Today we’re looking at the sixth episode of Batman: The Animated Series in which The Sewer King kidnaps and enslaves children so that they’ll steal things for him. Is this another great episode from the shows creators, or could this be our first bad episode?
1. Child Slavery
I’m going to address the elephant in the room first with this episode. The whole thing is built on the premise that this guy is keeping all these children for slaves in the sewers of Gotham. This just doesn’t feel genuine when you see it. The kids don’t come off as these manipulated and abused slaves, the Sewer King never comes off as someone menacing enough to abuse children, and so when Batman has to act outraged during their confrontation, it doesn’t feel earned. There’s a film called Beasts of No Nation that details very specifically how relationships like that work, and the thing that film does so well that this episode fails at is portraying a believable relationship between the child/children and their abuser. As sad as it is, abused children become attached and dependent on their abuser in a way that wouldn’t necessarily allow them to just let Batman beat up the Sewer King at the end of the episode.
2. Caped Crocodile Crusader
In this episode Batman has to fight multiple creatures, either crocodiles or alligators (I can’t tell the difference). It is on one hand really cool, and on the other really dumb. The problem is that you take away from the menace of this monster attacking Batman when he can suplex and hog tie them with ease. He defeats one by just stretching their mouth really far which is confusing at best.
3. Domestication
There’s a point where the episode gets sidetracked by Alfred trying to clean up and domesticate one of the Sewer King’s children that Batman’s found. This point partially builds on my first and partially is its own. There’s the problem of the character development of the child here feels disingenuous, and also that as a viewer there isn’t much you care about in seeing this child steal Bruce Wayne’s silverware. There’s also a confusing bit where the kid finds a gun in the house, starts playing with it and gets in big trouble with Batman and Alfred. Why does Batman have a gun? This whole section could have been replaced with Batman doing literally anything and the episode would’ve been better for it.
4. The Sewer King
He isn’t a good villain. He does detestable things which make you hate his character, but he’s also annoying and poorly done which makes you dislike the episode. It seems that the creators were unsure of how they wanted to handle him. On one hand, his voice and some of his actions lean into him being a pervy weirdo that likes children a little too much and on the other he’s seemingly being portrayed as someone who genuinely believes he’s helping these children. Now, one of these premises can’t actually be aired on a children’s show, so you have to wonder if this is an example of the producers trying to sneak in content for adults to enjoy and it not going over well.
5. Broadcast Standards and Practices
According to Bruce Timm, the episode was going to have more realistic and darker content in the episode in which the Sewer King would actually abused the children on screen, however, Broadcast Standards and Practices wouldn’t allow this to be aired. TTimm has said, “The impact is watered down. If we were doing it today, we probably would have decided not to do the show.”
