“The Ogg Couple”
Written by Stanford Sherman
Directed by Oscar Rudolph
Season 3, Episode 15
Production code 1705-3
Original air dates: December 21, 1967
The Bat-signal: Once again, Olga rides down the streets of Gotham City with her Cossacks on horseback, Egghead trailing behind on a burro. We only see Egghead, because horses are beyond the means of the third season budget…
They arrive at the Gotham City Museum (clearly labelled, “LOS ANGELES COUNTY HISTORICAL AND ART MUSEUM,” cough cough) where they keep the Silver Scimitar of Taras Bulbul, which is only to be pulled out of the golden Egg of Ogg that it’s embedded in by the rightful queen of the Cossacks. Olga yanks out the scimitar (which only comes loose after Egghead applies some Egg of Ogg Acid), while Egghead keeps the golden egg.
Gordon gets the report that Egghead and Olga are back to their old tricks—apparently after the last time, Egghead got out on a legal technicality and the Bessarovians refused delivery of Olga and her Cossacks when GCPD tried to extradite them—and immediately goes for the red phone.
Dick cuts short his study of the life of Genghis Khan and our heroes slide down the batpoles and head to GCPD HQ, where Gordon offers to compile a list of egg-related items that Egghead might go after.
At their hideout, Olga and Egghead discuss plans while the Cossacks do their victory dance. Egghead intends to steal lots of things to serve as Olga’s dowry so they can be married. His first target: a shipment of five hundred pounds of caviar that was a gift to the people of Gotham City from the Czar of Samarkand. Said fish eggs are worth two hundred bucks an ounce.
Gordon takes a rain check for lunch with Barbara because of the danger from the bad guys. He also urges Barbara to keep this to herself, as there might be panic in the streets (never mind that the bad guys in question are riding down the street on horseback in front of everybody). Barbara goes home and changes into Batgirl.
In the Batcave, the Dynamic Duo go through possible targets of Egghead’s thievery and warn them—among them the Lo Hung Company, makers of egg-drop soup, and Canes Candy Company, manufacturers of chocolate Easter eggs. They then recall that (a) Samarkand is adjacent to Bessarovia and (b) Samarkand donated all that caviar. They head out to the bank where it’s being stored.
At the Gotham City National Bank, the manager is quite proud of the fact that he had all the bank’s cash shipped upstate—but it never occurred to him to do likewise with the caviar, so Olga and her Cossacks steal it. Egghead shows up long after they’ve gone (because his ass is slow, ahem), and the security guard holds Egghead at gunpoint—right when Batgirl shows up. Rather than get shot, Egghead agrees to take Batgirl to their hideout. Egghead reluctantly climbs onto the back of the Batgirl-cycle and leads her there. Fisticuffs ensue, but while Batgirl holds her own against the Cossacks, Olga tosses some caviar on the floor that she slips on.
Batman and Robin arrive at the bank, where the bank manager fills them in. They head over in time to see Batgirl tied up and dancing the saber dance, which involves the Cossacks attacking her with sabers, and Batgirl using Yvonne Craig’s dance training to keep from being impaled.
More fisticuffs ensue, but Olga and Egghead dump the still-bound Batgirl in the cold caviar, and they use the distraction of our heroes rescuing her to make their escape. But at least they recovered the caviar…
Luckily for everyone, Batman had O’Hara surround the building, so they GCPD was able to capture Egghead, Olga, and the Cossacks. Batman and Robin confer with Gordon and O’Hara in the commissioner’s office about how they’ll get a more well-balanced diet than eggs and caviar in prison when Barbara enters, saying that she saw Catwoman and Joker driving down the street together…
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! Batman is able to trace the Batgirl-cycle with the Bat-Geiger counter, as the cycle uses radioactive spark plugs. Why Batman has never used this method to track down where Batgirl goes after she routinely disappears is left as an exercise for the viewer.
Batman also apparently keeps a small broom in his utility belt, handy for brushing bits of caviar off a costume…
Holy #@!%$, Batman! Robin grumbles, “Holy Tartars” when they are told that Egghead and Olga are back, prompting Batman to reply, “Unholy Tartars, Robin.” After they rescue Batgirl from the caviar, Robin complains, “Holy cold creeps.” And when they learn that Joker and Catwoman are teaming up, Robin sighs, “Holy here we go again.”
Gotham City’s finest. For some reason, Gordon agonizes over having to call Batman in, feeling a certain amount of guilt and reluctance. This is wildly out of character, as Gordon tends to default to the Bat-phone when someone litters, but whatever.
Special Guest Villains. Vincent Price and Anne Baxter are back as Egghead and Olga, Queen of the Cossacks. This was actually originally planned as the second part of the three-part story featuring Egghead and Olga, but this one was carved out and shown later.
No sex, please, we’re superheroes. Batgirl gets dipped in caviar. I’ll be in my bunk…
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na.
“I believe you overestimate your undertaking abilities, Egghead.”
–Batman’s clever response to Egghead’s threatening to kill him.
Trivial matters: This episode was discussed on The Batcave Podcast episode 59 by host John S. Drew with special guest chum, Kevin Lauderdale, author, podcaster, and gadfly about town.
The title is a play on The Odd Couple, which at the time of this episode was only a well-regarded, award-winning play. The following year, it would be adapted into a movie starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, and it has been adapted into four different TV series between 1970 and the present.
The scimitar that Olga steals is a play on the 1835 novel Taras Bulba, another romance involving Cossacks, which was adapted to film numerous times, most notably one starring Yul Brenner in 1962.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! “Bessarovia didn’t want the Bessarovians.” This episode would have worked far better in its proper place between “The Ogg and I” and “How to Hatch a Dinosaur.” Egghead’s desire to collect a dowry follows on nicely from the attempted wedding in “The Ogg and I” and stealing the dinosaur egg continues Egghead’s theme of egg-related thefts to build up a dowry, and stealing the scimitar goes along with Olga’s desire to be the legitimate ruler of the Cossacks. Not to mention Dick studying up on Genghis Khan, which previews the conqueror’s samovar in “How to Hatch a Dinosaur.”
As it stands right now, it feels oddly incomplete and disjointed. The theft of the scimitar doesn’t pay off, and the bad guys wind up being captured off-camera in the lamest of possible climaxes in order to make it all work. Sadly, this just turns Batman into an even bigger dick with his lecturing Batgirl about how superheroing isn’t really women’s work, when he knows full well that O’Hara and his men are outside rounding up the Cossacks.
Batman and Robin figuring out that the caviar is next on the egg-themed hit parade actually makes sense, but we never find out how Batgirl figures it out (possibly the same way, but maybe show us more of that and less unconvincing footage of Batgirl riding down the street?). And Batman can trace the Batgirl-cycle through its radioactive spark plugs? Really? Never mind the can of worms this opens with regard to the Dynamic Duo continuing to be stymied by who Batgirl is, there’s also the fact that Batgirl is riding around with radioactive spark plugs. She’s gonna need that wig for both identities once her hair starts falling out. (Maybe Egghead can give her advice on how to live with baldness……)
Vincent Price and Anne Baxter are a delight as always. Baxter apparently went to the trouble of learning some actual Russian (including bunches of profanity) to make the role more convincing, and Price is never not wonderful (his interplay with Yvonne Craig is actually a lot of fun), but the whole episode is just off-kilter.
Bat-rating: 2
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest work was just released this week: the third Super City Cops novella, Secret Identities, following up from Avenging Amethyst and Undercover Blues. Telling the story of cops in a city filled with superheroes, these novellas are published by Bastei. You can get the eBooks from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo, and read an excerpt from Avenging Amethyst right here on Tor.com.
Keith, the footage of Batgirl on her motorcycle wasn’t bluescreened, it was rear-projected — i.e. she was literally just sitting in front of a movie screen with the background footage projected on it from behind (which is why it was unconvincing). Few ’60s TV shows had the budget for something as elaborate as bluescreen mattes, so the simpler, cheaper technique of rear projection was far more standard. Offhand, the only ’60s TV shows I can think of that preferentially used bluescreen effects were Star Trek and The Invaders. It was generally more of a movie thing, although plenty of low-budget movies used rear projection. Although ’60s Doctor Who did use a similar video chromakey technique in black-and-white.
As for Batman not tracking Batgirl before, he’s repeatedly explained to Robin that it was a matter of respecting her right to privacy.
I wonder why they broke up this 3-parter but let the Londinium one stand. Maybe they were stuck with that one being a 3-parter because of the overseas location, so they couldn’t have second thoughts about it.
Have we seen the Wayne living room set at all this season? Bruce and Dick always seem to be in the study, making Alfred’s role as Batphone answerer rather redundant.
Samarkand is not a country, but is historically one of the great cities of Central Asia and is currently in the Samarqand Region of Uzbekistan. It’s some distance east of the Black Sea. I guess it’s a more logical connection to the Russophone “Bessarovians” than Genghis Khan was, though.
It’s always great fun to watch and listen to Vincent Price, but Egghead is still poorly handled here, reduced to cowardly comic relief instead of the ingenious mastermind he started out as. And while it was great to see Yvonne Craig get a chance to dance, the climax didn’t make much sense. How did Batgirl coming in through a different door improve her chances against the Cossacks? And it’s frustrating that they went for a damsel-in-distress beat and left the actual capture of Egghead and Olga to happen off camera.
The preview of “The Funny Feline Felonies” makes no sense. It’s out of continuity with the next episode, since it claims Catwoman and Joker are already together, which we’ll see next week is decidedly not the case. One more reason why I hate these previews.
I, too, lament Egghead’s brutal villain-decay (longtime Power Rangers fans, was this what happened to Lord Zedd?), but given Babs fearlessly charging into a five-on-one(!) battle and almost winning, this ep was almost certainly the most props Dozier and company ever gave her. I’d give it at least a Four on that count alone.
Chewing the scenery and going way over the top worked for Victor Buono, IMO. For Anne Baxter here, not so much. Three half-hours of her playing Olga got very tiresome very quickly for me. It didn’t help that it seemed director Oscar Rudolph never asked anyone (Baxter, Vallee, Rush, Moore, etc.) to tone down their performances just a smidgen.
@2/rubberlotus: While the Zedd/Rita marriage did make Zedd less menacing and more comical, I wouldn’t liken it to Egghead-Olga, because it was actually a funny pairing. It was a change in Zedd’s portrayal, but it worked. Given that the Power Rangers in those early seasons were always written as perfect, kind, polite individuals who never had any interpersonal conflict unless they were under an evil spell, the dysfunctional, bickering family that the villains evolved into was a refreshing source of comedic conflict.
Besides, Zedd didn’t really lose his defining trait. He was still a relentlessly evil overlord determined to conquer Earth and destroy the Power Rangers. Egghead lost his most effective attribute as a villain, his supergenius intellect, in exchange for the personality of a cowardly, henpecked toady. Also, Zedd remained the dominant villain with Rita as his partner, while Egghead became little more than Olga’s moll.
Now I’m imagining Lord Zedd with the voice of Vincent Price, and it’s awesome.
It’s very clearly just a partial episode and that hurts it a lot. It’s really a waste of Vincent Price, who could make reading the phone book interesting. (I got to see him speak once in the early 80s and it was one of the most entertaining evenings of my life.)
The scimitar is not just a reference to Taras Bulba. It’s a mash-up of the Golgol character and Abdul Abulbul Ameer, who is (was) probably better known to Americans as Abdul the Bulbul-Ameer from the MGM cartoon of the same name.
Christopher: Thanks for noticing my derp. :) It’s fixed.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
#5: On the one hand, good catch. OTOH, after following that link I had to spend a good hour and a half editing the Wikipedia page, because their then-present version of the “original” lyrics wasn’t. (That song has an incredibly complicated publishing history, including a great many folk-process alterations and no few outright parodies.)
I will be forwarding my bill along directly….
If Batgirl is going to require more wigs because of the radioactive sparkplugs in her cycle, what about Batman, Robin and Alfred? They are exposed to far more radioactivity on a regular basis (reactor in the Bat Cave, Atomic Batteries in the Batmobile etc). They should be positively glowing.
People in earlier generations were a lot more blase about radioactivity. The health risks had come to be known by the 1960s, but perhaps not fully; they didn’t entirely stop making radium watch dials until 1968, though the practice had been in decline for decades.
Also, a lot of our modern panic about radioactivity is the result of fearmongering by the anti-nuclear movement. There are many natural sources of radioactivity that we’re exposed to in small quantities all the time, so it’s just a part of everyday life. We’ve just been conditioned to be more afraid of it than people were 50 years ago — and while some of that added caution is justified, a lot of it is excessive.
They’re comic book characters. Exposure to radiation just results in new super powers.
As for why the commissioner feels guilt about calling Batman: I’m going to guess that, after a while as a crime fighter, Barbara has begun to appreciate that her dad does nothing for a living and has found subtle ways to make him feel guilty about it.
@/Ellynne Interesting point about the Barbara/Commish dynamic. Certainly she was appalled and frustrated when he expressed absolutely no interest several episodes ago that Princess Primrose had been hypnotized and kidnapped by Louie the Lilac.
I’m just wondering what, exactly, radioactivity adds to a spark plug…………………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Actually, a bit of Internet research has revealed that there were radioactive spark plugs — in the 1940s. Firestone created them in an attempt to give a greater charge, but they were abandoned by the 1950s. They had a bit of Polonium in them, though in amounts so small that the engine block would have kept the radiation from being detected by a Geiger counter. Of course, the Bat-Geiger counter is probably much more sensitive than that wussy detector that Hans Geiger made…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Actually. It’s polonium. So a piece of paper would have blocked the radiation- it’s only Alpha radiation.
It’s gimmick let’s use sciencey terms here, though. Mid to late 60’s is fair to late for such spark plugs to be in cars or motorcycles. ( rotary air craft engines, on the other hand, would have still used them.)
@7 JCB: I’m not well-versed in the various versions of the song, but the “original” version that was on Wikipedia at the time I checked did feel not quite right to me. Good work. It should, perhaps, be noted that Bulbul (or more correctly bülbül) is Turkish for “nightingale”.
@11/J.P. Pelzman: I’m sure Barbara’s outrage there was meant to be more about the older generation being unsympathetic to the hippie movement, rather than about Barbara finding her father incompetent.
The first few storylines in the first season made a point of having Gordon meet with O’Hara and his men and talk about how the police could handle any normal crime, but when faced with extraordinary criminals, they came to the mutual if reluctant decision that they had no choice but to swallow their pride and call in the experts. Before long, that evolved into the caricature of the GCPD being totally useless without Batman and Robin.
I’m tempted to cite the GCPD’s incompetence as an early case of Flanderization, but I’m not sure they were every actually shown to be competent to deal with ordinary crime (as opposed to someone stating it.)
Warning:TV Tropes
StrongDreams: hard to say, since I don’t think we ever saw an ordinary crime committed on the show……….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Keith is right. Honestly, I don’t think we ever explicitly saw a situation where the police were unable to cope with an ordinary crime, because the focus of the show was on extraordinary crimes. Gordon and O’Hara seemed clueless and dependent on the Dynamic Duo because they couldn’t cope with anything outside the normal, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t handle routine crime. The only things that come close were the episodes where criminals took over the city and ordered the police not to arrest criminals. The cops’ blind obedience to such orders was a source of humor there, but it’s not quite the same.
The one (debatably) in-universe portrayal I’ve seen of this idea is in the recent animated reunion movie The Return of the Caped Crusaders, where Batman has been slowly turning evil and has stopped answering the Batphone, and Gordon and O’Hara are totally swamped by a wave of ordinary crimes and tempted to call Batman to deal with some petty matter. And when Evil Batman shows up and kicks them out, he specifically accuses them of being unable to handle so much as a jaywalker without him (or words to that effect). When I saw those bits, they didn’t quite ring true to me; the show was definitely not flattering in its portrayal of Gordon and O’Hara, but it didn’t go quite that far into caricature.
If anything, we often saw situations where Gordon wanted to send in the troops but Batman specifically asked him to let him and Robin handle it alone. Gordon agreeing had more to do with his extreme deference and hero worship toward Batman rather than lack of capability. Although we did see Gordon and O’Hara try to tackle a crime on their own in the Chandell episode, and their approach was sheer gung-ho overkill with heavy firepower — which may help explain why Batman preferred to leave them out of it.
Writer Jon Blum, in the comments of this post below, questions the story that this was intended as part two of three. He found enough evidence in the story and its props to believe it was actually intended as the first part, despite perhaps being filmed between the other two. I think it’s a pretty convincing argument.
http://tothebatpoles.blogspot.com/2011/12/batscholar-on-episode-109.html
@20/Grant: Indeed. I think the title is another clue. I’d wondered where the term “Ogg” came from, as I’ve discussed before. There’s no reason for it “The Ogg and I,” a pun on “The Egg and I.” But if the first episode was “The Ogg Couple,” then it makes sense that the term originated as a pun on The Odd Couple, and then was repeated in the second episode’s title as a continuation of the theme.
The talk about the GCPD handling “ordinary crime” leads to the question of what it’s like to be an “ordinary” criminal in Gotham. I’m imagining a gang of gunmen who rob banks wearing ski masks who are routinely thwarted by the GCPD, downright offended that they don’t merit bat-attention, and adopting some sort of contrived gimmick so they can bring in the big guns.
@22/dunsel: I’d assume that conventional criminals are sort of the farm team (if that’s the right term — I know little about sports) from which supervillain henchmen are recruited. Prove yourself effective at robbing jewelry stores or beating up welchers on gambling debts, and if you’re lucky you might get a call from the Riddler or Catwoman. (I wonder if supercriminals have talent scouts.)