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!”)

There were A LOT of changes made between Seasons Two and Three, but let’s start with the one change I know my readers would be dying for me to get to if I had any readers.

 

Even while the show’s budget and episode length were being slashed, the producers thought it would be a good idea to bring some fresh blood to the show, and so Yvonne Craig was cast as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl.  I remember being really cheesed off at Batgirl when I saw her for the first time.  I felt like she messed up the established dynamic between Batman and Robin.  Plus, she never does anything aside from get kidnapped and frustrate the “real” heroes.  She doesn’t even get to punch people; the network wouldn’t allow a woman to throw a punch, so she got stuck doing high kicks and throwing stuff around while Mrs. Emma Peel was busy slugging every crook in sight.

 

I hope that’s an ABC executive she’s beating up.

But now that I’ve watched the series through several times and have a pretty decent understanding of what went on behind the scenes, I can better explain why I felt that way.  The original plan was to give Batgirl her own half-hour program, which would air right before Batman.  When the pilot failed to gain any steam, she was simply added into Batman proper, but the show could barely support the established characters anymore let alone a newcomer.  Poor Batgirl was never given anything more than Robin’s role as Designated Kidnap Victim and an annoying theme song with hideously sexist lyrics.  (“Or are you a girl with a tender warm embrace?/Yeah, whose baby are you?” #%&*&@#!!#*&%*#&!!!!) So the hate I felt for her as a younger Bat-fan is no longer there.  Now I see her for what she is—a desperate attempt at ratings who never got a fair shake.

 

Or a decent mode of transportation.  At least she isn’t Alfred’s niece. 

Meanwhile, Aunt Harriet’s role is greatly reduced this season, but apparently that’s because the actress was ill at the time (she died in 1969).  So don’t you dare be happy about it.  She only appears in two episodes in very brief cameos, which Robin lampshades at one point with the line “Holy missing relatives.”  So nothing to say on that front.

Also, like I mentioned earlier, the show was cut from two half-hour episodes a week to just one.  There are a few multi-part episodes here, but that’s not really saying much.  In “The Sport of Penguins/A Horse of Another Color”—Season Three’s first attempt at a two-parter—we get this as our cliffhanger.

 

Oh my Kirby BATMAN IS ANSWERING THE BATPHONE.  THAT IS… something we have seen in every episode… ever… is Lost in Space still on?  Because I’m gonna go watch that.  And then the second part doesn’t even bother to recap anything we might have missed from the first part, not even the death trap.  Obviously that’s because there was no death trap, but still, the least they could have done was pretended like they cared enough to fill us in.

Another major change they made was to the sets.  I know I made fun of the backdrops and stuff in my review of Batman: The Movie, but at least they HAD backdrops.  At this point, we’re down to empty black walls with a few appropriate set pieces propped up here and there.

 

They’re supposed to be on the deck of a cruise ship, if you couldn’t tell.  I’ve seen college plays with better sets than this.  Argh.

Generally speaking, the Rogues Gallery is the weakest it has ever been, with Egghead being reduced to a whiny stooge for a new villainess and Frank Gorshin returning as the Riddler for all of one episode.  Also, like with Season Two, there’s a whole slew of new villains.  Unlike with Season Two, most of the new faces seem to be of the female persuasion.  I’m… not really sure what to make of that, but anyway.

I’d like to say that the Siren, played by future soap star Joan Collins, is a good villainess but she really isn’t.  The fact is, she’s the third villainess we’ve had with the power to control men’s minds (Marsha and Black Widow being the other two), so it’s clear the writers were fresh out of ideas.  I still really enjoy her—she’s one of just two newbies who come close to recapturing the fun of the previous two seasons—but to say that she’s actually any good is a bit of a stretch.  In any event, she’s better than Black Widow.

 

Plus, I’m kind of a sucker for Greek and Roman mythology stuff.

Lola Lasagne (nee Lulu Schultz) makes about as much sense as her name.  First, that is not the way you spell lasagna.  Second, she claims to have been married to a South American playboy, but her surname is supposed to be Italian, so how does that…?  Never mind.  The point is… well, there is no point.  This character only appears in a team-up with Penguin early in the season, and she does absolutely nothing that a random, non-villain character or Penguin himself couldn’t have done.  I’m guessing she was only here so Ethel Merman could have a guest-starring role, but they don’t even let her sing, so what was the point of that?

One of the few new male villains to show up is Louie the Lilac, who is played by Milton Berle.  Unfortunately, Berle plays the part so seriously I have to wonder if he walked onto the wrong set and nobody bothered to correct him.  Louie wants to take over the world by cornering the flower market… somehow… and considering Batgirl was able to pwn him with mildew spray, he appears to be part lilac himself.  So why they didn’t just use Poison Ivy instead of some generic yet flower-themed gangster-type character is anyone’s guess.  Then again, Poison Ivy would have been the fourth man-eater to show up, so maybe her absence is a good thing.

The first time I saw Olga, Queen of the Cossacks, I thought two things.  One: “That is not Olga.  That is Zelda the Great from Season One.”

 

Two: “How dare she ruin Egghead!” Yeah, remember how I said Egghead got turned into a whiny stooge?  It’s because he fell in love with Olga.  And now his only Season Three appearances revolve around trying to steal enough loot for a dowry for Olga.  It’s clear Vincent Price is still giving the role his all, but when he begins every episode by trailing Olga on a donkey, it’s kinda hard for even him to escape with his dignity intact.

No matter how many times I see Olga, I will still think these things, but once I learned her backstory, they don’t bother me anymore.  According to Egghead, Olga isn’t really the queen of anything; she’s a delusional ex-dishwasher who thinks she’s the Cossack Queen.  As such, she also believes that she should be allowed to have up to four husbands (which Egghead is totally cool with it as long as he is one of them).  The woman is so completely and gleefully off her nut that King Tut looks sane by comparison, and she is FLIPPING AWESOME.  In fact, why hasn’t she appeared in the comics yet?  I demand a miniseries exploring this woman’s origin post-haste!

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our next pair of villains, Lord Marmaduke Ffogg and Lady Penelope Peasoup, whose only schtick is that they are British.  Yep.  That’s it.  Although I do have to give them props for having the most adorable death bee ever born.

 

 

Speaking as someone who is terrified of insects, I WANT ONE.  I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine, and he shall be my Squishy.  …Sorry.  That was wrong.  That bee is the queen.  I shall call her Squishy and she shall be mine…

Eartha Kitt’s Catwoman, while worlds away from Julie Newmar’s version in some respects (e.g. she doesn’t toy with Batman as much), is also fairly similar to the way Catwoman was initially portrayed in Season One.  Specifically, she has no desire whatsoever to go straight, and she certainly isn’t in love with Batman.  She is pure evil, plain and simple.  It’s a wonderful counterpoint to all of the insipid females who started crushing on Batman at the drop of a cowl, and I’d be very satisfied by the change if it wasn’t borne of blatant racism. (Kitt was black, and this was still a good year or two before the Kirk/Uhura kiss on Star Trek so we certainly couldn’t have a black lady flirting with a white guy, now could we?) Although, Kitt does have the best voice of any Catwoman who ever existed, and that’s including Newmar… darnit, 1960s, why can’t I like anything you do without feeling guilty?!

On the opposite end of the decency scale, we have Nora Clavicle and the Ladies’ Crime Club.  It would take me the length of this entire review to list everything wrong with them, but suffice to say, Nora’s an evil feminist on a show that has repeatedly stated women shouldn’t fight crime, practice martial arts, or do anything outside of traditionally “female” activities.  Given that information, you should easily be able to imagine the apocalyptic horror to be found in this episode.  Which I might have been able to deal with if somebody had learned something in the end or if JUST ONE stereotype had been refuted or even if Nora was halfway entertaining, but alas.  I’m really going to have to do an in-depth review of this episode one day because of how nauseating it all is.

 

Someday, Nora.  Someday.

Personally, I never thought of Calamity Jan as an actual villain—she’s just a moll for Shame—but the credits go out of their way to bill her as an “extra special guest villainess,” so what the heck.  Jan is really not that bad of a character in her own right, but in the context of the rest of the series, she becomes part of a larger trend to pair supposedly intelligent women with supposedly imbecilic men.  Which I’d be totally cool with if it didn’t come at the expense of the previously established male characters.  Shame, Egghead, and even Joker were all painfully dumbed down and paired with smarties like Jan, Olga, and Catwoman respectively.  Whether this is meant to imply that women can only appear intelligent when compared to spectacularly stupid men or if this is just the result of really bad writers, I don’t know.  I’m betting on the latter.

Evil alchemist Dr. Cassandra, played by Ida Lupino, is another example of the smart woman/stupid man dichotomy, but I don’t mind as much since she and her assistant/husband Cabala (played by Lupino’s then-husband Howard Duff) are completely new characters.  Actually, with a better script, they could have been really pretty cool.  Unfortunately, it’s Season Three and no one cares.  Plus, they both talk like they stepped out of an old school Teen Titans comic.

Cassandra: "Money is what makes my occult world go round!  The power to make other cats do what I crave them to do!  Dig!"
Cabala: "Dug, Doccy, baby, but why the hang-up?"

Did anyone anywhere ever think this sounded cool?

Last and definitely least we have Minerva, who runs a spa catering to the super wealthy so she can find out where they keep their fortunes and then swipe them.  It’s pretty much just Zsa Zsa Gabor taking her image as a classy gold digger up to eleven.  Nothing interesting to see here, folks, just move along…

Honestly, that’s the problem with a lot of these villains—they’re all stale.  It all has an “if you’ve seen one villain, you’ve seen them all” feel.  There are no real attempts to create any lasting, imaginative characters or situations anymore.  It’s like they just took the first ideas and/or celebrities that came to mind, no matter how derivative or ludicrous, and threw them in, making stuff up as they went along.  (“So the Joker shows up, see, and, uh… and MARTIANS!  Yeah!  And um, the Martian is a FAKE working for Joker as he prepares to take over the world by, um… by flying around in a flying saucer!  And then, uh…”)

In what I can only assume was an attempt to make up for the lacking scripts, all three of our heroes take the overacting to mortifying levels, though of course Batman is the absolute worst.  We all know Adam West is a ham to the nth degree, but at this season’s worst moments, I find myself recoiling in genuine embarrassment for the man, which has never happened before.  Well, except for that singing bit in the Black Widow episodes back in Season Two, but that was about two episodes away from being Season Three anyway.

That’s not to say Season Three is a total waste of your time; there are a very, very few bright spots.  Commissioner Gordon is as stalwart as ever.  Eartha Kitt absolutely shines as Catwoman.  And I liked Olga, as I mentioned before.  Siren was kinda fun.  King Tut is still pretty awesome.  And… um… nope, that’s it. 

This is normally the spot where I tell you what my favorite episode is, but for Season Three, I honestly don’t have one.  I probably dislike the Catwoman episodes the least.  Maybe King Tut.  But again, the very, very few likable elements are hopelessly bogged down by the haphazard writing, nonexistent sets, generic characters and horrendous overacting that now characterize the series as a whole, making it next to impossible to enjoy more than the occasional wisecrack.  (For some reason, Fred the British Mexican tickled my funny bone.  I wish he’d been the main villain instead of Shame and Calamity Jan.)  The general public knew the game was up long before this show did, and ratings dropped off accordingly.  There were, initially, plans for a Season Four (sans Robin and Chief O’Hara) that mercifully never materialized, and the show breathed its last on March 14, 1968.

 

Don’t cry, Caped Crusader.  It was a long overdue mercy kill, really.

Final thoughts?  Well, giving Batman a final, overall rating or grade is next to impossible, as the quality varies so much between seasons (and sometimes even individual episodes).  Season One is a perfect storm of snappy writing, enthusiastic actors, imaginative sets, and top-notch production values.  The show did, sadly, hit its peak right off the proverbial bat.  Season Two isn’t quite brilliant, but it’s still eminently entertaining.  It’s obvious that a lot of care and effort was still being put into it at this point, even if the results weren’t quite as stellar as they once were.  By the end of Season Two, the quality starts to fall off a little more, and Season Three buries any remaining grains of entertainment beneath an avalanche of lifeless new characters, cheap sets, and desperate silliness until the whole thing collapses under its own weight. 

But in spite of the impressively long and painful decline, the fact remains that Batman not only captured the Comics Code Authority-induced silliness of the Bat-comics from the early Silver Age (some episodes are direct adaptations of specific comics), it dictated the style of the Bat-comics for the late Silver Age, ensuring that ‘50s-era goofiness would successfully continue until almost the end of the decade.  Only well after the show went off the air did DC make any attempt to substantially change the Caped Crusader’s image.  But even today, approaching fifty years after the fact, Batman continues to influence and inspire the comic books that spawned it, the silver screen that transformed it, and the devoted fans who will always love it.

Next Time: Gonzo finds out that the people of the Wingdom have a very unique hobby—“Most Annoying Person Ever” Contests.

Images from Batman and The Avengers