Plot summary: A trio of TV comedians inexplicably don costumes and commit crimes one year after humiliating The Joker.
Each Saturday and Sunday Matt Waters recaps an episode of the legendary Batman: The Animated Series, building an overall ranking along the way. Plus best performances, the ever-popular Villain Watch and more!
Follow The Matt Signal on Twitter!
Notes
Episode Title: ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’
Original Air Date: November 5th, 1994
Directed: Boyd Kirkland (21)
Written: Paul Dini (23) & Randy Rogel (9)
The trio of contestants are all voiced by (semi) famous comedians. Grant Shaud was a regular on Murphy Brown, Stuart Pankin was on Not Necessarily the News and Andrea Martin worked on SCTV.
Lisa Lorraine is modelled on Rosanne Barr, but likely named for Lisa Lampanelli. Likewise Buddy Standler and Harry Loomis appear to be patterned after Buddy Hackett and Jerry Lewis.
As mentioned in ‘Riddler’s Reform’, one of Nygma’s TV commercials can be heard in the background of this episode when Lisa answers the door.
Recap
The freakin’ Condiment King causes a ruckus in a restaurant, covering the patrons in ketchup and mustard, even going as far as to force hot sauce into a man’s mouth! Unthinkable! Naturally intimidated, they all hand over their wallets and jewellery.
Batman arrives on the scene and is thoroughly unimpressed by the would-be-thief’s puns, advising him to just return the stolen goods and go home. Condiment King instead slips on some of his own ketchup and is lucky to survive the fall from the building.
Summer Gleeson (remember her?) reports that Condiment King is in fact TV comedian Buddy Standler, with his manager and Robin utterly baffled by his behaviour.
Across town, another costumed criminal, the Pack Rat, sticks up a department store, opting for a gun filled with actual bullets instead of sauce. Coincidentally Alfred is one of the shoppers and calls Bruce for help.
Batman again makes short work of the hapless first-time villain, who likewise has a penchant for bad jokes. Robin identifies the culprit as Harry Loomis, another famous funny man. Bruce notices a microchip on Loomis’ neck and naturally suspects Mad Hatter.
Visiting Tetch in Arkham, they find him catatonic with a disturbing grin on his face and a microchip of his own…
Alfred reports on a third TV personality, Lisa Lorraine, being abducted. Robin is finally able to link the trio as judges on an annual comedy competition.
Firing up a recording of the previous year’s edition, Batman notices that a disgraced contestant was in fact a disguised The Joker, who received laughs from the audience, but annoyed the judges and was promptly dismissed, swearing revenge.
Talk of the Murder-Clown, he approaches the host of the competition, offering up three replacement judges: Knuckles, Vinnie and Kowalski, a trio of heavies in shoddy clown make-up. Joker states he’s to be presented with the trophy and places a microchip on him just in case.
Sure enough, Joker is presented as the only contestant, and attempts to unleash laughing gas on the captive audience, but The Dynamic Duo intervene.
Unbothered, Joker presents his “new girl”, Mighty Mom, who is of course the third judge, Lisa Lorraine. Batman leaves Robin to deal with her in order to pursue Joker, and despite some minor embarrassment, the Boy Wonder manages to remove her microchip.
Up on the roof, Batman pursues Joker onto a giant runaway balloon. Mistah J briefly beats Bats with the stolen trophy, but Robin swoops in and in the chaos the balloon is popped, causing Joker to gently touch down, trousers around his ankles, humiliated.
Best Performance
My decision here depends entirely on whether Mark Hamill actually voiced Joker’s alter-ego, ‘Smilin’ Shecky Rimshot or not. I’m about 60% sure it is him, in which case, he walks away with this category, because it’s so profoundly different to how he usually sounds, and a pitch-perfect attempt at a slightly annoying stand-up comedian.
Ordinarily Hamill wins this category on the strength of his Joker voice alone, but he seemed to be playing the character a little differently this time, intentionally or not. It’s… lighter? More upbeat? I don’t know. I just wasn’t feeling it as much.
If Hamill DIDN’T voice Rimshot, then I don’t know who did and would thus be forced to make it a three-way tie between Andrea Martin, Stuart Pankin and Grant Shaud as the trio of TV comedians. They were sublime castings, understood what they were being asked to do and did it commendably.
Ranking
I have seen this episode compared to The King of Comedy. That is incredibly over-generous. It’s an entertaining episode of the show, for sure, but let’s not get carried away. Better than Joker though…
It manages to serve as a loving homage to a bygone era of Batman, while also delivering a mini-mystery for Batman & Robin to unravel, and even finds room for a disturbing little wrinkle with Mad Hatter. The episode is in many ways a more light-hearted take on ‘Joker’s Favour’, which is fitting as that was Paul Dini’s first stab at the character. More on that below.
Boy howdy can you see the Fox mandate that Robin do more things in this one. He has all the insight into the comedians, gets a one on one fight with Mighty Mom, and then ultimately rescues Batman. The script clearly called for the two to split up and for Dick to take out the lesser threat, which happens in several episodes, but instead he basically does it all, with Bruce looking comparatively ineffective. I’m not saying Robin should never get to save the day or that Batman has to get the final win, but the way this was handled was rather inelegant and detracted from the episode’s otherwise high quality.
- The Laughing Fish
- Mask of the Phantasm
- Almost Got ‘im
- Heart of Ice
- Harlequinade
- The Trial
- Riddler’s Reform
- Shadow of the Bat Part I
- I Am the Night
- Robin’s Reckoning Part I
- Baby-Doll
- The Man Who Killed Batman
- Perchance to Dream
- Two-Face Part I
- Bane
- A Bullet For Bullock
- Joker’s Favor
- Read My Lips
- Feat of Clay Part II
- Harley’s Holiday
- Catwalk
- The Demon’s Quest Part II
- Harley and Ivy
- Robin’s Reckoning Part II
- House & Garden
- Beware the Gray Ghost
- Second Chance
- Mad as a Hatter
- Heart of Steel Part II
- Appointment In Crime Alley
- Two-Face Part II
- Pretty Poison
- Harley’s Holiday
- Lock-Up
- Shadow of the Bat Part II
- Feat of Clay Part I
- His Silicon Soul
- Off Balance
- Vendetta
- Birds of a Feather
- Heart of Steel Part I
- On Leather Wings
- See No Evil
- The Clock King
- It’s Never Too Late
- Make ‘Em Laugh (NEW ENTRY)
- Joker’s Wild
- Eternal Youth
- The Cape and Cowl Conspiracy
- The Cat and the Claw Part I
- Zatanna
- Day of the Samurai
- Avatar
- The Demon’s Quest Part I
- The Mechanic
- The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne
- Terror in the Sky
- P.O.V.
- Christmas with the Joker
- Fear of Victory
- Be a Clown
- The Worry Men
- What is Reality?
- Fire From Olympus
- Night of the Ninja
- Mudslide
- The Cat and the Claw Part II
- Nothing to Fear
- The Lion and the Unicorn
- Prophecy of Doom
- Tyger, Tyger
- Blind as a Bat
- If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
- Dreams In Darkness
- The Last Laugh
- Cat Scratch Fever
- Moon of the Wolf
- Paging the Crime Doctor
- Time Out of Joint
- Sideshow
- The Under-Dwellers
- The Forgotten
- Showdown
- The Terrible Trio
- I’ve Got Batman in My Basement
Villain Watch
The Joker (Mark Hamill) (fourteenth appearance)
Most notable Joker stories delve into how twisted and edgy the Clown Prince can be, but I’ve always been a fan of Paul Dini’s infusion of extreme pettiness that began with ‘Joker’s Favor.’ Kidnapping the judges of a competition he felt was rightfully his to win and forcing them to dress as ridiculous villains one year later is the kind of grudge-holding I can get behind.
It’s also fun to see him legitimately try and win the competition while in disguise in the first place, alluding to The Killing Joke’s hypothesis that he used to be a struggling stand-up comedian. I like that he got laughs, but didn’t win because he angered the judges by failing to register in time and taking the stage over etc.
I’ll leave it to you to decide if you think it’s good or bad that his final appearance on the main run of the show was being carted away with his trousers around his ankles while everybody laughs at him.
Condiment King/Mighty Mom/The Pack Rat (Stuart Pankin/Andrea Martin/Grant Shaud) (first appearance)
I won’t go as far as to say these are top-flight Batman villains, but I loved how deliberately terrible and annoying they were, likely in loving tribute to Batman ’66. They’re also fun parodies of real comedians, fitting the story like a glove.
Condiment King gained some pop culture cache by appearing in The Lego Batman Movie, but is actually a BTAS original, joining Harley Quinn, Renee Montoya and Lock-Up as creations that found their way into comic book canon.
- The Joker
- Harley Quinn
- Poison Ivy
- Mr. Freeze
- Two-Face
- The Ventriloquist
- Catwoman
- The Riddler
- The Phantasm
- Baby-Doll
- Bane
- Mad Hatter
- Penguin
- HARDAC (and Randa Duane)
- Clayface
- Ra’s al Ghul
- Lock-Up
- Lloyd Ventrix
- Killer Croc
- Rupert Thorne
- Count Vertigo
- Clock King
- Nivens
- Josiah Wormwood
- Scarecrow
- Roland Daggett (and Germs & Bell!)
- Talia al Ghul
- Sid the Squid
- Queen Thoth Khepera
- Maxie Zeus
- Jimmy ‘Jazzman’ Peake
- Tony Zucco
- Man-Bat
- Hugo Strange
- Red Claw
- Arnold Stromwell
- Mad Bomber
- Tygrus
- Rhino, Mugsy and Ratso
- Kyodai Ken
- Condiment King/Pack Rat/Mighty Mom (NEW ENTRY)
- Gil Mason
- Nostromos (and Lucas!)
- Cameron Kaiser
- Dr. Dorian (and Garth)
- Mad Dog
- Ubu
- Professor Milo
- Romulus
- Arkady Duvall
- Sewer King
- Boss Biggis
- Montague Kane
- The Terrible Trio
Plugs
Eager for more long-form coverage of Batman? Why not check out my podcast with Mike Thomas, The Tape Crusaders, which reviewed every Batman movie and delved a tiny bit into the animated series.
The Reel World 