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That was a lot of Robins…

 AduroT wrote:
That was a lot of Robins…

Yeah, makes me wonder if season 2 is going to continue going down the no Bat Family route, or they did this so they could skip straight to Damian.

I could be wrong but isn't the slingshot kid from episode 6ish or so a Robin?

*check Wikipedia*

Yeah! Yeah she is. She's the Robin from The Dark Knight Returns; Carrie Kelley. Were there others? She was the only one I noticed.

Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, the first two kids from the same episode.

 LordofHats wrote:
I could be wrong but isn't the slingshot kid from episode 6ish or so a Robin?

*check Wikipedia*

Yeah! Yeah she is. She's the Robin from The Dark Knight Returns; Carrie Kelley. Were there others? She was the only one I noticed.

I'm pretty sure all four orphans were Robins, Dickie was definitely Dick Grayson and I think you also had Jason Todd and Stephanie Brown.

Don't know if there was any deeper meaning behind it, because the show was weird with the name dropping. They named that paparazzi guy who was in a couple of episodes Eel O'Brian (AKA Plastic Man) for some reason.

The episode started out and immediately pegged the black haired kid as Dick and then headed to the carnival I thought it was going to be the Robin origin story. Then they were calling the second kid Jason, and it’s like huh, is that a coincidence? I missed the Stephanie name drop initially, but seeing the fourth one aiming the slingshot with her round glasses and I recognized her right away. They were just missing Tim and Damian.

Wow.

I just somehow didn't even think to notice the other kids. Carrie had a whole thing going on so I caught her and missed the others.

And finished it. Overall pretty good. I liked the character arc and growth for Batman. My biggest complaint is making Bullock a crooked cop.

 AduroT wrote:
My biggest complaint is making Bullock a crooked cop.

So they took him back to his roots, huh? 1983's Bullock was a crooked cop...

I think BTAS was as uncrooked as the character ever got?

I feel overall the series is okay, not terrible but far from the heights of the original BTAS, which is a tall order to reach. My first pet peeve is the fact that Bruce Timm gender bent Penguin on the premise that Batman has a "lack of good villains". It's baffling he would say this given that Batman is well known for a widely known and popular rogues gallery, definitely the top one in DC and only rivaled by Spiderman in Marvel. If he was referring to female villains, that's also very, very wrong and ironic coming from him given that he himself introduced and popularized Harley Quinn through BTAS. Somehow he forgot there was Talia Al Ghul, Baby Doll, Phantasm (another Timm original), Roxy Rocket and more that exist.

I would forgive the gender bending a bit more if they were at least a modicum more creative on how it was implemented, but just naming her Oswalda Cobblepot and basically just making it Penguin but female is...just lazy. Like me making a female Joker called Jokera, and the only difference is she has boobs. I would much prefer they just created a new female villain at this point instead.

The other peeve is that they chose for the setting to be taken place in the 1940's....but it's basically just for show since it's nothing like how the 1940's was in America at the time. It's hilarious that some people go on about racism and sexism being rampant in the modern age, but then this show goes on and sets a diverse cast in a time when both of those things actually would be rampant.

No one in the show is batting an eye at a black commissioner, or a black lawyer, or a female mob boss, or an Asian psychiatrist around a time when Asians weren't exactly everyone's favorite people.

You know, when the Asian exclusion act was still a thing in America. Yeah, I'm not saying a cartoon needs to be "historically accurate," nor that they need to focus on racial injustices but... Asian American Harley Quinn is kind of unlikely in that setting. Not to mention that Asian Americans have a much lower obesity rate, or at least used to.

But the biggest thing that bothers me about this is just randomly race swapping her while keeping the same name and background, as if Asian Americans don't have a heritage or identity. She wouldn't have a surname like "Quinzel" unless she was mixed, married or legally changed her surname. It's more likely that she should have a Vietnamese surname. Or Korean surname. Or Filipino surname. Or Chinese surname. Or Lao surname. Or SOMETHING. Instead they kind of erased any sort of ethnic identity because they think that "race" just boils down to skin colour. Yeah black Americans have European surnames, but that's because they speak the same language and have the same culture. Asians, Latinos and other groups, even recent African immigrants, not so much.

Overall, feels like a missed opportunity, though I did quite like Onomotopeia as a villain.

I was a bit surprised to see him. I didn’t recognize him by mask alone but the moment he started speaking I was like Oh! It’s That Guy!

 Grimskul wrote:

The other peeve is that they chose for the setting to be taken place in the 1940's....but it's basically just for show since it's nothing like how the 1940's was in America at the time. It's hilarious that some people go on about racism and sexism being rampant in the modern age, but then this show goes on and sets a diverse cast in a time when both of those things actually would be rampant.

No one in the show is batting an eye at a black commissioner, or a black lawyer, or a female mob boss, or an Asian psychiatrist around a time when Asians weren't exactly everyone's favorite people.

You know, when the Asian exclusion act was still a thing in America. Yeah, I'm not saying a cartoon needs to be "historically accurate," nor that they need to focus on racial injustices but... Asian American Harley Quinn is kind of unlikely in that setting. Not to mention that Asian Americans have a much lower obesity rate, or at least used to.

But the biggest thing that bothers me about this is just randomly race swapping her while keeping the same name and background, as if Asian Americans don't have a heritage or identity. She wouldn't have a surname like "Quinzel" unless she was mixed, married or legally changed her surname. It's more likely that she should have a Vietnamese surname. Or Korean surname. Or Filipino surname. Or Chinese surname. Or Lao surname. Or SOMETHING. Instead they kind of erased any sort of ethnic identity because they think that "race" just boils down to skin colour. Yeah black Americans have European surnames, but that's because they speak the same language and have the same culture. Asians, Latinos and other groups, even recent African immigrants, not so much.

I think you're getting too worked up about this.
Clearly this show just another Elseworlds tale taking place on an earth that has superficial similarities to our own 1940s.

ccs wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

The other peeve is that they chose for the setting to be taken place in the 1940's....but it's basically just for show since it's nothing like how the 1940's was in America at the time. It's hilarious that some people go on about racism and sexism being rampant in the modern age, but then this show goes on and sets a diverse cast in a time when both of those things actually would be rampant.

No one in the show is batting an eye at a black commissioner, or a black lawyer, or a female mob boss, or an Asian psychiatrist around a time when Asians weren't exactly everyone's favorite people.

You know, when the Asian exclusion act was still a thing in America. Yeah, I'm not saying a cartoon needs to be "historically accurate," nor that they need to focus on racial injustices but... Asian American Harley Quinn is kind of unlikely in that setting. Not to mention that Asian Americans have a much lower obesity rate, or at least used to.

But the biggest thing that bothers me about this is just randomly race swapping her while keeping the same name and background, as if Asian Americans don't have a heritage or identity. She wouldn't have a surname like "Quinzel" unless she was mixed, married or legally changed her surname. It's more likely that she should have a Vietnamese surname. Or Korean surname. Or Filipino surname. Or Chinese surname. Or Lao surname. Or SOMETHING. Instead they kind of erased any sort of ethnic identity because they think that "race" just boils down to skin colour. Yeah black Americans have European surnames, but that's because they speak the same language and have the same culture. Asians, Latinos and other groups, even recent African immigrants, not so much.

I think you're getting too worked up about this.
Clearly this show just another Elseworlds tale taking place on an earth that has superficial similarities to our own 1940s.

The problem for me is that it's pretty immersion breaking and just saying "well it's elseworlds, so who cares" is a poor argument when you're using a clear historic aesthetic and aiming for a more "grounded" approach but then conveniently ignore what the noir timeframe is also like (guess what, not great for a lot of people, especially for minorities). It's not like it's going cyberpunk or high fantasy where it has no real historical basis. It would be like if they did a prehistoric style Batman show who's a caveman, but then proceed to have the female characters wear glasses and complain about about the patriarchy in their conversations while having several morbidly obese cavemen travel by rolling around like fat boulders. It also doesn't help that they've shown they can do things right like Gotham by Gaslight which takes place around the Victorian era with Jack the Ripper and it doesn't have this issue of forced diversity.

It wasn't the 1940s. It was Gotham City. Gotham has always been this strange blend of times and places to catch the right Noir feel. This is especially true in Bruce Timm's imagination.

Trying to set Gotham in a real-life time is a fool's errand, as it is not a real place or time. It does exactly what the plot and creators want or need it to do for that episode.

That is the joy of a made-up location as opposed to the Hell's Kitchen of New York City, or some such. Gotham can remain timeless.