Batman (1966) Season 1, Episode
9 - “Zelda The Great”
"A quiet, peaceful night in the
city of Townsville Gotham City; except at the First
National Bank, at precisely 8:37." Then, an explosion
straight off a sound-effects record rings out, and the establishing
shot of the bank's exterior shakes a little!
- the Ferguson Police Department is looking for just your kind of motivated self-starter; and
- guns, as it turns out, are exactly as effective as all the other tools used by law enforcement in Gotham City (which is to say NOT AT ALL; the thief cold-cocks the guard and gets away with the money),
so you're probably gonna get the
opportunity to shoot more unarmed suspects down the road (live the
dream, buddy).
What's that, Commissioner Gordon? A
thief who robs banks every April 1st for the exact same amount of
money each time? Oh, if only there were some sort of pattern
for your employees-who-you-could-fire-at-any-time to latch onto; I
bet they'd bust this whole thing wide open!
(You can feel Gordon's mounting
frustration with his idiotic top men in this whole scene)
What? No one answered the Batphone?
Good thing they're outside gazing into the telescope, where they can
see the Batsignal. I mean, if they were, say, down in a private sex
dungeon or something, Gotham City would be SCREWED.
"A town-hall lecture on Latin
American affairs"? Well, at least they're stretching their legs
on the excuses to get Bruce and Dick down to the BatCave.
Gordon's fruitlessly waiting on someone
to pick up the Batphone is priceless. Now I can't help but
imagine Batman's ringback tone; it would have to be a constant loop
of "na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na..."
Note: I don't give a hairy rat's
patootie how unnecessary to the plot it is; if you've got a car as
awesome as the Batmobile, it behooves you to feature as many shots of
it as you possibly can in every episode. End of story.
Oooooh! Not only is Zelda the Great the
first obscure villain featured on the show (as well as the first
woman), but she's also the first one that they don't already know
about in the show's mythology (criminy, I sound like a pop-culture
douche). Intriguing...
"Be on the lookout for a woman
in an orange dress."
"An orange dress! Good heavens,
what is the world coming to?"
(okay, I may have altered that
last line a bit)
Batman: "No time to
worry about that now; our task is to fight crime."
Translation: I don't give a
fuuuuuck what she's got going on in the bathing-suit area, I'mma beat
the brakes off her just the same.
"Master
Robin?" C'mon Alfred; the LAST thing you should be doing is
playing into their delusional architecture. All that does is enable
them.
So, the "criminal genius"
behind this whole thing is fooled by a planted news story that the
money he stole was counterfeit? You know what they say: Criminals
don't become criminals because they're smart.
Also: it's kind of counterintuitive to
have a magician be lured by the "easy money" of crime;
after all, an integral part of being a magician is the willingness to
invest WAY more time and effort into an endeavor than it seems worth.
Something I'm learning from this
episode: a stage magician who's a sexy woman is, as it turns out,
still annoying.
But the giant padlock on this escape
trick tank is EVERYTHING.
>sigh< If your big master plan
involves directly and deliberately taking on Batman, you've already
lost, moron.
Oh, poor Aunt Harriet! Didn't she read
on Snopes about all those "playground matron" scam phone
calls going around?
Really, show? A slide whistle when
Batman and Robin jump off the balcony? It's enough to make me think
you're not taking this whole thing seriously.
So maybe I'm calling it a bit early,
but so far Zelda seems like, far and away, the most capable of all
the Batman villains on this show.
Holy reversal, Batman! This episode's
cliffhanger actually features Aunt Harriet stuck in the deathtrap.
And Zelda doing her knitting while Harriet dangles helplessly over
impending fiery death behind her is very possibly my favorite visual
image of the entire series so far.
Batman (1966) Season 1, Episode
10 – “A Death Worse Than Fate”
When last we left our heroes, they
were… well, they weren't actually in any danger; but poor Aunt
Harriet was left dangling over a vat of flaming oil.
While waiting at police headquarters
for Bruce Wayne to show up and deal with the ransom situation
(presumably, Batman was still licking his wounds over having been
completely outsmarted by Zelda the Great), Commissioner Gordon
and Chief O'Hara (in shirtsleeves! THIS IS SERIOUS) engage in some
speculation regarding the lives of the 1%:
Chief O'Hara: "I'll bet
Mr. Wayne is out on some yacht, eatin' sherbet and changin' his
clothes!"
Now, I was born in 1968, and I guess
it's possible that this is some bit of 1960s idiom with which I'm
unfamiliar; but I checked on Urban Dictionary, and found bupkus. So I
leave it to you, dear Gentle Reader: Was this EVER a commonly-used
expression?
Luckily, Bruce Wayne shows up presently
(his clothes-changing and sherbet-eating duties having been
faithfully discharged), in order to execute Batman's brilliant
strategy for securing Mrs. Cooper's release: preempt local television
to engage the kidnapper in a bitchy radio call-in show.
And, yes, the following scene is pretty
amusing, but a couple of Baba Booey-style crank calls would have sent
it over the top.
Actual dialog:
"Hello, criminals, wherever you
are out there. Do you hear me, criminals?" (Do You Hear
Me, Criminals? It's Me, Commissioner Gordon was my favorite book
as I approached adolescence)
"Enough of this prattle!"
"You already have your filthy
lucre."
"Aw, c'mon, ya crook!"
Anyhoo, they convince Zelda that the
money she stole in the first episode was real (by showing her a
signed affidavit from the editor of the Gotham City Times
reading, "This morning's headline was entirely untrue."
I don't want to start making New York Times jokes here,
because I'll never be able to stop).
So, Aunt Harriet is off the hook at the
end of the chain hanging above a vat of flaming oil. Upon her return
back to Stately Wayne Manor, Alfred finds on her person a clue as to
Zelda's whereabouts (the World's Greatest Detective's butler, ladies
and gentlemen!).
As B&R speed toward the showdown
with Zelda (and her Svengali, Eivol Ekdol), Ekdol reveals his master
scheme: The high-end escape trick he's been developing for Zelda is
not actually complete. He plans to trap Batman in the locked chamber,
and then copy whatever method Bats uses to escape it (let that sink
in for a minute). Then, when Batman emerges from the trap, two
gangsters from Central Casting will be hiding in prop sarcophagi,
waiting to fill the Caped Crusader with lead ("In my country,
we have an obscure peasant saying: 'Dead men tell no tales.'"
Really, Eivol? Is it really that obscure? When I think, "obscure
sayings," it's usually something more along the lines of,
"eatin' sherbet and changin' his clothes.").
This goes down as
stupidly as you're imagining it does: Batman and Robin escape the
trap by using the electrified trapdoor within to ignite the poison
gas inside (aren't they also breathing and enveloped by the same
gas? Ah, well; best not to think about that too much, or the fact
that that is a completely unusable escape method on stage); upon
exiting, Batman receives the heads-up from Zelda, and ducks just in
time, causing the two gunsels to blow each other away (conveniently
offscreen, as they're still inside the sarcophagi; what a way to
go!). Eivol Ekdol's escape is cut short by his being cold-cocked with
a terribly-thrown Batarang, and Zelda sexily (and tearfully! Taste
'em, Batman; they're real) surrenders herself into custody.
In the coda scene, Bruce Wayne keeps it
in his pants long enough to visit Zelda in the penitentiary, where
she's rocking horizontal stripes (take that, fashionistas!)
from her prison heels all the way to her pillbox hat.
Wayne informs her that, because she
acted to save Batman's life, she deserves a break after completing
her sentence; so, he's going to set Zelda up for a regular gig at a
Gotham Children's Hospital (that's right, kids: before HMOs, there
was such a job as Resident Lady Magician at hospitals
nationwide).
Next up: The Riddler returns! And BOY
does he work hard for a measly one million (USD)!
#samebattimesamebatchannel
No comments:
Post a Comment