Remember that seesaw I was talking about last week in regards to watching THE BATMAN? After last week’s episode “ARTIFACTS,” the seesaw for this show was way up. It didn’t last long as the following episode, “SECONDS,” was a major drop-off from the previous installment of the show.

In “SECONDS,” The Batman, Robin, and Batgirl (Yes, the kids are back) face a villain who can manipulate time. Our bad guy of the week is Francis Grey, a former clock maker, who develops the ability to revert time back by twenty seconds during a eighteen year stint in prison. Upon his parole, he uses his ability to carry out the rather clichéd plan of “making the city pay” for what Gotham did to him.

In making Gotham pay, Grey intends to carry out an act of terrorism during Gotham’s New Year’s Eve celebration which will kill thousands of Gothamites.

So what’s wrong with this show? Well for starters, it has Batgirl in Robin in it. And when they’re included in THE BATMAN, you can count on lots of eye-roll inducing dialogue from the two. For example:

Batgirl: “’Robin’ is French for ‘duh.”

And…

Alfred: “Any New Year's resolutions? Master Dick?”
Dick: “I resolve to kick more butt!”

*rolls eyes*

Anyway, the story’s OK at best -- although I really didn’t like the whole altering time premise here. It’s never explained how he can do it, other than he was a clock maker/repairer and it just “happened.” Uh, OK then.

And as stated beforehand, the “make the city pay” storyline is totally tired. I mean, come on! How many times has that been used before?

I will say that the writers did manage to make this Francis Grey character somewhat sympathetic and kinda sorta gave him a reason to do what he’s doing in SECONDS.

Well, I guess as much of a reason one can have for “making the city pay!”