A Perfect Batman Villain: Baby Doll | Batman the Animated Series

Let's take a look at the obscure Batman the animated series villain, Baby Doll, and talk about how she is a perfect foe for the caped crusader.

#batmantheanimatedseries #batman #btas #babydoll

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
0:22 Baby Doll
1:42 Love Is A Croc
2:27 Baby Doll's Significance
3:37 The Outsider
4:44 The Dark Ending
6:46 Baby Doll's Impact
7:22 Conclusion

[zemox]

Baby Doll is the most tragic original TAS rogue ever created. Alison La Placa does not get enough credit for her performance as Mary Dahl. Whenever she switches to her true self, you can hear how truly broken and miserable she is, and when she uttered her catch phrase "I didn't mean to" one last time, I was brought to tears.

[ireallyneedtherapy]

There’s another tragic element to Baby-Doll’s origin: Her condition was actually treatable

Long story short, it’s revealed in the comics connected to the show. Baby-Doll could’ve gotten a hormone treatment but her parents wanted to keep her appearance of a toddler for the sake of the show and the money made from it. They hid the possibility of the treatment until she was old enough to where it wouldn’t work, then skipped town

[BrennaDraws]

I always loved Baby doll. She's the perfect metaphor for how if you're not able bodied people infantalise you. I'm disabled and obviously I don't have the same condition, but despite being a grown ass adult I've had people talk to me like I'm 5. It's humilating and frustrating.

[Crazylittlehobbit]

The fact that so many of Batman's Villains end up not in prison but an asylum shows that most of them are just broken individuals who just need help.

[joemartin]

Baby doll is a perfect villain as she represents all those child actors we hear about whose lives went downhill after the spotlight went away like Gary Coleman, Danny bonaduce and others.she can also be compared to being a comic book version of Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard.a person wanting so badly for life to be as it was when it seemed everyone loved them

[Warrior-Of-Virtue]

I could imagine her being recruited by the Suicide Squad since her ability to flawlessly impersonate a child could be useful. Or maybe becoming a vigilante who uses herself as bait to hunt down child molesters.

[StrangeCreed]

I'm glad someone else noticed that Mary was practically grinning at that stick of dynamite, and clearly planning to die in the blast. Even in Love is a Croc, we get hints of how trapped in her misery Mary actually is, first beating a man who recognized her as Baby Doll, but then going to her room to watch reruns of herself playing her character. When she's not at murder-suicide levels of unstable, she's still clearly stuck in the past, unable to progress away from it any more than she can age physically.

Something else that deserves mentioning is the comics did add an extra level to her torment; there was a time when her condition could be corrected! If she took some hormone therapy, she could have at least progressed *somewhat* to looking her age; never play pro basketball, but her career might not have stalled so completely. Thanks to her parents wanting to milk her Baby Doll fame, though, they held off on those until it was much too late, then show was cancelled and Miss Dahl was screwed out of a normal life on top of never working in showbiz again.

[Mathee]

I feel like if the creators didn't want Mary Dahl as a villain, due to her not being intimidating enough, I think she could have worked excellent as an ally. I could easily buy her getting her life back on track with the right help and a good social safety net, especially since she's definitely one of the Batman villains who genuinely want to live a normal life. I could imagine her working as a contact of Batman who has extensive knowledge on human biology and/or rare genetic disorders, justified by her studying her own condition

[hentaipanda]

Batman = Lost Childhood
Baby Doll = Lost Adulthood

As with many villain origin episodes, it is a strong favourite of mine . I find it a very powerful one like most of the tragic origins, despite it using a villian, that was hard to use effectively again.

[tajniak]

I love it when someone takes an idea which seems silly and cartoonish and makes it work in a dramatic way. Whou would've guessed that you can tell a story about Batman fighting a little girl and end it on a such a heavy, depressing, character focused scene.

[electrofonickitty]

As a learning disabled person, I remember being infantalized and Baby Doll reminded me. I wanted to get revenge, I hated being LD and I bet Baby Doll was just as frustrated

[thealmightybipper]

Not to her extent, but I'm very similar to Baby Doll in the sense that I'm also an adult that's very small and looks like a child. It is extremely frustrating sometimes. No one takes you seriously. No one wants to date you out of fear of looking like a pedo (actual thing my ex told me). Then, when you do get hit on, you find out they are an actual pedophile who thought you were 12. Some places won't let you in because, "No way that kid's an adult. Her ID must be fake." You get stopped by random people in the parking lot of Walmart trying to "make sure that's really your car. You just don't look old enough to drive. Are you sure you didn't steal that car from your parents? Am I gonna have to call the police on you, little girl?" I was 22....

[zachsands]

You have to imagine it would be hard for her to get a date on top of all that. Filtering out all the people who treat her like a child and the creepos who would date her SPECIFICALLY because she looks like a child, there are a lot of guys who might like her for who she is, but be turned off of pursuing a romantic relationship with her. Not because dating someone who looks like a child disturbs them, but because they know they would be viewed as a pervert by anyone who saw them together.

[everest]

Honestly I wished we got more Babydoll, if not as a villain than as some ally or even a friend of Batman’s. She might not have the same circumstances, but both of them are trapped in a place that was out of their control - Bruce loosing his parents, and Mary’s medical condition.

I could also imagine Babydoll could work as a distraction or even some kind of agent for other people, she is an actress and looks like a child who could get away with snooping through other people’s belongings or asking inconvenient questions. It would be cool to potentially see her somewhat reclaim her own autonomy by using it to her advantage (whether as a hero or a villain).

[WillScarlet]

I've always thought Baby Doll was meant to be the inverse of Bette Davis in 'Baby Jane' - where Jane Hudson was a haggard middle-aged woman who was deluded into seeing herself as her child-star self, Baby Doll was a little girl with the mind of a hardened, embittered older woman.

[wiselioness]

My head canon is that she eventually finds a new career in voice acting, getting roles in big budget animated features, video games, cartoons, anime, and voice overs. She is beloved by fans and receives standing ovations at geek conventions all over the country.

[SpringyGirl]

Batman comforting her really hits the heartstrings

[gdouble]

I'd like to imagine that the reason we don't really see her anymore is because she isn't a villain anymore, that she stopped and accepted that she couldn't be what she was on the inside.

But yeah, maybe not

[superomegaprimemk]

This is a fine example of why Batman the Animated series will stand for likely decades to come as the greatest Super hero show based upon a comic book character and outlive all other verisons, because it was willing to push its dark themes to close as possible to what it acceptable for a child, yet it never once really treats its viewers as idiots as some shows do, instead it simply treats the viewer as a small adult!

I honestly expect a hunderd years from now, there will be many generations discovering the masterpiece of BTAS and looking at the current slate and asking "Why is current stuff, so dull and lifeless?"

[tannerbruning]

Honestly her acting in that Shakespeare performance was pretty good, like, despite her obvious handicap she has great technical skill