Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff

[00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome to Charlie and Steve. Watch stuff, the podcast for two friends. Talk about the stuff that they're watching with each other. My name's Steve Snick and joining me as always, garbage collection days, usually on a Monday, but today he's making an exception. It's Charlie Peppers.

Charlie, how you doing today, man?

I am good. You know, I'm as good as can be for making an, an exception when it's not trash day . Oh my God. That line in the episode, we'll get to it. I just, I, I chuckled.

is that all you did, Charlie? You just chuckled.

I, I might have also rolled my eyes a little bit.

Maybe a little,

rolling. just

a tiny groan, dwell, just a sliver. Well, we might as well just get right into it. We're here today to talk about just one episode of Batman, the animated series. We've got a really fun two-parter coming up in our next episode. So instead of trying to figure out what to do with the extra time, we figured we would just cover one episode of our normal show, Batman, the Animated series. But then we would spend the second half [00:01:00] of the episode being true to our name as a podcast, going over some of the other stuff that we spend our time watching, because honestly, this is our project and we watch other stuff for fun outside of this time. But without further ado, let's jump into the thing that we're here for Batman, the Animated series. Today's episode that we're gonna be covering is called Be a Clown. It was released on September 16th, 1992. It was directed by Frank Power and written by Ted Peterson. And strap it 'cause this is a long one. The plot of this episode is the Joker Infiltrates, the Birthday Party of Mary Hill's son, to plant a bomb. That's it.

I, I fucks with it. I fuck with this episode.

Keep It, simple, stupid.

keep it simple, stupid. The writers are nailing the joker more and more, and I'm here for it.

Indeed. Well, we're trying something new in this episode. We've sprinkled our ridler [00:02:00] trophies throughout the plot of this episode. So instead of keeping them all for the end, we're going to be uncovering them as we go. And here after our little in depth description of what happens in the plot of this episode, we're gonna uncover our first Riddler trophy. We talked about in previous episodes that the Batman Animated Series team was having a little bit of problems with their storyboard team, and there were some struggles, and I guess they continued in this episode. And with those continued issues with the storyboard team, a freelancer reportedly quit halfway through this episode's production, forcing Bruce Tim to take over the role of storyboard artist for the second act of the episode.

So basically, someone who had a history writing and directing the show had to also step into a storyboarding role. And honestly, Charlie, like I enjoyed this episode on an animation front a lot more than a lot of, some of the other episodes that we've covered so far.

So

right.

[00:03:00] it moved. It, it. It moved and I really liked Jordan Mayor Hill's son in this episode. He was pretty clear about what he wanted. He wanted his father's attention. He liked magic, so I think everything with him and particularly everything with him and Joker in the amusement park was particularly chilling and scary and tense in a way that I wasn't expecting it to be.

I was, quite frankly, very scared for Jordan.

That's interesting. I thought, it's funny I had this later on, but I want to, I, I guess we can just do it now. I kind of Thought that they made Jordan look like a 25 year old

on

Shut the fuck up,

body. I like, I don't know if you go back and look at his face, he looks like a man.

He

looks

like

a man, like an animated man on a boy's body. I, I'm telling you,

go back

he a man? Is he an animated man?

he's an animated, grown ass man. It's just, it's funny.

I'm gonna call him grown [00:04:00] ass Jordan for the rest of the po

ass Jordan.

Oh my God. I agree with you that the animation did take a step up, even though I, I did think that Jordan kind of looked like a big man baby. But that actually takes me into the beginning of the episode too, because I actually think that the first place where the animation team really flexed was actually in the destruction of this tower that the Mirror was talking

about.

So we're gonna go into the beginning of the episode now, which I thought was another fun moment of rich white men. Doing something that they say will make the city safer than having an immediate example of why the city is not safer, just because the rich white man says so. And this, this example is the, the mayor standing in front of his new high rise luxury tower, which I'm sure is just for rich people, and that he's touting as going to be like a, a great place for Gotham.

But, you know, a car comes crashing through and guys come out with Tommy guns blazing and Batman rolls through riding a a construction beam like a fricking pommel horse and knocks him out

Which by the way, by the way. [00:05:00] They would be dead,

the

shirt

dead, dead if somebody just

That's so funny.

pummeled them with a construction beam. I kind of grimaced when I saw that,

This is the first time where you've said something and I've had the opportunity to go, oh, well, I just went, oh, cartoon, which is legitimately what I did, is I actually was just like, oh yeah, just that's a fucking cartoon. Whatever. Yeah, that makes sense.

He, he,

he just knew the angles. I guess. I didn't think twice about it like that, but yeah, those guys would've had like multiple broken ribs at the very least.

I know. He rode in on that construction beam like Miley Cyrus and the Wrecking Ball video.

Oh my God, that's uh, please. And thank you. This moment, or I guess this opening scene gives way to the mayor, equating Batman to the Joker. And I put this in the in the, my notes for the episode. But if you know the meme of Michael Jordan going, [00:06:00] and I took that personally. This is essentially the jokers. And I took that personally moment basically being like, how dare you say that Batman and I are cut from the same cloth.

and I love that. I love that he took it so personally. Yes. And to what you said. I just wish that he would've pulled out a gun like Jack Nicholson in the Batman movie and just destroyed the tv. Him throwing a pie at the TV was so lame. It's like that's all you're gonna do. Just a pie. I like my joker to go from violently laughing to just violently dangerous and unhinged.

From violently laughing to violently violent,

Yeah. To violently violent.

to violently violent.

But essentially the mayor also says that. My mansion is impenetrable. No one, we're totally safe there. No one's gonna come get me. Which is like, come on. You say that on the news. You're essentially like, after you say that, that is no better [00:07:00] than all of the villains in Gotham. And you're essentially inviting trouble. And you know, when you ask, it shall come and it comes in the form of Jeko the clown.

Honestly, mayor Hill's cognitive dissonance. I'm just gonna make that part of my head Canon now that he's so oblivious because he's so about the politics of it all. that he chooses to keep his head down and think that he has everything under control. And maybe he does overestimate his abilities as a mayor to think that he does have everything under control and that he doesn't need any help.

It just, it's pretty laughable that he. Really thinks that the police force has the handle on somebody like the Joker or fucking poison Ivy for that matter. it's not infuriating. I think it's illuminating for his character and I buy that somebody who's the mayor of Gotham who wouldn't have left and tried to be mayor somewhere else, [00:08:00] has a very high, borderline delusional amount of confidence in himself.

These are the same people who let poison ivy hang out in jail with a plant.

I know.

And it's very clear that the mayor still treats Batman like an adversary. And I don't personally know if whether or not the mayor's gonna change his tune on that. But we know that certain authority figures are going to embrace Batman as more of an ally, or at least someone to be less afraid of less left as a mystery, as an antagonist.

To to, an extent. I'm gonna push back a little bit. Not entirely the show, or not even the show, the universe, the DC animated universe, where this Batman goes from here to Justice League Unlimited to Batman Beyond. Law enforcement is never. Really cozy and Netflix and chill with Batman, for lack of a better term.

It's always very [00:09:00]

it's just Gordon, right?

yeah, it's just, it's just Gordon. Gordon becomes one of Batman's best friends, and that relationship flourishes throughout the show.

Let's move on to the party. Let's talk about the party. It's party time for, I keep wanting to say Jeremy, his name's not Jeremy. It's Jordan, but

that's how much, that's how much we care about Jordan. The 25 year olds, 12

grown ass Jordan.

The parties for Jordan and for his birthday allegedly. But it's not, it's very clearly not like the, the senator of the ambiguous state that Gotham is in, shows up with his son and the mayor's really just concerned about the photographer getting a good snap of him and the senator together and not making sure that his son is having a good time. And before we go any further, I do wanna quickly rewind and just say, I think it's really interesting that they, you know, I think it's important that they seed in the beginning that Jordan is super into magic and that that's something that he's really into. [00:10:00] And at the mayor at least knows enough to get a clown for his birthday. So he is like,

okay, I got a surprise for you.

it's the

you.

what? Do you think it's the bare minimum, Or do you think he's just like taking shots in the dark and sometimes you actually hit something?

I think he's taking shots in the dark and you actually hit something. I think . , magician and clown. There's such a disconnect between both of those in my mind, like if I were gonna invite a clown to a party, a kid's birthday party, I wouldn't expect him to do the kind of magic that Jordan seems interested in,

Mm-Hmm.

But, you know, we, we'll let him have it. We'll let him have it

you know that I had a magician perform at some of my younger birthdays when I was a, we taught, I

don't know why you would know this. I've definitely never told you this, but yeah, my parents hired the services of the amazing Andy

a couple times who came and did, he wasn't a clown, thank God, [00:11:00] but he was a magician that came to our house and did shows for me and all my cousins. And then when I graduated from high school, no college. When I graduated from college, they found him and rehired him, and he came and did a magic show in our backyard to like

all of my adult friends and family,

and it was super fun. It was like really, really fun. Anyway, that's such a non-sequitur,

No, no, no. A non-sequitur for your non-sequitur. My parents, my 11th birthday party, I'll never forget this. They said, oh, we have a surprise for you. And I'm thinking, oh my God, it's gonna be Sarah Michelle Geller. It's gonna be Sarah Michelle Geller. They got Buffy to come to my 11th birthday party and a basement in Brooklyn.

Totally, totally easy to do. Am I right?

Oh, totally.

came down and I was so disappointed. I was like rolling [00:12:00] my eyes the entire time. He was like, . doing tricks with me. I was like, you're not the vampire slayer. This is like, oh my God, my parents don't know me. Nobody. I'm kidding. I wasn't mad. It was wonderful.

I was delighted. I was thrilled. But

Listen, 11 year old Charlie could have been mad as hell. It's okay. It's okay. We, you know, we can't be held responsible for what our, our childhood wanted. Okay.

Yeah.

Did the, did the magician try and make you a, a balloon animal?

I don't remember. He was really cool. He did some cool tricks. He, a bird did come out of the palm of his hands.

Oh, that's sick.

our hands together. That

We had no live animals involved. That sounds way cooler. I just got like an elephant at a balloon animal.

Oh, I would've liked that.

Anyway, let's go back to this party before, now that we've unearthed a, a personal Ridler trophy. I'll take a pause here to talk about a couple of [00:13:00] the Ridler trophies that we found from this party scene.

In the party scene itself, the chef from Pretty Poison that was accused of poisoning Harvey Dent with his Jacque mousse. And the woman who was robbed at the beginning of the under dwellers which she ,she's actually the one that, and I'm kind of jumping around a little bit, but she's the one that looks at the sparking dynamite and is like, Ooh, look at the pretty candle on top of the cake.

Like, come on lady. Anyway,

two for two for this woman. And we actually have uncredited appearances from Detective Harvey Bullock, Senator Finch, and Councilman Fry. So if you go back into that party scene, you can see all three of them. In the crowd

mingling about throughout that entire party scene, which is pretty fun.

Yeah. So the surprise for Jordan's party is Jeko the Clown, who is just very obviously the joker. I just, I feel like you think that feel like something is off with him right away? I think the fact that you still see his yellow ass teeth the entire time also kind of gives it away.[00:14:00] Even though like he doesn't quite look right.

I just feel like there's a very joker and then as soon as the, his laugh starts coming out and we'll talk about that laugh in a second. It gets wheezy like the Joker, but then what really seals it is the, his little voice change when he goes steal it.

That's brilliant. I, that was a great touch because my ears definitely perked up I love when the joker goes from jovial to just really, really menacing and that was a great decision for them to make. It landed.

I agree but luckily Bruce Wayne is there because why wouldn't Bruce Wayne be invited to a a 25 year old, 10 year old's birthday party? That's actually just so his dad can look good. Gotta have the richest guy in town.

He's carrying something large and heavy. Do we ever find out what it is? I don't think we ever find out what gift he got for Jordan.

it never gets opened, right? Yeah. I didn't, I didn't think about that until right now. But [00:15:00] anyway, pretty much right at the moment that Bruce shows up, he, him and Jeko crossed paths.

Of course, joker doesn't know that. Bruce is Batman. Bruce doesn't know that Jeko is joker, so that's kind of a fun, like ships in the night kind of moment. He recognizes joker's laugh essentially, and that gets him to look towards the cake and sees the dynamite sticking outta the cake. And he is like Uhuh. This is, Hey everybody, we should probably be paying more attention to the giant dynamite looking thing that's currently sparking with joker's fucking face plastered on it, but it's okay. None of us recognize that. So I think this is actually one of his more brilliant Bruce Wayne moments where he kind of is like rushing through the crowd and pretending like he's fumbling, trying to get his present over to a certain spot, but actually just knocks the cake into the water and gets it to explode in the water so nobody gets hurt. Like super smart Bruce Wayne move, just like kind of looking like a goofy idiot. But actually he knew exactly what he was doing.

Yeah, it was very Christopher [00:16:00] Reeve's Superman, the way he would act as Clerk Kent when he was in the Daily Planet. So I think they kind of unintentional homage to that era and a little bit Michael Keaton ish. I find watching these early episodes really interesting because the Bruce Wayne of season three would never, you know, it's so interesting to see

Oh.

that, like they make him so smooth.

they redesign him, like they make him more handsome. They give him, not that this makes much of a difference, they give him blue eyes, like his posture's different. He doesn't switch out of his Batman voice anymore. He just sounds like Batman all the time. And nobody really questions it. But I think if I'm writing that off as something in my head Cannon, I think it's because in these early stages there is still more Bruce Wayne in him.

But as the show goes on and he gets more beaten down, he just becomes more and more just [00:17:00] 110% Batman all the time.

So after the excitement of the explosion at the party, we're gonna go through this kind of quickly because the show kind of hand waves this because they have more important things to get to. We find out that the real jeko was tied up down the road and that Jordan is gone. And Juer didn't kidnap Jordan. Jordan hitched a ride with the Joker thinking that he was a sick magician that he wanted to learn from, and they actually called back to the beginning of the joker's appearance as Jeko, basically being like, if you wanna become a magician, run away from home and learned from the best magician you can find.

So he listened to step one but Bruce slash Batman deduces the hiding spot really fast just from a banner. again, hand wave, whatever. He's at the carnival, not a hundred percent clear. If this is like an old abandoned carnival or just like a closed one that joker's [00:18:00] hiding out in, it seems like he's got a pretty robust hideout there.

So again, more hand waving, whatever Batman gets lured into joker's hiding place by Jordan, who has been suckered into thinking that Batman's actually the bad guy, because again, he has no idea who this joker guy is and just thinks that he's again, a smart magician and his dad has been spewing all of this stuff about how Batman's the bat guy and Joker manages to knock Batman out with some sleeping gas hidden in an ace of spades. One more Ridler trophy here. This is the first time in the DC animated universe that Batman has knocked out and finds himself trapped when he awakens. However, at no point, and I wanna talk about this, do his captors take advantage of his unconscious state to remove his mask and figure out his secret identity. And so I think the obvious answer for this is like, well, obviously the show would be fucking over if we did this. We literally can't.[00:19:00]

I think psychologically joker just doesn't wanna be disappointed by whoever Batman is beneath the mask. Batman is such an idea to him. He's the order to his chaos. I think Joker on some level also doesn't really wanna kill Batman. He wants to keep doing this dance for as long as he can do it, because Batman is somebody that he is essentially trying to make crack and make a laugh.

He wants to get a laugh out of Batman and that's why he's doing all these crimes. That's in my head, joker's logic for all the shit that he's doing.

Interesting. Well, that makes the next sequence a, a little bit of interesting motivation from the Joker, considering he puts him into a torture device and fills it up with water and tries to drought him while he watches and eats popcorn. But yeah

I think Joker thinks Batman can get out of that. I think Joker is watching, 'cause he's almost like, oh, what's Batman? How's Batman gonna get outta [00:20:00] this? Because of all the shit that he's tried to pull on Batman. And of course this is the first time we've seen him knocked Knock Batman out on camera that we know of. It might've happened before.

I don't think that Joker is stupid enough to think that something like that is gonna keep Batman down for that long. I think that this is just foreplay for the Joker and he is, Hmm. Let's see what happens.

I don't disagree with you. I think that they, the people who made the story maybe made a couple choices in this episode that could Be an argument against that potentially. I like when they're watching and Batman does break out of the straight jacket and he literally says they don't make straight jackets like they used to, I should know. Which is again a funny throwaway line. But to me that showed investment in watching Batman Perish and being successful now where I think that they don't quite go as far that if he was successful, I think [00:21:00] that there would be like a, like to steal a moment from Heath Ledger. Like I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. Like I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I was actually successful. So I think that, and maybe they haven't gone all the way with this yet. Again, with you having the, the expertise of where they are going with Joker, is that like Yes, and I think he's also like not really seeing that line of like, I think he wants Batman to die, but he would also be totally broken if he actually was successful in getting Batman to Die.

All right. I think you're right. You've won me over on you. Changed my mind. Maybe that's where Joker ends up, but that he's not there right now

Right.

because I, the version of the Joker that I claim as my joker would want something with way more bells and whistles to kill Batman. and the fact that Batman showed up when he wasn't expecting him to show up and he didn't get any time to prepare and really plan [00:22:00] for the big elaborate killing, and there was nobody to really witness it.

It very, it rings as un joker like to me. But maybe that's because I know how obsessed he becomes with Batman down the line.

WEll, before we go any further with the Houdini trap, we do have to uncover our second to last Riddler Trophy, which is, this is actually like a pound for pound scale for scale model of the actual famous water torture trap that Harry Houdini himself escaped out of in approximately two minutes, I actually went back in this episode and timed how long Batman was holding his breath for, and it was approximately two minutes, which I thought about being nitpicky about for a second.

And then I remembered that he's trained to be a literal ninja fucking assassin. So like. It doesn't bother me that Batman can hold his breath underwater for so long. I feel like that's kind of a given probably. I feel like you don't pass a ninja school [00:23:00] without being able to hold your breath underwater for at least five minutes.

Oh, that's what they teach you in Ninja School. That's like

It's 1 0 1 dude,

freshman year.

Ninja 1 0 1.

Breath holding holding, and tiptoeing 1 0 1.

Oh yeah

I just wanna acknowledge that when it seems like Batman's going to drown in a straight jacket is when Jordan finally realizes that, hey, maybe joker's the bad guy, maybe a little late. But I appreciate that he came around regardless. my 25 year old, 10 year old grabs an ax, tries to put a hole in the tank,

and then,

You know, he, he redeems himself by doing that. He

you think so.

once he realizes, oh shit, joker's the bad guy, he immediately turns around and I think Jordan is pretty brave.

I'll give you

that. That's fine.

I'll give you that.

I Mean, I think that he was being a little reckless, not just in sneaking in the van and not questioning why this grown ass man immediately [00:24:00] didn't call his dad and say, Hey, I got your kid. The fact that he wasn't immediately like, oh, please don't tell my dad. I don't wanna get in trouble, and just thought that this person was his pal.

Which again, maybe if you're a kid, that doesn't seem suspicious to you. But if I were Jordan, I would be sensing something isn't quite right with the moment, with the sword swallowing and just all of that. It made me pretty uncomfortable. not gonna lie, like what was Joker gonna do?

Yeah, I mean straight. We talked about whether or not Batman and Robin had a problematic relationship. This is

Oh, this is

this is this is the one we need to, to be talking

about for sure. Yeah. This, this is nothing but weird, which

is what we can only

very, that was very weird.

Well, Jordan does give Batman a chance, which I guess we can give him credit for, 'cause he runs off and Joker chooses to run after Jordan rather than stick around and make sure the deed is done with Batman. And that little crack in the glass is all Batman needs to [00:25:00] kick himself outta there and escape and, and get out and start pursuing. And that's going to take us into the finale of the episode, which is Honestly my favorite finale so far. I thought the chase scene on the rollercoasters with Joker, like Hucking Bombs at Batman was super fun.

Quick final Riddler Trophy to acknowledge that this rollercoaster sequence was adapted into the third stage of the joker level in the Super Nintendo, the Adventures of Batman and Robin, which just put that in another check mark of we need to play this game.

Batman and Joker fight. Apparently the sleeping gas goes from being able to spread over a 10 foot radius to being concentrated in a very small pellet that Batman just has to dodge by moving his head slightly to the left,

but we don't have to be too nitpicky about that. And Batman punts his ass into the water and I assume he just gets away because we don't really see what happens. Is there anything else about this rollercoaster chase that you wanted to, to talk about?

Adding to what you said about this being a level [00:26:00] on the Super Nintendo game, before I knew that, which I just found out right now, I watched it and I thought, damn, this would make a great video game level.

It felt, honestly, out of all the ones that we've

acknowledged so far, maybe the plant level probably makes sense, but this one was like, oh yeah, this makes sense. Are you kidding me?

Like a platforming

fun. It felt

platforming on rollercoasters? Yeah, I bet that level fucking sucked.

Oh, no, I,

I bet it was hard. Like you're talking SNES video game era, which was a notoriously difficult, and B, they didn't give a fuck about continues

or saves.

You don't. You don't. You never saved your game. Remember the Lion King game? If you died in the Lion King game, you start at the goddamn beginning and you're grateful. Same. I mean, so just the Lion King game. Any game from that era, like Super Mario, you don't have safe states. You start at the beginning and you either beat it or you turn it off and you start again the next time, or you lose and you start again the next time.

It's not like.

man. [00:27:00] I think

not to be like all

Geezy about it, but

you don't quick save like you can

today.

It was probably okay. 'cause I think what made Super Nintendo games notoriously hard is that the timing of the animation and just what was happening wasn't what it would be for something like Xbox or PlayStation now.

So I think the difficulty level wasn't in sync with the controls and how fast you can move, or you couldn't really do anything. Everything was so

a fair point. That's a really fair point okay. I'll give it to you. All right. Now the, the last thing I wanna cover before we move on to talk about the Joker a little bit and give our final rating is Batman secretly returning Jordan to his dad.

I don't think that his dad ever sees that it was Batman who saved him. now There's two things that I wanna talk about before we move on to just parking on the Joker for a minute in our final battering ratings.

The first thing is, I wanna talk about[00:28:00] deadbeat dad. Maryhill, because this guy fucking sucks. I just wanna say that if you're a father and you're having trouble connecting with your child, don't wait for them to get fucking kidnapped by a supervi before you pledge to try and connect with them a little bit deeper, okay?

Don't let that be the thing that does it for you. So if, if this needs to be the moment that you hear to try harder with your son or daughter or them fucking, just try harder. Don't wait for the joker to kidnap them. I don't know if you have anything you wanna add to that, Charlie. I just feel like that's classic nineties deadbeat dead energy.

Oh my God. I think deadbeat dads haven't changed, especially when they have sons. He would've reacted pretty differently if he had a daughter. In my head, I think dad's dealing with their sons have a lot of shadow work they haven't done. And this particularly shows with Mayor Hill and his son, but to his credit, [00:29:00] he did.

Well, not even to his credit. 'cause that's a very low bar to set, like showing sympathy for your kid after he, you know what? You're right. I'm not even gonna argue. Fuck Mayor Hill,

Just the, the final thing that I wanna talk about is the just iconic thumbs up that Batman and Jordan gave each other there at the end, and it was so iconic. I immediately went to my phone and I have a Google Pixel. Shout out Google Hive green Bubbles forever. Fuck your iPhone. And I looked up in my, oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

I haven't anyone talk, anyone listening to this, I'm gonna personally give you. Love you Steve, but fuck you for that. . I have an iPhone. We do not ruin group chats with the green bubble. I am here on behalf of everyone with an iPhone to say that I do not approve of that comment. Do not associate me [00:30:00] with that.

That's

Pixel,

That's all

Sponsor us please

all Steve.

I will. I will Stand on. I got Erin to switch to Android and I will stand on that point of pride forever. She loves her team Pixel over here.

Anyway, that's now that we're, now that we're done stumping for our corporation of choice, let's Let's move on to the point of what we were talking about, which is I went into one of the great features about my Google Pixel.

I don't know if your iPhone can do this. If you go into your text messages in the same little section where you can add emojis, you can actually like look up and plant gifs straight into your text messages so I don't have to go onto GFI and find them. They're just stored in like the system. And so I just literally looked up Batman thumbs up. And the only option is this thumbs up that he gives at the end. And some of 'em have texts that says, like, Batman approves. And so that's an iconic thumbs up that we just witnessed. An absolutely iconic. How is his thumb that big? [00:31:00] Imagine how big the rest of him is. Thumbs up, you know,

what they say about, you know, what they say about Big Thumbs.

Shout out

to Brandon,

Big gloves.

I, I learned, I learned about that from him. Anyway, that, that's the episode. Be a Clown. It was a good episode. I think it was a good episode. Before we move on to our batter rating for this episode, I just want to quickly touch on the Joker. And Charlie, I wanna let you cook here a little bit.

Give us a little snapshot of where you see the Joker now and how you've seen him progress so far versus where we're, we're heading with him.

He's definitely scarier and I think they're playing with the dichotomy of how he looks and really changing his voice up. I this, a lot of this rides on Mark Hamill's performance too. Joker going from really high pitch to really low in his voice. That really does it for me because that says so much about the anger and the. Just the desperate psychopathic need to be acknowledged that [00:32:00] drive so much of the Joker. I, I really, this was the first episode that the Joker frankly terrified me. I didn't know what he was gonna do with that collapsible sword. I don't know what he was gonna do if Batman hadn't gotten there to get Jordan back to safety.

Just him going on this just to blow up a kid's birthday party. I thought it was very, they're starting to make Joker. Click a little bit more for me. What did you think?

No, I agree with that. What we're really looking for are the feelings that he creates inside of us as we're watching it. And I think that that's a mix of entertainment and dread

Mm-Hmm.

yes. Yes, exactly that. It's entertainment. You're laughing. He's laughing and you know, at some point he's gonna keep laughing while you start screaming and he won't stop. That to me is what makes the joker. Such a worthy adversary for Batman. He's just [00:33:00] such a force of nature and this episode started to capture that.

Was it perfect? Eh, not really. But is it really showing great progress? I completely believe it's showing progress.

ALl right, well, well all that said, let's move on to the battering rating for Be a Clown. We just slipped a very real coin and decided that I would be going first. That's a total lie. Charlie wants me to go first, so I'm going first. I, I'm gonna continue to be like way too cerebral about this and continue to scale this, not only based on how much I like the episode, but in relation to how I've created the other episodes and where I consider like the lines of quality to be. So I'm giving this one, three and a half batter rings, and I I think it's like if we were doing quarters, it probably would be 0.75. Again, I think four, four and a half our like banger episodes to [00:34:00] me. And while this one was good and I was entertained by it and I saw a lot of good stuff in it didn't quite cross into like, full on banger territory, like potential spoilers I think we're gonna be dealing with next week with our first two-parter. So three and a half for me. Charlie, what's your, what's your battering rating?

So funny, you're more generous than me this time. Three out of five batter rings for me. While they're starting to find the joker's voice in what works for him, I think they're also still trying to figure out Batman and the Cow.

I think Batman talked way too much this episode, and I think he talked too much in the under dwellers episode too. Maybe it's episodes with Batman and kids that he's a bit more chatty because he wants to make them more comfortable, and that's me being generous, but him equipping him, giving a thumbs up, it, it was just so corny, like, Bruce, leave the jokes to Spider-Man, it, it just, [00:35:00] it doesn't suit him.

I, I didn't like it. I didn't like it. Three batter rings.

Leave the jokes to Marvel is what Charlie says. Next week we're really excited to be covering just honestly like some iconic episodes in the history of Batman, the animated series. We're gonna be covering the two-parter of the Arc. They are titled Two Face, part One and Two Face Part Two. since this is Charlie and Steve watched stuff and we didn't wanna just leave you with one episode that we watched, we thought that Charlie and I would take the opportunity to talk about some of the other stuff that we're watching right now when we're not watching the cartoon that we assign to ourselves for this project. 'cause that's such a tough job. watching a couple of different TV shows. One that just wrapped up its second season and one show that I'm currently on the third out of three seasons on that I've been binging through. [00:36:00] And we're gonna start with that one because it's probably the one that I wanna spend the most time on, and that is Ted Lasso created and written by one Bill Lawrence. You may have heard of him from a little show called Scrubs, also known as, I don't know if you know this, Charlie, my favorite television show ever made. I fucking Love Scrubs. It's, I could go back to

Really,

I didn't know that.

it'll, yeah, I mean, I, I think that you could watch it in 2023 and identify a, a good handful of problematic things that it did but it is one of the finest examples I. Of a show that can go from comedy to drama like that and really kind

of like shock you with how much it hits you in the heart

and how much soul it had. It also, and I guess this is turning into a scrubs discussion now is constantly rated as the most accurate medical show to ever be made.

Okay. Respect. You're making me wanna watch it more.

Oh yeah. I mean, it's a fantastic [00:37:00] show. But for some reason. I just never made my way over to Ted Lasso, even though it was written by the same people, like, largely produced by the same group. And, and we don't have to harp too long on it, 'cause I know you've only seen the pilot, so I guess this is my way of pitching to you to, to continue to watch it if, if you feel like diving back into something. I am on a perpetual journey. with my mental health and my self-perception and all of that stuff that we as men probably don't talk about enough and that we should. So if that's something that you also struggle with, maybe this is for you too. I have said to myself, do I need this show? Like no less than 12 times as I've been watching it, just from how much it preaches, not only belief and hope and being curious rather than being judgmental, but it just shows fucking dudes going to therapy. I just think that if you [00:38:00] need something inherently positive in your life, and I think maybe a lot of resistance to it for a long time is because I wasn't allowing myself to let positive things in. This is a worthwhile bit of positivity that will also probably challenge your emotions a little bit, especially if you're a guy. And I can't recommend it highly enough. And there's just enough football to be cool, but there's not so much that you need to understand it. And I that one of the whole running jokes is that Ted Lasso actually doesn't understand a single rule of soccer for the entire series. So it's not a point of entry. So anyway, that's Ted Lasso. I love it.

also chiming in. That's so beautiful. I went to therapy earlier today and you're selling me on Ted Lasso as a show. I thought that it was bright for the sake of being bright without having any depth and I clearly need to push past the pilot episode to give it more of a watch.

Quick transition, just to give a, a [00:39:00] shout out to the latest MCU show that just finished airing. At the time that we're recording this. The season finale for Loki just went off. Are you watching Loki currently?

That, are you, are you up on those MCU shows?

I didn't finish secret invasion. It didn't hold my interest. And I watched the first episode of Loki, which I have thoughts about. What do you think of Loki the second season?

I never thought MCU fatigue was gonna get me.

I

Just think that it's so, and it's not the performances. I don't even think that it's really the writing, the writing is doing what it needs to do. I just think that it's, the structure of the stories there is so much heavy lifting and set up and reminding the audience of rules

it feels so dense the point where it can't really fly free and enjoy itself.

I agree with that. I think that, I mean, I've, man, we've been so down bad for the MCU [00:40:00] when I say we, I mean my, my partner Aaron and I, and like we spent some time during deep pandemic times rewatching every single one of the movies through the first phases through endgame, infinity War. And we have a Google Doc existing somewhere with our def quote unquote definitive rankings of all the movies. And like when the show started coming out, we were really, really excited. And I think what started to lose me was I started having a harder and harder time seeing how all of the shows were connecting back into the larger universe of it all.

Mm-Hmm.

And it seemed like they started to make the shows a little less consequential to the MCU as a result, because they just realized that not as many people were watching them.

And so they were like, okay, we need to make some of this stuff less important. ,

I wanna push back on that a little bit.

Great.

think that the reason why a lot of the stuff in the MCU isn't clicking as much as it did in phases one through three is because new characters are [00:41:00] taking so long to come back around and to be interacting with mainstay characters that we know. We introduced.

Like how many years has it been since we saw Shang Xi? How many years has it been since we saw, and I'm wondering if Moon Night came out last year or the year before that Moon Night had a show, haven't seen Moon Night again. It just, nobody mentions also that whole thing that happened in Wand Vission.

The fact that we got to Falcon in the winter, soldier and Bucky. And Sam Wilson both know Wanda and they worked on a team with her and they didn't mention that shit at all, that she went crazy. It enslaved an entire town. And the fact that Hawkeye doesn't mention the fact that now Sam is the new Captain America, it it feels so sectioned off from each other that they're all in the same universe.

But are they really?

But are they? [00:42:00]

nobody's mentioning anybody. It doesn't feel like these are characters relating to each other. It feels like new characters are being crammed in like crazy.

And lIke none of them are really talking or interacting. And by the time that they talk or interact in the next Avengers movie, years from now, it's like, well that movie was seven years ago that they first were introduced in. Now we're getting to see them again. It's taking too long to wrap back around 'cause they're doing too much.

Whereas when they kept it simple, captain America, Thor, Ironman, black Widow, Hoke, Hawkeye, you had enough characters you were able to have the movies matter. You

And the latter two did even have their own movies.

Did you see the Eternals,

Hell no. I refuse.

do you care if I spoil the eternals for you?

Sure.

Spoilers for the Eternals, which Aaron has watched far too many times the [00:43:00] celestials are like kind of the main antagonist of, of the eternals, these giant galactic beings. We don't have to get into the backstory of the eternals, but essentially the, the story of the Eternals is that there are these beings that the celestials have created, sent to earth to protect Earth from these bad guys.

That, against spoilers, the bad guys were also kind of created by the celestials and they're all just, it's all sort of a ploy because celestials are born out of planets. And so the sort of like big climax is that the eternals realize that earth is housing a celestial and that they've actually been protecting the Earth's to eventually let the celestial be born.

But then all the eternals are like, no, wait, we like humanity. We don't want this to happen. So they stop. The celestial from being born and there's just like a giant hand the size of fucking New Zealand frozen, sticking out of the ocean at the end of it,

Hmm.

and

we never hear about it.[00:44:00]

ever again.

are you serious?

we've, we've still just never heard about it.

Oh my God. And what's also killing me are all these mid credited scenes that are gonna pay off in what, five or six years? Just

well in that. Yeah. And in that those end credit scenes, you get a tease for Mahershala, Aliya is blade.

I did, I read an article about that. I'm excited about that. But it just, I don't know. It's getting to the point where I, I don't even want them to have the X-Men at this point. I don't know how the X-Men are gonna be handled. Like, are you just gonna do one X-Men movie that's meh.

And not do anything with the X-Men for seven years. I think they're, they're doing way too much right now and they need to keep it simple,

I just don't wanna see the X-Men until they've closed the multiverse.

Yeah.

And, and I think the thing that we can kind of close

the [00:45:00] Loki talk on, since there isn't much more for me to say about it, other than I watched it, and I think I'm just kind of over the MCU right now, is that, and no, no spoilers for this season of Loki, but I think the way that it ended sort of leaves the door open for them to go. These were happening in different universes,

hmm.

But anyway, we can move on from our MCU talk, our first MCU talk on Charlie and Steve watch

stuff. Certainly not our last. Charlie, you're what I like to call tastefully active on social media.

Mm-Hmm,

I I just made that up right now. But Charlie's a great follow on on the old Instagrams. And you recently posted two top 20 lists of your own. You posted your top 20 movies and your top 20 TV shows. And I know that we only talked about your movie list before this, but I, I had interacted with you on this before. I saw that you also posted your TV list, so I think I'm gonna rope both of them in. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the [00:46:00] assignment and I want you to take three entities from your top 20 lists, whether they be TV shows. I. Or movies. And I want you to tell us why we need to go and watch said TV show and or movie with our next free opportunities.

'cause more than likely, this is also gonna be stuff that I've never watched before.

So I'm selfishly doing this for me, but if I've watched it, then maybe we can talk about it.

okay. Easy. Off of my movie list. I'm gonna pull, bill and parasite

I have seen Kill Bill. I have not seen Parasite.

Dude, I'm so excited for you.

Great.

for you. Your life is about to . Change that movie before the pandemic hit. I think I saw that movie four times.

Oh wow.

Definitely.

win? Best picture.

It did.

That's right.

It did. Great film. All About

Well, let's start with parasite then.

All about

[00:47:00] Give us like the, yeah, give us the lowdown.

I really, really enjoy how it doesn't start out as a thriller or a movie with thriller elements. It starts off as a

kind of a satirical social commentary on class, and I don't wanna give away too much of the plot, but it feels like three different movies in one, in a very beautiful way. Each layer of the film presents itself when it needs to in ways that are motivated by character. And there are still probably six or seven moments in that film that terrified the shit out of me.

Just the absolute bejesus out of me. It's great to watch with an audience. That's why I did it four times. I, I can't say enough good things about that movie. Maybe I'll rewatch it tonight.

I'll have to find someone to watch that with because I refuse to watch anything that anyone says is [00:48:00] terrifying by myself, and I know for a fact that my partner won't watch it with me, so I'll have to, maybe that will put that on our list the next time we get to visit each other. For sure. We'll have a, we'll have a parasite check-in.

A parasite, a parasitic check-in,

A parasite postmortem gross.

film is Kill Bill. Kill. You said you've seen it before, but I'm just gonna say kill. Bill is such a love letter to cinema.

Hmm.

it. The

Talk about that.

film. Yeah. Volume one is a love letter to Kung Fu films and volume two is a love letter to westerns and both of those movies watch Back to Back Tell a very ambitious story and it tells it very well.

I could watch Kill Bill volumes one and two every night for a week, two weeks. Might be pushing it , but I could [00:49:00] watch it every night for a week and not get tired of it. 'cause there's so much good stuff in it. The performances, the writing, the fight choreography. Some of the best fights I believe we've seen on film are in that movie.

Shifting gears to the TV show that I would pull off of my list. I would say insecure. , which finished its run at the very end of 2021. So it wasn't that long ago that it was on air, but that show is so dear to my heart because it is about a female friendship between Issa Rae's character Issa and Molly, and all five seasons are about them learning to be better friends to each other while they're navigating their careers and relationships with men and how they handle the microaggressions thrown at them.

For being black women in la,[00:50:00] and also the way that it films black people and shows black LA is unlike anything I've seen before because so much of LA that we see, I. on TV is very, oh, this is Hollywood. This is Entourage, this is, you know, the industry which tends to be very white, male driven, insecure shows that there can be a show made by black people for black people that places the lives of black characters front and center in a way that normalizes the experience.

But in doing that makes it revolutionary, not just for black people watching it, but people outside of the experience who can come to find things within themselves that they a have in common with an Issa or a Molly. And I would say that season four of the show is the best deconstruction of a friend fight that I've ever seen.

[00:51:00] Season four is all about a friend breakup, and it is some of the most gripping shit I've ever watched and . You feel for the friendship, the way that you would feel for a breakup of romantic partners, just because of how deeply invested you are in their friendship. After three seasons of work, it, oh my God.

I love Season four of Insecure. I love the whole show, but season four is a masterpiece,

love it. That's so beautiful. I, it's on max, right?

Insecure. That was an HBO show.

I'll have to put it on. . Top of my list as well. And maybe this is something that you relate to based on how you feel about Insecure. I can't remember the last time I watched a TV show where I was legitimately rooting for the characters. I actually felt invested in their success and their heart ache and their, like, their failures and their, I picked up a little bit of that in how you talked about how you related to these characters and insecure, just like being able to truly invest in them for their flaws [00:52:00] and for their strengths and for their growth and all that stuff.

So I think that's really cool.

Oh yeah. It's also hilarious and everybody in the cast is just so gorgeous.

That does help. It does help when they're funny and pretty. That

is for sure.

Funny and fine

Funny and fine. Just like you and me, baby.

a.

Hey, well, that's gonna do it for this episode of Charlie and Steve Tuff. Thanks for joining us. As we talked about, be a clown from Batman, the animated series, and some of the other stuff that we're watching. We're going to be back next time with our first two-parter in Batman, the Animated series. Now, this is Two-Face, part One and Two-Face, part two AKA, the origin of Two-Face in Batman, the Animated series, AKA, the Fall of Harvey Dent. We're very excited to dig into that one. So thank you so much for joining us, and always please remember to rate and review this podcast.

Charlie and Steve, watch stuff wherever you get your podcast. [00:53:00] Any sort of feedback really goes a long way for us and for our improvement and for our enjoyment. So thanks for being along this ride with us so far. Go forth and watch some stuff yourself for Charlie and Steve, we'll see you on the next one.

Bye.

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