Enter Batgirl

[Jaws63]

Season 3 was plagued by several problems, Budget cuts, poor writing, going from an hour to a half hour show. I wouldn't necessarily blame Batgirl as the sole reason for the shows decline. I might be in the minority but I actually liked the Batgirl character.

Batgirl could've been brought in the series earlier, like making random appearances in season 2, the writers could've written her differently, explaining what drives this character to fight crime. Another thing is that it was written that Barbera Gorden's dad is commissioner Gorden, but the later comics and in the movies, she's the niece of Alfred's, it might have been interesting to suggest that Alfred(Alan Napier) was her niece on the show. This gives a purpose for her random appearances, Barbera was someone who idolized Batman and wanted to be just like Batman. One show, towards the end of season2 is her meeting up with her uncle Alfred.

[AndyFish]

Batgirl is the shining light in Season 3-- Yvonne is great, the character is played well. I wish they had let her do more than Ballerina kick-- had she been a Emma Peel type of fighter (like Yvonne wanted) I think it would have benefited the show a lot.

Maybe Batgirl is played straight to compare to Batman and Robin's (by then) ineptness. It was not her fault that the writers didn't know what to do with her and that budget cuts stripped the show of it's original charm.

There's a reason the ratings fell off the way they did and the show was cancelled.

[superman1966]

I thought Batgirl was hot in season 3,but by then,the show was allready tanking sadly.

[That_weirdo_Cage]

Batgirl really couldn't have been brought in much sooner than she was, because the character hadn't been created yet. Created during the run of the show, she was integrated into the program not long after her initial comics appearance. There were actually conflicted accounts given by some of the parties involved with her creation at DC and her addition to the TV show, raising the question of whether she was created purely for the comics and then added to the show, created in the comics to be added to the show, or added to the comics at the suggestion of persons tied to the show. However that actually worked, she couldn't really have been added sooner than she was, as much as I would have liked that.

Barbara Gordon has always been a Gordon, and Batgirl as Alfred's niece was a twist unique to the last Schumacher film. Barbara as Alfred's niece might have simplified some things if they'd gone that route for the TV show. Some of the episodes are weird and complicated in the ways they strive to draw Batgirl into the storyline. I find the Barbara Wilson model less satisfying than the Barbara Gordon model, however. As a Gordon, Barbara serves to strengthen the bond between Batman and Commissioner Gordon. It would be a very different Batman Family without her in that bridging role, one with James Gordon much more on the outside. They didn't necessarily tell more interesting stories on the show because Barbara was a Gordon, but I think Barbara as a Gordon does ultimately create room for more interesting stories to be told than would result from Barbara as a relation of Alfred's.

I sort of like the idea that Barbara ended up being the audience identification character for season three. She's sort of an everyman figure, more an average person than Bruce or Dick. She's not rich, nor is she orphaned. As Batgirl, she doesn't have the resources that Batman has. As Barbara, she holds down a day job. She doesn't have a clearly-defined motive. She's "plain Barbara Gordon, out for a lark" as Batgirl. Rather than this making her a weaker or less compelling character, as some (notably a Big Name in the industry) have asserted, I think this makes her more fascinating. A bit of Peter Parker has been interjected into the Batman continuity. Barbara doesn't have the advantages of Bruce or Dick, yet she manages to be Batgirl anyway. There's a hint of "Anyone could be a superhero!" to this. The audience shares with Barbara her great secret and participates when she laughingly pulls one over on all the other characters.

None of this really helps make the series more realistic or believable, but that wasn't really the goal of the series anyway. Season three, even more than the two previous seasons, is hard to take very seriously. I can see why many people don't like the third season or Batgirl. Each of the three seasons carries a slightly different tone, and I think perhaps they need to be watched differently. You can't easily take the same things away from all three, because they don't offer the same things in the same measures.

Or something. I sort of wonder if I may have a different opinion about any of this after being able to watch the material with a fresh eye on the upcoming home video release.

[Lounge lizard]

A Bat-girl character had been introduced in 1961. Bette Kane. It makes sense to me to have the revitalised character related to Commissioner Gordon.
I suppose it's a bit like the Aunt Harriet character. Dozier said she was introduced by the tv series. However check out Batman #328 from 1964 and there she is.

[That_weirdo_Cage]

A Bat-girl character had been introduced in 1961. Bette Kane. It makes sense to me to have the revitalised character related to Commissioner Gordon.

Right, but that is so thoroughly a different character that there's no real point in even discussing the possibility of adding the character to the show.

Really, I've never understood the recent trend toward trying to draw some connection between the Bette Kane Bat-girl and the Barbara Gordon Batgirl. The only hint that I've ever seen that anyone, anywhere, ever considered them linked is that blurb on the cover of Detective #359, "Introducing the NEW Batgirl!" One possible interpretation of that blurb would suggest that a "new" Batgirl should be contrasted, in the reader's mind, with the "old" Bat-girl. On the other hand... the new Batgirl was new, see, in herself. New Batgirl is new. Other than this hint of a thing, on a cover, a DC cover where they used to sell the books using gratuitous gorillas... Ooh. Gorillas. This cover needs more gorillas. And... let's add an Australian airline stewardess with an unlikely name. I had a point. Gorillas! Other than that, my experience was always that these were such incredibly different characters that if you spoke of them in the same breath you would get laughed out of the comics shop... unless you got laughed out first for discussing DC characters instead of whether Thor was stronger than Hulk. Until maybe, what, 2005 or so, some rather recent period when DC needed readers to think of Batgirl less as Barbara Gordon and more as any character DC branded with that name. All of a sudden no online resource could mention the 1967 Batgirl without suggesting that she was part of a line of succession which began, bafflingly, with Bette Kane. There was never any connection before that! But all suddenly-like, there's this pervasive meme, positing a direct link between the characters. To, for instance, spend twenty minutes writing a rambling forum post in which you seek to refute a connection between these characters would be just silly. Obviously the DC Universe has never been subject to retroactive continuity changes.

I suppose it's a bit like the Aunt Harriet character. Dozier said she was introduced by the tv series. However check out Batman #328 from 1964 and there she is.

So probably we should strike from the record the testimony of Horwitz or Strangis or whomever I read suggesting that Greenway had catalyzed Batgirl. That seems fair. (Dull, but fair. ) The simplest answer, then, is that DC created Batgirl and she was then seized upon as a potential new addition to the show. If we take Greenway out of the loop for Batgirl's creation as a character, it makes it all the more unlikely that she could have been included earlier, right?

There really wasn't room for Batgirl to be added sooner. We, as fans, like to imagine how bits could be rearranged more to our liking. Cue the Mary Ann Mobley crowd in 3, 2, 1....

[Gotham]

That made my head hurt. I thought being laughed at in a Comic Book Store would be a good thing....
This is getting as serious as talking to a Trecker.....lol
I always did wonder where Aunt Harriet came in, but I haven't read every Batman Comic.
I started in about 1967, and stopped when I got... Pimples....

[epaddon]

She's "plain Barbara Gordon, out for a lark" as Batgirl. Rather than this making her a weaker or less compelling character, as some (notably a Big Name in the industry) have asserted, I think this makes her more fascinating.

But there is one thing I have always felt is missing from this dynamic, and to quote Burt Reynolds in a hilarious Twilight Zone episode, "What's my tertiary motivation?" Just *why* does Barbara Gordon decide she needs to copy Batman in costume, style etc.? This required an explanation a lot more than doing it for a simple "lark" or worse yet the tone of "anything you can do I can do better" that unfortunately came off in the character as written on TV (and sue me for being part of the "Mary Ann Mobley crowd" if you will, but Yvonne's performance IMO didn't overcome this problem. But this is not a thread about casting but about the character). If Barbara Gordon had grown up as a teen idolizing Batman and feeling inspired to think, "I can do that too!", then *that* gives the character more depth, and not in some kind of overly deep psychological motive. I would have much rather seen that in setting up the character of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl then what we got. The comic book origin tale I'll admit didn't do it too much better, though it was marginally better (and the newspaper strip origin tale marginally better than the comic book).

[High C]

I sort of like the idea that Barbara ended up being the audience identification character for season three. She's sort of an everyman figure, more an average person than Bruce or Dick. She's not rich, nor is she orphaned. As Batgirl, she doesn't have the resources that Batman has. As Barbara, she holds down a day job. She doesn't have a clearly-defined motive. She's "plain Barbara Gordon, out for a lark" as Batgirl. Rather than this making her a weaker or less compelling character, as some (notably a Big Name in the industry) have asserted, I think this makes her more fascinating. A bit of Peter Parker has been interjected into the Batman continuity. Barbara doesn't have the advantages of Bruce or Dick, yet she manages to be Batgirl anyway. There's a hint of "Anyone could be a superhero!" to this. The audience shares with Barbara her great secret and participates when she laughingly pulls one over on all the other characters.

I honestly admire your belief in the character, and I know I'm not going to convince you otherwise, but I can say I never identified with her. And much of that isn't necessarily Yvonne's fault. (For the record, I agree with epaddon. I would have liked to have seen Mobley in the role because I think she could have brought more of a wide-eyed exuberance to it.) The writers created the 'nyah-nyah' persona from the start, and by giving Barbara so many ridiculous amenities in her apartment--a wall that opens out automatically, rooms that totally change at the press of a button, etc., they negated the 'she's doing this on a budget' concept anyway.

I'd add that Warner's current handling or better yet, non-handling of Batgirl as a character in its promotion for the series proves that they don't think the audience identifies with her. Obviously, they know how many people hate season 3, but if they believed that more people would be buying the discs because of BG/Yvonne and their personal identification with same, they wouldn't be giving Yvonne such (unfair, IMO) short shrift in their marketing. Warner isn't giving Yvonne any semblance of a victory lap the way they certainly have for Adam.

[That_weirdo_Cage]

The silences can be part of the music, too, perhaps. Those gaps in the information we're given are areas we can fill in with imagination. For myself, I like the ambiguities in the character. The basic outlines are presented to us, but not the details or specifics. A simple cartoon-like drawing invites greater participation from the viewer than a detailed rendering. The cool medium is immersive and the hot medium is distancing. Batgirl becomes an invitation to audience participation. I just think that's... pretty nifty. We weren't told everything about this fictional universe and its characters, much of what we were told was nonsensical or inconsistent. It's hard to take a lot of it seriously. I guess I don't end up seeing any of that as a problem. I sort of look at the oft-maligned sets of the third season the same way. They suggest rather than specify a lot of what the scene might hold. And, ooh, the invisible fight scene. Gaps to fill. Fun stuff.

(I'm always fascinated by how the two of you manage to post side-by-side and back-to-back, BTW. How do you do that? Here, you've managed it while I was responding to the first of the two posts.)

[That_weirdo_Cage]

I'd add that Warner's current handling or better yet, non-handling of Batgirl as a character in its promotion for the series proves that they don't think the audience identifies with her.

I don't know that we can accept this as proof of anything. We know they aren't promoting the release using Batgirl. Until and unless someone involved with making that decision disambiguates matters, we can only guess about precisely why they've gone this route. Nonetheless, you're not wrong. Batgirl divides the show's fanbase. Some love the character, others hate her. I don't understand the vocal hate for her, but there seems to be a good bit of that about. Which is fair. I can't stand noodles, myself. Ick!

[High C]

The silences can be part of the music, too, perhaps. Those gaps in the information we're given are areas we can fill in with imagination. For myself, I like the ambiguities in the character. The basic outlines are presented to us, but not the details or specifics. A simple cartoon-like drawing invites greater participation from the viewer than a detailed rendering. The cool medium is immersive and the hot medium is distancing.

I doubt that Marshall McLuhan was in the writers' room with Hoffman, Ross and Stanford Sherman, although it's fun to contemplate.

What you present as cool/hot medium is really just a case of writers on deadline who needed to repurpose the old Green Hornet sets as a budget-saver and never bothered to come up with a reasonable excuse for doing so.

[High C]

I'd add that Warner's current handling or better yet, non-handling of Batgirl as a character in its promotion for the series proves that they don't think the audience identifies with her.

I don't know that we can accept this as proof of anything. We know they aren't promoting the release using Batgirl. Until and unless someone involved with making that decision disambiguates matters, we can only guess about precisely why they've gone this route. Nonetheless, you're not wrong. Batgirl divides the show's fanbase. Some love the character, others hate her. I don't understand the vocal hate for her, but there seems to be a good bit of that about. Which is fair. I can't stand noodles, myself. Ick!

I'll grant you that 'proves' was a little too strong, but I still would submit it's pretty convincing circumstantial evidence that, for whatever reason, they don't feel it's necessary to reach out to the pro-BG crowd.

[That_weirdo_Cage]

I doubt that Marshall McLuhan was in the writers' room with Hoffman, Ross and Stanford Sherman, although it's fun to contemplate.

What you present as cool/hot medium is really just a case of writers on deadline who needed to repurpose the old Green Hornet sets as a budget-saver and never bothered to come up with a reasonable excuse for doing so.

Absolutely. I don't necessarily think my interpretation of the material was anything intended by the writers or the production team. When regarding this fictional universe, however, we can fill in the omissions and resolve the contradictions any way we like.

Ah, MacLuhan in the writer's room would be a thing. Have you read the Batman monograph published by Wayne State Press? It's a fascinating case of interpretive overkill.

Why would they need a "reasonable excuse" for doing anything?

[epaddon]

The silences can be part of the music, too, perhaps. Those gaps in the information we're given are areas we can fill in with imagination. For myself, I like the ambiguities in the character. The basic outlines are presented to us, but not the details or specifics.

Certainly as a fanfic author I'm all for the idea of using our imagination in certain areas, but in the case of Batgirl its not so much wanting the details and the full story but just a one-sentence, "I've admired Batman ever since I was in high school and felt inspired to follow his lead" which at least grounds the character with some context. It's the absence of that which also IMO hindered Julie Newmar's Catwoman in not having some basic notion of a background, whereas by contrast the Siren (and also Mr. Freeze for that matter) have some general backgrounds that makes us understand their place in this larger than life universe. And the pilot at least acknowledged Batman's reason for being with the murder of his parents without having to give us the whole traumatic backstory.