As a fan who sent NBC a letter from the future asking them to save the series, I am a bit disappointed as to how I worded that letter. This episode was the perfect season finale. Season finale. The way that the writers brought together many of the story points of the initial arc in this episode, especially the involvement of Dr. Langley, makes it a good place to say "Goodbye for now." The 'back nine' episodes would only get in the way between this well-crafted episode, and the beginning of Season Two, assuming that NBC greenlights a second season of this excellent hour of television.

This episode actually may be part of this series' redemption, in my mind. Here we actually see some emotional depth to Batman, as well as a tragic beginning to Robin. In the previous episodes of the series, there was little to no emotion played in the characters; lunatic goes out doing crazy stuff, endangering people, etc., Batman shows up, beats the stuffing out of them, lunatic goes to jail. When they tried to play on our emotions (The Clayface of Tragedy), it fell flat, and just didn't hit with the force it should have... The cameos of Messrs. Conroy and Hamill were icing on the cake, showing that the people who are making this show have reverence toward the canon of these characters, and the people before who made the Batman and Robin come alive. If the writers keep this up, this series may prove to be decent.

The Evidence, at first glance, is just another procedural police drama with another twist: at the beginning of each episode, viewers are presented all the evidence collected in the case in the episode. That being said, the execution is what makes the show something else. Inspectors Cole and Bishop (played by Rob Estes and Orlando Jones, respectively) have an on-screen chemistry that matches none that I have seen. In addition, the writing is intelligent, witty, and moving. The scene in the pilot with Bishop mourning the passing of his mother, flowing directly into Cole’s “Yo’ Mamma” joke was one of the better scenes on television that I have seen. The Evidence proves to be an excellent program.

With all of the lawyer shows on television, and all of the shows about judges, it was only a matter of time until one of the most famous made-for-TV movies of all time (Twelve Angry Men) was used as the form for a regular series. It was a good series. Twelve different individuals, locked in a room, trying to decide guilt or innocence. Sometimes things are sedate, other times the jurors are at each others' throats. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don't, sometimes they don't get the chance. Everything comes down to twelve of the defendant's peers, and that's all that matters.

Appointment in Crime Alley is one of the more memorable episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, for reasons that casual viewers may dismiss it entirely. The villain of the story is a corrupt industrialist, and his grandiose scheme is quite simple. However, this does not detract at all from the story. It helps to ground the series in reality, as it discusses (quite subtly) how society treats the impoverished. We must remember that these types of 'urban renewal' happen all too often in the United States, accompanied by the proper governmental support for the destruction of the only homes that some people can afford, and have ever known. Some may be entrenched by the idea that the Batman fights lunatics with a thing for spandex, when he fights for all those oppressed.