Justice League Unlimited – Episodes – Season 1, Episode 6 – This Little Piggy

It’s musical mayhem when Batman and Zatanna join forces to save a teammate from a fate worse than death.

Review by Bird Boy
Media by Bird Boy, Jim Harvey

"Lulu’s Back In Town"
Written by Al Dubin and Harry Warren

"Am I Blue?"
Written by Grant Clarke and Harry Akst

Voices:
Kevin Conroy as Batman
Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman
Jennifer Hale as Zatanna
Rachel York as Circe
Jack Carter as Sid
Peter Onorati as B’wana Beast
Lorraine Newman as Medusa, Themis (Greek God of Justice)
Chad Einbinder as Attendant
 

When the solicitation for “This Little Piggy” premiered, everyone assumed the “musical mayhem” bit was a misprint (“mystical mayhem” some suggested); the creator of the show even attempted to throw those off the trail by suggesting that Cartoon Network has never been that good with descriptions (“I guess Green Lantern’s new hairdo qualifies as a “bold, new look”). Then, days before airing, it was revealed that there were musical numbers—and it was none other than Batman himself doing one.

Fans were either already laughing at the concept and couldn’t wait to see how it was pulled off or were mortified. I was with the first camp;
I don’t know how anyone could dislike the singing that Batman did at the end, if only because of its sheer “shock” factor at not only hearing Batman singing, but Batman singing well. Andrea Romano was quoted as saying that they had always wanted to do something like this from the very beginning of B:TAS, since Conroy had such an excellent singing voice. As fans found out, she wasn’t kidding. This isn’t to say that there isn’t much of a story elsewhere; after all, the songs lasted under two minutes combined.

Seeing Zatanna again was a treat, considering we hadn’t seen her since her appearance in B:TAS in over a decade ago (unless you include her two [three if you count the wax statue] brief appearances in the webisodes of Gotham
Girls); despite the new character changes (she now uses “real” magic; new voice actress; slightly changed design), she and Bruce still had the same kind of chemistry they had back in the B:TAS episode, which was great to see again. Aside from Etrigan and The Joker, we haven’t seen much of the “old” side of Batman in the show, so seeing him interact with someone from his already established past was very nice.

Moving on to the actual plot: Evil sorceress Circe transforms Wonder Woman into a pig and Batman, Zatanna, and a handful of others (B’wana Beast!) are all in the plan to find “Wonder Pig” and capture Circe and make her change her back. It is a weird plot, yes, but the whole story was pretty much ludicrous to watch from beginning to watch. It did entertain me for the entire twenty-two minutes I watched it (and did so again the other twenty-two minutes again when I re-watched it), so I can’t really say too much bad about it. I’m sure plenty of fans hated the episode for the drastic departure from the serious tone of the show—“Kid Stuff” aside—but it’s hard for me to understand how anyone can have such hatred for a show that was obviously written to be funny. I get the feeling that, more and more, those that are working on this show day and night are doing it more for themselves than the fans—obviously they listen to fan input and do make changes, but I don’t recall reading about any fan that wanted to hear Batman sing—and, as stated above, it was something the crew had wanted to do for awhile.

Paul Dini hasn’t written much in the DC animated universe in the past few years (and with him resigning from WB Animation, it looks like he won’t ever again); but what he has done, are generally light-hearted stories. “Comfort and Joy” with it’s Christmas theme and side-stories with Flash / Humanite,
Lantern / Hawkgirl and Superman / J’onn, and now this story with it’s silly sight gags and the musical numbers (first ones seen since Batman Beyond’s
“Out of the Past”!), you can really tell he was just doing these stories for fun—fans expecting another “Heart of Ice” from his recent scripts will probably be disappointed; for those that enjoy some humor injected into their cartoons, then his last two works will definitely please.

Now I just have to figure out why his Static Shock “Hard as Nails” story was so horrid…