In the 1990s and early 2000s, TV was a very different place from what it looks like now. Everyone watched television as it aired, and shows premiered at certain times of year. They had to have a certain number of episodes to fill out a given calendar. Writers couldn’t depend on people catching every episode, so they didn’t try to tell deeper stories–they mostly just supported enough character interaction to keep things interesting, and little more than that. As shows ran long, the writers would have to dig around for more concepts to keep the characters doing something they hadn’t done before–even if a thousand other shows had done it.
One of the tropes that came up all the time in shows with a high school character was plopping them into a ‘home economics’ style class and making them take care of a pretend baby, often represented by a sack of flour or a doll with a gimmick like crying. In fact, I can’t help but imagine that Will Friedle, the actor who voices Terry McGinnis, probably had to do an episode like this on the show he’s best known for, Boy Meets World.
While Batman Beyond is a darker show in general and is more interested in futuristic concepts, the writers still had to fill time and put characters into new situations. Even if a thousand other shows did it.
Batman Beyond: Egg Baby
But somehow, Batman Beyond managed to do it right, and it won an Emmy for it.
The setup is kind of ingenious. So often episodes that employ this trope do so just for comedy. Batman Beyond does that but also uses it to shine a light on who Terry is. Bruce is alerted to a series of heists going on in Gotham, performed by a criminal named Ma Mayhem. With the help of her two bumbling sons–another common trope–Ma Mayhem is stealing specific rubies and leaving everything else behind.
At the other end of the city, in Hamilton Hill High, Terry is failing Family Studies, and has one last chance to rescue his grade: take care of a pretend baby and bring it back in one piece. The sci-fi and superhero trappings of Batman Beyond give it a chance to complicate the idea. This isn’t an inert bag of flour or a simple doll. Instead, it is a computerized, egg-shaped thing with all kinds of sensors. Because the doll is “smart,” Terry can’t simply put it on his bed and jump out the window. They give us all kinds of reasons that he can’t simply pawn it off on someone else.
And so every time Batman and Ma Mayhem come face to face, we get a funhouse mirror comparison of the grouchy, abusive mother of two bumbling adult sons, and the reluctant but determined young person trying his best to get a good grade in school. In one shot, Ma Mayhem is whacking her kids over the head with her purse, and in the next Terry is diving to catch his egg baby before it hits the ground.
This is one of the funniest episodes of Batman Beyond, with some really sharp writing. One of my favorite moments, just before Terry gets the techno egg, goes like this:
Terry: More rubies? What’s she gonna do with them all?
Bruce: Don’t know. But I have a feeling she’s not making slippers.
Terry: Slippers? From Rubies?
Bruce: Before your time. What I need from you–
Terry: It’ll have to wait until tonight. I got to get to class. It’s family studies, and I’m failing.
Bruce: How does someone fail family studies?
There’s a lot to unpack here. The slippers comment is, of course, an allusion to The Wizard of Oz, which is a 100-year-old movie by the time these characters are talking in 2040. By that point, the cultural relevance of the movie may have faded enough that no one remembers it except the old kids.
Bruce is somewhere between 75 and 85 years old at this point, making him a child of the 1960s or 1970s, so it makes sense for him to remember it. It’s a reminder of how old Bruce is and it helps connect the show back to the animated series in a small way.
But then there’s that last line from him. Of all the people in the world, Bruce asking how someone could fail family studies is funny and sad in equal measure. The elderly man’s entire life, from when he was maybe 8 years old, has been defined by the murder of his parents. He’s actively resisted familial connections throughout his life, and the idea of him having a child wouldn’t become part of the cultural consciousness around the character until a few years after this (Batman: Son of the Demon gave him an infant son in 1987, but isn’t considered canonical. Damian Wayne first appeared in 2006).
The great writing goes throughout the whole episode, with even Terry’s classmates getting a chance to be funny–such as Howard falling utterly and completely into the roleplay almost immediately, and Nelson being pretty chilled out about being a “stay at home” husband.
This episode should end up just the same as “Terry’s Friend Dates a Robot,” another episode that depends on a tired sitcom trope. That is to say, tiresome and forgettable. Instead, it ends up being a highlight of the season, and it’s not hard to see why the writing for this episode picked up an Emmy award when it aired in 2001.
