BanGos - Hit Me With Tour Best Shot

BanGos performing the Pat Benetar song Hit Me With Your Best Shot live at the South Huntington Public Library.

The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series

 Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 8

The Forgotten

Here’s another lackluster episode which in the grand scheme, it is okay but there are just better episodes.  In another cartoon show this could be regarded as its best episode but for BtAS it’s really lacking.  

 

Batman goes undercover as homeless because people keep disappearing.  He ends up getting kidnapped himself, get amnesia, is put into slave labor.  Eventually he gets his memory back, escapes, Alfred who’s been looking for him arrives around the same time.  He comes back as Batman and frees everyone.  

 

The episode wraps with him telling some of the guys he met at the slave labor camp he’s Bruce Wayne and offers them jobs.  Homelessness is cured? It’s a sappy happy ending for those guys but ultimately the episode just doesn’t work.  Too much going on.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Episode by Episode - Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 3

Episode 63 Carpenter Street

 

It wouldn’t be a Star Trek series if a few people didn’t travel back in-time to Earth to stop something.  The original series did it three or four times, Next Generation did it once, Deep Space Nine did it twice, Voyager did it once and got some help from Sarah Silverman (sigh of frustration) along the way. 

 

In this episode Archer and T’Pol travel back to 2004 to stop the Xindi from stealing people to make a bioweapon.  Some sketchy dude kidnaps people with specific blood types and turns them over for experiments.  

 

It’s a fun idea to have the crew travel back to the year the show was being made.  The original series found great success with those types or storylines and saved the humpback whales in the process.  Carpenter Street was a bit too grim for a time travel episode.  Somehow Captain Kirk letting Joan Collins get hit by a car and die had more innocence and charm attached to it. 

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

BanGos - I'll Set You Free

BanGos performing I'll Set You Free live at the Huntington Public Library

The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series

Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 7

P.O.V.

There are one or two clunkers in the series and this this is one of them.  It retells the same story three different times from the Point of View of three Gotham cops.  We get the rookie Wilkes who describes everything like a child, or in terms of magic, even though he’s probably in his twenties. We get Officer Rene Montoya who describes it fairly straightforward.  Last we get Harvey Bullock who lies to cover his own butt for screwing things up.  Batman is a recurring figure throughout all their events of the story.

 

This plot is Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon.  Pretty deep reference for a children’s show and A+ for tackling that depth but implementation on the story is less than interesting.  

 

Ultimately Commissioner Gordon is trying to defend his cops while the Internal Affairs cop is harassing them.  They all get suspended and Montoya by some chance gets the opportunity to redeem herself, bust the bad guys with the help of Batman, and everyone gets their job back. 

 

For some reason the story is just not interesting enough. Why is the police commissioner involved in an internal affairs investigation?  He’s their boss too. Therefore his authority could seriously hinder the investigation since he’s clearly on the three cops side.  Somehow even with the head of the police helping them, they still get suspended.  How does busting the bad guys at the end make up for the fact an entire warehouse was burnt down because of their incompetence earlier?  

 

It’s a story which could have been told better.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Episode by Episode - Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 3

Episode 62 Similitude

 

Such an odd episode.  A clone of Commander Tucker is made so he can receive a transplant.  The clone only lives a few weeks and has to be killed in order to save Tucker.  There are some weird sci-fi ethical questions about it.  Ultimately the clone chooses to sacrifice his life which only has like 30 days left anyway in order to save Tucker who has an entire human lifespan to live-out.  

 

It’s not as horrible as the Tuvix episode of Star Trek Voyager but it runs a fine line. Ultimately the episode is okay and touching at times.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

BanGos - Manic Monday

BanGos performing Manic Monday live. 

The DC Animated Universe Weekly Review - Batman: The Animated Series

 Batman: The Animated Series

Episode 6

The Underdwellers

This is a heavy episode.  Probably heavier than intended.  There’s a crime spree occurring in Gotham which is being committed by a bunch of kids.  Very similar to the plot of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

 

Batman happens to capture one of the kids Frog, takes him to the Bat Cave, and has Alfred to care for him.  Some cutsie shenanigans happen with Alfred bumbling to care for the child.  The show takes the opportunity to show the dangers of firearms when Frog picks up an antique gun and points it at Alfred.  Batman appears and takes it from the kid, gives him a scary Batman lecture about gun safety which resonates way better than any 80s cartoon PSA.  Then Batman asks for Frog’s help to find the rest of the kids living underground.

 

Frog takes Batman to the sewer and he finds an entire city of children being used as slave labor.  Batman is super pissed off.  He starts taking pictures of the kids and their conditions.  The writers have him verbally utters the worlds “evidence” so we the audience doesn’t think Batman is a creep and understand he’s gathering proof for the police to bust the Sewer King.  It’s expositiony but serves a purpose for the kid audience to understand what’s happening. 

 

Batman then confronts Sewer King, he fights his giant alligators, then him.  As Sewer King is about to fall to his death Batman saves him.  Sewer King asks why Batman saved him and Batman tells him it’s not his job to pass judgment, it’s the courts job, but he was tempted to make an exception because Sewer King is a sicko.  The show only shows slave labor, physical abuse, and mental abuse.  Sewer King was probably up to far worse which couldn’t be put in a cartoon show.  A creepy dude, dressed in 18^th century garb, living in the sewers, enslaving a bunch of kids; the math seems pretty clear.  If anyone deserved true vigilante justice, it would have been Sewer King.  

 

Sewer King’s tactic of verbal abuse and brainwashing would recur in the Batman Beyond episode The Last Resort.  A different take on the episode unique enough to recycle the theme and come up with something fresh.  

 

The episode ends with the kids being freed, coming out of the sewer, and seeing the sun and being happy.  This is a good episode but almost too dark of a story to truly enjoy.  The goofy antics with Frog and Alfred don’t balance out the darker theme of child abuse.  Still an excellent episode since it doesn’t talk down on the subject.  .  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

Episode by Episode - Star Trek: Enterprise

Season 3

Episode 61 North Star

 

The crew of the Enterprise discover a bunch of humans on a planet living life like the old-west.  Turns out aliens called Skags kidnapped them to enslave them but they rebelled.  The Skags are now treated like second-class citizens because of it.  A ton of western clichés happen.  Archer reveals they are from Earth and promise to come back for them after his Xindi mission is complete.

 

As silly as the concept is, it’s actually not a terrible episode and Star Trek loves delving into the old-west.  The original series was pitched to the network as a western in outer space.   The western theme episode is almost a requirement and has been done on countless Star Trek series.  The plots tend to be different; you might you have Captain Kirk and friends fighting Wyatt Earp or Lieutenant Worf taking on multiple western themed Datas...  

Star Trek also loves having its characters investigate the mystery undercover first, then comeback to reveal their true nature.  The only problem with the episode is how it mix and matches a ton of different Star Trek plots.  It’s like the writers threw a few old scripts into a blender and this is what they got.  

 

Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com

BanGos - Our Lips Are Sealed

BanGos performing Our Lips Are Sealed live from the South Huntington Public Library.