so far … not yet.)

I watched these episodes with my wife. Now, keep in mind: she’s not really a comic books person. Occasionally, watching these shows, I was thrilled—”Hey! Look! This is awesome!” Other times … yikes. I was a little embarrassed to have wasted her time in the evening, her free time, when she could have been doing something—anything!—better.

Here’s my thinking on how the not-so-great episodes happened:

Too much candy is a bad thing

All those production companies, all those fans … how can you please them all? Everyone wants a treat. Put this in, put that in. Make mine cherry flavored. Let’s have more candy corn. How about more soda?

You’re going to be calling Ralph after awhile, and I don’t mean Dibney.

Simply put, Caped Crusader could have picked and chosen its treats, serving them up elegantly, savoring them as they went by—even innovating in their presentation.

But then we get “Hey! You have to put Catwoman in!” and “What about the Spectre? The Spectre was totally noir!” and “It’s not Batman unless you put in The Penguin!”

Better to be silent, and to be thought a fool…

Some of the choices of characters to feature were questionable. In fact, shoehorning some of them into the series took a character with possible depth and an interesting storyline and turned them into a one-shot caricature. It would have been better to just have saved that character for a (hypothetical) later season, instead of wasting the chance on something inept.*

* “Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt” was NOT a quote by Mark Twain, but you can learn more in this article on Quote Investigator.

Reviewers like to talk about three dimensional and two dimensional characters. When Mr. Zero / Mr. Freeze shows up in Season 2, I challenge you to find any line of dialogue he has that is about anything other than “I freeze folks for money and also art and I’m really weird.” That guy could have been replaced with some animatronic pirate out of an amusement park ride and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Tales of the Really Hard to Believe

Remember at the beginning how I said they made a believable enough Gotham City setting that people were trying to figure out what year the series was taking place?

Well. Stand by. Massive spoilers, but also my biggest disappointment of the entire series.

They spent a lot of time building up the Joker storyline. His character was chilling. His actions menacing. He seemed to be in the process of developing and testing his famous Smylex gas, the stuff that makes people look like Rob Beckett* before they die.

* Apologies to Rob Beckett, he’s a hilarious comedian, and look! He’s also on WordPress.

And then … they made the story just ridiculous. Here’s everything that Smylex can do, apparently:

1. The Joker can inject someone with it. They get a big horrible grin on their face, not a normal grin, but a jaw-cracker. They’re dead.
2. Joker can somehow precision-time this drug, so that if he wants you to die at exactly midnight on a certain date, you will. How? Anyone in the medical fields knows it’s difficult to determine correct dosage in the first place, and most drug effects take place gradually, over hours.
3. Now let’s make it worse. The victim dies. Then, later, and ALL AT THE SAME TIME, everyone who died from the injected version suddenly sits up, starts laughing, and burps out a huge cloud of green gas. This includes people who have been killed at different times throughout Season 2, even one person who was frozen solid for most of that time. Think about it: if it was difficult to time the dose that killed them in the first place, how much more impossible was it to have all the “corpse burp” effects go off at once?
4. Everyone who breathes in the green gas suddenly gets the Huge Fatal Grin of Death, but they don’t die—instead, they turn into a hulking, out-of-control murderer and start chasing everyone else around like Night of the Living Dead.
5. Then the final bit of idiocy: if they bite someone, that person gets the symptoms from #4 and also goes on a rampage.

Consider what I just said. The Joker has such technical skill he can make a poison that can A) kill someone with precision timing, B) make the corpse explode with gas with precision timing, then C) release an airborne version of the poison with D) completely different effects that ‘s E) also spread by saliva.

Some chemical, right? Worse than pop rocks and coke by a longshot.

So, yeah. Farfetched. Ruined it for me. Then again, I’m a chemist. Bad science is practically a religion on television shows.

(I guess the Joker couldn’t just do the “huge balloons filled with Smylex over Gotham City,” as that’s been done before.)

Can I just ask? Why is Batgirl never a thing?

On a personal note, I loved Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) in the 1966 series. Barbara Gordon has appeared in a lot of Batman media.

So why is Batgirl as a character so rare?

Navigate the Episode Minefield!

Here’s the spoiler-rama, my episode guide, with commentary. If you choose to watch the series, and what I’ve said above makes sense, follow this guide to avoid disappointment, a migraine, or both.

Two possible Quantum States here: [OK] or [SKIP].

Season 1

1. “In Treacherous Waters”—[SKIP] The Penguin as a character is completely wasted here, recast more or less as either Phyllis Diller or Cruella Deville, take your pick by how old you are. Watch her kill her own sons a few minutes into the episode to add gravitas, then later fire a piece of yacht-mounted-artillery for effect and somehow demolish a specific building in the middle of Gotham city in ONE SHOT. No ranging tables, no calculations—just looking through iron-sight type crosshairs set on the back of the gunbarrel.
2. “…And Be a Villain”—[OK] One of the nice things about the Caped Crusader series is they don’t go out of the way to give villains the clever codenames associated with them. For example, here, the character has a face that can be molded like clay; he is never referred to as Clayface.
3. “Kiss of the Catwoman”—[SKIP] Catwoman has always deserved better in terms of her movie portrayals. Bluntly, this version is crap, the character and situation unbelievable, the plot probably written on a deadline. This is one of those “bits of candy” elements I was talking about earlier: someone probably pressed for this character to be included as a love interest later on, only to end up with this travesty, better off forgotten.
4. “The Night of the Hunters”—[OK] The previous episode introduced psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel, better known in popular culture as Harley Quinn. Interestingly, in this telling, she’s not just the Joker’s acolyte or girlfriend; she’s a psychiatrist with a dark secret. That said, nothing is worth going back to that Catwoman episode to see her introduced. Let’s just pretend she sprung from the brow of Dionysus. This episode really shows off the noir elements and sets up the formation of the Batman Task Force, as well as establishes the crooked cops Bullock and Flass as recurring threats.
5. “The Stress of Her Regard”‘—[OK] Harley Quinn’s character is definitely established here. I think the weirdest bit (repeated later with the Joker) is that this is not the mad, out-of-control Harley well-known across movies and television, but … now she’s someone who talks calmly, methodically, analytically. Some parts of this one are silly, but overall, experiencing this new version of HQ is worth the watch. Special shoutout from my wife: she’s always annoyed when female characters run and fight wearing high heels. At one point Barbara Gordon has to sneak around / trespass inside someone’s mansion—and does the sensible thing, taking off her shoes so the villain isn’t clued in by “tap – tap – tap – tap.” Good thing this isn’t one of those villains that’s always throwing bottles at henchmen, though.
6. “Night Ride”—[OK] The inclusion of Gentleman Ghost on the villains list for Caped Crusader was a bit bizarre to me at first, but this is the only solidly occult threat in the series. Especially worth your time is the dynamic between Batman and “Pennyworth” (he hasn’t gotten used to calling him Alfred … yet.)
7. “Moving Target”—[OK] Jim Corrigan as a crooked cop? If you read comics, you might have been startled as I was. His character will return in Season 2, but warning: it’s a real crap-fest. Meanwhile, this episode about hired killers stalking Commissioner Gordon is worthwhile.
8. “Nocturne”—[OK] There’s a main plotline going here, but the big news is the developing story with Harvey Dent, the prosecutor who’s been getting too close to the crimelord Rupert Thorne. Yes, those of you who know Harvey from the comics, this is the “acid in the face” episode. It sets off the fantastic final two episodes of Season One.
9. “The Killer Inside Me”—[OK] Writing this, I sometimes regretted deciding on two possible states (“OK” or “SKIP”) and wished I’d incorporated something like “MUST SEE.” This episode is extremely complex, and even though I’ve given out spoilers before, I’m not this time. I’ll just leave you with discussion questions for after you watch. A) Whose fault is it that Harvey Dent ended up becoming so dangerous? B) Has this episode made a case for or against receiving a fair and impartial trial? C) Discuss the parallel between Batman and Harvey Dent’s stories.
10. “Savage Night”—[OK] I had to admit, about the time I got to the Catwoman episode, I didn’t think I was going to make it this far. This ending is perfect. Plus, this is the first appearance of that guy who’s neither a smoker nor a midnight toker.

Season One had its silly moments, but established its brand enough to lead us into Season 2. For the most part, that paid off. But you could tell … in the back of the car, the kids wanted candy.

Season 2

1. “Brute Force”—[OK] If you don’t mind the silly concept—a chemical that apparently turns one of the usual random disposable mobsters into a super-strong and invulnerable creature similar to Solomon Grundy—this one isn’t too bad. More importantly, this is the start of the Riddler’s story arc. The Joker appears again in a brief scene, hinting at a plotline I had a lot of high hopes for. (Those crashed and burned, see above.)
2. “Rocket’s Red Glare”—[SKIP] This could easily be a standalone episode, but not necessarily of this show. More something like the Super Friends. We get a take on Roxy Rocket, who, well, seems to have borrowed a lot of ideas from The Rocketeer. The bit of pseudoscience nonsense in this episode is a new element called “Ultriam,” which is apparently an unlimited power source. You know the type of invention it is: it can somehow be manufactured on an industrial scale, up until the inventor dies and someone burns the blueprints. Then every person in the entire company who knew how to make it suddenly forgets! So I imagine there’s this great huge factory or atomic lab out there, with all this dedicated equipment. Clyde comes in to work one day, after the blueprint has been burned. He looks at the machine he’s been working for years and is like “Huh. What does this do?”
3. “Deep Cover”—[OK] Batman goes undercover to try to figure out the identity of the new and bloody crime boss of Gotham, the Riddler. This episode has a couple of major and sudden changes in narrative, particularly when Edward Nigma meets up with the disguised Batman and … introduces himself in a rather perfunctory manner.
4. “The Devil’s Due”—[SKIP] This one was just silly, especially the name of the putative demon. “Barbatos.” Pronounced bar – BAT – os, for people who’ve never heard of the Caribbean, I suppose. Some of you may remember when Batman was a guest on Scooby Doo. Well, here’s the return favor: a Scooby Doo type villain in Batman. Ruh roh!
5. “The Spectral Hand”—[SKIP] Somehow this episode manages to be as bad as the Catwoman episode from Season One. Worse, actually. Let’s catalog the atrocities: 1) Our old cop-turned-criminal friend Jim Corrigan is back, sentenced to life in prison. 2) He “volunteers” for a medical experiment to reduce his sentence. HOLD ON A MOMENT: When did we decide that performing medical experiments on prisoners was a great idea? That whole concept has a very nasty history in the United States. 3) In the experiment, they’re going to stop his heart and—wait a moment. Kill him? Right in front of a bunch of witnesses? Good thing death row is right around the corner and down a hallway. 4) Oh, wait. They plan on bringing him back, using some suspicious Dr. Frankenstein type equipment that looks more suitable for building a bug zapper that could kill Mothra. 5) He’s dead, Jim! (Or, “You’re dead, Jim!”) but he comes back as a sort of vengeance-obsessed zombie to clear up a backlog of criminals who escaped punishment. I mentioned this character above as an example of too much candy, and here it is, idiocy-flavored. Finally, 6) in other news, the Gordon family lives in a suburb of Gotham with a subway stop RIGHT IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD, like where no subway system in the world is ever built. (Unless this is Earth-NZ, where no one ever invented “zoning.”)
6. “Sudden Fear”—[OK] This one I marked as OK, but it’s on the borderline. I mean, the central idea is that the bad guy invented a kind of gas that causes lethal levels of fear (you know him in other media as the Scarecrow). My question is, how long would it take Columbo to catch this guy? Probably microseconds. A) He was working on a fear compound with a collaborator, and kept some pretty damning notes; B) he mainly waxed people in his own personal research group, so that if you marked off the victims, only he and his collaborator were left; C) his collaborator was the creepy sort who probably would have wound up on To Catch a Predator anyway, so inevitably would have been the target of an investigation.
7. “Her Dark Reflection”—[OK] The central concept is a little hard to swallow, but the Riddler has made himself a pest all season, and in this episode, he gets the full-on Inglourious Basterds treatment. I admit, I laughed.
8. “Zero Hour”—[OK] The one redeeming feature in this episode is Carrie Kelley. In comics, she’s one of the later incarnations of Robin. She already appeared in Season One, Episode 8 (“Nocturne”), but here? She’s the hero this city deserves. The crap part of this episode is the aforementioned Mr. Zero, certainly a waste of the character.
9. “Dead Before Dawn”—[OK] I am putting the “OK” mark on this one with one huge caveat. I’ve written at length about the Smylex gimmick being ridiculous. Other than that, this strange, quiet version of the Joker is just sinister.
10. “The Laughing Death”—[OK] Same thing, but in this episode, we add in the equally silly idea that Alfred (occupation: butler) managed to take a blood sample from someone who’d been killed by Smylex and develop an antidote in a manner of hours. Even better, though we only see him working with the B.S. sort of chemistry set people who’ve never done lab work think chemists use, somehow he’s able not only to aerosolize it, to produce INDUSTRIAL QUANTITIES OF THE CURE in a matter of a few hours and load it into a cropduster type plane all by himself.

In the final analysis…

Overall, not too bad an effort. Some of it was very worthwhile. The absolutely abysmal, skippable episodes were only five out of a total of twenty episodes—

Wait a minute. That’s … a 25% fail rate.

Ouch.

Caped Crusaders, try to be better than that next time. Of course in the modern streaming environment, even two seasons was a lot to hope for, so …

Standard operation in the DC universe: wait for the next reboot.

That’s It! And Disclaimers

Opinions expressed in my blog are my own, and although works were referenced here, the authors of those works played no part in this article’s construction.

The great majority of the names mentioned in this article are trademarked, copyrighted, paywalled, gold-plated, guarded by immortal Kung-Fu warriors, whatever. Those names are mentioned here for review purposes only. However: I’m not going to stick in those stupid ® and ™ symbols all over the place, as that’s its own Form of Parody.™ (Though I’ll admit, ® is kind of appropriate for Robin.)

I don’t take tips or collect names for an email list. Neither did I flap a “subscribe” placard in your face while you were trying to read. If you appreciate my work, try donating to one of the following charities or organizations. This short list was chosen for relevance to this particular article.

• The ACLU—Because the corruption seen in Gotham City is actually not as scary as reading the news.
• The Native American Rights Fund—I don’t know about you, but as member of a tribe that was forced to walk the Trail of Tears out to Oklahoma … I see a lot of history repeating itself.
• The Nature Conservancy—Because even if you save Gotham City, it’s not going to do you any good if the whole rest of the world gets wrecked while you’re busy chasing the Riddler.