Seriously, I recently rewatched "Bullet for Bullock," and I was quite surprised that the characters were openly talking about drugs and crackhouses in Gotham.
So many stories, so little time.

1: WB ordered a show for kids, and the producers wrote a show for themselves instead.
2: In original broadcast it actually ran six days a week, so it was so easy to stumble across that it became a huge hit that they couldn't dream of cancelling.
3: Given the steady stream of new episodes, airing a single episode here and there like Never Too Late tended to get lost in the barrage, where if it was limited to one episode per week it would have received a lot more attention for a much longer period of time.
This show basically blitzed us the first season. Episodes were aired in the order they were cleared for broadcast, which resulted in some oddities like two-parters that took a full week to resolve in spite of the 6-day broadcast schedule (the first Catwoman story was broadcast as something like episodes 6 and 12). It took around a full year for the first season to actually finish getting through original broadcast, but the bulk of the first season came out within a span of 2-3 months and was probably very hard to keep up with on the network censor front.
You know what noone tells you about cooking with the Dark Side? The food is really good!

There are several dark episodes, and it was known this show pushed the envelope for what a kids show could show and deal with. It did this surprisingly well and didn't treat 8 year olds like they were mindless drones who can't reason which is why it's still appreciated by adults today.
Flaming doesn't help your point, it engulfs it in a wall of fire no one is going try to go through.

Because the 90s wasn't the nauseating PC world we live in today.

Lol it's pretty tame bud, it's not exactly Cannibal Holocaust or anything. Perfect for kids, not too dumbed-down like most other cartoons but not so deep that they'll be lost, we are talking about a show where Catwoman was turned into a giant cat after all.

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I remember watching this on Cartoon Network right before they switched to TNT. That was the UK version of it i think or the Scandinavian dont remember which one we got at the time.

There were less restrictions on cartoons back then. Its Never Too Late is a tv classic IMO.

Even still, Fox BS&P were very strict on what they could and couldn't do. It wasn't until the show moved to WB were they able to get away with more.

Kids' shows can be dark too. They were in our day.
"Don't forget to bring a towel. Always remember to bring a towel. You wanna get high?"-Towelie

I hated those laser guns in X-Men
But there were some other shows like Exo-Squad where those laser rifles weren't so cheesy. I'll never forget how they lost most of the squad by the time the series was wrapping up, and their main command ship got blown to bits. That show ended on a real sour, sad, depressing, explosive note, but hot dang was it good.
Batman: TAS didn't play around, though. They didn't bother with laser rifles and used more realistic weapons. And oh man the sound effects for the gunfire and explosions in that show were amazing in surround sound.
I'll never forget that episode where Jim Gordon bit a bullet to the chest in that shootout with The Jazzman. He was such a generic villain, an average criminal with a gun. It was that episode that made you realize as an audience member that sometimes just a single bullet no matter who fires it can end a hero in a heartbeat.
The show was really something.

Yeah. All those other 90s cartoons like X-Men had those damn cheesy laser guns.

I think I'm even more impressed that they were still able to keep the guns on the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=eqGup4UGS_A#t=66

New episodes tended to be aired daily, because the first season was around 60 episodes, with reruns on Saturday. The remaining seasons aired both new episodes weekly and on weekends, with a final batch of five left over episodes airing for one week in early September of 1995.
There are old promos for the show online for the first batch of 40 episodes. Pretty neat stuff, and they all say "Catch Batman weekday afternoons"
I wasn't waiting, I was just sitting and breathing. Got a problem with that?

WASN'T IT a saturday morning show?

When it premiered FOX thought it stood a chance in primetime but the ratings just weren't good enough so it was limited to the afternoon timeslot where it was a ratings smash hit.
When theres no more room in Hollywood, remakes shall walk the Earth.

I did watch them religiously and I did understand them.

I'm guessing not all kids reacted as you did and enjoyed the complex plots and layered storytelling. I know I watched it religiously regardless of the villains because I greatly appreciated the filmmakers' approach to the series.
Requiescat in pace, Krystle Papile. I'll always miss you. Justice was finally served.

To me, the series always had good villains, whether they were big names such as the Joker and Two Face or small names like the gangsters and the chain gang group. I liked the contrast between epic stories featuring over-the-top battles with implausible villains and smaller, more personal struggles with more realistic baddies.
That's one reason I still consider Batman: The Animated Series to be the greatest cartoon series ever.
Requiescat in pace, Krystle Papile. I'll always miss you.

Back then I loved Batman for the villains, I didn't care for the main character, hence why most of the episodes were boring at the time.

How did the kids not get bored?
Because it's BATMAN! That's all you need, or all you used to anyway, I don't know about today.

I have no idea. I watched the series back in 1992 and episodes like Never Too Late bored the HELL OUT OF ME. It was always about the big villains for me, I loved those, of course now It's Never Too Late is a masterpiece to me and the big villain episodes bore the hell out of me, the question for me is not how did it get on air but how did it find an audience. How did the kids not get bored? I was hooked because of the art but it was always a huge disappointment to see the episode card and realizing it wasn't going to be Poison Ivy or Catwoman.

I love how they had to get around the censors - it made them have to get very creative. I remember checking our tv guide back in the day and noticing that a Batman cartoon series would be aired. I thought it would be one of those 60s or 70s show and was really looking forward to it. Boy was I in for a treat loved it as a kid and love it now.
http://www.trespasser.nl/misc/pta/pta.pdf

Planes, Trains and Automobiles script

The writers knew how to get around the censors most of the time. If Fox Kids/Kids WB told them they couldn't do something, they'd follow the network's orders to the letter and in the process make what they wanted to do even more horrific. You should hear the story about how they managed to kill Batgirl in 'Over the Edge'.
https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5423577/Bobbydrake2000