Tyger, Tyger

If there’s one thing I know about, it’s probably already been mentioned by this point. But I thought of another thing I am at least passingly familiar with: spelling things with a Y instead of the normal vowel. Good ol’ Y. Sometimes a consonant, sometimes a vowel, sometimes used to make a boy’s name more girly. Where was I going with this.

Tyger, Tyger. That’s not how you spell “tiger.” It’s a really archaeic spelling of it, and the title of this episode is taken from the poem by William Blake. This episode is also hells of weyrd.

The episode starts at a zoo where a security guard is doing his rounds. A tiger growls up at him, and the guard says not to tell him, he just works here! The tiger will need to wryte his grievances on a formal complaint card and turn them in to upper management. “COMPLAINT #1: THIS WHOLE ZOO THING.”

After the guard wanders off, Selina Kyle comes walking out from behind a tree. I guess she goes to zoos at night. She talks to the tiger a bit, when a strange ape man comes at her! What in the…He shoots Selina with a dart, and grabs her as she passes out. The guard comes walking back over. I guess he does his rounds really fast and tells those crazy kids to stop doing it in the zoo!

Except, oh no! It’s an ape-man! The Ape throws the guard into the tiger pit, and makes off with Selina.

Somewhere downtown, Bruce is hanging out waiting for Selina to meet him for a hot date. She’s all kinds of late, so he whips out his sweeeeet cell phone

and makes a call to Alfred. As he’s talking to him, the maitre’d comes out and says, heeeey, Selina called and said she’d be late, because she was gonna swing by the zoo. Bruce wonders who goes to the zoo this late at night, and tells Alfred that he’ll be home…late. Whatever, thinks Alfred, I’m going to bed.

Bruce heads to the zoo, where a couple cops pulled the guard out of the tiger pit. How they knew he was in there? I don’t know! He tells the cops what happens and Bruce runs up all like, hey guys can check out this crime scene, just gonna poke around, heeeeey a dart on the ground, I’ll take that. Thanks!

Meanwhile Selina is tied up at some place with a large skylight. Oh skylight, I do not see good things in your future. OH GOD A GIANT CAT CREATURE IS COMING AT HER! A voice yells at him to stop and a dude with a cane comes walking out. He introduces himself as Emil Dorian and the giant cat is his creation, Tygrus. He keeps referring to Tygrus as “he” even though Tygrus is a hella girly sounding name. Like you got a boy cat and a girl cat and you named them Tyger and Tygrus. Tygrus also only vaguely looks like a cat to me, what with the lack of whiskers and the huge goddamn ears and his outright ferociousness instead of a more subtle, plotting against you ferociousness.

Let’s take a sidebar quick to point out some recent news:

“The Arizona state Senate on Thursday passed a bill making it illegal for a person to “intentionally or knowingly creating a human-animal hybrid.””

If I make one accidentally though, that’s okay right? I guess I didn’t realize this was such an impending threat. I’m gonna go through some other Batman episodes and find more things Arizona should make illegal. Huge open vats of chemicals, cyborgs, any sort of “growth hormone”, science experiments in general, really…

But I dygress.

Emil is talking about how he made this cat creature thing because he loooooooves cats soooooo much, which is kinda strange. I like cats too, but I don’t want them to walk like maaaan. He says his next plan is to turn Selina into a cat! Because she loves cats! Hey ass, how about you go turn yourself into a cat!

Batman, meanwhile is having the dart he found analyzed by Kirk Langstrom, as his previous analysis said it was similar to the man-bat compound. Oh Langstrom recongizes it all right. It was made by that crazy Dorian dude! Lookit this messed up cat-monkey thing he made that I keep in a way too tiny cage!

Batman flies to the Dorian’s island and as he wanders around, a fucked up cat-bird thing swoops down at him! Inside, Batman sighs to himself. This is going to be a goddamned ordeal.

He finds a building and climbs to the top where he finds, oh! That skylight! Skylight, your days are numbered! He gazes down into it when that ape man jumps him! Fuck! He fights him a bit, when Dorian yells up for the Ape guy to bring Batman downstairs. I don’t think he really heard him though, because they’re up really high and there’s all this glass and shit. I mean really. Batman punches Ape guy, gets him a headlock and then just jumps through the skylight with him like that. He just can’t help himself. He saw a skylight, he NEEDED to jump through it.

They crash down near Dorian, who starts blah blah blah-ing at Batman. He just wants to know where Selina is. Dorian shows him…she’s in this enclosure and oh guess what, she’s mostly cat now. Batman looks freaked out and sad. He was gonna tap that. But he’s not into cats! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Emil keeps blabbing about how great it would be to be a cat, which, if you were a housecat? Yeah, I think that’d be an okay life. My cats just sleep and eat all goddamn day. Some sort of cat-human fuckery? No thanks. Batman isn’t really listening to this anyways, as he has grabbed a table and is smashing the glass to the enclosure. Selina runs over there and Batman is like “Heeeey??” and Selina just kinda looks “Whaaa, I was licking myself. Oh Batmaaaaaaan, heeeey…”

Batman demands that he change her back and Tygrus is like, oooooh hey, that is one hot sexy cat lady.

He and Batman start fighting while Dorian quotes poetry until Dorian has an idea. Batman and Tygrus will venture off into the jungle and battle each other there! And whoever wins, gets Catwoman! Sure! Batman thinks how horrible his day has been. Dorian gives Batman a head start, and tells Tygrus to fuck ‘ym up good. Tygrus tears off after Batman who throws some smoke bombs to slow him down.

Back at the ranch, Dorian and Apebutt are gonna give Selina the last dose of the cat stuff. She says she won’t put up a fight, but instead darts off and escapes. Oooooh if only we hadn’t made her as agyle as a cat! This sucks!

In the forest, Batman gets Tygrus tied up to a tree who…starts…talking? This is kinda freaking me out now. Batman leaves him there and heads off to…I dunno. He’s crossing this reeeeaaally rickety bridge when Tygrus, having escaped from the tree, starts attacking him. Batman sighs to himself again. Dude. On a rickety bridge here. C’mon.

During the fyghting, the bridge breaks, surprising no one and the two plummet towards the bottom of the canyon. Batman manages to grab a tree branch mostly with his ribs while falling and when Tygrus tries the same he slips through and continues falling.

As Selina is also venturing through the woods, Batman fynds her. “You’re hurt” she says. “Uh. It’s nothing.” replies Batman. JUST EVERY RIB PUNCTURING BOTH LUNGS AT THE SAME TIME. Interrupting the heartfelt reunion is Tygrus, who survived the plummet to the bottom of that pit, by landing on all fours. Catwoman pleads with him not hurt Batman and Tygrus is like “but whyyyyyyy, I wannnaaaaa bone yoooouuu.” She’s like, I ain’t gon’ bone no cat that be killing Batman! Duh! Tygrus realyzes that this makes sense, but he’s still got the hots for Catwoman, so he storms off into the jungle.

He goes back to Dorian who is super angry, and slaps Tygrus across the face. Why you gotta make me hit you, boy!

Batman storms in, demanding the antigen to turn Selina back to normal. He tries to get Tygrus to side with him, but he’s lyke, I caaaaan’t. He’s my daaaaaad. Batman sighs once more. THIS OLD GEM. YOUR DAD. GREAT. Dorian decides to try to shoot Catwoman and this upsets Tygrus quite a bit. He starts going crazy and smashing shit and a fire starts and what the fuuuuuck. Batman is like, we gotta cheese it, and he and Selina start dragging the unconcious ape guy out of the building. They get outside and the building explodes. Are they…ys Tygrus dead? NO! Here he comes carrying Dorian! A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!

Batman is gonna have to load all these schmucks into this batplane though now and dammit, he was gonna get laid but now his lady friend is CAT and he has all these damn errands to run, what the hell…

Selina freaks out. The antigen! Oh goddammit, I am gonna be stuck as a cat for freakin’ ever! Tygrus asks her to stay on the island with him, being cats and doing cat stuff. She turns him down, and he hands her the antigen. She asks him to come back to Gotham and he’s like, nope. Which really, is probably for the best.

Batman flies off in his plane, whyle quoting that poem again. But the conversation afterwards probably went something like:

“So Selina, you think after I give you that antigen…”

“. . .”

“You think that tail is gonna fall off, or get sucked back into your body?”