Agree 1000 percent on Baxter. Olga was a caricature from jump street and never resembled an actual human being, which the even more outrageous costumed villains should manage to do.Ben Bentley wrote: To me this episode was a symbolic flirtation with a direction and freedom from what we consider to be the formulaic nature of these two-part narratives. In retrospect, the part I find most bizarre is the notion that the show-runners were already trying to play with the structure and per-requisites merely two months into the show's original broadcast run, keeping in mind that their original audience had yet to meet such iconic villains such as Catwoman.
For better or for worse, I found Anne Baxter a lot more tangible and tolerable as Zelda than I did two seasons further down the road as Olga.
I've always been generally positive about this ep, but the flaws are obvious. 1. The villainess is weak. Villains being blackmailed by others aren't as much fun as purely evil villains. I realize Lorenzo Semple Jr. changed the Zelda character from a male in the comic story that inspired this, but still, writing strong female characters wasn't in his wheelhouse, and this one wasn't strong.
2. It seemed they didn't want to fully commit to the 'normal villainess' in that they included Zelda breaking the fourth wall at one point, and the ridiculous scene of her knitting while the Aunt Harriet stunt double is doing windsprints above the boiling oil. If you're going to be serious, then do it consistently.
I wouldn't be surprised if this garnered neither good ratings nor word-of-mouth buzz. It's telling there was never another non-costumed villain until some of the season 3 duds.
