Batman The Animated Series Episode 59 Blind as a Bat

Now it’s time to review Batman the Animated Series Episode 59 Blind As a Bat. While trying to stop the Penguin from stealing an experimental military helicopter, Batman gets blinded and is forced to fight the Penguin without vision. Batman the Animated Series Episode 59 Blind as a Bat aired on February 22nd 1993 on FOX.

Batman the Animated Series Episode 59 Blind as a Bat

The thought process for this episode might have gone something like this.

“Hey you know the phrase “blind as a bat”? What if we do an episode with that phrase as the title?”

“Okay, but what’s the plot?”

“Oh um…Penguin steals a helicopter, Batman gets blinded, and he has to fight the Penguin without vision with an experimental technology that is failing on him throughout this episode.”

“Brilliant, write a script!”

Really, that’s all you need to know about this episode. No I’m serious, that is pretty much all you need to know. Penguin is one of the most iconic Batman villains, but three out of his four episodes have been duds. This one was slightly better than the other two duds and better than a few other bad episodes. There was some decent action and the visual with Batman’s red eyes was cool too.

But, really, I think someone heard the phrase “Blind as a Bat” and thought that would be an awesome and obvious tile. We blind Batman, I mean that should be something that writes itself. Funnily enough, they did an episode of Darkwing Duck was a rather similar plotline of the hero being blinded temporary and it was far better than this one. It did have a rather punny title, “Duck Blind”, but it was a Megavolt episode and Megavolt is awesome.

One day, I will do a complete run through of Darkwing Duck just like my BTAS run through. And my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run that I started as well.

I’ll be perfectly honest, not that much to talk about. This is the last solo Penguin episode of the series and of the DCAU in general. And it is the last time where he is in the role as a villain as he goes reformed as the owner of the Iceberg Lounge(although shady doings are still on with his club). I enjoy the Penguin, but he didn’t really have all that much to work with in these episodes and got some lame plots with the exception of Birds of a Feather which was a fantastic character study.

This episode gets a quite charitable 3/10. You can watch Batman the Animated Series Episode 59 Blind as a Bat on Batman the Animated Series Volume 3 DVD and Batman the Animated Series the Complete Collection.