[7.7/10] Silly me! Given the episode’s title, I assumed this was going to be a Royal Flush Gang episode. Instead its an Ace the Bat-Hound episode, one that explores his origin story and plays on most folks’ inherent sympathy for animals in distress. It is cheap, and it is manipulative, and it absolutely worked on me.
I’m not made of stone. Seeing Ace as an adorable little puppy, watching him be abused by the folks who buy and sell him from a shady pound, and seeing him thrown into dogfighting rings is utterly heartbreaking. What valances that out is seeing how Ace is “a survivor” with spunk and grit long before Bruce Wayne showed up and adopted him.
Again, it’s a cheap plyo to show Bruce going to Crime Alley to pay his annual tribute to his parents and have that be where he encounters Ace, being rescued by the pooch from a Jokerz gang attack no less. But it always works on me to see a crusty and/or prickly persona showing tenderness, and watching Bruce cardle the pup in his arms melted me like butter.
“Ace in the Hole” is pretty transparent about what it’s doing. It doesn’t dare to try to make us sympathize with either the venal dog-catcher or the cruel dog-fighting ringleader. Despite the lower stakes nature of their crime, they may very well be the most hateable villains in the DCAU so far. But sometimes it’s fun to have pure good and evil, especially when you’re talking about pets.
What follows is pretty by the numbers. We see Ace chasing after his bauser and getting lost. We see Bruce missing and remembering how he got his beloved hound. We see Terry out trying to find the pup. Things only take a stranger, more Bat-villain-y turn when it turns out the bad guy has been using the same growth hormone as Big TIme to pump up his pugilistic pooches (another reason to watch this show in production order rather than release order).
Terry’s fight with the grotesque, genetically modified bulldog isn’t the most thrilling in the show’s history, but it has the weird factor of the elephantine fido, which gives it some juice. And it’s nice to see Ace get so much personality here, being a determined little dog who busts out of his cage and chases off the bad guy and even arguably helps save Terry. They give the dog the twin, which is cheesy, but the right move under the circumstances.
All-in-all, this is an episode that makes no bones about what it’s doing. It’s a “love thy pet” episode, and as cloying as that could be, seeing Ace’s near-tragic backstory, his chance to strike back at his abuser, and his loving reunion with Bruce has a pathos and charm that not even my cold dead heart could resist.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-06-09T17:49:21Z
[7.7/10] Silly me! Given the episode’s title, I assumed this was going to be a Royal Flush Gang episode. Instead its an Ace the Bat-Hound episode, one that explores his origin story and plays on most folks’ inherent sympathy for animals in distress. It is cheap, and it is manipulative, and it absolutely worked on me.
I’m not made of stone. Seeing Ace as an adorable little puppy, watching him be abused by the folks who buy and sell him from a shady pound, and seeing him thrown into dogfighting rings is utterly heartbreaking. What valances that out is seeing how Ace is “a survivor” with spunk and grit long before Bruce Wayne showed up and adopted him.
Again, it’s a cheap plyo to show Bruce going to Crime Alley to pay his annual tribute to his parents and have that be where he encounters Ace, being rescued by the pooch from a Jokerz gang attack no less. But it always works on me to see a crusty and/or prickly persona showing tenderness, and watching Bruce cardle the pup in his arms melted me like butter.
“Ace in the Hole” is pretty transparent about what it’s doing. It doesn’t dare to try to make us sympathize with either the venal dog-catcher or the cruel dog-fighting ringleader. Despite the lower stakes nature of their crime, they may very well be the most hateable villains in the DCAU so far. But sometimes it’s fun to have pure good and evil, especially when you’re talking about pets.
What follows is pretty by the numbers. We see Ace chasing after his bauser and getting lost. We see Bruce missing and remembering how he got his beloved hound. We see Terry out trying to find the pup. Things only take a stranger, more Bat-villain-y turn when it turns out the bad guy has been using the same growth hormone as Big TIme to pump up his pugilistic pooches (another reason to watch this show in production order rather than release order).
Terry’s fight with the grotesque, genetically modified bulldog isn’t the most thrilling in the show’s history, but it has the weird factor of the elephantine fido, which gives it some juice. And it’s nice to see Ace get so much personality here, being a determined little dog who busts out of his cage and chases off the bad guy and even arguably helps save Terry. They give the dog the twin, which is cheesy, but the right move under the circumstances.
All-in-all, this is an episode that makes no bones about what it’s doing. It’s a “love thy pet” episode, and as cloying as that could be, seeing Ace’s near-tragic backstory, his chance to strike back at his abuser, and his loving reunion with Bruce has a pathos and charm that not even my cold dead heart could resist.