• Airdate: November 13, 1992
• Director: Kent Buttersworth
• Writer: Eddie Gorodetsky

     The Joker escapes Arkham on Christmas, riding out a giant, rocket-propelled Christmas tree. As you do. At the Batcave, Robin attempts to talk Batman into relaxing for the holiday and watching It's A Wonderful Life. Once home after a quick patrol, the two finally sit to watch the film, only to find that The Joker has high-jacked Gotham's channels as a 'special' for Batman.
     Batman believes he located where The Joker may be right as the Clown Prince of Crime reveals he has kidnapped Commissioner Gordon, reporter Summer Gleeson and Harvey Bullock, with the intention of killing them at midnight if Batman doesn't arrive to save them.
     Joker blows up the President's Bridge just in time for the soon to arrive passing train. Batman and Robin rescue the passengers and move to the Gotham Observatory, believing The Joker is there. He isn't, but there are a few Joker robots and other fun things to attack the duo. After dealing with a rogue cannon, Batman pinpoints where The Joker may actually be after he accidentally reveals his location.
     Once there, the Dynamic Duo deal with The Joker's henchman and some more murderous toys (all the while 'Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies' plays over the speaker), before catching up with Joker himself. The Joker gives Batman a gift, who opens it even with Robin's objections. The gift turns out to be a pie in the face. Laughing, Joker makes his escaping, attempting to use the trio of hostages as a distraction, though Batman is able to rescue them and apprehend the clown easily.
     Back at home, with It's A Wonderful Life ending, Dick tells Bruce and Alfred that it –is- a wonderful life, with Bruce admitting that it "has its moments." In his cell in Arkham Asylum, The Joker sings Christmas tunes to himself while laughing.

     While there is quite a bit to enjoy about Christmas With The Joker, I have always felt that the episode comes off a bit slight, for lack of a better word. Though even with that feeling once the episode ends, there is still fun and a few specific things to point towards when it comes to positives coming out of it. I should say, there's nothing wrong with an episode like this, sometimes it's great for an episode just to be fun and an enjoyable 22 minutes, and there are a lot of B:TAS episodes that are there for complete entertainment, and my feelings come mostly from, I believe, watching it with the intention of writing about it.

     The positives though are there and, I feel, fantastic. It's an episode that showcases just how important helping others is to Batman. It's Christmas and he still opts to go out and patrol, even being pessimistic in terms of what he will encounter, shown in a great moment where he believes a teen is stealing an elderly woman's belongings, only to have him actually returning it after she had dropped it. Though Bats seems to be really on edge, considering he gets ready to leap into action before fully seeing what is happening. It's also incredibly nice to see how the show, in his production order first appearance, will be handling Robin/Dick Grayson in the series. He's there to ground Bruce and be a voice of reason whenever he might need it. He's also there to make sure he has some semblance of relaxation, bugging Bruce to spend Christmas watching It's A Wonderful Life (with Batman, ever so broodingly, replying that he has never seen it because "I could never get passed the title.").

     The portrayal of The Joker (also making his production order debut) here is also great. Though it would take a while (again, in production order) for the truly fantastic Joker episodes to arrive, thanks to Paul Dini's writing, I do enjoy the way he is presented. One minute he's goofy, with his hand puppet and cardboard audience, and the next he's attempting murder. He plays Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies and uses giant toy soldiers to attack the Dynamic Duo and also sabotages a train to derail and murder a lot of people. It's a great use of both aspects of the Joker, easily and comfortably moving between fun-loving clown and murderous psychopath. The slight escape he has from Batman, pulling out of a coat with fake arms, is also wonderfully executed and in character.

     Though I did call the episode slight in the initial paragraph, I don't want to make it sound like watching it would be a total loss, far from it. There's still a lot to enjoy, with a lot of fun to be had with its characters and set-pieces within its runtime.

Great Lines and Moments
Joker: "Live from Gotham City! The show that nobody wants to see, but everyone will watch! Yes, it's 'Christmas With The Joker.'"
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Summer Gleeson: "My mother is on that train!"
Joker: "Your mother? Well that's different."
"Laughy" The Hand Puppet: "Yeah, it'll be more exciting when it crashes!"
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Robin: "What's our next move?"
Batman: "To be quite honest, I don't know."
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(Batman uses a baseball bat to take out some of Joker's toy airplanes)
Robin: "They don't call you BAT-man for nothing!"