I Am the Night

Up next is another one of my favorites, and one of the most powerful episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. "I Am the Night" was the 49th-produced episode, but got bumped up to be the 34th aired on Nov. 9, 1992.

My first point will be for the main idea of this episode. It's the anniversary of the death of Bruce's parents, and for once, Batman begins to doubt himself. I really like seeing our main character having occasional moments of human weakness and emotional fatigue. After a while, you'd expect even someone as heroic as Batman to feel like he's not accomplishing anything when past criminals are quickly released and new criminals appear every day. It's also good to take a step back and realize how weird and dangerous it is for a man to dress up like a bat to fight crime, and this episode helped a lot with that idea by not having any costumed super villains. Looking at the world through this episode, it becomes completely understandable for Batman to realize that what he's doing is not normal and that maybe he should stop.

I'll raise the score to a 7 for having Batman lay the roses on the sidewalk with Leslie Thompkins. I always love Batman with the roses and I always love to see Leslie. It's also important that he does this with Leslie, who was the first person to comfort him after his parents died, and she has continued to comfort him every year since. In my mind, this element is as essential a piece to Batman as the Batcave and Alfred and everything else is.

Another point has to be added for the powerful and shocking moment of Bullock finding Gordon after being shot. It was extremely rare to hear a swear word in this show, but in this case, it is fully justified. I mean, you just don't mess with Jim Gordon! I also liked the different reactions from Bullock to Barbara to Batman. Everybody handles grief differently.

Bringing Dick Grayson onto the scene raises the score to a 9. Dick perfectly filled the role of the sidekick by talking some sense into Batman. He made some great, logical points and demonstrated caring and love without getting cheesy. And ultimately, he succeeded in getting Bruce to put the cowl back on.

And my final point comes after Gordon wakes up and laments that he's not a hero like Batman. Batman then delivers one of the best lines of the show: "You are a hero, Jim." Just beautiful. I almost wish the episode ended right there, but the quick redemption scene that followed didn't diminish it at all.

I didn't expect to give this episode a perfect score, but it really is well-made and emotionally powerful. It had some nice nods to continuity and brought in a bunch of minor characters, including Judge Vargas from the Dr. Strange episode. Since "I Am the Night," there have been a plethora of depressed Batman stories that mostly feel pretty stale. But this was a first for me as a youngster, and it maintains its freshness more than 20 years later.

Final score: 10