We’re back with a one-off episode to share several exciting pieces of news!
First, Lorenzo Semple’s BATNOTES memo (also known as “Bat Poop”), sent to prospective Batman writers, outlines Semple’s concept of the show. It was thought by many to be lost, but now it has resurfaced! This time we share the seven most surprising things we found in this 14-page memo. It also inspires Paul to take a long-awaited Camping Trip!
Second, our book is coming along. The plan is for it to cover Batman season one, with future books to cover the other two seasons. It’s not finished, and now that we’ve belatedly hit on a good angle on the show, some parts that were thought to be finished may need a lot more work. We’ll fill you in.
Finally, we got some lavish praise from podcaster Frank Santopadre on his Fun For All Ages podcast! Aw, shucks…
Plus the Smooth4Lyfe EDM version of the Batman theme!
Regarding casualties among the villains' henchmen: one example you didn't mention occurred at the end of "Zelda The Great," when the two hired killers accidentally rub each other out in whimsical "Tom and Jerry" style.
I'm a little slow to the party.
The Bat-Bible was never lost, I have a version here that made the rounds back in the day, and I thought at some point it was in the resources pouch here on 66batman. As I've said for decades, if Lorenzo had more creative control of the series direction the show would have greatly benefited from it.
If you look at Season 1 especially the earliest episodes all of the actors are simply taking his words and following them as they should. I deal with this in my own work- when you first start a project everyone backs off and let's some single creator sail the uncharted seas, but once it becomes popular suddenly everyone has ideas. In all long term productions as series television is the actors themselves start to give input and that input is not always great input. Look at the way Adam and Burt took a look at the script for LEGENDS and said "yeah this works".
One of the directives was that Batman was never to be the joke but we need only to get midway through Season Two and there's "Poor Little Buttercup". I doubt Lorenzo saw that episode and thought they were doing fine without him.
AndyFish wrote: ↑Sun Dec 21, 2025 7:59 am
I'm a little slow to the party.
The Bat-Bible was never lost, I have a version here that made the rounds back in the day, and I thought at some point it was in the resources pouch here on 66batman. As I've said for decades, if Lorenzo had more creative control of the series direction the show would have greatly benefited from it.
If you look at Season 1 especially the earliest episodes all of the actors are simply taking his words and following them as they should. I deal with this in my own work- when you first start a project everyone backs off and let's some single creator sail the uncharted seas, but once it becomes popular suddenly everyone has ideas. In all long term productions as series television is the actors themselves start to give input and that input is not always great input. Look at the way Adam and Burt took a look at the script for LEGENDS and said "yeah this works".
One of the directives was that Batman was never to be the joke but we need only to get midway through Season Two and there's "Poor Little Buttercup". I doubt Lorenzo saw that episode and thought they were doing fine without him.
Agree with just about all you said and Semple living in Spain didn't help. After the first season they really seemed to have lost their way and didn't understand what made the show successful in those first 12 episodes of the first season . I think one of the worst offenders was Stanley Ralph Ross who took a kind of Borsht belt / sit com approach to his episodes. I got the feeling Ross thought he was real cute and clever with the stuff he wrote. What made it worse was Ross appearing with the cast on talk shows in later years almost as if he was the creative force behind the show. The show was mischaracterized as camp when in fact it was ironic which is not easy to pull off but they did it in those early episodes.
Couldn't have said it better Gerry.
Ross started out strong-- the first appearance of Catwoman remains a top 10 episode for me, but it wasn't long before he went from Ironic Comedy to straight Camp. By definition Camp is intentionally "so bad it's good" and that's not the classic episodes at all. The delicate balance was keeping the action angle with just the slightest twist of humor-- as kids most of us were surprised when people called it a comedy -- I remember reading that in a TV Guide listing and thinking it odd. But even as kids we knew some of the episodes were out right bad.
I also think that as the adult audience left in droves sometime in the first season, that Dozier/ Semple/ etc. realized now they were just writing for kids which is why the standards dropped and it got silly. You know, those darn kids will fall for just about anything.
