[COLUMN] In The Caped Crusader, the Real Villain is Gotham | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

NOTE: This piece contains spoilers for the first season of Batman: The Caped Crusader, available on Prime Video now. It’s solid, if not quite spectacular.

It is a cliché to describe the location of a story as a major character within the narrative, to suggest that New York City is the “fifth character” on Sex and the City or that Los Angeles is “the real star” of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. Still, the recently launched streaming series Batman: The Caped Crusader is at its strongest when it feels like a show about the fictional Gotham City. If nothing else, the series constructs a compelling argument for why Gotham City needs Batman (Hamish Linklater).

Still, Batman has one of the most iconic rogues’ galleries in comics. Indeed, several recognizable villains appear in the first season of Batman: The Caped Crusader: the Penguin (Minnie Driver), Catwoman (Christina Ricci), Harley Quinn (Jamie Chung) and Clayface (Dan Donohoe). The bulk of the season is devoted to the familiar arc that sees District Attorney Harvey Dent (Dietrich Bader) transformed into the monstrous Two-Face. The season closes with a short tease of the Joker.

Batman: The Caped Crusader is being positioned as something of a spiritual successor to Batman: The Animated Series, perhaps the greatest superhero television show ever produced. Much has been made of the involvement of Bruce Timm, creator of The Animated Series. Although the art style on The Caped Crusader is more heavily influenced by Golden Age artists like Dick Sprang than the art deco approach of The Animated Series, both shows share a similar retro film noir aesthetic.

However, there is a marked difference in how the two shows approach the character of Batman. After all, the tone and mood of The Animated Series was largely defined by writer Paul Dini. Dini tended to construct episodes as elaborate character studies of classic villains, often turning ridiculous antagonists like Mister Freeze (Michael Ansara), the Mad Hatter (Roddy McDowell) or Scarface (George Dzundza) into truly tragic – and often sympathetic – figures.

The Caped Crusader makes a few attempts to emulate this approach early in its season, with the first two episodes focusing on a gender-flipped take on Penguin and retro version of Clayface that harks back to the character’s four-color origins. These are easily the weakest episodes of the ten that compromise the season, in large part because they feel like an unconvincing imitation of something that The Animated Series perfected.

The show seems to acknowledge as much with its third episode, “Kiss of the Catwoman.” This features perhaps the most conventional villain origin of the season and provides the framework for the obligatory flashbacks to Bruce’s own childhood trauma. Of course, everybody knows Batman’s origin story, beat-for-beat. It’s all very tiring and familiar. There is a sense of obligation to all this. This is the stuff that every Batman adaptation has to work through.

That frustration is woven into “Kiss of the Catwoman.” After punching out reporter Eel O’Brien (Tom Kenny), Bruce Wayne is sentenced to therapy with Harleen Quinzel, where he is obligated to relitigate his formative trauma over his own better judgement. Neither Wayne nor Quinzel seem particularly satisfied by the court-mandated experience. “Did you really not get anything out of talking to her, sir?” Alfred (Jason Watkins) asks. Bruce curtly replies, “I’m fine. Now drop it.”

In the same episode, fallen socialite Selina Kyle reinvents herself as the costumed Catwoman. The dynamic between Batman and Catwoman has long been flirtatious; the romance between the pair was foreground in writer Tom King’s recent extended run on the Batman comic. However, in The Caped Crusader, there is no chemistry between the pair. Bruce has no real interest in Selina. In the episode’s final scene, Bruce admits, “Gotham’s got a break from her nonsense – and so have I.”

Indeed, “Kiss of the Catwoman” represents something of a sharp pivot for The Caped Crusader. It is the point at which, having established its bona fides, the series can take a turn towards its own unique interests. The climax of the episode finds Gotham City Police Department Lieutenant Arnold Flass (Gary Anthony Williams) threatening to execute Selina in retaliation for his humiliation early in the episode. Photographs of Batman subduing a police officer turn him into a public enemy.

If Paul Dini was the defining creative voice on The Animated Series, Ed Brubaker is a major influence on The Caped Crusader. Brubaker is a veteran comics writer who worked on several Gotham-set titles in the early 2000s: Batman, Catwoman and Gotham Central. Brubaker’s influence on The Caped Crusader is obvious. The second episode, “And Be a Villain”, was written by Greg Rucka, who wrote on Detective Comics alongside Brubaker’s Batman and who co-wrote Gotham Central.

Indeed, The Caped Crusader takes many of its cues from Brubaker’s work on Batman. There’s a heavy emphasis on “the East End”, a derelict part of Gotham created by Frank Miller and Dave Mazzucchelli for “Year One”, but which featured so heavily in Brubaker’s work that the blockbuster collection of his Catwoman run is titled Cat Woman of the East End. The tease of the Joker at the end of the season is framed to evoke Brubaker’s introduction of the character in The Man Who Laughs.

While Dini’s approach to Batman tends to focus on developing the villains, Brubaker was always more interested in the relationship between Batman and the city itself. Gotham Central is one of the best Batman comics ever published, and it barely features any superheroes. It is instead focused on the police officers working major crimes in Gotham, operating in the shadow of the Batman and his rogues’ gallery. The best parts of The Caped Crusader carry some of that approach over.

The Caped Crusader is very interested in the structures and systems of Gotham. Not only is Harvey Dent serving as District Attorney, he is running for Mayor. Not only is Commissioner James Gordon (Eric Morgan Stewart) head of the Gotham City Police Department, his daughter Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown) is a public defender trying to protect the rights of those in police custody. Bruce spends most of his time in the Batcave contemplating a map of the city. The show’s opening and closing credits focus on the empty spaces of Gotham – offices, apartments, meeting rooms.

The characters themselves are intertwined with the city’s infrastructure. Dent monologues about how the train lines are “the arteries of [this] great city” and the workers “form the beating heart of Gotham.” A late-season episode, “Nocturne”, features playful cameos from a gaggle of Batman’s future sidekicks: Dickie (Carter Rockwood), Jace (Henry Witcher), Stephie (Amari McCoy) and Carrie (Juliet Donenfeld). Before they become Bruce’s wards, they are wards of the state: orphans in the care of Doctor Leslie Thompkins (Donna Lynne Champlin).

Obviously, Gotham is modelled on New York City. In the words of legendary Batman writer Denny O’Neil, Gotham “is Manhattan below Fourteenth street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November.” However, because Gotham is a fictional construct, it can take on a life of its own, as demonstrated by Anton Furst’s design work for Tim Burton’s Batman. In The Caped Crusader, there is a real effort to explain how Gotham City could produce a hero like Batman.

The Caped Crusader suggests that real monsters in Gotham aren’t the supervillains, but instead the corruption, indifference and poverty that have taken root. Bruce listens to reports on how “inflation and unemployment in Gotham continue to rise.” A security guard (Kari Wahlgreen) laments, “I remember when these factories were open around the clock.” She opines, “We had a government worth a damn, we’d rebuild. Pump some life back in. But instead we get to keep the slums.” Lieutenant Renee Montaya (Michelle Bonilla) complains that “richies can’t stomach the real Gotham, so just leave instead of making the city better.”

Wealth is a recurring preoccupation for the season, even beyond the Wayne fortune. Frustrated by the indifference of her privileged clients who refer to their workers as “chattel” and complain that they “want to unionise”, Harleen Quinzel reinvents herself as the vigilante Harley Quinn in “The Stress of Her Regard”, warning the city’s wealthy that “the kings don’t run this court any more - the jester does.”

In “Night Ride”, Batman faces “the Gentleman Ghost”, the spirit of James Craddock (Toby Stevens) who “only targets the underprivileged.” Like Bruce, Craddock was a wealthy vigilante, but he didn’t bring salvation to the needy. “James Craddock was no Robin Hood,” explains a librarian (Gaille Heidemann). “He robbed from the poor to give to himself.” Craddock longs to return to “a better time”, when “the lower classes knew their place.” Indeed, if Bruce has a character arc over the course of the season, it’s coming to see Alfred as more than just a function, to stop calling him “Pennyworth” and start calling him “Alfred.”

It isn’t just the city’s wealthy that prey on the impoverished and disenfranchised citizens. In “The Night of the Hunters”, Flass unleashes the supervillain Firebug (Kenny) on a tenement building to draw Batman out into the open, risking countless innocent lives. In “Moving Target”, a contracted hit forces James and Barbara Gordon to go on the run because they can’t trust the police department. This paranoia is well-founded; Lieutenant Jim Corrigan (Roger Craig Smith) proves himself a rat.

While the season builds to the familiar story of Harvey Dent’s transformation into Two-Face, the subject of countless Batman stories, The Caped Crusader finds a fresh angle. Harvey is incarcerated in the season’s penultimate episode and the season finale finds him being hunted by the police when he promises to testify in the hopes of revealing “where the bodies are buried” and “exposing corruption.” Dent is ultimately shot in the back by Flass, executed by a police officer.

Flass insists that it was “a righteous shoot” as Batman squares him down. “You can’t do this,” Flass warns the hero. “You’re just some lousy vigilante. I’m a goddamn cop!” It’s the most powerful moment in the series, particularly in the aftermath of national protests about the use of lethal force by police officers who have rarely faced legal consequences for their actions. In that moment, Bruce’s anger is palpable, justifiable and feels incredibly timely despite the show’s noir setting.

It's a moment that really makes an argument for Batman as a vigilante. After all, the Dark Knight is frequently (and increasingly) criticized as “a billionaire aristocrat who beats up poor people.” The Caped Crusader is less interested in Bruce Wayne’s internal psychology than other adaptations, less compelled by the arguments about why Bruce would choose to be Batman. Instead, the series explores how broken Gotham must be to justify Batman, to make Batman a logical response.

It's a fresh and fascinating angle on the classic Batman mythos, and it allows The Caped Crusader to feel like more than just a pale imitation of The Animated Series. It’s a show less interested in the well-trodden takes on Batman and his iconic villains than it is engaged with the world in which they operate.