[Batman] The Batscholar on Episodes 55 & 56

[Ubiquitous]

The first Joker episode of the second season has the fiend attempting to take
over Gotham City with the aid of his key controlled invention and key shaped
pills he placed in the city's water supply. It allows him to control time,
moving it backwards and forwards at will.

A rather bizzare story science fiction story, but this would not be the last,
especially for the Joker, who would later return with homemade androids and
later a flying saucer complete with Martian henchman. I suppose this was the
producers way of competing with time slot rival Lost in Space. The Joker,
whom according to Batman was a famous hypnotist earlier in his life, first
creates a flashing box of lights and sounds to hypnotize Batman and Robin,
and thus carry out his crimes. Joker then creates his time machine and can
control all of Gotham City, but as the series progressed, Joker was reduced
to a childlike clownish buffoon. He was great with mechanical gadgets, but
his mental state was reduced, to the point he was almost on the same comical
intelligence level of Dr Smith on LIS. I loved the Joker and Cesar's
performance, but by the time the series reached the end of the second season
and into the third, just about all of the villains were being dumbed down, to
the point the plots made no sense whatsoever.


There are some good points to the episode, Alan Napier gets to take a turn as
his lookalike gravel voiced cousin Egbert, the night watchman at the water
works. And as such is able to fool Aunt Harriet, who drops by while he is on
duty. It was also the first appearance of Alfred's Alfcycle.

Another is actor Chrisopher Cary, as Angus Ferguson, a fine character actor,
who is best remembered as the title character of Merlin the Magician on the
Time Tunnel tv series.

There is a window cameo by Felony Squad (another Fox show) star Howard Duff,
who would later return with his wife Ida Lupino as Dr Cassandra's husband
Cabala.


Burt Ward's second wife Kathy Kersh, (who was several years older than him)
appeared as Cornelia, the Joker's latest girl.

According to Executive Producer William Dozier: “We didn’t have serious
problems with Burt Ward. He was very young and very broke when I first saw
him. We were interviewing guys, and my assistant, Charles Fitzsimons, a very
able man and a very bright man who was the head of the Producer’s Guild, was
interviewing people. One day he came into my office and said, ‘I think this
may be the guy.’ So, he brought this Burt Ward in. Burt introduced himself,
and I said, He is the guy, all right, if he can walk and talk.’ He and his
wife were living on turned-in pop bottles. Really, literally that is what
they were living on. So, we put him in the show, and he was very good. I
think he was exactly right for the part. Not long after the show got started,
he dumped his wife and married Kathy Kersh (the ex-wife of the guy who played
Ben Casey, Vince Edwards), who was a barracuda. She ate him alive and
encouraged him to spend money. He spent his money as fast as he made it,
thinking it was going to last forever, and became very star-struck. He
thought he was a star, but he was too young and too inexperienced to evaluate
his position, whereas Adam evaluated his position completely. Adam was smart;
he saved his money. He knew this was a freak thing that wasn’t going to last
forever. And to get the most out of it, he and Burt would go out on weekends
and open supermarkets in their outfits and the Batmobile. We had three
Batmobiles, and they’d clean up. They would make a lot of money on those
weekend things.”


The interesting thing about the Joker and Cesar was the no matter had
ridiculous and stupid the plots became, he managed to instill life into the
show. Cesar became funnier, the dumber the Joker became.He overcame the
material to uplift the show, but it also showed the series was already
running out of steam.

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