Batman Beyond S02E25-26 Review: Doggy Business

Batman Beyond, Season 2, Episodes 25-26

Episode 25: Where's Terry

This one, I didn't really like quite as much. It's, on paper, a pretty all right episode, but I just... I just didn't get into this one. The episode starts off with Terry seemingly being gone, missing in action. No one's seen him -- not his mother, not Dana, not Bruce and not Max. All they have to go on is that Terry separated from his friends chasing down a suspicious individual after going to the movies. 

It's kind of interesting to see all these other people in Terry's life worrying about him, but ultimately it's just an excuse for Bruce and Max, the two allies that know about Terry's double-life, to have a bit of a team-up. It's already been building up throughout the season that Max already figured out Bruce Wayne's secret identity, and I also love that the two of them basically already sort of figured out that the other party had figured out. 

It's just that... it's just that what they do, I think, isn't very interesting. Sure, we've got some great moments, like Max coming in to help Old Man Bruce from a bunch of gangsters, and Bruce's offscreen-interrogation (which they had again in the later-released Justice League), as well as Bruce making Max think he's going to distract the people when he's using her as bait... but ultimately it all sort of amounts to a B-plot that doesn't really do much, and despite me liking both Old Man Bruce and Max a lot, their interactions here are way too bland. 

Terry himself finds himself at the mercy of Shriek's second return! And Shriek is... I'm actually not sure what he's doing, he's just fighting Batman or something, I guess. At least Ollie shows up too, I do like the interaction between him and Shriek. Shriek's battle with Batman leaves him trapped in a section of the underground tunnels with a young runaway boy called Dak, and... again, while we do have some neat visuals (mostly Shriek's sound waves moving like a worm through the underground tunnels; and the flooding) and the idea of a runaway who idolizes supervillains is neat, it's not the most interesting thing either. Maybe it's because I just find Dak a bit annoying?

Either way, despite blaming Batman for beating down all these other supervillains who are "only doing it to be free", Batman ends up saving Dak, and trusts him to get out of the hole that he managed to crack open in the ceiling of where they were trapped. Dak ends up repaying the favour by covering for Batman. It's a nice moment, even if the scene didn't quite land for me. Ultimately, Dak tricks Shriek into attacking a wall that leads to the river, following what Batman taught him before, flooding Shriek and Ollie away at the risk to Dak himself. Batman breaks free, saves Dak, while Old Man Bruce whacks Shriek from behind when he tries to menace Batman. 

Overall... it's a neat episode, honestly, but not one that I'm going to be in a rush to rewatch any time soon. 

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Episode 26: Ace in the Hole

It's really interesting how the first season is basically kind of a buildup to a confrontation with Blight, while season two is just... really just there? Every single episode in this one was just standalone stories, either featuring returning villains or having a 'Troubled Youth(tm)' storyline. None of which are honestly a problem -- Batman: The Animated Series managed multiple seasons without any huge overarching plot, after all -- but it does make this season feel a lot less... interesting, y'know? There are certainly some great episodes in this season, but there are also a bunch that made me simply shrug at them, like the car-jacking one, or Howard Groote, or the Eggbaby...

At least this one was neat. "Ace in the Hole" is basically one of those "origin story and resolution in the same episode" stories, except it revolves around Ace. When Ace goes a bit berserk and chases down a strange man and gets loose in town, we get to learn from Old Man Bruce about the circumstances behind Ace coming into Bruce Wayne's care. 

Turns out that poor widdle baby Ace was taken and raised by an abusive, terrible dog-fighting manager called Ronny Boxer. The episode really sells just how fucking terrible people who raise dogs for dog-fighting rings are. It doesn't show anything graphic, but, man, the episode really manages to make me loathe Ronny Boxer pretty quickly as he raises Ace to be a 'fighter'. During a GCPD raid on the illegal dog-fighting ring, Ace manages to escape in the chaos, and happens to meet Old Man Bruce, who's putting flowers down on Crime Alley. They save each other in turn from a Jokerz gang member, and that's how Bruce met Ace. 

Interestingly, nothing about this other than the Crime Alley meeting is something that's known to Bruce, so it's all just something that the audience sees while we see Ace wandering around 2029-era Gotham, while Terry has to juggle looking for poor, missing Ace. I do really like the scene of Bruce pushing Terry to go hunt down the bad guy, Ronny Boxer, brushing away concerns about Ace with "he's a resourceful dog, he'll be fine" while giving sad, longing glances at Ace's dish... god damn it, Bruce. 

Batman's investigation finds out that Boxer has been doping up his dogs with some growth-steroid called Cerestone, while poor Ace gets captured by the corrupt dog-pound man who caught him so many years ago. The dogcatcher sells Ace back to Boxer, who recognizes him and plans to use him as a prize dog again. Batman arrives on Boxer's cargo ship, and ends up finding himself sealed in an arena, fighting against one of Boxer's experiments, a mutated, deformed bulldog the size of a dinosaur. Poor Terry straight-up ended in the giant thing's mouth at one point!

It's honestly a fight that dragged on a bit longer, but ultimately Ace breaks free of his own cage, and attacks Boxer, dropping him off the railing of the ship (he survives, unfortunately) before jumping into the arena to help Terry fight the giant mutant bulldog. It's a fun, happy ending for Ace as he runs back to Bruce's arms at the end of the episode, and, man, the smile on Bruce Wayne's face and voice is very, very heart-warming for sure.

An interesting one -- I really didn't expect an Ace backstory for sure. Anyway, that was an odd one but a good one to end season two off on. See you guys some time in the future for Batman Beyond, season three!

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DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Dak name-drops Blight, Spellbinder and the Royal Flush Gang.
• The Stacked Deck is a villain bar that was featured several times in Batman: The Animated Series. 
• Cerestone will be properly introduced in season 3, but due to the shuffling of episode production orders, this one ends up name-dropping Cerestone a bit earlier.