Recap/Review: Gotham Girls "Precious Birthstones"

Welcome back to Gotham Girls. You know, I've been giving this series more crap than it deserves. While I do wish more time and effort went into this series, I do appreciate that this was pioneering the way for higher-quality Flash animated cartoons on TV.

Then again, the pioneering didn't really begin until Season 2. Let's keep making fun of Season 1.

Then we'll make fun of the pioneering when we get to Season 2.

Today's Gotham Girls has a Simon Says-type game to play as the episode loads. It's pretty darn easy, for one major reason. Nowadays, as I've said, you have to watch Gotham Girls without the original border. This means that things that were supposed to be hidden "behind the black" are now visible for the world to see. Including the solution to every level of this game.

You can't make this up, people.

We open up on an unmasked Catwoman lounging on her bed in her apartment. She's home alone on her birthday, which is just horrible. I mean, can you imagine? Being home alone on your birthday? Not having to go to work and deal with customers on your birthday? Not getting yelled at because how dare you take an entire minute to get to a customer who starts dropping F-bombs at you while sipping his oh-so-precious coffee that you were getting around for him which is why he's complaining in the first place like an ungrateful bast....

Yeah, she's home alone with her cat on her birthday. Could be worse.

After watching a bit of TV, she sees a news story gossiping about some Baroness's party and whether or not she'll wear her fancy diamond necklace (which is apparently encrusted in emeralds, oddly enough). This is on the news in the most crime-ridden city America, where people get murdered and robbed almost nightly. And they're showing this crap on the news? Must be a Fox affiliate.

She suits up and heads out, climbing up the Baroness's hotel to crash the party. On the roof, the interactive portion happens as you decide how to take out the guard. They all work, so it doesn't really matter which one you pick.

Batman has gadgets, Catwoman has random junk.

Whichever way she does it, she knocks out a guard on the roof, kisses him for some unfathomable reason, and infiltrates the building. She goes into some random room, steps on a random squeaky mouse, opens a random drawer, and finds a random pearl necklace.

She steals it, and comes across a random little girl in this darkened room. As little random girls are wont to do, she's crying. Catwoman wants to put her back to bed a la Cindy Lou Who, but the girl starts speaking French, saying something about a "Bijou." Catwoman, recognizes the word to mean "jewel," and has the girl show her around.

"Whatcha doooooooin'?"

French speakers will no doubt know that "bijou" is actually closer in meaning to "small trinket," having come from a root word meaning "finger ring." Also, it's more often used as an adjective than a noun these days, basically meaning "swanky."

Also, I don't actually speak French.

After some more French conversation, Catwoman is led to a safe which she believes contains the  "Jewel of the Empress" necklace as well as some smaller gems. She cracks the safe and finds....  a cat and two kittens. All named "Jewel," I guess.

Catwoman: "They must have left the safe open. You crawled inside and got locked in."

One of my cats does that all the time. Closets, cupboards, the fridge, you name it.

Seen here under an end table in the actual NewtCave.

Catwoman gets the kittens as thanks, and she wishes the little French girl a happy birthday.

"Hey, kid. Ever been a hostage before?"

Review
The main problem is the episode's pacing. There's far too much footage of Catwoman just slinking around. While this would work in something like Batman: The Animated Series, it doesn't work when you consider that it would probably take at least half an hour for your average computer to load this cartoon, 50% of which is just Catwoman sneaking around. But having said that, this installment was surprisingly well-written and it was animated fairly well. Relatively speaking, of course.

All in all, if more webisodes were like this, I could grow to like Gotham Girls.

Next time, we return to Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy to see what shenanigans they get up to this time. See you then.