Batman, Season Three

 

*sigh* And so we arrive at the third season of Batman.  Far and away the worst of Batman’s three seasons, Season Three debuted well after the show’s popularity began to wane.  Bat-mania was dying, but the show itself stubbornly refused to die with it.  They suffered massive budget cuts that reduced their sets to the bare bones.  Even the distinctive two-part episode structure was stripped away, leaving a single half-hour episode per week with each one ending in the flimsiest of cliffhangers. (“Oh, yes, Batman and Robin may have defeated THIS villain, but look over there!  THAT villain is roaming around!!  What trickery is THAT villain up to now?  Tune in to find out in our next episode!”)

El Chapulín Colorado

I’m willing to bet that most of the native English-speakers reading this (all two of them) have absolutely no idea who this guy is, unless they’re Latino and/or grew up around Latino people. (Is Latino even politically correct anymore?  I can’t keep up with this…) El Chapulín Colorado, “the Red Grasshopper”, is the brainchild of Mexican comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaños, a.k.a. Chespirito.  The characters he created—particularly Chapulín Colorado and Chavo del Ocho (dude had a thing for “ch” sounds)—are immensely popular, scoring monster ratings across multiple nations and multiple decades.  He’s popular outside of Spanish-speaking nations too; his shows have been translated into Japanese, Portuguese, French, Russian, and more. 

The one language it hasn’t been translated into?  English.  The DVDs I own don’t even bother to provide English subtitles.  Which is a pain, because that means I have to do the translating myself.* But hey, nowhere in my list of superhero requirements does it say that a superhero needs to speak English, so let’s take a quick look.