Batman Beyond S01E09 Review: Don't Do Drugs, Kids

Batman Beyond, Season 1, Episode 9: The Winning Edge

Oh wow, I forgot about this episode completely. Like, I've got vague inklings that there's going to be a Royal Flush Gang episode, and a Spellbinder episode, and a Mr. Freeze episode, but somehow this episode just completely escaped my memory... but it's so bland, apparently, that I forgot about it in spite of it having a cameo from a Batman: The Animated Series villain in Bane.

But, man, the whole episode was... it was solidly paced in telling its story, for sure, but I just felt pretty bored throughout it, y'know? After the obligatory cold-open supervillain fight with the Jokerz gang (which has nothing to do with the rest of the episode), we basically have Terry (who's back with Dana with no explanation) basically watching the bizarre Future-Quidditch-Hockey-Football sport and basically getting himself embroiled with drug/steroid-abusing people, using 'slappers' that they slap on themselves to give them extra strength but increases aggressiveness. It's... it's honestly a pretty mundane storyline, so I can't fault the writers for trying to inject a bunch of sub-plots tied to the drug-abusing students line. Batman foils a robbery done by one of the sports players, Mason, in his search for clues on who's distributing the slapper drugs, and there's this whole bit where Terry's mom mistakes Terry for a drug-user himself, the horror. Oh, and Terry himself has to deal with general lethargy and tiredness throughout the episode, which his mom mistakes as being the side-effects of abusing drugs. Okay?

And... I dunno, I think the episode would actually be a bit more consistently paced and the tone'd at least feel like it's actually trying to say something about doping athletes and street drug sales, but then we just practically abandon the whole school and neighbourhood setting by the second act to go off and hunt down Bane, an old enemy of Batman's, thanks to traces of Venom found inside the slappers. But then Bane's... basically a vegetable with a broken-down body thanks to a lifelong usage of Venom. A dead end, right? Except, obviously, it's not. After a brief encounter with another drug distributor, Batman ends up finding out that Bane's caretaker dude, Jackson Chappell, was the one running the drug distribution after obtaining the formula from Bane.

And then we get a fight that's honestly not super impressive, particularly compared to the flair of something like the Inque battle from a couple of episodes back. It's just Chappell slapping all the slapper drugs on himself and becoming what's essentially a second-rate Bane, eventually defeating himself by quite literally running into his own machines and getting caught in the explosion. 

Overall, it's not a bad episode, but I do feel that even for one of those special "drugs are bad, kids" episode, it's a particularly bland and uninteresting one. Probably easily the weakest episode of Batman Beyond I've seen so far in the first season.