Strange Minds
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| “Strange Minds” | |
|---|---|
| The Batman episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 2 Episode 23 |
| Guest stars | Frank Gorshin as Professor Hugo Strange |
| Written by | Greg Weisman |
| Directed by | Brandon Vietti |
| Production no. | 210 |
| Original airdate | November 19, 2005 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Ragdolls to Riches" | "Grundy's Night" |
| List of The Batman episodes | |
"Strange Minds" is the twenty third episode of the television series The Batman. It was first aired on Saturday September 5, 2005 in the US and on Friday September 26, 2005 in the UK.
Contents |
[edit] Plot Synopsis
Joker takes Detective Yin hostage, but once captured he refuses to tell of her whereabouts. Convinced it's the only way to learn Yin's location before she meets her demise, Batman uses a device created by Professor Hugo Strange to enter the bizarre brain of the Joker in search of an answer.
[edit] Plot Summary
The episode opens with Detective Ellen Yin entering her department to find a small flyer for a pizza delivery service at her door. When Detective Yin calls to order a pizza she is surprised by the voice with an exaggerated Italian accent telling her that her order will arrive in less than thirty seconds. Confused, Yin asks if he didn't mean thirty minutes, as someone then knocks at her door. Alarmed, Yin peers through the peephole and sees a man with wild green hair and wearing a blue jacket, recognizing the Joker. However before she can seize her weapon, Joker breaks down Yin's apartment door dousing Yin in the face with his what appears to be a gun, but is really a simple squirt gun. Yet, as she tries to rise to confront the madman, the drug-laced water takes effect, and Detective Yin slowly slumps onto the floor into unconsciousness.
Meanwhile in his private balcony at the Gotham Opera House, Bruce Wayne sits watching the performance of I Pagliacci. Later, as the opera ends, Bruce Wayne mingles with the crowd in the lobby of the Opera House, his attention is drawn to a mannequin in a clown-like suit worn by the first tenor that ever performed the I Pagliacci opera. As he draws near he over-hears a large man remarking that the costume is worth its weight in gold thread. Bruce turns to greet Professor Hugo Strange, congratulating him for his recent appointment as Arkham Asylum Chief of Psychiatry. Strange thanks Wayne for the support Wayne Enterprises has given him in his efforts to build a new device of his own creation. Curious, Bruce realizes he knows nothing about the project, but before Strange can go into details, Joker swings from the ceiling, robbing the I Pagliacci suit. When Strange turns to Wayne to escape, he finds that Bruce Wayne is no longer beside him.
As the Joker readies his attack on Dr. Strange, Batman plunges from the ceiling and brings down Joker. All of this is seen by Strange, who compares Joker and Batman to the two sides of a coin. As Joker is taken away to Arkham, he utters a warning: Yin has eight hours of life left. When questioned at Arkham, Joker has nothing to say about her whereabouts, refusing to even whisper a hint. Batman, after uselessly trying to contact Yin, eavesdrops a suggestion Strange makes at Arkham Asylum while questioning Joker: to use his mind machine to hook himself into Joker's mind and find out where Yin is being held. While Rojas does not like the idea, he relents.
Bruce Wayne borrows the prototype machine from the Wayne Enterprises building, and uses the Bat-Wave to link himself to Arkham and to Dr. Strange's device from the security of the Batcave. As Strange orders an Arkham guard to switch the machine on, nothing appears to happen. Infuriated with the guard, thinking he screwed up his prized invention, he frees himself of the straps of the machine and approaches the device, only to find a cube made of sticks and some balls. When, even more infuriated, he turns to the guard to demand to know where is his machine, he sees The Joker instead of the guard. Strange's fury turns to glee, as he sees the Arkham surroundings turn into a bizarre funfair where everyone attending is, quite literally, Joker. Swarms of grinning fish hover above, and Jokers sell Joker balloons to other Jokers. A Joker ringmaster is giving a pitch to convince people to enter a Joker cinema as Jokers tell jokes in-between. Seeing a child-like Joker, Strange follows him to ask questions of his own to him.
Batman has by then hooked himself into Joker's mind, and appears downtown into an even more bizarre version of Joker's Gotham. The moon above then turns to be another manifestation of Joker's mind, quoting "Egads! A batman in my belfry!" and warns him to be careful with the loose screws. Instantly after this, Joker's Lady Gotham statue shatters, and releases a gigantic screw, which almost crushes a mother and a baby below. Saving them, Batman realizes who they are just more manifestations of Joker's mind. After both Jokers refuse to cooperate, Batman leaves. Batman realizes that Joker would not talk openly, and directs his steps to a massive idea factory.
After a failed attempt to extract the information from Joker's memory files, he finds an ordinarily dressed man sitting at a desk, whose only job seems to stamp the word "INSANE" across a pile of papers before him. He claims to be the last remainder of sanity in Joker's mind and initially refuses to tell Batman anything about Yin. But Batman convinces him, and Joker's sanity directs him to a new path called "Recent Schemes". Joker's main intelligence is heard berating his sanity for revealing "family secrets" and a saw cuts the floor below the Joker's sanity, allowing him to fall to a chemical pit below. From there, another Joker emerges, and taunts Batman.
Batman escapes through the Recent Schemes door, which leads to a trap slide. This leads him to Strange, who is further questioning Joker's childhood in a Hall of Mirrors. When Batman asks Strange for help to find Yin, Strange, instead of cooperating directly, chooses to psychoanalyze Batman in a lengthy manner. This infuriates Joker's ego, which thinks he should be the center of attention, given it is, after all, his mind. This Joker then sends Strange plummeting through a mirror that leads to a swampland where a Joker chicken asks him, after checking he's a psychologist, why he crossed the road.
Batman pursues Joker through the mirror, and ends up in an opera stage where a Joker, donning the I Pagliacci costume, is singing aloud. After this, a marionette play shows Yin in an explosive jack-in-the-box, which promptly explodes and destroys the Yin puppet and sets the Batman puppet alight. A Strange puppet appears in a couch and ridicules Batman. This proves to be the last straw for the Dark Knight, who proceeds to climb the stage and hold the performing Joker by the collar, demanding the information he needs. By then, all of the opera lights are switched on, revealing the complete theatre to be full to the brim by a massive posse of Jokers.
Succumbing to the human-wave tactics of the thousands of resident Jokers, Batman finds himself as a puppet for Joker. Climbing through his cords, he threatens Joker and in response, Joker tells him that if he wants to go into his mind, he'll be dragged so deep he'll never find his way out. After a maddening sequence of hellish visions about Yin's death, Batman is nearly drawn into insanity. At this same time Alfred, who is back at the Bat cave, urges Batman to resist when he notices Bruce’s brain activity starts to become extremely frantic and erratic (which causes him to laugh uncontrollably). Locked in an Arkham cell in Joker's mind, Batman nonetheless receives the message, and devises a plan: by remembering that Strange had said the device was a transmitter-receiver device, he grabs Joker by the collar and throws him through a bat-shaped portal.
As soon as this happens, Joker awakens in the Arkham cell where he was hooked to the device. Strange unhooks himself and watches as Yin enters the room. Joker does not believe his eyes, and wildly insists that he was cheated. Strange then tells him what happened: he did not reveal Yin's location consciously; he revealed it by singing the I Pagliacci aria while in the session. Then Joker remarks that he hid Yin under the opera stage, but then he gets a bad feeling-and sees all the people before him unmask, revealing all to be Batman. They thank him for the information, and when Joker demands to know where he is, Batman replies: "In my mind." After this, a flurry of bats flock in slamming Joker back into his own portal.
Batman barely arrives to save Yin, who, trussed up in a skin-tight harlequin costume and surrounded by many crates of explosives, asks him what took him so long. Meanwhile, at Arkham, Joker weeps in despair, as Strange makes a personal log about Joker-and Batman.
[edit] Characters
- Bruce Wayne/The Batman voiced by Rino Romano
- Alfred Pennyworth voiced by Alastair Duncan
- Detective Ellen Yin voiced by Ming-Na
- The Joker voiced by Kevin Michael
- Professor Hugo Strange voiced by Frank Gorshin
[edit] Trivia
- The first time Joker cried in the ending.
- This is also the first time Professor Hugo Strange engaged in an odd activity, that would eventually lead to his establishment as a villain, when instead of searching for answers as to the whereabouts of Yin, he starts asking Joker's various personality factions about their origin, past, etcetera, to satisfy his need to know about the reason of being of the madman.
- The name of Joker's fake pizza parlor (seen in the box as Lee and Cavallo's) is a reference to Ruggero Leoncavallo, who wrote the actual play Pagliacci that is featured in this episode.
- The opera in question is Pagliacci, composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1858-1919) and arguably his most famous composition. It tells the story of Pagliacci, an entertainer and clown, who takes in a homeless girl only to be betrayed by her and her best friend.
[edit] Quotes
- Strange: (after Batman defeats Joker) Fascinating, just like watching two sides of the same coin.
- Strange: (after seeing Joker escapes) An escaped patient?
Joker: Doc? Let's discuss the Arkham diet with you--too many nuts! - Strange: Joker's childhood, the inevitable key to his mental state. Uh, little boy, come here. I have some questions to ask of you.
- Batman: (after Joker still refuses to find where Yin is) Joker won't consciously talk. I need to look for clues from his sub-consciousness. (sees a building with a massive light bulb flashing) His idea factory.
- Batman:(Examining a file cabinet in Joker's idea factory) Y for Yin?
(He opens the drawer, which rams him with immense force, proving to be extremely long)
Joker's Sanity: No. It's Y for Yuck.
Batman: Who are you?
Joker's Sanity: What remains of his sanity in this hell of a place. - Joker's Sanity: This is actually only my day job.(Reminisces sweetly) But what I'd really like to do, is to make people laugh.
- Joker: If you want to go in, I'll take you so far in, you'll never find your way out!
- Joker: (about Yin) Well, duh, I hid her under the opera stage. Wait a minute.
(Strange, Rojas, Yin, and a guard all unmask themselves as Batman)
Batman: Thank you.
Joker: Where are we?
Batman: In my mind. - Strange: (recording his message about Joker) Tears of a clown, the rage behind the leer. Tonight, I only witnessed Joker's peculiar form of madness. So many dark roads to cross, before I can get to...(looks to see a Batman picture on Joker's file) the other side.
