Best Series 2005
Lorin Mandaloniz
26 years later, it is easy enough to note that Batman: The Animated Series is the best Batman toon, or maybe even the best superhero television show of all time (all due respect to your favorite Netflix MCU shows or the CW's DCTV). But the reason it stood out in 1992 and the reason it stands out today is one and the same. It stands out because of its scale. It may have been a superhero show, but it was rarely larger than life. And it is that adherence to the human-sized drama that has allowed it to age so well.
It is not the most narratively ambitious kids cartoon (Gargoyles and Young Justice come to mind), the most explicitly violent (the seemingly cheerful Batman: The Brave and the Bold has far more onscreen violence and sometimes shocking carnage), the most relentlessly action packed (The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes), or the most cynical (Wolverine and the X-Men). But it paved the way for everything that has followed in its hollowed footsteps.
It proved that kids cartoons could take themselves seriously, play for keeps, and exist as real character dramas. But what makes it stand out then is still what makes it stand out now. I speak of its pure realism and it's life-size storytelling. While other cartoons that came before and many that came after deal with world-changing stakes, Batman: The Animated Series almost always kept its stories explicitly to-scale.
The world or even the city was rarely at stake, merely the lives of a few innocent Gothamites or the reputation of those who would attempt to protect the city. More importantly, the show made a point to focus not just on Batman and his circle of fellow crime fighters but on all of the citizens of Gotham. It wasn't just about Batman and the villains he encountered, but as much about the everyday normal people who crossed paths with these colorful figures.
There are eight million stories in this city, and the show did its best to tell every one of them. Be it the random low-level criminal who thinks he accidentally killed Batman, the typecast former television star on the verge of homelessness, the disgraced physician who illegally practices medicine for his brother's mobster cohorts, the former model who was tossed aside after she had to gall to turn 30, or an Olympic athlete who cursed himself by experimenting with an untested steroid, the various heroes and villains were normal people with normal problems.
The writers and directors made a point to ground even the flashiest costumed villain with plausible and sympathetic motivations. Its version of The Riddler was merely a computer game designer cheated out of royalties. The Mad Hatter was a heart-sick scientist using his newest invention to trick the object of his affections into loving him. Baby Doll went mad trying to recapture her former child-star glory. And let's not forget The Clock King, an OCD fanatic driving to his own brand of anal-retentive vengeance over a chance deviation that ruined his career.
These weren't cardboard comic book villains but three-dimensional human beings driven to madness and/or crime by tragedy or random bad luck. The world of Batman: The Animated Series was a dark and foreboding one, full of real danger and genuine menace, but its Gotham City was never so battered down by crime and misery that Batman couldn't make a real difference. Perhaps due to the fact that it was a kids show, the violence was aggressive and omnipresent without being overwhelming. Yes, Gotham was a dangerous city and yes the criminals occasionally shed blood in pursuit of their goals, but said murderous escapades usually didn't take place in front of us.
First, by not allowing Timm and company to fill the screen with violence and carnage, they actually made the show more realistic. Unlike the comics (or shows like Gotham), which often present a level of violence so extreme that it would probably cause martial law and/or mass exodus in real life, the Gotham City of Batman: The Animated Series was dangerous and somewhat corrupt, but still inhabitable with the potential to be even greater than it was. This was a city where Kevin Conroy's empathetic Bruce Wayne/Batman could make a real difference.
Also, by not allowing the show to be too violent or too action-packed, network censors forced the writers and producers to craft real stories and three-dimensional characters in lieu of non-stop fisticuffs or vehicle chases. The show never descended into 'Batman meets up with a super villain of the day and they beat the crap out of each other for 20 minutes'. Even the goofiest Harley Quinn comedy was rooted in character and contained worthwhile emotional payoffs.
The show never forgot to treat its most absurd plots as real-life drama for the characters who were living through them. It never forgot to be *about something* no matter how fast the fists were flying or how big the explosions happened to be. What that 'something' happened to be is what made the show truly 'adult'.
The series wasn't "adult" because it was the darkest, most serious, and most violent afternoon animated show of its time. No Batman: The Animated Series was adult in nature by virtue of its intelligence and its frank dealing with genuinely adult subject matter. The show's plots concerned divorce, patent law, insurance fraud, homelessness, class prejudice, age discrimination, typecasting, prison abuse, animal testing, and all manners of mental illness.
Its stories revolved not around alien invasions or doomsday scenarios, but around the stuff that real life is made of. And it was not the last kids cartoon to be dark, brooding, dramatic in nature, and sometimes violent. But it still stands outside of the pack by virtue of not only its quality but its life-size and small-scale storytelling. It is the best American action cartoon ever developed, and it still remains the best interpretation of Batman that has existed in any medium.
It shows Batman at his best while never turning away from the inherent darkness of the character. It is that rarest of things, optimistic film noir, a Batman who we can respect and admire. It is a cartoon to be passed down from generation to generation, as defining a piece on the character as the 1960s television series. For a generation lucky enough to grow up watching it, it remains 'our Batman'.
Yes, technically the Xbox Series X has more memory and beefier processing components that run at faster speeds than the Series S, but it's all in service of hitting 4K and 120 frames per second while gaming without upscaling. Or it's 8K/60 frames per second with it -- if you think you need it.
The Series S' target of 1440p and 120 fps is a lot less demanding, hence its lower-power components and smaller body. For streaming video, the Series X can do native 4K and upscale to 8K, while the series S upscales to 4K.
The Series S comes with only 512GB of SSD storage compared with the Series X's 1TB, but thanks to Smart Delivery, games optimized for the new consoles won't take up as much space on the Series S as the Series X. If you want to keep a lot of big games on deck and in progress, the Series S supports the same Velocity Architecture for SSD expansion, either via swapping the NVMe or the pricey (relative to the price of the console) Seagate 1TB plug-in card. Whizzy new game features are designed to be compatible with both and they have the same support for the new wireless controller and other peripherals.
The biggest challenge for a living-room-bound Series S is finding a TV that supports the 1440p maximum resolution natively rather than forcing it to dial back to 1080p. Most TVs do 1080p or 4K (or both). But if the console is cohabiting with your workspace, there are a ton of compatible monitors you can connect to it. The Series X may look better, but if you're playing on a monitor-sized screen, you won't miss the 4K as much.
The Series S is a much better deal if you're planning to sign up for Xbox All Access. Once you subtract the price of the console, you end up paying about $12.50 a month for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate compared to its solo $15 monthly rate. If you have an older console, though, you may be able to get the Series X for as little as $300 with a trade-in.
If you've been gaming at 4K on an Xbox One X, you may want to shell out the bigger bucks and upgrade to this model. You'll be able to get a higher frame rate with the One S, but that's at the expense of resolution. If you're used to playing in 4K, 1440p might look soft to you. But that will depend on the size of your screen and your visual acuity.
Xbox All Access isn't a terrific deal with the Xbox Series X. At $35 a month, once you subtract the price of the console you're shaving only about 80 cents off putting the console on your credit card and subscribing separately to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. (If you don't have a credit card, remember that in order to sign up for the plan you still have to pass a credit check with Microsoft's third-party financing company, Citizens One. The latter is the only way to subscribe to All Access as well.)
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And then, on top of all that good science fiction comedy and the time-jumping stories coalescing in an exciting finale, is the Fallout of it all. The Fallout wiki mods will make the call after the show has completed, but from my perspective, it feels like it could all be canon. Not a separate universe or a retelling of a known Fallout story, but rather a series of events that could conceivably take place before or after any of the games, which is what I want from a good adaptation. I like Fallout as an extension of the games rather than a retelling or something separate that happens to look familiar. The rewards for Fallout players are frequent (as my Fallout fan wife excitedly pointed out often), but for those like me with a passing interest in the franchise, what exists here is an excellent, original story in that established universe. Plus, some good jokes.
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