Southern Fried Fandom & Nostalgia: Batman The Animated Series Episode -- Christmas With The Joker (1992) Review

Christmas With The Joker is the second episode of the first season of the popular 90's action/adventure Warner Bros. cartoon television series Batman: The Animated Series. It originally aired on the Fox television network in the United States on Friday, November 13, 1992. The episode was written by Eddie Gorodetsky and directed by Kent Butterworth -- the only episode that both men would write and direct for the series.

It was the first episode of the series that featured the characters of The Joker, voiced brilliantly by the legendary Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame; as well as Batman's sidekick, Robin, voiced by Loren Lester.

Despite being the second episode of the series, the first season episodes of BTAS were not featured in chronological order. Because of this, Christmas With The Joker did not premier in television until three months after BTAS first began its run on weekday afternoons. The Joker's character would actually debut to fans of the series on television two months earlier with the episode Joker's Favor (Season 1, Episode 22) premiering on Friday, September 11, 1992 -- another fan favorite of the series.

As far as holiday episodes of an animated series go, Christmas With The Joker is certainly high up on my personal list with many classics. The episode ranks on the top 20 list of most fan favorite episodes of the animated series overall.

The Story

The holiday episode opens just before Christmas Eve at Gotham's Arkham Asylum where the inmates are celebrating the Holiday Season by decorating the Christmas tree and singing the classic American holiday song "Jingle Bells" under the watchful gaze of the guards.

"Jingle bells, Jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh!"

One of these inmates is, of course, The Joker (Mark Hamill), who begins the second part of the chorus with a rather different version of the popular song: 

"Jingle bells, Batman smells

Robin laid an egg.

The Batmobile lost a wheel
And Joker got a-waaaaay!"

Fun fact: "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" has been a well-known parody of the classic song that's since about the mid-1960s, with many variations on the lyrics. The original author is unknown, but might possibly have been inspired by the classic 1966 Batman television series. The song was really popular with grade school children at the time and it became more popular in the early 1990s with Bart Simpson singing this version on The Simpsons in their holiday episode (and their serious pilot episode) Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, which first aired on Sunday, December 17, 1989. The parody song still remains popular among grade school kids here in the United States -- much to the chagrin of many music teachers.

The Joker climbs up on the tree, seemingly ready to mount the top ornament -- only for the tree to turn into a rocket and crash through the glass skylight, Joker and all. The Crown Prince of Crime continues to sing as he makes his holiday getaway through the snowy night. Naturally its never explained how the Joker managed to put, or improvise, a rocket engine in a Christmas tree; oh well in this case let's not worry about the technical stuff and just sit back and enjoy ourselves.

"Crashing through the roof, in a one-horse open tree;
Busting out I go, laughing all the wheeeee!"

With Joker on the loose, Bruce Wayne/Batman (voiced brilliantly by the late iconic voice actor Kevin Conroy) and Dick Grayson/Robin (Loren Lester) go out to patrol Gotham City as their alter egos in case anything out of the ordinary should happen. Robin insists it would be better to take the holiday off, enjoy Christmas dinner and enjoy the upcoming Christmas Eve broadcast of the 1946 American holiday classic Its A Wonderful Life. He add that even scum spend the holidays with their families; prompting Batman to retort, "He has no family."

There's just something about the way that Conroy delivered that line; Batman's simple, but serious acknowledgement that Joker is alone in this world that always stuck with me. For longtime fans of the DC Comics Batman series and its graphic novels, you can feel something else beneath those words; a quiet humanity about a common connection that Bruce Wayne shares with his arch nemesis.

The two crime fighters scale the city's skylines on the lookout for criminal activity, only to witness an act of kindness that Batman almost mistook for a mugging. Despite this, and Robin's suggesting they should go home, Batman wordlessly continues their patrol; prompting Robin to reflect aloud, "He could give lessons to Scrooge."

Bruce looks ready to say "Bah Humbug" to the whole thing.

After finding Gotham to be uncharacteristically peaceful, the Dynamic Duo return to Wayne Manor to watch It's a Wonderful Life (which Bruce admits he's never seen having never gotten past the title) when they discover that Joker has taken over Gotham's television signals to put on his own live Christmas special: "Christmas with the Joker".

In his cross between being comical and insane, the Joker's pirated holiday special -- complete with an audience full of cardboard cutouts of various people and civic servants and canned laughter and a literal hand puppet named Laffy -- also includes three special guests. Since its been established that Joker doesn't have a family of his own, he decided to steal some: "The Awful Lawful Family" featuring a kidnapped Commissioner Jim Gordon (late actor Bob Hastings), Detective Harvey Bullock (voiced by Robert Costanzo), and news reporter Summer Gleeson (voiced by credited anime voice actress Mari Devon).

Threatening to kill them all at midnight, Batman and Robin have to stop their Christmas to track down Joker's broadcast signal -- however they must first have to deal with several life-threatening situations, starting with Joker's henchmen blowing up a bridge before the arrival of a inbound passenger train.

Racing to the site with just enough time to spare, Robin manages to uncouple the passenger cars and stop them, while Batman pulls the train engineer out and jumps clear just before the engine goes over the demolished bridge and explodes.

Following the broadcast signal to the Gotham Observatory on nearby Mount Gotham (because of course that would be the name of the mountain) they locate the broadcast tower -- as well as a large gift box with a very hideous-looking Jack-in-the-box featuring the Joker's face. The Joker-in-the-box informs Batman that he is broadcasting his death and the observatory's telescope (which has been transformed by the Joker into a makeshift cannon) begins to fire at the duo.

Despite Batman knocking out the broadcast tower, the Joker's show is still on the air and now the cannon is out of control and firing erratically toward Gotham City. Meanwhile, Robin is inside the observatory dealing with laughing robot Jokers shooting at him in his attempt to shut down the cannon, which he eventually manages to do.

Now with time nearly running out, and in order to keep the Dynamic Duo in the game; the Joker decides to give our heroes one final clue to where he and the hostages are located in the form of a Betty Blooper Doll (a clear homage to the classic cartoon character Betty Boop). Batman realizes that they don't make those toys anymore since the factor that makes them went out of business.

This leads us to the final confrontation with the Joker at the abandoned Laffco Toy Factory....which absolutely looks like the sort of place the Joker would make into a lair. Props to the series artists and show designers.

If that doesn't scream villain lair in Gotham City, what would?

The Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder make their way to the hideout where the Joker is more than ready with more of his comical, yet dangerous obstacles.

Joker plays Christmas music from the classic Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite as several giant toy nutcracker soldiers attacks. Despite their size, the soldiers are easy enough to defeat. Just then Joker-themed toy planes fly after the duo. Batman grabs up a baseball bat and smashes most of them while Robin catches the rest in an oil barrel.

Just as the planes are finished off (along with a witty retort from Robin about how they don't call him Batman for nothing....har har), machine gun-toting snipers in the rafters -- the same two goons that blew up the train bridge earlier -- begin shooting at the duo. Batman races up toward a set of giant teddy bears and hides. The snipers are confused by his disappearance until they see his cape and start firing. Much to their surprise, they find that it was only a giant teddy bear they shot at. The bear falls over and pins them down.

With Joker's men and traps down, the duo sets out to find him, but the jolly jester reveals himself. His hostages are dangling over a vat of molten plastic and Joker threatens to drop them in if Batman doesn't come and get his Christmas present. Batman takes the present (which has Batman-themed wrapping, a nice touch there!) and opens it to discover a spring-loaded pie inside, which promptly hits him in the face.

Okay, even I'm going to admit I thought this was funny too.

Joker laughs hysterically and then cuts the rope holding his hostages. Fortunately, Batman saves them by rushing up, jumping and grabbing ALL THREE OF THEM and pushing them to safety. Okay, even for a cartoon superhero, that was impressive.

Leaving Robin to take care of the three hostages, Batman goes after the Joker who manages to evade him for a short while before climbing up a ladder onto the rafters and trips on a roller skate almost falling into the hot vat head first. Fortunately for him (but perhaps not so fortunate for Joker's future victims) Batman grabs him by one leg before he can fall in. Batman smiles and bids him, "Merry Christmas, Joker."  Joker, defeated and humiliated at being rescued by his arch nemesis simply says, "Bah humbug!"

The final scenes of the episode show Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson back at Wayne Manor having finally finish watching It's a Wonderful Life -- which Bruce even admits "It has its moments" and the Joker returned to an isolation cell at Arkham Asylum, still in the Christmas spirit as he laughingly sings in his straitjacket and ending the story.

Merry Christmas! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Conclusion

In his first outing as the Joker, Mark Hamill does a wonderful job portraying the Clown Prince of Crime as both the comical and deadly menace that he is. Even in the setting of Christmas, his version of the Joker comes off as both funny and terrifying at the same time. Hamill's ability to shift from jolly jester to menacing evil made him the best possible choice to play the role in the series.

Fun fact: originally the Joker was going to be played by actor Tim Curry -- who might have been a good Joker in his own right given his roles as villains in other animated shows. All the same, I don't think I could picture anyone else other than Hamill voicing the Joker. Even reading the comics and graphic novels all these years later the voice I hear when reading the Joker's lines is Hamill rather than my own internal reading voice.

While not actually a holiday special, Christmas with the Joker is definitely one of those must-see holiday classics for those fans of superhero stories, particularly fans of our favorite caped crusader. Its on my to watch list every holiday season as a fan of Batman the Animated Series and someone who appreciates great animation in general.

Until next time have a wonderful holiday season, and Merry Christmas, y'all!