After much searching, I found a post by Allen White that suggested to use a Trap to catch the inner exception.

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/allen_white/archive/2009/06/08/handling-errors-in-powershell.aspx

Turns out the Microsoft.SqlServer.BatchParser, Version=9.0.242.0, was "missing." Apparently it's a 64-bit box, with 32 bit SQL, and I was using the 32 bit powershell. Switching to 64 bit PoSh was the ultimate fix.