Batwoman S01E12-13 Review: There Can Only Be One

Batwoman, Season 1, Episode 12: Take Your Choice; Episode 13: Drink Me

Episode 12: Take Your Choice
We continue with the next couple of episodes of Batwoman. Apparently there's a month-long gap between episode 11 and 12 when it was originally released? Having two Beths running around feels a bit too fantastical for a more grounded show like Batwoman, and while it's still a superhero show, I do agree that a random alternate-Earth doppelganger does feel like it's the wrong vibe for the show, so one of the Beths must go. Either the good, newly-introduced Beth has to die in some way, or that Alice, after serving her role as the series' first big bad, will get written out while Beth is a way to keep Rachel Skarsten in the show. Legends of Tomorrow has done far, far more convoluted things to keep actors around, after all.

"Take your Choice" puts our main character in the unenviable position of having to choose between her flesh-and-blood sister that's psychotic and is a known murderer and liar, and the what-could-have-been sister that's, well, arguably an impostor, but is a perfectly nice and wholesome human being. While all of this is going on, Sophie has called up a shoot-on-sight order on Alice/Beth, because the Crows need to save space, leading to a rescue and Beth finally learning that Kate's Batwoman. Which, by my count, leaves only poor Mary as the only one not privy to secret identity stuff, but is in the loop about the existence of alternate-universe doppelgangers.


It is, admittedly, a bit odd that the rule that no two doppelgangers can hang around each other in Earth-Prime before they both die thanks to new cosmic rules -- particularly since we've actually seen doppelgangers that are left behind post-Crisis in Supergirl, but okay, I'll buy that the rules work differently now. We get a pretty neat scene of Beth finding out Kate's secret identity, and later on, an also neat scene when Alice waltzes into Wayne Towers to basically find out what's going on and trying to get the panacea she injected into Mary's blood during the mid-season finale. Which... okay, that's a bit of an awkward way to get Alice into the orbit of Team Batwoman, but I'll buy it.

Throughout the episode, though, Kate ends up being forced to basically choose which Beth she wants to pick. And it's an interesting dilemma. Since Alice killed Catherine, Kate has basically hammered down on the fact that she no longer sees her as her sister anymore but as a criminal, but at the same time she's also seeing the what-could-be if she had saved Beth, and that sheer amount of glorious Bat-family guilt angst is eating into her. And while for us, the audience (and for Mary in particular) the choice should be patently obvious, Kate's conflict about actually picking which sister lives and which sister dies is a very well-executed one. The way and honestly sheer suddenness in springing this new plot twist about Beth in around two episodes, we basically get a whole lot of tension and the sense of a race against time is really felt. Kate really hasn't spent enough time with the new Beth, for sure, but that makes her decision and what happens afterwards so much more tragic.

The episode seems to lean a bit more towards Kate foolishly choosing Alice, but she's not that stupid and when Kate chains Alice up to a hospital floor, Alice realizes that Kate chose the alternate-universe doppelganger instead, and everything that Alice thought was real about Kate end up basically crashing down all around her. She's always thought that Kate was "one step away" from acknowledging her as a sister, and to see that Kate basically sentenced her to die in favour of another Beth Kane? Psychopath or not, you can't feel at least a bit sorry for Alice, and the scene of Kate and Alice just crying and holding on to each other, both filled with lost hopes that they could respectively 'redeem' their sister to their side, is pretty well done.

Of course, the B-plot catches up with us. Throughout the past couple of episodes we've had this very banal side-story of Jacob Kane trying to get plastic surgeons to testify about the possibility of life-like masks (you now live in a world where the Elongated Man exists and is a city away, what the hell, you damn Gotham doctors?) and one of the plastic surgeons finally agrees to collaborate after meeting with Mouse... except said plastic surgeon is, in fact, August Cartwright himself, that evil child-kidnapping motherfucker. August basically torments Mouse, calling him a piece of shit for letting himself be manipulated by Alice, then goes off to snipe Alice in the head. Only instead of the real Alice, August ends up shooting Beth instead, abruptly ending the life of this 'good sister',  and, unknowingly, saving Alice's life.

And that's a pretty powerful moment. I could argue on how this could've perhaps been executed better, but personally? I really did like the suddenness of it, and the finality of the Kate/Alice scene that ends up being ripped away when Alice realizes that, hey, she's alive now but there was a moment when her sister was straight-up ready to let her die. Alice whacks a grief and guilt-wracked Kate with a metal tray and buggers off, and it's so, so interesting to see what's going to happen next with this pair of sisters.

As far as the B-plots go, Jacob Kane gets shanked by Dodgson but rescued by some other prisoner. Okay? Meanwhile, Mouse is clearly extremely terrified by August Cartwright, and while the Kate/Alice/Beth drama clearly dominates the main body of the episode, I do appreciate the fact that Mouse, as psychotic as he is, is still pretty damn terrified of August and is still as much a victim of abuse as Alice is. Sophie's also basically getting a bit more desperate and military-minded with how she's handling the leadership of the Crows, which is portrayed by the episode as basically being a huge negative.

I could argue about how the Beth Kane situation could perhaps be introduced to us in a bit better of a way, but the rapid pace of the revelation, and the fact that just like us, Kate and her friends didn't get the opportunity to spend time with Beth before she was so brutally ripped away from us, is definitely well done.
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Episode 13: Drink Me
After that gigantic whammy of an episode that is episode 12, though, we sort of end up getting an interesting 'filler' episode of sorts? Considering how central the Kate/Alice conflict has been throughout the entire season, and how last episode was such a gigantic, explosive and tense affair, it's interesting that we dial back the tension as we tackle something more... trivial? It did start as an intentional distraction as Luke Fox tries to get Kate's mind off of hunting down Alice by bringing up a mysterious new serial killer, someone who styles themselves as a vampire and leaves their victims drained of blood. For both Kate and the audience, this is an interesting way to cope and deal with the death of Beth.

This adaptation of Nocturna is a pretty basic comic book villain, a woman with a unique skin condition who's shunned by the world, took the vampire comparison and ran with it to make it her unique modus operandi. It is admittedly somewhat jarring compared to the usually more grounded Alice, who mostly restrains her wacky Batman-villain-gimmick to quoting Lewis Carroll and maybe a prop or two, but definitely a welcome change to me. The actual chase for Nocturna isn't the most interesting thing in the world, and I definitely didn't care much for the Sophie-shipping-and-jealousy bit. I'm also not sure how I feel about working Alice into the whole thing, but it did give us a bit of a not-quite-team-up between the Kane sisters when Alice ends up as one of Nocturna's victims.

Alice, meanwhile, is completely furious at Kate (who, meanwhile, is also beating herself up with grief and guilt over how she's failed the two Beths) for choosing the good Beth over her, and she's basically ran back to her base of horrors to talk to Mouse and basically plan the next step in taking Kate down... but Mouse is missing, under the mercies of his psychotic dad August Cartwright.

In the B-plot... Mary finally figures out that Kate is Batwoman due to both of Kate's alter-egos asking Mary for help during different parts of the Nocturna case, and Mary, bless her, is intelligent enough to put two and two together and realize that her step-sister is actually the badass vigilante that has been asking her for help every now and then. Mary's just recovered from the bit of conflict that she had with Kate over her initial attempt to believe that Alice could be redeemed, it's going to be interesting how Mary and Kate's next confrontation is going to be. Mary's easily my favourite secondary character in this show for sure. Also, I think the show's hinting at her and Luke getting together, which is neat and actually handled a lot better than some other CW shows I can think of. Luke's pretty much a goldmine for lighthearted banter in this episode, which I definitely approve.

Overall, "Drink Me" isn't the most plot-relevant episode, and more of a fun 'well, let's have a villain-of-the-week for once!' change in formula for Batwoman, but it's definitely a very welcome one, and I'm a fan of how the Kate/Alice/Beth central focus of the show is still touched on without it dominating the episode. Regrettably Nocturna herself is a bit one-dimensional, but what can you do.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Luke briefly mentions the existence of a 'cryogenic tank', which is likely a reference to classic Batman villain Mr. Freeze, who keeps his wife in suspended animation in such a tank. 
• Nocturna, Mistress of the Night a.k.a. Natalia Knight, is an adversary of Batman who was exposed to radioactive laser who drained her skin of all pigment and rendered her sensitive to light. With her lover Anton Knight, and the two unleashed a spree of robbery. Nocturna would later retire from crime, get into a relationship with both Bruce Wayne and Batman, and became surrogate mother to the second Robin, Jason Todd.
• Nocturna's whole vampire theme in this episode is based on a cancelled episode of Batman: The Animated Series, which planned to have Nocturna appear as a straight-up vampire, but the content of bloodletting and drinking blood caused the episode to be shot down by Fox.