Review: The first two acts of "Two-Face, Part II" from BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES

[about_faces]

Part I reviewed here!

Two-Face, Part II is a decidedly different beast from the first episode, one that feels more complimentary than a proper continuation. And not to make it sound like I dislike the episode--because I don't, I love it--but nonetheless, it's largely inferior.

Part I was both a refreshingly psychological take on Harvey's descent

Comments

[about_faces]

Well, he couldn't have obtained the coin after the fact, since I think we're meant to assume that the coin is the same as the one he was seen flipping in On Leather Wings and Part I. Especially the later, since he kept it in his coat pocket, as if that's where it belonged. I'm fairly sure that it has to be special rather than just any coin, since as you'll see in the final part, the climax hinges on it being his own one and only coin. But that is a good point that it might not be the same coin, since he'd have to go back for his clothes. Unless his clothes were already in his hospital room, and he snatched it on his way out. I can see him doing that in his trauma, just to have something to hold onto emotionally and physically.

That he scratched it up himself after the fact, though, that would make sense, since that's what his comics counterpart did all the way up to Eye of the Beholder, where it was damaged by the acid itself (also like in The Dark Knight). Years later, Ty Templeton came up with a powerful explanation for the coin, which I won't spoil for the benefit of anyone who hasn't read that story yet until I can get to my own review.

With the "Don't bother to adjust the picture" line, I personally thought it was a reference to his face. He meant something like "no, you're not seeing things weird - it's me, Two-Face! Now stick 'em up!"

I think that's what they were going for, but they were still going for it by using a reference to the Outer Limits, and it doesn't work. He should have just said something original, or a variation on the exactly thing you just said.

[psychopathicus]

What I meant was that I'm not sure the coin is supposed to be the same one as in episode one, though. You will note that at the beginning of this episode we get a nice clear close-up of it, something that we never got in the previous one - if it were a two-headed coin he was flipping there, I'm pretty sure that would have been focused on to show the roots of the duality obsession. Instead, it's been emphasized (in the episode novelization, anyway) that Big Bad Harv didn't have any sort of duality issues, that those came later, and that Harv was in fact subsumed into the duality-obsessed Two-Face. It made sense for the bullying Harv to idly flip around a coin, as that's a properly gangsterish, tough guy thing to do - it doesn't really make sense for said coin to be two-headed, since Harv couldn't care less about duality issues. My theory is that the coin-flipping obsession itself comes from Harv, but not the two-headedness or the scratches inflicted upon it - that coin was acquired and scratched up after the fact, it seems to me. (Really, this all would be much clearer if it were a three-part episode, despite the lack of thematic appropriateness.)