I’m already doing a rewatch of a show that debuted in 1966 that has become a popular culture icon and stars a man known (whether fairly or not) for his overacting. So why not another one?
Starting next Friday, I will be doing The Bat-Rewatch! I’ll be looking back at the Batman TV series developed by William Dozier for ABC, and which ran from 1966 to 1968. Between seasons one and two, we’ll also take a gander at the Batman feature film that was released in the summer of 1966.
Each week we’ll go over a single story, so each entry will cover both parts of all the two-parters (48), all three parts of the three-parters the show did (3), and single entries for the single episodes (15).
As if my wont with all my previous rewatches (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek The Original Series, and Stargate), this rewatch will be divided into appropriate categories, which will be as follows:
The Bat-signal: This will be the plot summary.
Fetch the Bat-shark-repellant! Batman had an amazing array of gadgets, all modified with the prefix “Bat-.” This section will catalog them.
Holy #@!%$, Batman! Robin’s catch-phrase has become seared on the public consciousness over the past five decades. We’ll catalog his uses of it here.
Gotham City’s finest. Batman is mostly necessary in this iteration because the Gotham City Police Department may be the most spectacularly incompetent police force in the history of the universe.
No sex, please, we’re superheroes. A modification of the category seen in the Trek rewatches, while this was a show very much geared toward children, there were occasional hints of romance.
Special Guest Villain. The villain (or villains) that appear in the episode.
Na-na na-na na-na na-na na. A funny quote from the episode.
Meanwhile…: This will be the trivial matters section, with the usual collection of nonsense relating to the episode. Among other things, I’ll also be providing links to The Batcave Podcast, a fantastic podcast (on which I have appeared) that examines each episode of the show, hosted by John S. Drew.
Pow! Biff! Zowie! The review of the episode.
Bat-rating: The least important part of the rewatch, the ranking of the episode on a scale of 1-10.
We’ll begin next week with “Hi Diddle Diddle”/ “Smack in the Middle.”
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s Heroes Reborn eBook novella Save the Cheerleader, Destroy the World is now available for preorder. One of six novellas tying into the new NBC series, Keith’s tale will be released on the 20th of November, and can be preordered from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo.
I remember seeing reruns as a kid but I don’t think I ever saw a complete two parter.
It’ll be interesting to see how episodes I remember.
And: Damn. I wanted Bab 5.
Holy rewatches, KRAD! I’m just excited to do a rewatch with you that wasn’t posted two years ago!
Hwack! Hwack! Hwack! A rewatch, eh? We’ll see about that!
*waddles with joy*
Groovy! Looking forward to this, old chum.
@krad, You’re doing the “Star Trek Voyager” rewatch after this, right ;)
Great — gives me a chance to repost my comments from the TrekBBS’s MeTV Super Sci-Fi Saturday thread. That should save me work. ;)
Then you move on to the Burton films? You’ll make me relieve ages 10-3 that way. All I did was watch Batman in whatever form I could find it.
@1, I feel you noble. To the best of my childhood recollection, I somehow only saw the first episode of each pair, leaving me wondering how batman managed to escape all these (necessarily elaborate) traps.
The one notable exception I can recall, is he and Robin being trapped in giant hourglasses filling with sand. And a “Holy squirrel-cage, Batman!”, giving him the inspiration to escape. I think House should have paid royalties for copyright usage.
Hahahaha :) I’ve never seen the show and have no intention to, but both my sons (especially my younger one) are fairly obsessed with the movie. (I’ll be honest, it gets on my nerves in a huge way, especially when my kids want to watch it multiple times a day). So I will definitely be excited to see what other people get out of that movie, haha.
Joe will be excited though :)
ETA: Arrrgh, just tying out this comment made the music from the movie’s opening credits get stuck in my head. :P
@Lisamarie, I’ve never seen this either, but I’m almost out of Star Trek to watch, so maybe this will fill the void:)
Batman ’66 is terrific. It’s one of the more imaginative and distinctive sitcoms from an era rich with imaginative sitcoms, and its wit isn’t just goofy but often satirical, literate, and clever — though it’s plenty goofy too. The acting and production values are terrific, the music is awesome, and it’s just a whole lot of fun. Although it starts to lose its freshness in the later second season, and the third season is mostly pretty lame except for the marvelous addition of Batgirl.
Any show that has a “Batmobile Parachute Pickup Service” gets my vote. Such absurdity should be celebrated. Really nails the tone of comic books from that time.
I was prepping for this! I’m just about a third into season three. I will set my Bat66-alarm clock so I don’t miss a post and follow along wearing my Bat66-socks, drinking from my Bat66-thermos…..
Is the show streaming anywhere?
Gotham City’s finest might be seen as incompetent, but provided they aren’t shooting unarmed civilians I’m willing to view this as a win.
@8 I think the channel I saw it on would air two episodes back-to-back but never in the right order.
“Meanwhile… “
… at the Hall of Justice?
We got the full box set last Christmas and watched it all the way through with our daughters, who adored the show – especially Catwoman and (finally) Batgirl.
The incompetency of the Gotham Police is fascinating, but completely sidelined by the work done at the Gotham Penitentiary. As the show goes on, we regularly hear about the Governor and his in depth, highly experimental attitude to prisoner rehabilitation, which pretty much provides a swinging door for the regularly-captured criminals.
My favourite example is when the Penguin is rehabilitated for his many crimes and the city throws a party in his honour because he’s a good guy now… until the opening credits.
Another favourite ongoing theme is Bruce’s attempts to pass positive, educational messages on to Robin (as proxy for the audience), everything from ‘this is how the solar system works’ to ‘don’t be a high school dropout, kid.’
@18/TansyRR: The “educational” messages underline how clever the show was. It works for kids as a genuine action-adventure show, and for adults as a deadpan spoof, a parody of its own earnestness. As a kid, you see Batman giving important lessons about safety and citizenship; as an adult, you see how silly it is that he’s preoccupied with such things in the middle of the life-and-death pursuit of criminals. It’s essentially a prototype of the same kind of deadpan farce used in Airplane!
I had what I gather is a typical journey with the show: As a boy, I bought into it wholly as a serious action-adventure; then as a teenager, I recognized how silly it was and developed a disdain for it; then as an adult, I realized that it was silly on purpose, that it was actually a very innovative sitcom, and I learned to appreciate it on a whole new level.
And of course the oft-repeated story told by Adam West of how the scene he screen-tested was Batman in full costume, walking into a nightclub and asking the matre’d for a table out of the way “so he won’t attract attention.” That set the tone and West was in on the joke from day 1.
Very excited for this! Much better than Voyager!
Although I was thinking recently of watching the ’44 and ’49 Batman movie serials and it would have been a nice coincidence if you were passing through those on your way to the 60s Batman.
Any chance you are planning on ending this with a rewatch of “Legends of the Superheroes” (the ill-fated and terrible spinoff)? Only two pilots shot, I believe. Absolute dreck. But a lice-action continuation of the show, of a sort.
@19 – I think I’m still in teen mode when it comes to the movie. Intellectually, I understand what it’s doing and how it’s being a spoof…but it still doesn’t make it more pleasant for me to watch.
Although I guess the bomb gag is kind of funny…
@21/Joe: It’s a reach to say that Legends of the Superheroes was a continuation. It was a pair of Justice League-based comedy-variety specials that managed to get West, Ward, and Gorshin to reprise their roles and maybe made some jokey references to the show, but it was really its own thing. It didn’t have any creative staff in common with Batman ’66, and in fact it was produced by Hanna-Barbera, making it sort of a live-action Super Friends spinoff if anything.
Filmation’s 1968 and 1977 Batman cartoons had some elements of a continuation of the show, particularly the ’77 New Adventures of Batman, which had West and Ward doing the voices and included Batgirl, the Batpoles, and the Batphone. There’s also Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which often threw in Easter-egg nods to the show like cameos by its original villains (e.g. King Tut, Egghead, and Bookworm) in crowd scenes and the occasional appearance of the Batpoles and the bust of Shakespeare. And that show was an homage to the same wild, goofy Silver Age comics that B’66 was based on. So it feels like a continuation in a way, even though its Batman (Diedrich Bader) is rather more aggressive and stern than the West version. (Adam West played two roles in the show, Thomas Wayne and a sentient robot helper to Batman. Julie Newmar played Martha Wayne.)
@krad: as much as I’m looking forward to this (and oh yes i am), you know you want to do a Babylon 5 rewatch. :p
@23/Chris That may be, but I suppose you could say that my interest is more that it is a live-action Batman (of a sort), although perhaps less of a direct spin-off than I thought.
Compared to Superman, live-action Batman gets so few shows. Prior to Gotham, how many have there been that didn’t star Adam West? I can’t think of any. (Other than the 1940s serials which predated modern TV, but has TV-like characteristics.)
@25/Joe: The only other live-action Batman-related TV series was Birds of Prey from 2002, which had kind of a weird revisionist take on the Batman mythos. Its backstory was that Batman had waged a secret war against metahuman criminals, but had fallen in love with a metahuman Catwoman and had a daughter, Helena Kyle, with her; then the Joker killed Catwoman and paralyzed Batgirl, which broke Batman’s spirit and caused him to leave Gotham. The show is set years later in a “New Gotham” rebuilt after some No Man’s Land-ish cataclysm, and focused on Barbara Gordon/Oracle, the metahuman Helena/Huntress, and the daughter of Black Canary as they battled metahumans led by an older, saner Harley Quinn in her first live-action appearance. It was from the creators of Smallville, which is probably why they stuck superpowers into it, but it was basically an attempt to do a superhero version of Charmed, in terms of its characterization, tone, and focus — though crossed with a Burton-Schumacheresque approach to Batman and Gotham (in fact, the Batgirl costume was a repaint of the one from Batman and Robin). It wasn’t very good, though Dina Meyer and Ian Abercrombie were fantastic as Barbara and Alfred, and Mia Sara was an impressive Harley Quinn. It had a brief flashback appearance by Batman in the pilot, played by Bruce Thomas of the On*Star Batman commercials, and had Mark Hamill dub the voice of the Joker in the same flashback.
As it happens, the creators of Smallville were originally going to do a show called Bruce Wayne about Bruce as a young adult growing toward the crimefighter he would become and interacting with twentysomething civilian versions of his future enemies. But then the Warner Bros. film division kiboshed the idea because of their plans to relaunch the Batman film series, so Gough and Millar retooled the concept from a young Bruce Wayne show into a young Clark Kent show, and Smallville was born.
Fantastic! For the record, I was guessing either B5 or Eureka, but this is great. Is it streaming somewhere? I went looking not too long ago and could only find it at $2 an episode. Thanks!
I agree with CLB @11 and 19, except I will mention that my later viewings generally include no recollection of the first watch, and I pay more attention to the female guest stars (Jill St. John!), henchwomen, etc. now.
Somehow, Catwoman always had my attention.
@1 and @24 Re: Babylon 5: I’ve already said several times I would love to see a B5 rewatch. A good starting point would be to ask Andy Lane to redo his Babylon File, which I thought was an EXCELLENT rewatch of the series. Just not sure whether he’s up to it. The last season left him so disappointed (as evidenced by the Babylon File 2) he may not even want to go back to the material.
Never saw a complete episode of Campy Batman (Campman?), but I’ll see what I can do to keep up…
The real spinoff of the show was the Green Hornet, which had (to the best of my recollection) one or two cross over episodes.
@30/fcoulter: The Green Hornet wasn’t a spinoff, since the character actually predated Batman by three years, having originated on radio in 1936. The ’66 Green Hornet series was a separate show from the same producers as Batman, but it was played as a straight adventure show rather than a campy comedy. (Both shows reflected their source materials accurately. The original GH radio series and movie serials were serious crime thrillers, while the Batman comics of the ’50s and ’60s were bizarre and comedic.) In fact, each show was treated as fictional in the other show. There’s a Batman episode where Bruce and Dick are sitting down to watch The Green Hornet and we hear a snippet of the theme music before the villain cuts into the broadcast with an ultimatum, and there are two GH episodes where a character is watching Batman on TV.
The first Green Hornet/Kato appearance on Batman was a cameo during a wall-climb sequence, in the same vein as the cameo appearances by characters like Lurch, Colonel Klink, and Jose Jimenez. In that appearance, Batman and Robin were familiar with the GH and Kato and knew they were actually crimefighters. But that was ignored in the later, full-on crossover 2-parter, in which B & R had never met GH & K and initially believed them to be criminals.
My dad’s cousin, William P. D’Angelo worked on that show as a producer. He worked on a lot of shows over the years, including Alice, Run Joe Run, Hawaiian Eye, Love American Style, The Monster Squad, and co-exec produced Pee Wee’s Playhouse with Paul Reubens. Even though I thought Run Joe Run was the coolest thing he ever did, because the dog in the show was his own dog, who I played with as a young child, most people today are more impressed by the fact that he worked on Batman.
Wow, I have to go watch these episodes again, thanks for the excuse! It’s been years and years since I saw them, but the show’s always worth at least a good chuckle, even its worst. Very excited!
I like this show a lot, and like CLB says, it works wonderfully as a regular kids’ show, and as a satire for grown-ups, The bad thing is that it was later taken at face value by the wider audience, and colored people’s perceptions of what superhero comics, and comics in general are, leading them to think the medium is childish.
On another note, among the online and RL nerd circles I run in, a myth of Adam West having a potbelly that was very noticeable in costume. I used to support the myth when I was in my teens and twenties, but then I went back and revisited the show and realized that West had a very athletic physique… he just wasn’t a ripped, washing board-abbed modern-day hunk that is now popular.
@28 – sps49: Yes, Catwoman, and the henchwomen. And Batgirl. :) I started noticing them when I was like 12.
@14; 27 – from what I can find, no streaming for free/accounts. Only per episode on iTunes for $3 and Amazon/Vudu for $2.
So I have finally caught up to where I should be on TOS and find another series I need to track down. At one point, I too clamored for a VGR rewatch. However, as much as I would love to read the complaints and comments, I doubt I will ever willingly watch the series again (unless one of the kids asks to). It was just too painful. Only thing worse has been the firs few episodes of Enterprise. Once again, however, it’s the ship’s Doctor that is making the series survivable. The rest of the crew would have been better served losing to the Klingons.