Hidden Agenda

What makes a person smart? Test scores? Common sense?

Is it short pink hair that says to the world “I am independent, bold, and defiant. Do not get fresh with me yo.”?

Allow me to also pose this question:

Which one makes you want to punch the person in the head? And is it really smart to make people want to punch you in the head?

I’m sorry that ended up being multiple questions.

Today’s episode makes us ponder those questions. From Batman Beyond, the episode is Hidden Agenda.


We kick things off with a bald guy trying to make a train. Which isn’t really a train, it’s some sort of thing that rises up and then maybe it does more train-esque things, but it does get very high, which is good for when you need people to fall out of things. He barely makes it, only to find the car full of Jokerz. Those ruffians, lead by this asshole Terminal, decide to terrorize the kindly bald man by spray painting his nice suit.

Then they dump out a bunch of chompy teeth that are smarter than they look because they apparently know right where the dude is. They’re also very slow though. So the guy has plenty of time to panic, and the Jokerz have plenty of time to leave, because Batman has just arrived on the scene. I’m not even sure why the Jokerz were in that train car by themselves; perhaps they were having a club meeting of sorts.

Baldy has scooted his way towards the open door with the ground holding its open arms out to him below, waiting for him to splat down into them. As he falls though, Batman swoops in with his classic “grapple something and swing down to catch the guy.” In the time all that took, the Jokerz scampered away. Terry says what anyone would say in that situation: “Slaggit!”

The Jokerz are walking across a roof when the pudgy black Joker decides to not listen to everything Terminal says, so Terminal shoves him off the roof. He catches some scaffolding, but I think from now on he won’t say disagreeable stuff, or he will only say it when he’s on less perilous ground.

At school, the GAT scores have come in. I don’t know what GAT stands for. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure what SAT stands for. Or ACT. I think I probably knew in high school, but stopped caring immediately after I got my scores. I remembered the scores though, because how else would I rub them in my older brother’s face?

Max is checking out her perfect 2400 and being all smug in that “oh gosh it’s no big deal” type of way. It’s really annoying. Excuse me I need to find like a huge fucking knitting needle to cram ferociously into your ego. Terry’s score on the other hand is “incomplete” which will look great on a college application.

Not that he’ll ever go to college.

The other students are checking out their scores and Carter Wilson is pleased with his 2391. When he sees that Max beat him though, he’s a little, well…upset. Max struts on by with Terry and Dana, explaining to them her computer program she just made to help her figure out who Batman is. Terry looks obviously nervous, intimidated by Max’s determination and completely insane computer program.

Carter, in his house, is explaining to his haggard bitch of a mom that he got the second highest score in school.

Doris O’Wrinkleskin is yelling at him for this horrible error and refers to Carter as the “winning loser.” Which sounds more like there’s some sort of loser competition and he won it, but a loser competition would be trying to determine who was the best at losing but if you win that competition than obviously you’re terrible at losing and whoa there goes my brain.

Unable to deal with his mother’s, um, let’s call it encouragement, Carter decides to fuck up the GAT scores and throws on a little makeup. Or, a lot of makeup. And a wig. Because you see…Carter is Terminal.

He heads into the school where a floor-scrubbing robot is hard at work. Terminal does a little hacking when he stumbles upon the news that Max is going to get valedictorian or something. He is angered! Furious! And he kicks the vid-screen! Which is glass, despite this being the future.

The next morning, Terry, Dana, and Max are checking out the damage the Jokerz did to the school. They all open their surprisingly empty lockers and a pie flies out of Max’s! It was an explode-y type pie though, so it was more threatening than delicious. It wasn’t a hot apple pie popping out on a plate with a side of vanilla ice cream. Oh god that’s so good.

Terry suggests that instead of using that program to hunt down Batman, she should use it to figure out who the Jokerz are. Or, who Terminal is? I don’t remember how they had decided it was just one Joker. Max decides that maybe this is a good idea and goes to change up her program. She stays at the school pretty late, and the Jokerz have decided that now would be a good time to show up and take her out, and I’m not talkin’ about going to ball games. God sometimes I make the worst jokes ever.

Three of Jokerz are creating what seems to be a distraction outside and Batman gives them a good chasing. He finally stops them and notices that one of them has Max’s student ID card on a string around his neck.

How dumb is that? “I stole this from someone. It has their picture and name on it, I am going to have it dangle in plain site around my neck.”

Inside the school, Terminal is laughing ominously and generally freaking Max out. She’s about to be cornered by three janitor robots which seem to be the easiest things to outrun and outmaneuver ever, but she just stands there going “uuuh uuuh” until Batman swoops in and saves her ass.

Later Terry sees her and tells her she’s got to stop that program because that’s what the Jokerz be all pissed about. She’s about to shut down the program by saying “Hey computer stop it” when the computer first says “whoa hey wait I got something.” Cartoon computers are always so silly. You talk to them, they talk to you, and then, as we also see in this scene, they love to print out results instead of displaying them on the screen. It is my dream to someday own a computer that does all these things.

The computer prints out a list of students who could possibly be leading double lives and on the top of that list is…TERRY MCGINNIS.

Max takes this as irrefutable evidence that one of her best friends is trying to kill her. And why wouldn’t she! He’s at the top of the list! It certainly couldn’t have been anyone else on the list. She’s totally pissed at him then, for no good goddamn reason aside from her stupid stupidness. She sends Terry a message telling him to meet her someplace or she’ll blow his….

secret wide open.

Dang.

She heads to the meeting spot, and wouldn’t ya know it, that group of Jokerz shows up again. She calls Terminal “Terry” and naturally he has no goddamn idea what she’s talking about. Terry is actually at home but gets Max’s e-mail and runs off to the meeting spot under the impression that she knows he’s Batman.

Terminal is yelling at Max about GAT scores and she still isn’t smart enough to guess that it might be the guy she beat out by 9 points, when Batman shows up to save her ass. And then that dumb broad decides that oh ho she’ll do some fighting too, which is always the best way to get your ass killed and you don’t have a goddamn suit with everything you could possibly ever need in it. Batman saves her ass again and Terminal gets knocked into a fountain where his make up washes off and everyone sees that it’s Carter.

At school the next day, folks are yucking it up over his criminal activities and suggest that he’ll be valedictorian at juvy ha ha ha. I’m pretty sure people at juvy don’t care about grades.

Max and Terry are talking about stuff, and Max informs him that Carter wasn’t even on her list. But Terry was, she tells him. And then she makes it clear that she thinks he’s Batman, because of that list, and Terry with his “crap you caught me” look gives away the fact that he indeed is Batman.

Terry.

You dumbfuck.

DENY IT.

Who fucking cares if you were on her precious list? Carter wasn’t even on it, so it obviously doesn’t work! Say that to her! Don’t say “oh gosh ya wanna see my batarangs?”

Max insists she can be an asset to Terry and when Dana comes in yellin’ at him, Max gets her off his case. Of course, that problem would’ve been solved a long time ago if Terry had just told Dana he was Batman, for fuck’s sake.

The point of all this is that no one is smart ever ever ever.

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