Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff

[00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to Charlie and Steve. Watch stuff where today we are watching Batman, the Animated series. My name's Steve Snick and joining me as always, he's working on his sleigh of hand as we speak. It's Charlie Peppers. How you doing today, Charlie?

I am doing well, ready to discuss this uh, interesting episode. We got on our hands right now.

Oh man. I love hearing the kind words that you try to use to describe episodes that you hate.

I mean, I mean, I mean, I was gonna say cluster fuck, but I decided to be a little more

tell 'em how you feel, baby. '

cause honestly, Steve, this isn't a cluster fuck, that's me being mean. the thing that frustrates me about Batman, the animated series, the first season in particular, is that the quality and episodes goes up and down.

So consistently that I just, I don't know. The best thing to have is no expectations.

Well, if the [00:01:00] part of the roller coaster that's exciting is going up in anticipation and going down with the exhilarating feeling of the roller coaster, this is the part where it's kind of flat and nothing's happening, and you're wondering why this section of track got put into the design. But at any rate, let's talk about.

This filler of an episode, it's called Prophecy of Doom, here on Batman, the animated series. It was released on October 6th, 1992, directed by Frank Power Teleplay, by Sean Catherine, Derek, and the story by Dennis Marks. And the plot of the episode depicts the appearance of Nomos, a self-proclaimed psychic. That has conned several rich individuals to put massive amounts of money into a trust fund to prepare for a quote unquote great fall. Things turned quite sour when no SMOs orders an attempt on Bruce Wayne's life to scare his followers into believing him. Now, Batman must expose the fraud for what he truly is, and let's just jump [00:02:00] right into this.

We start off with a kind of a redo of the Titanic in a way. You see a cruise ship, it's, there's a rollicking good time, there's party, there's gambling.

It's, you find out later that it's a gambling cruise ship, and you actually get a pretty cool, kind of like panning shot through the party. And then you slowly go below decks and you see that there's. A bomb near the engine and the bomb goes off and the ship sinks and the people have to get off the boat and you pretty much smash cut right into Bruce Wayne on, a date with a woman and her father.

I guess. But before we get into that weird little, maybe it's a date, maybe it's not situation. Is there anything you wanna say about this Titanic opening that we get? Did it like actually set off any intrigue for you or was it just like, okay, this is, let's see what's happening.

I mean, they got everybody off the boat, I guess we can't have anybody drown on Fox Kids where this aired. That was my thought.

I'm dying right now because I can just, I see like, again, not a video podcast, [00:03:00] but I just like, I see you working so hard to be like, just say something about this and it's just like, it's okay. You can just be like, no, I got nothing. Like, it's all right. We'll get right into it. So, anyway. We get, we get set into sort of like, we get told who the bad guy is and what's going on right away.

Bruce is on this maybe date, but her dad's also there and it seems like a rich connection of his and he's, he's talking about nomos and a little sidebar. My mom, when I was like much younger, had a, like a no, like a really weird nose infection.

And she's like, never told me exactly what it is, other than it just like was bad. So I, to this day, don't know exactly what she has. But my, my uncle, what do you call an uncle that's now divorced from your mom's sister? Is that still your uncle? Technically

I think I'd still call him an uncle.

I call him Uncle. Johnny. So

That's such a uncle, aunt. That's such a loose term. I

that's true.

community it is. I don't know how it is for

I, well, I'm an uncle [00:04:00] to a child that I'm not blood related to. I'm Uncle

Steve to him, so I guess that makes sense. Anyway, my, my uncle Johnny would make fun of her by calling her Nostradamus

because she had a thing going on with her nose and she was all knowing, and so I kind of chuckled at Nomos over and over because it made me think of Nostradamus over again.

So, mom, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry for tricking you by saying Nostradamus. I know you hate that name. But this old rich guy fucking loves Mamos. He's like, this guy told me that there was danger on this boat and that I shouldn't get on it. And look what happens. It fucking blew up, and all these people were in danger.

So there's the connection to the boat in the beginning, and you're just like, Bruce is like, okay, hold on a second. Like timeout. He, he, like, Bruce is smarter than this, but he's also smart enough to play along. And he's like, oh yeah, I gotta, I gotta meet this Nemos guy. Let me see what's going on with this dude.

'cause you know, it's Bruce, he can't help himself. He's forever the detective

And he plays it off like he's interested and he [00:05:00] goes and sees for himself. And Nemos, I think is just like a guy with a lot of hubris goes like, oh, let me get this new rich guy, because I think he's as gullible as the rest of them, and points him out as like he's the one that's going to be in danger next. Bruce is home and someone sabotaged his elevator and he escapes this collapsing elevator by changing into Batman and hitting his battering grappling hook out of the elevator and then goes to chase the guy that tried to kill him. Now Charlie, the only thing I can think about here is if you go to try and kill Bruce Wayne. And suddenly Batman is appearing out of the only place that Bruce Wade could be appearing out of. How the fuck do you not think, oh, Bruce Wayne's Batman.

I, all right, here's my theory. I think that so many things are happening. I don't think that the animation quite [00:06:00] matches the level of chaos and adrenaline. That people are feeling in this situation if it were today, and maybe if it were done digitally, it would be a little bit more swift, okay.

In real life, I'm gonna throw that question back at you. If I were to fall down an elevator shaft, but then Batman pop popped back up, what would your first question be?

Well, I guess it would be, what the fuck is he doing there?

I just feel like the way that they wrote it off where they were just like, what are the odds that Batman was there?

Mm-Hmm

Like he just happened to be there to catch this very specific thing going down. Like he was, he was there watching over this billionaire.

They don't for a second be like, oh, maybe they're the same. I, it's the second time that the show has been very cavalier about how careful he is about changing into Batman and then immediately leaping into action

where a place, a place where I'm talking about see no evil.

I knew you were bringing that up where [00:07:00] he burst through the door like he was making an entrance on a

Because he, he like thinks he's inconspicuously going into a bathroom and then all of a sudden, Bruce or Batman, Bruce Wayne is kicking his way out of the said bathroom

where no one else was. It's, yeah, I don't like, I get it. It's a 20 minute cartoon for kids,

yes. And or I think AIX to Batman. Exiting and then coming out of the same door. I'm a fan of Batman, falling out of skylight windows

or like bursting through them. Not only does it look badass, it's consistent with the theme of him being a fat bats fly and him just coming through a window.

Visually in the comic books, it looks better. I also think that. It suggests that Batman's looking over everything that's happening, Batman coming out of the bathroom or out of a broom closet doesn't ring true for [00:08:00] me as much. I think if anything, that would weaken his mythos a little bit, but I guess you gotta do it.

You gotta do in these situations.

In my mind because, and this is this part I skipped over at this point, he knows. That Nastro most is a former criminal, that he has a partner in crime who's a special effects artist. Like we skipped over all of that. Whatever. It's, it's not that I, I guess it's important, but we don't care enough to make it that important.

But like in my mind, what I actually, now that I'm thinking back to watching it, what I thought was gonna happen is, yes, he uses Batman to escape. But then I thought he was just gonna be like, okay, I know who that was. Let me go get him in my Batman way. I was surprised that he then went after the guy who tried to kill him, because I thought that just makes it obvious that he's Batman

I don't know. I think, again, I'm really, my brain is doing a lot of work to justify the plot hole of that.

Sure.

either be the villains have such an [00:09:00] ego about themselves that they don't connect that Bruce Wayne of all people could. Be the Batman. It could be that this is happening much more quickly than we think it is.

It could be that, I don't

I think, I think the ego's right?

the ego, there's also a lot of people around.

So I think maybe that would get lost. And I'm also wondering, because there is an episode in season three of the show where Batman's in a situation. Or no, Bruce Wayne is in a bad situation and he pretends to fall down an elevator shaft to his death, and the two villains are like, he's dead.

They pause, they look at each other and they say, well, we were gonna kill him anyway, too bad. And they walk away. Then Batman crashes through the window of their car. I think that was the show being a little bit more self-referential about. What it typically does. But yeah, this is definitely, it makes no damn sense.

But why do you [00:10:00] think the ego part is right?

I think the ego part's, right, because all they care about is getting rich

and they think that it's working so well on every other dumb rich person that this is just like another step in the process basically. And Bruce plays into that because he immediately goes into SMOs and he is like, you were right.

Like, I'm gonna give you $10 million, which Alfred like clutched his pearls at. But it's a smart play by Bruce. So it's, it goes from a dumb play by Batman to a smart play by Bruce. I just would've rather him. Gotten away, been like, okay, this is definitely what's happening. And then went into just like, I just thought that the chase part was unnecessary and them trying to insert some action. the thing that I was wanting to connect is, and this skips to the end a little bit while this is a kid show, Bruce Wayne quotes fucking Shakespeare at the end. He literally quotes Shakespeare at the end. So if you're gonna like, pretend like you're all high and mighty and artsy and quote the bard. But then throw something like that at us that makes [00:11:00] us be like, hold on, are, do you think we're smart? Or do you think we're dumb? It just, it throws me in different directions. And honestly, now that I'm thinking about it a little bit more, I think I have my score a little bit higher than I'm gonna give it now that we, once we get to the end of the episode.

But anyway, let's get to the great fall. In this episode, they're all gathered at the observatory. The observatory coming back into play. It's the first time we've seen the observatory since Chris is with the Joker.

Mr. Romos claims the great fall, which has been mentioned many times, is on its way. He uses the special effects artist to show this.

It's honestly like. It gave me maga vibes. when all of the protests were happening, like more frequently during covid times and cities like Seattle and San Francisco and New York. And LA even were being painted as these like lawless liberal bastions of anarchy where everyone's just gonna like bash your windows and take your shit. And all of the rich people were clutching their pearls and voting red and. Being like, no, like we back the [00:12:00] blue, like law and order and stuff like that. I, I, that gave me this kind of vibes, like Ms.

Romos was telling all the rich people, like the pores are gonna come and fuck your shit up. And by giving me this money, I'm gonna make sure that this chaos stays away from you.

The fact that all of them were so. to believe him. And so gullible just shows how disconnected they are from the world. It's so funny to me the way that this show frames being unhoused and being somebody who isn't rich. I honestly, one of the things that the Christopher Nolan Batman films did really well is showing how bored Bruce is of.

Rich society and socialites. You remember Batman Begins where he kicks all of them out of his birthday party. He's like, no, no, no. This isn't a joke. Leave you fucking phonies. Stop drinking my booze. Just get outta here. I thought that that was just, that [00:13:00] wasn't really acting. On Bruce's part. I think that was definitely a lot of how he really feels.

I would love this version of Bruce Wayne to do something like that. Like you all believed in a psychic. Ah, you're stupid. All right. Thank God Batman's here to save your asses.

One thing I will give credit to the episode for is I think that they did a good job of slowly revealing how much of a fraud ne stroma is. I think

you start the episode. He shows up totally in costume. You get his act without any breaks or cracks. And slowly as the episode goes along, you start to see little intricacies of where he's lying or where he's fibbing.

Like during the, the montage of the great fall, you see the guy who tried to kill Batman working the lights and all of the stuff. When he, the second time he's suspended in the air, you get a shot of the hook in his back. So you can see that that's some sort of special effect.

Um, at one point you see him without the wig on, so you can see that that's.

Not his actual hair and stuff like that.

It is always the wig, always the

it's [00:14:00] always, it's always the wig. You, you can just, I liked how they kind of parsed out showing that, yeah, this guy's a fraud and he's just putting on an act, so I will give a little bit of flowers to them there. But we also see. That the the hook is going to be one of the things that starts to give Nostros his downfall.

'cause Batman uses it to kinda yank him away and his, his sidekick in him start to fight and Nostros starts to spin. The planets really dangerously. And I didn't mention that Lisa was there and she's tied up as a captive. So the rich guy could, like, there's a certain point where he breaks it. He tries to get the rich guy to give him what he wants and whatever.

And so there's, she's in danger 'cause the planets are crashing together and. There, there's like a big ring that's gonna come and cut Lisa in half. And Batman does his rescue thing and he beats the sidekick and he sends the earth crashing down to beat Nemos and to knock him out. And he saves Lisa before the planet can cut her in half.

And our one Ridler trophy today. Is that the crew hated it. They hated the scene. [00:15:00] They hated how it looked. They were displeased with the animation in this episode, specifically in this climax with Bruce Tim, having stated if that whole end sequence with the spinning worlds in the observatory had gone to JU or any other studio, it might have come off, but it went to ACOM and they just weren't able to pull off that level of animation.

So ACOM catching, apparently some well deserved strays there.

And the sentiment was echoed by the director of this episode, Frank Power, which had said it, quote unquote, broke his heart. I designed those planets using a circle template. How hard is it to animate circles? It was done by hand, and if we had done it by now, it would've just been done on computer and would've looked spectacular when I knew the show was going to acom, a studio I'd had a long history with, I knew they weren't going to pull it off. Admittedly, it was a tough sequence, but they should have been able to do it. Damn.

I love hearing their criticisms of the animations, peaks and valleys. That's not something that [00:16:00] I anticipated them to have strong opinions about. I thought it was mostly gonna be them focused on the characters and the writing.

But to be honest, the animations, everything with this show.

it's, funny, I do the research for these episodes, and so when you get notes like this that you like, go back and watch it and yeah, it's like, it almost looks like they put like polish on a marble and then forgot to make it roll. I don't know the first thing about animation, but yeah, it's like I can see how they were disappointed by that.

So it is interesting to get those, those little tidbits. And, and after everything is done, the, animation team and the crew decides that also adults should be able to appreciate this, but not think too hard about it because Bruce Wayne quotes the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, as he takes us outta the episode.

And that is the finale of Prophecy of Doom, an episode that when I first heard the title, I thought was gonna be the introduction of Al Goul. So how

disappointed was I? we'll have to wait a little bit longer to see the head of the demon

Yeah. There is no bad episode of this show [00:17:00] with the head of the demon. I'm just gonna tell you that right now. He brings such a. Indiana Jones level energy to the series that I really appreciate I can't wait till we get to the first two part era with Raja Goul.

Love it. Well, let's wrap up this single parter episode just a shorty. Shorty today for prophecy of Doom. Charlie, what would you like to give Prophecy of Doom on your battering rating out of five?

Okay, so the sorta love interest, her name was Lisa. Lisa raised my score by half a battering. I liked her character. I liked that she cut through all of the bullshit. I

mean you're about to give it half a battering?

I'm not that vicious.

Okay.

consider it. I did consider it though this, this wasn't terrible. It had some interesting ideas they were trying to cook, but the meal, eh I'm gonna give it two and a half bat [00:18:00] rings.

I think it was close to being decent. I think it's better than Okay. 'cause the ideas are very interesting. Just having a. Character who purports to be an actual psychic. And as the DC animated universe gets more extended, Batman's gonna know people like Zana who could very quickly be like, oh, he's not psychic.

I don't read any magical energy off of him. So. It's interesting for me to see the show tackle something like this before the world got bigger. Because if this were a Justice League episode, they would've approached it a lot differently. So eh, interesting. But I don't think it was the right time for this story.

What do you think?

Yeah, it's a two for me. I'm a, I'm at a two battering, so just below where you're at. I don't disagree with anything you said. I actually was gonna give it two and a half and in our conversation, I think I bumped it down in my brain to it too. So, yeah, I mean, just again, it's wedged in between. I think [00:19:00] as we get more and more great episodes like we're about to cover.

Feet of clay next. And I feel like my gut says those are gonna be good episodes. I hope for

someone like Clayface coming into the, to the series. So, and the fact that we've recently done Heart of Ice and Two Face and other ones, this, I think I'm gonna be a little bit more critical of these ones that I'm just like, why did, what, what did I just watch for the last 20 minutes and what did we really take away from it?

So two better rings for me. And I I think that's it. Do we have anything we wanna say about prophecy of Doom or should we just move on with our lives?

I think, okay, if we were gonna make this episode better. Do we think it would've been better if the person being swindled were

somebody like Mayor Hill, who we already know? What if

instead of some random old guy of a girl he's dating.

Yeah. That we never see again? I think that it should have been Mayor Hill. I think it should have been him trying to anticipate what's gonna happen [00:20:00] politically in Gotham or how he can.

Best Batman by being a couple of steps ahead. I think that this show does such a disservice to Mayor Hill's character until it comes to the, Clock King. There's some episodes with the Clock King where they do interesting work with Mayor Hill and those are some of my favorite episodes.

it should have been him. I think it also should have been Veronica Reland. It's one of Bruce Wayne's on and off Again, love interest. I think she could have been the person that's getting duped or just some consistency with the characters that we're seeing. Most of these episodes that bump me and don't work, just feature randos.

We don't care about these people.

and I don't, I don't necessarily mind one-off fill-ins. I think it's just when they're random and also seemingly are either just like con artist or mobsters. And we've said this before, but give us, give us, fill-ins. Give us comic

Yeah.

man. Well, on that note, that's gonna take us [00:21:00] out for this little mini baby quickie episode of Charlie and Steve Watch stuff. We watched the episode, prophecy of Doom on Batman, the Animated series when we come back with the animated series. In the next episode of this podcast, we're going to be watching the two episodes that feature Clay face in feet of Clay, parts One and Parts two.

So for myself, Steve Snick and my good friend Charlie Peppers, we will see you on the next one.

Bye