"Totally Schway" Re-Watch: "Dead Man's Hand" & "The Winning Edge"

 Batman Beyond

"Batman Beyond" gives us new takes on classic DC villains with these episodes. And, honestly, the one you would think would be the least successful is actually the most successful. Check it out.

[On Terry's perspective girlfriend, who turns out to be a criminal.]

Terry McGinnis: "This kind of thing ever happen to you?"

Bruce Wayne: "Let me tell you about a woman named Selina Kyle."

Terry's life as Batman is getting in the way of his personal life. It costs him the relationship with his girlfriend Dana who breaks up with him due to his lateness and seeming disinterest when they are together. Terry quickly finds a rebound in Melanie Walker. But, little does Terry know that Melanie is part of the reconfigured Royal Flush Gang.

Love at first wrestling move.

I was a little surprised to see a revamped, futuristic Royal Flush Gang making an appearance on "Batman Beyond." The Royal Flush Gang are kind of forgettable and a little bit of a joke. A gang that model themselves off of playing cards? OK. And I don't really see them as Bat villains. 

I think the episode does a really good job of giving newer viewers the information they need on the Royal Flush Gang and their past. I didn't realize that the Royal Flush Gang were a family of aristocrats that passed this criminal enterprise through the generations. I really liked the bougie air that this leant the group when we got some solo scenes with them. This could be exactly how the Royal Flush Gang acts in the comics, but for some reason I've always just thought of them as goons who were way too involved with their gimmick.

Terry and Dana break up in this episode and it doesn't hit too hard because we don't know a lot about Dana. She's a barely sketched out girlfriend. It makes sense why she dumps Terry. I can't say that I wouldn't do the exact same thing if I were her. Melanie Walker is waiting in the wings to console Terry though. I do have to say, I did think that it was kind of creepy that she was watching all this and waiting to swoop in, but I probably wouldn't have thought that as a teenager. This does feel very true to being a teenager though. You feel like you're so in love with someone, but it can be really easy to move on.

i did appreciate how the episode doesn't try to make it seem like Melanie is not part of the Royal Flush Gang. It isn't played as this huge reveal. You know it from the very start. Though I do find the whole storyline of Melanie fighting against working with the gang and her own morals a little cliche. I kind of wish they had gone in a different direction. Or tried to do something different with it. I have to say I do love the melodramatic cheese of Terry and Melanie meeting in the rain and the electric guitar swelling. It's hilarious.

The King's vendetta against Batman isn't really explained super well. It feels like he's just mad because Batman ended up putting him in jail and putting the kibosh on the gang for a while. I guess that's enough, but the fact that the King is willing to put so much in jeopardy to just to try to get revenge on Batman makes it feel like it should be more? That being said, I did really love the action in this episode. One thing "Batman Beyond" does is really use the architecture of Neo-Gotham to make these actions scenes thrilling and a little more acrobatic than the action scenes from the OG "Batman: The Animated Series."

Grade: B

[as Terry is on his way to find Bane]

Bruce Wayne: "Remember, he was a formidable opponent. Be careful."

Batman: "Come on, he must be a zillion years old. What trouble could an old geezer..."

[Remembers who he's talking to]

Batman: "Never mind."

A variation of the drug Venom has hit the streets of Neo Gotham. It seems like the athletes at Hamilton Hill High School are being targeted as Batman catches them looting an electronic store to get more money for "slappers" after seeing them almost get into a fight at the game. Bruce believes that this may be the work of his old enemy, Bane.

Bruce isn't looking too bad.

Has anyone ever noticed that when they are coming up with names for futuristic street drugs in shows like this that they come up with the absolute dumbest names there are? Like "slappers?" That is so fucking dumb. I get it. They are patches and you slap them on your skin to get the Venom in your system a little bit faster than the old way, but come on, "slappers." That is a terrible name. It's so stupid. I think sometimes simple can be good, but then sometimes there is too simple and this is way too simple. I feel like the writers of this show could do way better than this and I know they can do better. So, for God's sakes, "Batman Beyond" writers, do better!

We get another classic Batman villain making an appearance in this episode with venom and Bane. This is probably the weakest classic Bat villain appearance so far. I don't have an issue with the show revisiting the classic rogues. I think the Mr. Freeze episode is the strongest of the series so far. But the reason why that it was so strong was because it built on what had already been established and pushed it forward. Like, I was hoping that Bane was still going to be formidable somehow but instead he's just some living corpse being kept alive by machines. It felt very expected to me.

The actual villain of the piece is the person taking care of Bane. He's the one that has made this new venom and is the dealer for the students. It all felt really perfunctory to me. It led to one of the weakest action scenes in the series so far. And that was kind of bummer because you can usually count on "Batman Beyond" to at least bring it in the fight department but it just feels like they were fully phoning it in from beginning to end.

It's not the worst episode of I've ever seen, there's just not too much to it. It feels like a spec script that is just here to pad out the season and the thing that is supposed to make it special and different is Bane, but he doesn't. Also, any tension between Dana and Terry from the last episode is completely gone. So, there's that. And I also don't really think we need to talk to much about Terry's mom thinking he's a slap head or whatever you call someone addicted to slappers.

Grade: C-

Next up, new villain Spellbinder appears and Inque makes her return.

What did you all think of these episodes? Do you think the show just needs to focus more on creating original villains for the new Batman? Let me know in the comments.