Batman:The Brave and The Bold episode 4-‘INVASION OF THE SECRET SANTAS’

Episode 4-INVASION OF THE SECRET SANTA'S

Well I finally caught up with this past week’s THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD episode and it featured The Red Tornado in the team up. I have to say my enjoyment of this show hinges directly on who Batman teams up with, and I’m not the biggest fan of Red Tornado. I liked him in the YOUNG JUSTICE book being the chaperone to Superboy, Impulse, and Robin but the character never did anything for me outside those situations. Well this episode just made that more clear to me. Invasion of the Secret Santas starts off with Batman and Blue Beetle fighting the Sports Master during a bowling broadcast and it was silly fun. It pretty much served to show that Batman doesn’t even take Christmas off from crime fighting. I noticed that Adam Beechen(current writer of Teen Titans) wrote this episode and I perked up because I really like his stuff. Then the episode started.

Um thanks Reddy, how about next time you get me a better team up instead

At first I thought I was going to see Hawkman but they switched it on me by having Red Tornado teaching a class. I don’t even remotely pretend to know a heck of a lot about Red Tornado but I’ve never known him to teach, but then again he probably has to do something on his off time. Usually the design of the guest heroes makes me curious on what incarnation of hero I’m getting but with the Red Tornado he looks really dumb in this episode. I’ve never really liked the design “Reddy” has had over the years but I know I hate this costume the most. I’m more of a fan of the current look for him that DC Comics is using. Being that this is a christmas themed episode this is filled with enough smaltz to choke a dead horse. We get Reddy trying to find Christmas spirit and Batman thinking about his last Christmas with his parents. In this show, little Bruce received a family Nutcracker and hated it so much that he threw it against the wall. His parents feeling bad that he was disappointed in his gift took him to see THE MASK OF ZORRO, which is straight out of the books and then we go from there. Unlike the books Bruce doesn’t come out of the movie pretending to be Zorro he comes out still angry that his Christmas was ruined, then we get the off screen murder of his parents.

It's not bad enough I gotta team up with Reddy, I gotta fight this guy too...who the hell is Funhouse? I'd rather fight BATMITE.

Reddy and Batman team up against a villain I’ve never heard of in FUNHOUSE, who looks like SUPERFRIENDS version of The TOYMAN. This is also the first episode to have any mention or visual of Alfred, although we only see him in the flash back. The end with Batman mentioning Alfred made me smile, but as soon as we’re getting into something other than a straight up Batman story, he gets a alarm and rushes off to another battle. Batman doesn’t take off for Christmas and hopefully he’ll get some better villains and heroes to team up with.

CHARLES’ GRADE: D

PROS: The mention of Alfred and the Blue Beetle and Sports Master cameos at the beginning of the episode, Batman fighting space ships

CONS: RED TORNADO, FUNHOUSE

Best part of the episode