We're freewheeling towards the end now, with just four episodes to watch. The last story I watched was the Shame two-parter featuring the gloriously-named Frontier Fanny. It only dawned on me in the latter episode that Cliff Robertson would go on to be Peter Parker's Uncle Ben in Sam Raimi's
Spider-Man films.
Season Three has continued to be an enjoyable journey. The relative brevity of the season had helped. Perhaps my lower expectations were a factor too.
Even the dafter situations have been fun. There've been a few telling signs of the times. The Shame episode featured a stereotypical-looking Native American and Mexican played, apparently, by caucasian actors wearing bronze makeup. Even on this series it's not the first time it's happened. I recall a chief in an earlier episode along the lines of Charles Hawtrey in
Carry On Cowboy. The native American in the latter episode is more Bernard Bresslaw. One scene from this episode appears on YouTube titled "Racist Batman Scene" and, while I'm neither doubting nor advocating the dubiously dated nature of this custom, the scene in question is, as far as I can see, fairly standard. If anything, it highlights the surreal nature of it, since the Mexican character can clearly be heard speaking in a Jacob Rees-Mogg voice.
In the same vein, there's been something approaching social commentary, with the episode
Nora Clavicle And The Ladies' Crime Club taking aim at the then-nascent Women's Lib movement. The plot involves the titular character getting Commissioner Gordon sacked so she may take his place. She also gets Chief O'Hara replaced with a female friend of hers and they go on to replace the entire Gotham Police Force with women in nicely fitted uniforms (more
Carry On influence here, perhaps. It's rather reminiscent of
Cabby).
And the reason? They know that women will be far less competent than men which will allow them to get away with their schemes. Indeed, we go on to see a bank robbery taking place under the nose of female officers. The one inside the bank is too busy using a compact and applying makeup to respond, while the two officers outside the bank (each holding a brightly coloured rolling pin) are involved in exchanging recipes. The police switchboard is flashing like crazy, but the woman operating it is oblivious as she's calling all cars to tell them about a great sale that's just started.
The grand plot involves Nora's plan to destroy Gotham City and get a huge insurance payout. She aims to achieve this using thousands of clockwork mice, each containing a small charge. And so we cut to scenes of terrified female officers standing on desks and chairs and swooning into dead faints at the sight of the mice. It's kind of terrible but also riotously funny, perhaps even more so in this MeToo saturated world than it was then. Even Batgirl - the series' symbol of girl power and liberation - earnestly observes that with women running the force Nora's plan is likely to succeed.
The mid-episode cliffhanger, too, is one of the most implicitly sexist. The heroic trio are bound into a human knot which will only get tighter if they move a muscle. Batgirl is practically sitting on Batman's lap, while at the same time facing Robin's groin with her leg up over his shoulder.
Batman starts to free them by wiggling his ears and ordering Robin to wiggle one of his fingers (quite shocking if one stops to consider where Robin's hands are). Given West and Ward's reputation as ladies' men, one can only imagine the kind of antics that were taking place on set that day.
The denouement is appropriately daft, with Batman, Robin and Batgirl using flutes, Pied Piper style, to charm the mice into the water.
I found it quite odd that they still did multi-parters. I'm guessing that maybe they were re-written from scripts intended for the old format.
I enjoyed most of Season Three's multi-parters, but found it odd that most of them were missing the "Same Bat-Time..." cliffhangers. It's as though the new edict of the storyline being wrapped up but having a little teaser for the next episode still applied. Being in amongst the single storyline episodes, the two and three parters should have felt like big events but they were mostly indistinguishable. I also miss the rhyming two-part episode titles.
Alfred accidentally leaning Barbara's secret was really a little too much, I thought. Even for a show that thrived on the absurd.
I know what you mean. My school of thought around it is that anything that gives Alfred a bit more involvement is a good thing.
