Having run out of Batman Beyond episodes with funny titles, we’re moving on to an episode that is just funny, and has resulted in my writing “baby” more times than I am really comfortable with. And it puts forth such parallels in parenting that it perplexes the people in a way most preposterous. Don’t bother thinking about what I mean there, I just felt like doing that.
THE EGGBABY!
The episode opens with a terrible trio of hideous looking people. Not an attractive cell in the entire bunch. The gigantic mother is wearing an outfit that at this point, must be centuries out of date. One son looks like the type of guy you would avoid in the movie Deliverance; the other, voiced by Andy Dick, looks like the kind of guy you would like the Critic to beat the shit out of. They bust into some rich people’s house and get the rapidly sweating butler to show them where the safe is. The younger, Dicker son looks into blowing it up and instructs them to put on their goggles, even though his normal glasses or whatever, pretty much already seem to be goggles.
They steal a ruby ring, and the butler reports it, but adds an extra 20 thousand creds for himself. Would you have stolen more or less? Probably more. Let’s face it, we’re all scum.
Bruce is discussing the incident with Terry and we learn that Fatty McHorrible is actually “Ma Mayhem” named during, as Bruce puts it, The Golden Age of Alliteration. Or, as the Penguin would refer to it: Heaven. He mentions a string of robberies involving rubies and Terry asks what she might plan on doing with them. Bruce throws out the possibility of her making slippers, but Terry can’t follow the yellow brick road to that reference.
Terry scampers off to Family Studies, which he is failing, and which I would likely be failing too, simply due to an overwhelming apathy towards the subject. For example, before the whole eggbaby assignment is passed out, the teacher asks who all intends to be a parent someday, and everyone raises their hand. See? I would not raise my hand. That should mean that I get out of the assignment. It’s like saying I want an abortion. Alternatively, I should be able to put the thing up for adoption.
On top of that, I have a little brother who is 12 years younger than me. I would already have a better idea than most others in the class what it takes to raise a kid. It means you have to ride your bike to the KMart at 8:30 at night to get diapers for the thing, and everyone looks at you funny because you’re a 12-year-old buying diapers. Which is another one of the huge problems with the eggbaby assignment. Yeah sure, you have to take care of it, just like a kid, but it doesn’t cost you like a million goddamn dollars.
Anyway.
Terry gets teamed up with Blade, who is a huge walking she-bitch, and Dana ends up with Howard, mirroring the real-life marriage of Paul Dini and his remarkably gorgeous wife, Misty. Though this brings up another problem with the Eggbaby thing, your partner is randomly assigned. Just like in real life!
That night, Terry prepares for his night on the town by eating a nutritious tomato sandwich:
Blade, however, decides to dump the eggbaby off with Terry, who is thus forced to take the thing for a ride in the Batmobile without the proper child-safety seat. As he encounters the family forbidden from beauty, the baby gets upset at the sound of gunfire, and Bruce is alerted to its presence. Angry at the possibility that Terry knocked up some broad without him knowing about, Bruce asks Terry if he has anything to tell him.
Terry attempts to simultaneously fight and care for a baby. He sheilds the baby from gunshots and in the manner of a panicked 14-year-old, sets the thing in a dumpster. He’s not back at the fighting for more than five minutes when it’s time for the late night garbage collection. As opposed to the usual 6 in the morning garbage collection. It’s the wave of the future.
The next day, all the other couples are coddling their wobbly children. Howard, in particular, is loving this baby stuff. He’s doing all the things my various fathers never did, like not drinking. Dana attempts to take over, but Terry can’t get Blade to even touch their fake child, and demands a divorce which would result in the least enthusiastic custody battle ever.
“I don’t want it, you take it.”
“I can’t take it, I’m Batman.”
Back in the cave, Terry can’t even get Bruce to take over while he zips around town, beating up the very goons Bruce sends him to beat. Ace takes a lick, and develops a taste for infant which can only end in disaster for the local hospitals.
Terry heads off and stows the baby in a something or other near a something other, and asks the baby to not wake up. Despite the fact that there will likely be gunfire. In the future, babies are just used to gunfire, I guess.
Inside a fancy clothing store, the Fat-Fam is rounding up the last of their ruby collection when Terry busts in on them, and we have what looks to be another Question reference:
Terry is then knocked into his one weakness, giant shoes.
He chases the family outside, where they have taken off in their future El Camino, with OH FUCKING CRAP, the baby in the backseat…thing.
Terry is going totally nutter butters at the prospect of having to take Family Studies again, and makes with the baby chase post-haste. Bruce makes a tasteless omelet joke, how dare he! And the Household of Horrors have discovered the baby in their midst. Andy O’Dickerson pokes at it, and just keeps poking at it.
Old Mother Blubber asks the fatter son to dispose of the egg and he moves to drop it out the window, which is what I do to dispose of things as well. Outside my window right now is just a huge pile of crap I have decided I don’t want. Terry luckily catches it just in time, and stows the child in his bat-pack.
The Fatasses of Fatville have once again escaped in their El Camino and the mother’s unpredictable driving is making the boys sick to their stomach. She mentions carrying on the family business which at this point seems to be puking. Along with the obvious investment they have in looking completely repulsive.
Terry ends up getting the Dick son to blast the clothes right off the fat son, and I’ve decided to start a rival puking business, as Terry punches Ol’ Dickey and I resist making another Jon Lovitz crack.
Frau the Foul takes a crack at Terry with her purse and he slices it off with his Batarang. As she plummets toward the ground, he catches her with his batrope. He was however, not ready for that jelly and the paunchy lady nearly pulls him down with her.
Back in class, the teacher is telling everyone what shitty parents they would be, and it seems none of them opted to just leave the baby in a basket in front of a church. In fact, we find that the best parent is Terry. Because children love action and adventure and gunshots and batmobiles. What child wouldn’t? Dana gives Terry the hey hey ho ho eyes and Terry makes a note to get her on the pill. The rest of the class ooohs like a Saved by the Bell audience.
Terry and Dana sitting in a tree, R-E-P-R-O-D-U-C-I-N-G.
Doesn’t really roll off the tongue.
One Response to The Eggbaby