Batman: The Joker Trumps an Ace & Batman Sets the Pace

The Joker Trumps an Ace

"Let Gayfellow take you to the cleaners."

The Jokers's back a third time and, like the previous two parter with the Riddler, this is a fairly par story- entertaining enough but not likely to stand out. It does though, admittedly, have a genuinely clever plot.

There are a few things to raise an eyebrow, however. The opening scenes give us some of the old "Batteries to power, turbines to speed" clip for the first time in ages. One of the Joker's henchmen would voice Kranix twenty years later in Transformers: The Movie. And the plot revolves around the kidnapping of a comedy maharajah who is... played by a white actor. Oh dear.

Cesar Romero may be no Frank Gorshin, but he certainly has charisma and presence- and the suspense of working out what the Joker is up to is fun; this is no loose collection of set pieces but a (just about, if you squint a bit) coherent plot. Plus it's enormous fun to see the Batmobile roving around a golf course. That'll teach people to spoil their good walks.

Good cliffhanger, though, and I like how the utility belt and rope are explicitly ruled out as our heroes are trapped in a chimney with rising poison gas.


Batman Sets the Pace

"Gosh, Batman. I'll never neglect my math again!"

It's a devilishly clever cliffhanger resolution: Batman and Robin, tied together back to back, simply walk up the sides of the chimney to escape the gas. So it's back to the Batcave, an undercover visit to a joke shop, and the use of, er, trigonometry to get into the Joker's hideout via a ventilation shaft- Batman goes first, of course, because of "dynamic seniority".

Then we come to a little three way phone call arranging the maharajah's ransom between Batman, the Commissioner and the Joker which, uncannily, is most certainly my earliest memory of watching Batman, no doubt at some point during the '80s during Wacaday or something. It's a strange feeling to get such an unexpected wave of nostalgia.

The ending, for once not bothering with reforming the baddie's conscience-stricken girlfriend, features a genuinely clever twist. But the ending is odd- the Batphone rings at the end of the episode and, for some reason, surprises everyone because the episode is over- something which makes no sense (crime doesn't take a break) unless everyone realies they're in a 25 minute television programme. But it's just a feeble joke about Batman running for Governor of California- better him that that moron Ronald Reagan- with talk about, ahem, tiger hunting. Oh dear.