Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

General goings on in the 1966 Batman World

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JimmyVale
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by JimmyVale »

I’m rewatching the whole series and they were doing ok in Season 1. It’s now obvious to me that after Season 1, the writers were trying too hard to be funny. It got to the point where the show was insulting your intelligence. That’s why it started out extremely popular, then tanked hard.

The solution would’ve been to make the shows a little more serious, or lighten up on the idiotic comedy, not adding Batgirl. Season 1 is like telling a joke that had everybody laughing, then following it up by trying too hard to be funny afterward. It just doesn’t work.

I think the audience wanted to see Batman, not a comedy show. The writers and producers did not understand that - they made the TV audience mad in the ‘60s when it got too stupid, I think.

That’s just my opinion. It’s just strikingly obvious when comparing season 1 to season 2 and 3.
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AndyFish
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by AndyFish »

I agree with you Jimmy-- the first season was subtle and clever, the subsequent seasons got more clumsy and slapstick to the point that it lost the adventure edge of season 1.
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SprangFan
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by SprangFan »

I agree the shift to (lame) comedy hurt the show, but I think there were deeper and more fundamental problems with the core concept that guaranteed the show would always have a short life. Basically, except for a few superficial details, every episode is pretty much the same as every other one.

If you look at a show like Star Trek (which admittedly didn't last much longer than Batman) there was an ability to tell different kinds of stories from week to week: adventure, comedy, horror, romance, mystery, courtroom drama. Maybe a better example is Gunsmoke, which stayed on the air forever with episodes that ranged from comedic to tragic to romantic to suspenseful...even if it was pretty much a given they'd almost all end in a gunfight. Batman, by contrast, was always the same show, with the same plot and the same structure, week to week. A criminal escapes from jail and launches a crime spree, Batman and Robin track them down, try to apprehend them but lose a fight and end up in a death trap. The next night they escape the death trap, track down the criminal again, have another fight and win this time. Maybe we get a jokey coda back at Wayne Manor. Batman's life is like "Groundhog Day" in spandex, and the scripts become little more than a "Mad Libs" exercise. We all have a favorite death trap, or a favorite guest villain, but when we single out an episode for praise it's not really because it did anything revolutionary or remarkably different from the others; the "best" episodes are the ones that came the closest to executing a very narrowly defined formula perfectly.

When it arrived, Batman was different from anything else on the air, and the public always loves novelty. Soon enough everyone knew exactly what they were going to get, and familiarity breeds contempt. If there's anything the public *doesn't* love, it's yesterday's fad.
"You were right again, Batman. We might have been killed."
"Or worse. Let's go..."
robinboyblunderer
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by robinboyblunderer »

This is a very good point. I think, to a degree, they tried doing different things with the formula in the 2nd season.

Ma Parker---Criminals wanting to be arrested, villaiin's hide-out in jail, the speed based bomb death-trap.
Chandell---Giving Aunt Harriet a larger role.
Darn Catwoman---Robin being under her influence the whole time, Batman vs. Robin, Catwoman teamed up with Batman etc.

You know, I thought there'd be more and I may be missing some (not counting Zelda) but you're right.

Could they have told other types of stories...I think so, to a degree. But they'd have to maybe introduce more outlandish elements, other dimensions, time travel, Holiday themed episodes, etc, which would've also aligned iwth a phase from the comics.

After (or even before) the movie and as the second season went on the novelty was gone. Perhaps even wittier without being campy scripts and pushing the concept further could've extended it.

Well, really good point SprangFan.

cheers
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Ben Bentley
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by Ben Bentley »

SprangFan wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 5:26 pm I agree the shift to (lame) comedy hurt the show, but I think there were deeper and more fundamental problems with the core concept that guaranteed the show would always have a short life. Basically, except for a few superficial details, every episode is pretty much the same as every other one.

If you look at a show like Star Trek (which admittedly didn't last much longer than Batman) there was an ability to tell different kinds of stories from week to week: adventure, comedy, horror, romance, mystery, courtroom drama. Maybe a better example is Gunsmoke, which stayed on the air forever with episodes that ranged from comedic to tragic to romantic to suspenseful...even if it was pretty much a given they'd almost all end in a gunfight. Batman, by contrast, was always the same show, with the same plot and the same structure, week to week. A criminal escapes from jail and launches a crime spree, Batman and Robin track them down, try to apprehend them but lose a fight and end up in a death trap. The next night they escape the death trap, track down the criminal again, have another fight and win this time. Maybe we get a jokey coda back at Wayne Manor. Batman's life is like "Groundhog Day" in spandex, and the scripts become little more than a "Mad Libs" exercise. We all have a favorite death trap, or a favorite guest villain, but when we single out an episode for praise it's not really because it did anything revolutionary or remarkably different from the others; the "best" episodes are the ones that came the closest to executing a very narrowly defined formula perfectly.

When it arrived, Batman was different from anything else on the air, and the public always loves novelty. Soon enough everyone knew exactly what they were going to get, and familiarity breeds contempt. If there's anything the public *doesn't* love, it's yesterday's fad.
I like the shape of your point here Sprang for sure.

We're actually able to point a pretty clear finger at precisely where the show changed. Prior to the airing "Purrfect Crime" (ignoring Rocket launches etc for a moment) every episode up to that point had been produced prior to any real ratings or critical response data being gathered. There's correspondence between Dozier et al which lays out their new rule book of what they feel the audience wants based on the show's first 10 weeks on the air. That's it, except for episodes like Bookworm (which were shot in that first half of the season and aired later), everything we see after that point was created in a reactionary fashion and as such the lightening in a bottle nature of early S1 is gone. As for truly jumping the shark, that happens a little later, "shortly after it bit him", as Scott would say.
BiffPow
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by BiffPow »

I might add that “The Adventures of Superman” and the old comic book stories, themselves, frequently followed a similar formula: the heroes lose the first round only to come back and defeat the villain. Perhaps they were trying to emulate something that had a proven track record. But, I agree, strict adherence to a formula like that becomes monotonous.

For me, the worst of it was Batman always having exactly what he needed in his utility belt to get out of any situation. This just smacked of pure laziness on the part of the writers, and it eliminated any real sense of danger or adventure, and, while it might have been funny to see once or twice, eventually, the laughter dies an agonizing death like the iconic scene in “Austin Powers” where everyone laughs with
“Dr. Evil.”

The predictable formulaic approach was true of another favorite 1960s show: “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” which routinely utilized an ordinary person (typically female) recruited to help U.N.C.L.E. with an extraordinary situation. (Plus, in the third season, they actually tried to emulate “Batman” in terms of silliness, and it effectively alienated its adventure fans and killed the show. It limped back for a fourth season, but the damage had been done and the series ended abruptly.)
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SprangFan
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by SprangFan »

Absolutely, to be fair Batman was no different than dozens of other shows of the era that relied on formula and in which -- thanks to episodes not always airing in production order -- it was impossible to manage things like "continuity" or "character development" even if they'd wanted to. The idea was to make it possible for each episode to stand on its own since every episode could be someone's first. Same with comics: stories were usually produced way ahead of time and might be slotted into Batman or Detective, depending on where they were most needed. They had to be pretty uniform, and they needed to be able to work whether they saw print this month or next year. And at the end of the story, everything had to go back to where we started.

As Ben notes, the problem with any show usually starts once the "suits" crunch their numbers and decide to dump creativity in favor of checking off boxes. "This worked before, so make 'em all like that." It's a mindset that's ruined many a show, movie franchise and musical act. "Steve Urkel gets the biggest laughs, make the show more about him...give Fonzie more screen time and make him say 'Aaay' at least three times...if you liked 'The Twist,' you'll love 'The Peppermint Twist'...and next, up, 'Let's Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer.'"

I also agree with BiffPow about the utility belt "gag." Zounds, Robin, it looks like The Joker spent the last few months in prison inventing his revolutionary "Joker Time-Stopper Ray." Good thing I brought the "Bat-Anti-Joker Time-Stopper-Ray." The intended joke, of course, is that comic books supposedly pull this kind of foolishness all the time and isn't it funny when real, live grown-ups spout that nonsense in their funny costumes? Except it ultimately undermines our ability to invest ourselves in the action at all. Same with the death-traps: when our heroes are trapped in a giant cake somehow made of quicksand (?) and escape via rocket boots, then neither the "danger" nor the "solution" are believable. A few consecutive weeks of that and you eventually lose interest in tuning in for part 2 each time.

I think they could've prolonged the magic by relying more on adapting comic book stories in which most of the heavy lifting had already been done for them. Writers like Bill Finger had written scores of inventive perils for our heroes and resolved them with creative and often plausible escapes. Sometimes we even learned something about science and nature in the process. Instead the show focused on how to best showcase the latest "name" celebrity guest star and treated the death traps as an afterthought, or as a chance to deliberately accent the perceived ridiculousness of the comic book genre. Some of the "escapes" were flat-out cheats, which probably was a nod to the old cliffhanger serials that cheated too (and sometimes in worse ways) but while that's funny once, over time it chips away at the "tune in tomorrow" angle. As a kid, half my fun came from comparing notes with friends on the playground after a Part 1, trying to figure out how the Dynamic Duo would get out of the latest trap. As often as not, the "solutions" shown in Part 2 were so ridiculously hare-brained there was no way any of us could've guessed them, and we eventually learned to stop trying. Imagine if they'd put more effort into this aspect alone. Houdini made a fortune off of the escape schtick, and Dick Tracy pulled in readers for decades. Play fair with us and you've got something great.

But anyway, it is what it is, and Batman isn't so much worse than a lot of other shows about it. For instance, you couldn't get much more "One Joke" than Gilligan's Island: "Look, they have a shot at getting off the island this week! Nope." But every now and then there was a show like Get Smart, which managed to deliver the expected (pratfalls, puns and patented catchphrases) while still offering enough clever twists and worthy gags to remain fun til the end.
"You were right again, Batman. We might have been killed."
"Or worse. Let's go..."
BiffPow
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by BiffPow »

"Steve Urkel gets the biggest laughs, make the show more about him...give Fonzie more screen time and make him say 'Aaay' at least three times...if you liked 'The Twist,' you'll love 'The Peppermint Twist'...and next, up, 'Let's Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer.'"

So very true.

“Aayyyyyyy! Did I do that?”

And: “The Joker spent the last few months in prison inventing his revolutionary "Joker Time-Stopper Ray."

For me, I always wondered why the villains didn’t just sell their inventions, instead of using them for petty crimes? They would’ve been billionaires.
JimmyVale
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by JimmyVale »

I’m glad there are guys out there who are into Batman as much as I am! Obviously, the shows were rushed and people got tired, and the quality dropped.

It’s sad, because they had the sets, actors, right music….all they needed to do was realize why people like Batman in the first place. He’s cool! He fights bad guys. He is mysterious. He’s a detective. The comedy thing….they just went too far with it.

Oh, one last thing….there seems to be a relationship between how curled the ears are and how good or bad the story is…

I’ve found the more Batman’s ears are curled (seasons 2 & 3), the worse the episode. The straighter the ears, the better the episode. Purely subjective, of course. Just my opinion. Seems to be true for me.
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Larry A.
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by Larry A. »

JimmyVale, as regards the curled ears......You make a VERY good "point"! (pun NOT intended!)
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SprangFan
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by SprangFan »

Billionaire inventors as super-villains? Who would believe that? Ahem.

Wile E. Coyote was the one I could never figure out. What a credit card debt he must have wracked up ordering all those shipments from ACME, Inc and he was still always on the verge of starvation because he couldn't catch the Roadrunner. If he'd just ordered a pizza he'd have been fed and kept 90% of his money.
"You were right again, Batman. We might have been killed."
"Or worse. Let's go..."
BiffPow
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by BiffPow »

SprangFan wrote: Sun Jan 29, 2023 3:39 pm If he'd just ordered a pizza he'd have been fed and kept 90% of his money.
That actually made me laugh. Not to mention the medical bills he would have saved.

90%! Of course, you’re talking about pre-inflation.
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SprangFan
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by SprangFan »

Even with "the works" any pizza has got to be a fraction the cost of a 20-foot-tall wooden catapult, or a rocket with handlebars. The real expense comes with the delivery charge and driver gratuity, since he lives in the middle of the desert. But on the upside, no matter how long it takes to arrive it's bound to be warm.
"You were right again, Batman. We might have been killed."
"Or worse. Let's go..."
JimmyVale
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by JimmyVale »

In the king Tut episode at the beginning of “The Pharo’s in a Rut” where Bruce is on the stretcher….that’s gotta be the same road that leads from Griffith Park to the Hollywood sign!

I think I even see the Hollywood sign in the background behind the sign, “Danger 300 Ft Drop”.

Anybody else notice this? Am I wrong?
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Jim Akin
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Re: Things you didn't notice or remember until seeing the DVDs

Post by Jim Akin »

I never noticed it before, but the Hollywood sign is definitely visible at 23:59 in The Curse of Tut (and again in The Pharaoh's in a Rut). Well spotted.
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