You don't want to hurt the boy, Harvey

Bugger me, it's cold.

(NB: Do not actually bugger author)

We've been looking at Romeo and Juliet in depth today which has me thinking about dualisms and Harvey Dent. The best Harvey Dent ever is the one in the Batman animated series (which to me is some of the most definitively tremendous Batman ever made), especially his early appearances pre-transformation where we really got to like the character and ever-so-slowly see his darker side emerging. The two-part transformation episode is the series' absolute best for me, with his fiancee's concern over his personality shift and the psychotherapist's realisation of what he's capable of before Two Face is unleashed being wonderfully and traditionally tragic stuff. They went in a similar direction (the tragic fallen hero) with Aaron Eckhart's Dent in The Dark Knight, although the time restraints in a film already stuffed to the gills meant they couldn't develop the concept of his pre-transformation duality and his anger problems ('Bad Harvey' in the cartoon) quite as well as the character deserved. Still, it's ace stuff.