Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #233 Batman Beyond: "Sneak Peak" and "Eggbaby"

Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.

Or you can be like four kind patrons and use this column to commission a series of pieces about a filmmaker, actor or television show. I’m deep into a project on the films of the late, great, fervently mourned David Bowie and I have now watched and written about every movie Sam Peckinpah made over the course of his tumultuous, wildly melodramatic psychodrama of a life and career. That’s also true of the motion pictures and television projects of the late Tawny Kitaen. 

A generous patron is now paying me to watch and write about the cult animated show Batman Beyond and I’m deep into covering the complete filmography of troubled former Noxzema pitch-woman Rebecca Gayheart. Oh, and I’m delving deep into the complete filmographies of Oliver Stone and Virginia Madsen for you beautiful people as well. 

If it were up to me, Batman Beyond would win ALL the awards. When I say ALL the awards I mean ALL the awards, not just the one it’s eligible for. It should win daytime Emmy Awards, of course, but also Tonys, Nobel Prizes, Most Improved Player at my cousin Franklin Sack’s Tennis Camp, the 1992 Blockbuster Award for Best Screen Kiss and various Dundies. 

Batman Beyond deserves awards for writing, direction and animation but also for casting, because that is one of many things it does not just well but perfectly. 

Kevin Conroy is of course the perfect animated Batman, at any age, while Boy Meets World’s Will Friedle is shockingly good as his young charge. But it’s in the casting of the villains that Batman Beyond really shines. 

Batman Beyond doesn’t just cast voiceover actors who are ideal for their roles: they hire people who bring enormous baggage to their performances, all of it positive. 

For “Sneak Peak”, that meant giving the juicy role of Ian Peek, a notorious gossip reporter whose seedy secret is that he possesses a belt that allows him to become incorporeal, to literally walk through walls to get the hottest gossip, to the great Michael McKean, who is obviously having a blast playing an evil version of Michael Musto. 

“Eggbaby”, meanwhile, gives us the great Kathleen Freemont, who specialized in playing difficult women who gave men the business, primarily in a series of Jerry Lewis movies, as the unforgettably named Ma Mayhem and Seth Green and Andy Dick as her sons/henchmen. 

As that casting perhaps conveys, “Sneak Peak” and “Eggbaby” are lighter and more overtly comedic than most episodes of Batman Beyond. Conroy’s Bruce Wayne has always had an exceedingly dark sense of humor commensurate with his bleak view on life and humanity. 

But in “Sneak Peek”, the ancient crime fighter who looks like Boris Karloff crossed with Clint Eastwood and and an NFL linebacker has got straight up jokes. 

For example Bruce says of Ian Peek, “Peek isn’t really a criminal. Unless being a reporter counts.” All this needs to be a Rodney Dangerfield joke is Bruce emphasizing “reporter” for comic effect, which he does not.

When Bruce tells Terry to be careful dealing with Ian he replies that he always is, to which Bruce quips, “Yeah, but you’ve never had to deal with politicians before.” 

At his grimmest, Bruce answers Terry’s questions as to what will  ultimately happen to Ian when he loses the ability to become corporeal almost completely and keeps plummeting further and further down with, “He’ll keep falling until he reaches the center of the earth. It’s about as inside as you can get.” 

See, his show was called Inside Peek and then he fell into the inside of the earth, where he will die a hideous death after burning alive. In “Inside Peak”, McKean’s super-villainous gossip-hound uses his special powers to get the scoop on everyone from rockers engaged in illegal splicing to degenerate businessmen to mobsters. Ian even gets the lowdown on Terry and his crime-fighting alter-ego and threatens to expose him on his television show. 

Terry even tells his family that he’s Batman, at which point they break out into laughter and fate, with an assist from Terry and Bruce, intervenes before the unscrupulous rumor-monger can spill the beans on the high school student’s eventful double life. 

Ian’s unexpected profession plays a big role in making “Inside Peak” comic but it attains a tragic heft at the very end when a mortified Ian realizes that the very belt and gift that made him special will also result in a horrifying, painful death. 

He’ll just keep falling and falling and falling until he can’t fall anymore. That’s a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. 

As its title suggests, “Eggbaby” is even zanier than “Inside Peak.” It’s a high school-centric episode that finds Terry suddenly burdened with having to take care of an “Eggbaby”, a wonderfully designed baby-sized robot that looks like an anthropomorphic giant egg, for a class about family. 

The humor in the episode consequently comes from Terry trying to juggle the very different responsibilities of taking care of a pseudo-baby to prove that he’s ready for parenthood and fighting the criminal scum of Gotham. 

Here that entails Ma Mayhem, a Ma Barker-like matriarch of a bumbling crime family, and her good for nothing henchmen sons. 

“Eggbaby” is all about different permutations of family and the responsibilities that come with each. That includes the surrogate family at the show’s core: grumpy but supportive father figure Bruce Wayne and his eager boy Terry. 

Bruce has some great comic moments here, like when he discovers that his protege will be bringing a “baby” with him when he fights crime and, when Terry assures him that it’s not a real baby, replies, “Why am I not reassured?” 

“Eggbaby” threatens at time to become Two Batmen and a Baby but ultimately finds a nice balance between domestic comedy and gritty drama, world-building and character moments. 

Batman Beyond may be getting goofier and lighter as it progresses but it’s found a way to lighten up without devolving into self-parody or compromising the fundamental darkness and substance at its diamond-hard core. 

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