Crisis of Infinite Episodes - The New Adventures of Batman Recap

 
 Sometimes it felt like a Batman show, but sometimes it felt like Batman was included in episodes as an obligation. The best example of this was the two-part episode set half on an alien planet with a talking, flying robot. By the end of the series run, it felt like the show had become a full-on Batman parody. While I won't say the New Batman Adventures reached the lows of Super Friends, it was close, and the New Adventures definitely fell short of the original Adventures of Batman a decade earlier.

 So was Bat-Mite that bad? No. But he was mostly incredibly pointless and the series was not better off for having him. His inclusion just added another level of strangeness to a series that never really decided what it wanted to be. The original Adventures of Batman's successes came out of building on the live action series. It was silly and it did have its share of duds, but it was still grounded in some sort of reality. The New Adventures tried to double down on the camp and zaniness by throwing an extra dose of unexplained and limitless, yet limited magic. I guess there is a reason that although I grew up when this was still theoretically on TV, I have no childhood memories of this series. 

 I would be remiss if I did not mention the Bat Messages at the conclusion of each episode. First and foremost, they were usually not messages at all, just a chance to see Bat-Mite do something stupid. In the rare cases that they did provide a public service announcement of some sort, I really wonder how much better they really made the world. In any case, the next series, The All New Super Friends Hour would take this idea to a whole new level.

Essential Four:

1. Dead Ringers- The intro of Clayface pretty much played as a normal episode and I guess in this series, that earned it the best of breed title.

2. Trouble Identity - Call me a sucker for doppelgangers, but like Dead Ringers, the plot involving a mysterious villains framing the heroes served as actual entertainment that didn't over last its welcome.

3. Birds of a Feather Fool Around Together - Admittedly, this was a ridiculous episode with way too much going on, but somehow, while other episodes got bogged down and boring, this one remained lively and fun - even with the Penguin.

4. A Sweet Joke on Gotham City - Hey at least this series tried to introduce some new villains. Even though he didn't take, Sweet Tooth was my favorite newbie of the pack winning out over Electro, Chameleon, Moonman, or even Zarbor.