“The Forgotten”
INFO
Episode #7
Originally aired on October 8, 1992
CREDITS
Written by Jules Dennis, Richard Mueller, & Sean Catherine Derek
Directed by Boyd Kirkland
CAST
Kevin Conroy as Bruce Wayne/Batman
Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Alfred
Richard Moll as Computer
Lorin Dreyfuss as Salvo
Dorian Harewood as Dan Riley
George Murdock as Boss Biggis
I have stated many times how much I love Batman: The Animated Series. To this day, I think it is a perfect model for a live-action cinematic Batman moving forward.
With that said, not every episode was memorable and some were downright terrible — like “The Forgotten,” for example.
The premise of the episode is this: While volunteering at the Dock Street Rescue, Bruce learns of a series of disappearances of homeless people that the GCPD have ignored because, well….they don’t care about the homeless, apparently.
So, Bruce decides to dress like a homeless person himself to investigate the matter.
READ ALSO: “The Batmen in Animation“
After being distracted by a cat, Bruce seems to lose all his keen and honed abilities as The Batman. He allows a thug — whom he just knocked out — to sneak up behind him and slug him in the head.
Bruce wakes up with amnesia at some random location, surrounded by slaves all ran by Boss Biggis and his mining chain gang.
The rest of the episode is just a colossal mess of contrived plot points, a silly adventure by Alfred, and really out of place score that doesn’t quite achieve what I think it was going for here.
Some cool moments do ensue when we actually crawl inside Bruce’s head during a dream and later when he walks through a hall of mirrors.
That particular sequence is actually quite riveting, with our favorite Clown Prince of Crime making a rather disturbing (in that cool “Joker” way) cameo.
Once Bruce regains his memory and Alfred rescues him with the Batwing, we get to see some cool Batman shots of him kicking ass and rescuing all the slaves.
What happens to the slaves? All of ’em get offered a job at Wayne Enterprises.
I’ll take a sappy ending like that for good measure, but I would have preferred a better journey to make that nice ending just a little sweeter. – Rick Shew
