The Clock King

Fuck I am exhausted. After PAX all weekend, combined with my inability to sleep much since last Thursday, I’ve ended up way behind in my goals for this damn thing. I wanted to keep a week a head of everything? Yeah, it’s almost Monday right now and I’m just starting to review an episode I watched almost a week ago. And these notes are uh…wow, what the hell.

Let’s see how I do, typing in a state where I sort of space off and go to a magical nowhere land for a while. This should be fun. As a side note, my typing gets really good when I’m super tired. Anyone else experience this phenomenon?

Fuck, ok, shut up about other stuff. I watched The Clock King!


The Clock King is known as the villian who gets the biggest upgrade in awesome from the comic world to the animated world. I mean, check out his comic outfit:

whaaat the shit is that?

Whereas in the animated world, he takes on the look of a dapper gent, with a smile on his face and the whole world in front of him that is not scheduled very well.

The opening scene is totally confusing because it takes place 7 years in the past but they don’t tell you that until later when they announce that the current scene is taking place 7 years later. Temple Fugate (Temple is a pretty awesome name, but I don’t know if I’d name my completely hypothetical child that), is getting on the subway to head to work and then he has to go to a court thing or something. Mayor Hill is on the subway too, but he’s not mayor yet so when you see him you’re thinking “what the hell is the mayor doing riding in the subway? Is this some sort of gesture to the people that although he holds such power, he is still one of them?”

Fugate bitches and moans at Hill for not knowing who is despite riding the same damn subway with him for some very specific amount of time because Fugate, you see, fucking loves time. This is the sort of guy who would fuck a clock, and possibly go through the effort to create a clock for just such a purpose. Wow, what a terrible and disturbing sentence.

Fugate is checking out his schedule for the day, plotted out to the very minute. Somewhere around the 3 o’ clock mark, he is set to brush his teeth. I fucking hate those people who insist they brush their teeth after every meal. In part because they are responsible for those finger teeth brushing products, and thus also responsible for this terrible commercial they had for one of them.

My notes now say “It is apparently May.” Apparently, it is May.

Fugate’s company is getting sued and Hill suggests that Fugate relax so he doesn’t look like the sort of dude who fucks clocks in front of a judge, because judges frown on that sort of thing. He moves his coffee break, and instead takes the beverage to the park along with all his important court documents. As he sits on a bench, a bug flies by uncomfortably.

Some kids are doing what kids do nearby, which is to say being useless fucking assholes and a pox upon our society. They end up fucking over a man’s entire life by causing him to drop his documents, and then a big wind comes and blows them around and as he reaches into a fountain to retrieve them, this fucking dog that looks like Scrappy motherfucking Doo, knocks him into the goddamn fountain. God fuck that dog. Fugate loses the court case and we jump to seven years later.

Fuck is it just me or this review like a million miles long already?

Fugate blames Hill for ruining his life since he told him to move his coffee break. But really he should be blaming the children. Or, the existance of coffee itself. Or whoever made up breaks, or court cases or created the very building blocks upon which our society is based. Fugate decides to take out his anger on Hill while he runs for re-election, and uses all the creativity of an 8-year-old to vandalize a giant poster. I do have to give him props for vandalizing something that huge.

Bruce “In the right spot” Wayne, sees Fugate up on a rooftop using the 8-year-old part of his brain to no doubt giggle in delight. Bruce sprints up a staircase and changes into Batman with a speed surely graced upon him by the gods. As he reaches the rooftop, we see that Fugate has the best glasses ever, and if I knew where to get a pair, I would most assuredly be wearing them at this very moment.

There’s some fighting or something some yelling or something, and Fugate flips over the edge of the roof and accomplishes a down right miraculous landing onto a passing train, in which he manages to not even lose his hat, which must be actually grafted onto his head.

Bats hangs out in the Bruce Wayne mobile, which looks really awkward.

My notes now say “Motherfucker LOVES clocks.” Speaking of which, at this point there have been enough clock puns in this episode to…I dunno, let’s say tick a tock at. That doesn’t make sense, but do any of you care? I hope not.

Uh, ok, so Fugate at some point around here is trying to kill Batman, as villians often do. And this fucker knows Batman. He has a pump to suck all the air out of this vault he got Batman locked into and totally screwed him out of most of the ways he would normally get out. But he uses some money sandbags and blows the door up with this bomb. Back in the subway, Hill is promoting some thing about making the trains run on time. Fugate, in his never-ending plan to make Hill lose the election, has fucked up the trains so they’re not on time. The crowd is amused while also displeased! And then the train does show up about to kill them all.

After the subway incident, Fugate has kidnapped Hill and tied him to the arms of the big clock tower in town, which I imagine, was a feat in and of itself. The threat here is that as the hands come together at 3:15, school lets out and I get the fuck out of there. I mean, they’ll crush Hill, who is tied to the hour hand. My problem with this episode has always been that hands of a clock don’t smoosh together. One goes behind the other. So Hill’s arm and leg on one side might get fucked up pretty bad, but he should live. It’ll suck a lot, don’t get me wrong, and it’ll suck again in another hour and five minutes, but it probably won’t kill you.

I also have to ponder Fugate’s overall plan in this episode. He doesn’t want Hill to get re-elected. So he vandalizes his poster. Then with the train stunt, he attempts to convince the constituents not to vote for Hill, then immediately tries to kill them with the train. Then he’s just gonna kill Hill anyway. Who am I to doubt his methods though?

Batman shows up to do his Batman thing, and everything turns into a battle of clock puns.

“Clean your clock.”
“Matter of time.”

Actually most of my notes just say “MORE CLOCK PUNS GOD.”

There’s an elaborate fight inside the clock tower with all the gears and in the end the whole thing comes tumbling down, which is kind of upsetting because I was hoping for a Back to the Future-esque clock tower stuck at a specific time type thing. I guess I better luck next time. Or just go watch Back to the Future.

As a challenge, I suggest everyone here to try to think of a clock pun that was not in this episode.*

*There aren’t any.

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