Batman Caped Crusade Episode 1: The Penguin

 Well. 

That was a lot to take in.

First I will say that to some degree I still retain my overall impression of this series that it's more deja viewing than I would prefer.  

Now, I certainly support the series' Golden Age aesthetic; well, it's more than an aesthetic, it's actually the setting, as the 1930s cultural references are intended to make clear.  I am pro-Golden Age nostalgia for characters rooted in the Golden Age.  It's a bold and clever choice, eschewing the challenge of trying to give Batman a period feel in a modern era.

But I am much less supportive of the elements of the show that, inevitably, feel too familiar from Bruce's Timm's original Batman show ("Batman: The Animated Series", you know, the one that started the convention of calling cartoons "the animated series").  For example, as fine and familiar as people and performers as the likes of John DiMaggio, Tom Kenny, Grey DeLisle, Yuri Lowenthal, et al., are... they are, frankly, TOO familiar and it's distracting when I simply hear THEM and not the characters.  Or the character style, which is still, in many cases, more cartoony than I enjoy (although it does seem less so than BTAS).

There is some great character introduction and reinvention going on in the first episode. The good guy standouts were Bruce Wayne's playboy persona and Barbara Gordon's dry-witted public defender (I did a double-take seeing Babs SHOOTING A GUN, but... of course it makes perfect sense; she's the police commissioner's daughter).  I appreciate that "good guy" Harvey Bullock is a scumbag on the take, because I still remember that when he was originally introduced in the comics... that's what he was. On the bad guy side....

BOLD CHOICES WERE MADE. And I approved of that.  

I didn't know we need a torch-song crooning female version of the Penguin, but... I am glad we have one.  And, boy, did that pack an enormous amount into that character in just one episode. The Iceberg Lounge, a legal public persona, a secret crime boss, deadly umbrellas, giant props, off shore weaponry that would make Doctor Domino jealous, a coldness and viciousness that (if heavy-handed) was ... bracing, and a willingness to go-for-broke with a peripitous fall at the end.  I don't know whether they EVEN intend to use "Oswalda" again, but if they don't, they have already gotten their money's worth out of her!

Meanwhile, Harvey Dent, it cannot be overemphasized, is a ****.  This is an ingenious and novel reinterpretation of the character.  The point of every conviction is improving his political credibility, the point of being D.A. is becoming mayor.  He cares about no one except as tools to power and it perfectly contextualizes his friendship with Bruce Wayne, who appears to be a vapid member of elite to which he aspires.  The idea that is only his disfigurement that teaches him empathy, that his scarred side is in fact his GOOD side, is a master stroke that justifies the whole series, in my opinion.