How About That Thing?

Well folks, Valentine’s Day is just five days away. And what better way to embrace the holiday then to recounting the story of a proto-incel control freak obsessed with a woman to the point of slapping a mind control device onto her head?

SIDE NOTE: I may still be in the process of unlearning everything about love and relationships the boomers and their standup comedy taught me over the years.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love Batman: The Animated Series. If for no other reason, then because it took silly D-list villains that spouted cringeworthy puns and committed equally silly crimes, and made them into legends. They took Mr. Freeze: a tacky diamond thief with a freeze gun, and turned him into the most tragic antivillain I think I’d ever seen at the time. They took The Riddler, whose existence alone is the reason the term “Riddler syndrome” exists in comics to this very day, and actually made him interesting. And, of course, there’s this guy right here.

This man is Jervis Tetsch. Better known to Batman fans as The Mad Hatter. In the silver age of comics, as well as that 1960s Batman TV show that inspired “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” over on SNL, he was really nothing but a glorified hat thief. But then the 90s happened, and good lord did things take a turn for the creepy.

Instead of having a silly obsession with hats that puts my own to shame, Jervis Tetsch is now a obsessive-compulsive proto-incel who is obsessed with Alice in Wonderland. Which sounds dumber when you hear it out loud, but god damn does Bruce Tim and company know how to turn chicken shit into chicken salad.

In his debut episode, conveniently titled “Mad as a Hatter”, we see right out the gate that Tetsch is obsessed with mind control. He’s also shy, socially awkward, passive, and absolutely obsessed with a secretary by the name of Alice.

He frequently finds himself debating whether or not he should use his mind control tech on Alice in order to make her his. And in the beginning, he talks himself out of it, realizing that she’d basically be nothing but a mindless puppet. Also, her boyfriend ends up needing a hiatus from their relationship, which presents ol’ Jervy-boy with the ultimate opportunity to slide in and steal the girl.

And thus, we get this version of Jervis Tetsch.

They say clothes make the man, and dressing up like this seems to fill the guy with confidence. This, and having enough mind control cards to fill a Magic the Gathering deck inserted into the brains of every rando who gives him guff, or says he doesn’t have a reservation, or who says his hat looks stupid, and so on. Admittedly, the top hat is a bit much, but he wouldn’t be a mad hatter if he didn’t have a hat, right?

After a night on the town, Alice returns home to find her boyfriend ready to apologize. And to propose.

Finding out that he’d spent all that time and effort on the best date ever, only for the girl to run back into the arms of the jerk who dumped her is enough to piss Jervis off to the point of no return. And so, he implants his mind control card into Alice’s head. And because he anticipates Batman finding his way onto the case, he gets himself some “hired help”.

Batman’s first challenge ends up being these two dudes: the walrus and the carpenter. [INSERT KEVIN SMITH JOKE HERE]

After freeing them from The Mad Hatter’s devices, he tracks down Jervis Tetsch, who at this point has pretty much abandoned any hope of normality at this point and has become The Mad Hatter. Even going as far as to quote Alice in Wonderland at him every chance he gets.

“Twinkle twinkle, little bat. How I wonder what you’re at.”

I do have to wonder how on Earth MH was able to set up things like this maze of cards in such little time, but whatever. Oh, and we’re greeted by more mind-controlled goons. Including this.

It becomes apparent that if Mad Hatter tells his goons to attack Batman, they’ll leave anyone else in the room alone. So all it takes is freeing one guy (in this case, Alice’s boyfriend), an explaining that all you need to do is yank that card out from behind their ear or wherever.

Batman saves the day, Alice is reunited with her boyfriend, and Jervis Tetsch is crushed under a chandelier.

“Would not, could not. Would not, could not. Could not join the dance.”

I have to say, “Mad as a Hatter” is one of my favorite episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. As I said above, it took a lame villain from the lamest Batman series ever, and made him into this creepy, Wonderland obsessed proto-incel that just can’t take the hint that this one specific woman is out of his reach. A more logical person would take the hint, and move on. There’s plenty of Alices out there in the world. And if her name ends up being something like Veronica, or Debbie, then fine. Just mention roleplaying is your kink, and you’ve always wanted to railroad Alice from Alice in Wonderland. Sure, it sounds weird when I say it out loud, but seeing the alternative play out like it did here, and knowing we live in a world where giant toad monsters eating power rangers counts as a fetish, then surely it can’t be THAT weird. Right?

All I know is that this episode cuts deep for me personally. Largely because, as embarrassing as it is to admit, I was probably just one or two steps away from being a socially awkward incel more or less like this.

I know all about taking a girl out on extravagant dates in an attempt to wow her, only for her to run off and hook back up with her ex-boyfriend. It’s soul crushing, it’s infuriating, and it makes you wonder why you even bothered in the first place.

So in a way… Well, I don’t want to say I relate to Tetsch. Or even sympathize with Tetsch, for that matter. But I can understand how that sort of bullshit can make a man snap.

Especially because I’m visually impaired. I won’t bore you with a rant, but let’s just say us impaireds don’t exactly get first pics when it comes to the dating game. It was already hard enough in a day and age where the standard requirements were “must have job, car, and place of your own.” You have no idea how hard it is finding a job when you’re impaired. Dude looks at you for one second, notices the obvious defect, and the rest of the interview is just formality. So no job means no money, and therefore, no place of your own. Also, you really don’t want a guy who’s blind in one eye, and near sided in the other to drive, so no car, either.

There will always be that stuck up bitch who sets her standards way too high, and possesses weird turn-offs like men who use the turn signal, but the dating game is especially unfair when you’re impaired. That, and the fact my generation adopted ghosting at some point towards the end of my dating years really didn’t help, either. It’s the kind of thing that makes a man frustrated with the game, and with life. So much so that you might actually find yourself wishing for a handful of mind control cards.

Somehow, though, my moral compass stayed on magnetic north. I realized that a mind-controlled puppet was not the way to go. If I wanted that, I might as well have just bought one of those “male masturbation aids” that looks like a headless torso in a maid outfit or whatever with the back of the skirt hiked up all the way. Not going to lie, I did think about buying one of those at one point or another in those dating years… But then I saw the price tags most of those went for. I did eventually find a decent job, but even then, it wasn’t worth it. Also, there’s just something about humping a headless mannequin that’s just… Awkward. Possibly even sad. But I digress.

The Mad Hatter, meanwhile, would appear in other episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. Unfortunately, his character wouldn’t quite have the same oomph it had in his debut. He mostly just became the go-to villain whenever they needed a guy who specialized in mind control of any sort. Not to mention they’d change his look entirely in season 4 (AKA, the red sky years) to something that I just flat out hated. But “Mad as a Hatter” is definitely an episode that left an imprint on my mind that I’ll never forget.