The Mechanic

Some people may not care about where Batman got the Batmobile, but I do. And "The Mechanic" answers that question for me. It was the 55th produced episode, and 48th aired on Jan. 24, 1993.

My first point will be for the great banter between Batman and Robin at the start of the episode. It seems like it's been a long time since I've reviewed an episode with Robin in it, and it was a nice treat to see him again. In the midst of a pretty entertaining car chase, one of Penguin's men opens fire on the Batmobile to no avail. Robin asks, "Is he kidding?" Batman (showing a rare sense of humor) says, "Maybe he's new in town."

I'll raise the score to a 7 for one of the best Penguin moments in the entire show. Some nerdy pencil pusher presents Penguin with copious notes detailing exactly where the Batmobile was made. As a reward, Penguin writes the man a check for $300,000 — no, $400,000 — and pushes him onto his giant rubber duck. And the poor nerd is so polite that he still yells, "Excuse me!" while he's being sucked down to his death. Just beautiful. I don't know why I love the Penguin so much, but I do. Especially his giant rubber duck.

Now I do have a problem with the backstory of Batman's mechanic, Earl. He was a rising star at a big car company, but one day he presented his boss with information that their new sports car had faulty brakes. Instead of fixing the problem or issuing a recall (which happens all the time), the boss tells Earl that the lawyers assured him they wouldn't be held accountable. Meanwhile, for some reason, Batman is listening in on this conversation. (Does he just spy on all the top businessmen in Gotham?) Anyway, Earl refuses to remain silent, so his boss sends some hired thugs to beat him up. Batman saves him, of course, but Earl can't find any work because he now has the reputation of a whistleblower. Seriously? How corrupt is Gotham? Not a single car company will hire a man who was honest and wanted to fix some faulty brakes? But luckily, Batman showed up in his old, beat-up Batmobile, and commissioned Earl to build him a new one. At the end of the day, I guess it all works out, but there were still a few problems that bugged me, so I'll have to take a point off.

The latter half of this episode directly rips a plot point from Batman Returns, which came out shortly before this episode. And that plot point involves Penguin taking control of the Batmobile. It's a brilliant idea, but I felt the movie executed it rather poorly. They didn't sufficiently explain how Penguin's crew was able to bypass the Batmobile's security system, and things got really goofy when Penguin sat in a kiddie ride shaped like the Batmobile to control it. And then the whole crisis was solved by having Batman punch a hole through the bottom of his car. I think this episode improved on that idea in every regard. Penguin tracked down the man who built the Batmobile and coerced him into sabotaging it. But Earl was still able to give Batman a clue, which ended up saving him in the end. Now, I could penalize this episode for its lack of originality, but I will reward it for vastly improving an interesting concept. It's funny to see how a simple sentence — "Penguin takes control of the Batmobile" — can be interpreted in two vastly different ways. One that worked, and one that didn't.

Final score: 7