To The Batpoles! Batman 1966

Julie Newmar appeared as Catwoman in six two-parters during the first two seasons of Batman . During that time, the show and her character evolved, and while some might not agree with the direction they took, it's hard to deny that Julie did both the evil, whip-snapping Catwoman and the Batman -besotted, comic Catwoman-of-a-thousand-disguises very well. Then in season three, she was gone and Earth...

Batman Meets Godzilla issue 2 is out! You may recall we previously reviewed issue 1 of Eric Elliot 's labor-of-love project, with contributions from numerous artists (including Ian Miller , who drew the above panel), to bring life to a movie pitch from the '60s. Issue 2 manages to noticeably top issue 1 in numerous ways. In this episode, our review. As 20th Century Fox and Greenway Productions wer...

Is Batman Forever a comedy? Or is it an action movie with a few funny parts? Is it a throwback to the '66 series, or a blend of every iteration of Batman ? Is it camp? And the cut scenes regarding Bruce 's memories of his father's diary prompt us to consider: is it better to have a lame payoff, or no payoff at all? Meanwhile, "Holy Deja Vu!" is back, and Paul fills us in on character actor of Karn...

Yvonne Craig 's memoir, From Ballet to the Batcave and Beyond , poses quite a contrast to those by Adam West and Burt Ward . Batman takes up much less space in it, and recountings of sexual adventures take up no space at all. What emerges is a very practical woman who sees herself as a geek, is surprised to find herself typecast as "sexy" as she approaches 40, has plenty of amusing anecdotes (Holl...

Penguins live where it's cold, but somehow the pairing of the Penguin and Mr. Freeze never came about on the TV show. But Jeff Parker made it happen in the second issue of the Batman '66 comic book! In the same issue, he gave us another logical pairing, Chandell and the Siren . This time, we review the issue. Also, we take a closer look at the 1966 memo from William Dozier to Howie Horwitz , which...

This episode: BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT! We discuss two topics often suggested by listeners: In 2013, not long before Batman finally came to home video, DC Comics began the Batman '66 comic book series with Jeff Parker and Jonathan Case 's "The Riddler's Ruse." In a comic whose main reason for existence is nostalgia, is it forgivable to take advantage of the comics medium to do things the TV show ne...

Scripts are back! After many months resting our script-research muscles, we're back to tackle the first two drafts of Robert Dozier 's The Joker is Wild — originally called The Joker's Utility Belt , after the comics story the script is based on. Oddly, this first draft seems to also have scenes that are based on Lorenzo Semple 's Hi Diddle Riddle ! Holy carbon copy! As usual, draft first-season b...

Hey Batfans! Want details on what kept the show out of home video for so long? Want to know where the building called Gotham Plaza was, and what other shows that same structure was used for? Wondering about the background on the missing narration at the start of Hi Diddle Riddle ? Have questions about the history of the all-seeing, all-knowing 66 Batman message board ? There's only ONE MAN (OK, ma...

TV in the '60s was, of course, dominated by male characters. It'd be tough to find a series that would pass the "Bechdel Test." How does Batman fare from a woman's point of view in the year 2020? To help us investigate this question, we invited novelist Nancy Northcott to join us this time and screen selected episodes from the first season. Plus, Tim and Paul have identified five "rules" for how w...

The 1964 "New Look" facelift and, of course, our beloved 1966 TV show created a boom in Batman comics... briefly. The sales numbers dropped to their lowest point yet after the show was cancelled. Meanwhile, diehard fans of the comics, whose vision of Batman couldn't have been farther from how he was portrayed on the show, were fed up and demanding a darker version of the character, a return to his...

In 1966, one sure way to make money was to tie your product to the Batman TV show in some way. Bill Adler was an expert at riding the latest wave, and in that year he released Bill Adler's Funniest Fan Letters to Batman , a collection of real (?) fan letters sent by fans (mostly kids) of the Caped Crusader 's TV show and comic books. In this episode, we discuss this book and read some of our favor...

At last, we're back! Week-to-week Neilsen ratings info isn't easy to come by, but some research on the ratings has been shared on the all-seeing, all-knowing 66 Batman message board by Bob Furmanek . This time we examine Bob's research and how it puts another nail in the bat-coffin of the pervasive fourth season myth . 2015 4th season myth thread 2018 4th season myth thread 2018 4th season smoking...

Tim and Paul explain why the next episode will be delayed a bit. Also, how you can put yourself in a drawing to win a Batman meets Godzilla T-shirt !

This time, a double-header! First, we finish what we started by discussing Legends of the Superheroes: The Roast . Was it a great achievement by West and Ward ? (Um…) Was Frank Gorshin probably better off for having skipped it? Was the inclusion of Ghetto Man racist? Is it really a roast at all? Is it, you know, funny at any point? We discuss all these questions, the big and small names that appea...

In January 1979, Adam West, Burt Ward, and Frank Gorshin reprised their '66 roles in two specials that barely registered in the Nielsen ratings. The first was "Legends of the Superheroes: The Challenge," in which Batman, Robin, and other DC Comics heroes went up against a group of villains (including the Riddler) who, for no clear reason, were plotting to destroy the world. Adam looked sub-par in...

We've finished season three (and the series), so it's time to examine the final year of Batman . It's not a task we relish; so much of season three is a disappointment, from the writing to the production values, the head-scratching cliffhanger-free episode tag scenes to the phoned-in acting. And then there's the introduction of Batgirl . While Yvonne Craig was always a delight, the execution of in...

And so we arrive at the last episode of Batman . Of course, the show didn't get a spectacular sendoff; they didn't even give us any of the major villains. Instead, Zsa Zsa Gabor , who had twice almost appeared on the show, finally gets her turn, as (relatively?) evil spa owner Minerva . ("How could she be evil? She's so beautiful!") What's perhaps more notable is the amount of self-parody in the e...

How might a longtime Batman comics reader in 1966 have reacted to Burgess Meredith 's portrayal of the Penguin ? That's the question our friend Kyle hit on a few months ago, and in this episode he joins us to read pre-'66 Batman comics to compare how similar Meredith's Penguin was to the character in stories by Bob Kane , Bill Finger , Sheldon Moldoff , France Herron , and the like. How similar ar...

As Batman neared the end of its run, the budget situation got worse (occasioning the need for an invisible fight), and the writers threw caution to the wind: witness at least half a dozen double entendres in "The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra" — this at a time when most viewers who were old enough to get these naughty jokes had already bailed. In this episode, we examine this, the final episode written...

When Batman was the hottest show on TV, it naturally became a major target of humor and parody as well. In episode 115 we looked at a couple of contemporaneous Bat-parodies from 1966-67, and this episode we examine three more: The Adventures of Jerry Lewis no. 97 , featuring the actual Batman and Robin , who are both dealing with the effects of West/Ward Batman on their own lives, and acting in wa...

In Cesar Romero 's final appearance as the Joker , he seems hamstrung, and not only by the lousy plot and the single episode in which to tell it. Ken Holtzhouser , who grew up rating Batman episodes based on their Romeroian content, joins us to identify the problem, separate out the chaff from the episode, and see if there's any Bat-wheat left. Plus, the Andrew and Hudson version of the theme , an...

While Batman and Robin never had their own show back in the "Golden Age of Radio," they did appear from time to time on The Adventures of Superman . Sometimes it was because Superman actor Bud Collyer was taking the day off, but in the case of "Batman's Great Mystery" , he appears in all eleven episodes as Batman (Stacy Harris) has disappeared, and Superman helps Robin ( Ronald Liss) try to locate...

Victor Buono 's final appearance as King Tut is, while hardly the Semplian ideal, plenty enjoyable on its own merits - for Buono, for the unusual situation the Dynamic Duo find themselves in, for some well-thought-out camera work. But what's up with Adam West 's line delivery? We've never heard him sound so grouchy and cynical before. Also, how does this episode seemingly fit together with The Unk...

What does the movie Flash Gordon (1980) have to do with Batman '66? Simple: a guiding force for both was screenwriter Lorenzo Semple, Jr. ! What can we learn about Semple's approach to Batman by comparing it to his work on Flash Gordon 15 years later? What was his approach, and what other factors skewed the results? There's no walkthrough of the plot of the film in this episode, but we do talk abo...

"Come back, Shame !" In season three, come back he does, and seemingly stupider than ever! And yet, Shame's plotting for his caper seems oddly smart. Meanwhile, Stanley Ralph Ross goes all-in on gags that are gleefully at odds with the template set by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. in season one. In this episode, we examine the final two-parter of the Batman series: what works, what doesn't, who's in it, and...