Big Time

Do you guys know what’s awesome? Chemicals. Chemicals are awesome. I loved chemistry in high school. I got a silver medal in the chemistry event of the state Science Olympics. And now I’m sitting here on the internet writing about superhero cartoons and trying to work up the guts to ask a girl to the prom.

Wait no, I’m done with high school.

Chemicals though! Chemicals are so oft responsible for the creation of super-powered beings, it’s a wonder that any of them are legal anywhere. They’re exciting, they’re unpredictable, they’re untested! They are the moistest of lotteries.


The BB episode, Big Time, opens with a seemingly innocent vehicle hauling seemingly innocent bins marked with seemingly innocent biohazard labels. As they drive along, a larger truck cruises up next to them. The driver rolls down his window and gestures towards the other driver with a finger pointed gun-like at him. He jokingly says “stick ’em up” as if you could possibly hear someone in the next car over while driving on a busy city road. The larger trucks pulls forward some more and it’s side opens up where a man shoots a grapple gun thing towards the smaller vehicle, and pulls it into it’s trailer.

How fucked up would that look to someone driving behind them? You fucking know some guy was chatting up his OnStar lady right then.

“Uh…a larger truck appears to have just kidnapped a smaller truck, maybe you should call a cop or something.”

One of the goons lasers open the back door of the smaller truck and they pull the 4 guys out. They throw them from the vehicle and the 4 somehow manage to survive without a single tuck and nary a roll.

Batman thankfully has been eavesdropping on OnStar conversations and has shown up to save the day. He immediately starts beating people up and this boss robber guy has some claws he whips out and starts swiping at Bats with ’em. He also has a terrible, terrible outfit. The delicately packaged barrel of chemicals manages to somehow break open in the scuffle. Bruce, on Terry’s ear piece, informs him that the serastone is perfectly safe as long as you don’t touch it, breath it, or smell it. So, pretty much entirely unsafe.

The robbers recognize the danger, and the head honcho detaches the front half of the trailer, leaving Batman and the chemicals to slide along the road and crash. Another mildly successful evening for Batman.

Later, Terry is talking to Bruce on the phone about the serastone. It’s an advanced growth hormone made my WaynePowers that a rival company, AgriChem wants to get its greedy little hands all over. Terry decides to table this conversation for now though as he looks up and sees that some asshole is hitting on his girlfriend what the fuck.

He goes over the booth (they are at some “future restaurant” with booths) and finds that the offender is an old friend, Charlie Bigalow, aka Big Time. Charlie calls Terry “TT” which apparently stood for Tiny Terry. Terry introduces him to Max and Dana, although Dana seems to already know him and doesn’t seem to like him at all and the creepy hitting on her a few minutes ago probably didn’t help.

Charlie tells Terry that he just got out of jail and wants Terry’s help with a job he lined up through some connections he made on the inside.

Good to know the system works.

He asks Terry if he wants to help him with it and Terry’s reaction is naturally “uh, fucking no.” Charlie whips out some major guilt-tripping here with the whole “oh you were always the lucky one, with your not going to jail and having a job and stuff” and Terry decides to ask Bruce to give Charlie an actual job so he doesn’t have to steal shit. Bruce is not really a fan of this idea, as you would imagine but Terry’s persistence and charm win him over and he gets Charlie a job doing late night data entry.

He calls Charlie to tell him this and when Charlie hangs up, we see that he is with some guy and you can already feel the cahoots floating around the room. Also in the room is the creepy guy from the robbery. The first guy asks if Charlie is ready for the big time and Charlie explains that it’s “his middle name” because Charlie doesn’t know the difference between middle names and nicknames.

That night, Charlie is working hard at his new job, trying to move a big…computer thing. He works all alone in a large room wearing a nice tie for his late night data entry job. They have to look nice for any late night tours that might come through the building. He dropped a punchcard behind his work desk. He asks a guard to help him move the giant thing so he can retrieve it and the guard begrudgingly agrees. After the guard leaves, Charlie grabs a little camera things and takes a picture of the guard’s hand print, for purely legit reasons.

In the Batcave, Terry stumbles upon Bruce doing a little background checking on Charlie. “Get this!” Bruce says, “he was in jail!” Not just in jail though, his cellmate was Richard Armacost who was, and still is, a bigwig at AgriChem. Terry realizes that Charlie has pretty much just played him for a fool and stomps out of the cave, shoving the chair over. Bruce shouts as he leaves, “Yeah thanks I wasn’t gonna sit down or anything, I’m only like 90 million years old!”

Armacost and the robber from earlier, a guy named Karros are giving Charlie the glove they made from the guard’s hand print and telling him to use it to open doors. Charlie soaks these instructions up like a sponge and Karros treats him like he’s about as smart as one. Charlie is a bit pissed at this and lets Armacost know that he wants some fucking respect, he doesn’t care how goofy Karros’s eyes are.

Armacost tells him to chill the fuck out, that they’re just trying to make sure he’s ready for “this business.” Like he’s at a weekend training seminar or something.

They also have the glove in a very fancy case that seems entire necessary and entirely unnecessary at the same time. It’s just a glove, and they’re just kinda throwing it in the case so it seems like the case is rather superfluous. Then again, the glove has to go in something and it would look really dumb being carried around in a grocery sack.

Outside, Terry is waiting for Charlie so he can yell at him about his now obviously scuzzy motives. They argue a bit, Charlie lays on some more guilt tripping, like “oh no poor me and my life, I’m just robbing places so I can be a normal dude with a normal robbing people business.” He tells Terry that he still thinks small, and that he hasn’t changed. No Charlie. It’s you. You’re the one who hasn’t changed. The “have a parent get shot and end up being Batman” justice system works a lot better than the actual one.

Speaking of, it’s gotta be kinda disheartening to be Terry and think that his friend ended up in jail when he didn’t and now his friend is probably gonna be a stupid thug forever and Terry hardly got punished at all and now he’s Batman, but he keeps putting people in jail. Awesome.

That night, Charlie takes out a guard before using his fancy glove-tech to open the door to the lab with the serastone and then opens another door to let in the rest of the robbers, including Karros. Batman arrives with his dramatic entrance and offers the group of hardened criminals a chance to walk away and avoid a fight, as he doesn’t want to have to send Charlie back to the big house already. Though maybe he should’ve moved in to scare off just him a bit earlier, instead of now trying to scare off a large group of people, one of whom gave you a pretty good fight earlier. But that’s just me.

Surprise, surprise, a fight ensues, and while Karros and a couple thugs set their sights on Batman, Charlie determinedly heads for the serastone. Again however, it’s delicate packaging ruptures and Charlie is coated in the stuff.

Karros busts open a big thing of future SOIL that spills out and buries Batman, while they make good their escape. It is a lightish brown that suggests it lacks moisture and there’s none of those little white pellet-y things.

Karros and the robbers try to leave Charlie behind but he jumps on the back of their truck. Batman again sighs at his feeble grip on even just the status quo.

After stopping their vehicle, Karros has decided to yell at Charlie and blame him for the entire thing going wrong. He says that if he doesn’t get his money, he’s gonna pretty much kill him. He doesn’t say it as bluntly, but why dance around the issue? Karros leaves and Charlie feels a sudden pain in his hand. He grabs it and it throbs, suddenly bulging to a much vaster size than is generally recommended for hands.

Then it returns to its normal size.

The next day, Charlie goes to find Terry so he can try to get help from him. He asks Terry to steal the money he needs from Bruce. Terry doesn’t care for the idea, so Charlie tries to sweat him into it.

That doesn’t work either, and Charlie runs off to…find a towel and replenish some electrolytes and stuff.

Terry explains to Max what the deal with Charlie is. Charlie was 18 and Terry was 14. They were running around being little punkass hooligans, throwing rocks through windows and shit. One night Charlie takes Terry to a heist with some other guys and they get busted but since Terry was only 14, he got off light and Charlie got sent to jail for three years. So Terry feels bad for being younger than his dumbass friend.

Elsewhere, Charlie is moaning and turning into something, and it doesn’t look all that great.

At AgriChem, Karros is talking Armacost, complaining about Charlie’s fucking things up during the theft and oh what do ya know Bats is standing there with a tape recorder, ha ha ha. As he gets ready to read them their Miranda rights (gotta keep these arrests on the up and up), Charlie busts into the room but has been turned into this:

thanks to the growth hormone.

Who didn’t see that coming? Anyone? Anyone?

Charlie is pissed at Richie, but Karros jumps in to fight him first, finally giving us a good look at his adorable little outfit.

Charlie punches him aside no problem, and Bats moves to put the brakes on him instead. He leaps onto a table, which Charlie grabs from underneath and slams into the ceiling where it sticks.

It just sticks there.

He goes after Armacost again and his him out on the rainy ledge. Part of the ledge is busted and Armacost falls, but manages to grab onto the railing and hold on despite it being really wet and probably incredibly slippery. There’s some three-way fighting here between Karros, Bats, and Charlie that results in Karros falling off the building, and Charlie almost collapsing before a punch from Bats knocks him out.

Charlie ends up in jail again, and Dana tells Terry she’s glad he didn’t get involved this time. Terry ho-hums at this because he’s Batman.

TELL HER YOU’RE BATMAN GOD I HATE YOU.

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