Batman: Catwoman Goes to College & Batman Displays His Knowledge

Catwoman Goes to College

"I just heard there's to be a spontaneous demonstration in Chime Square tonight."

Terrible news: this is Julie Newmar's final appearance as Catwoman. This is, of course, devastating news. She is at once superb, sexy and a real mistress of comic timing- and has real, electric chemistry with Adam West. She will be missed.

This is a very 1967 episode, concerned with the new (for then) phenomenon of student protests, although of course there's certainly no political context here, no civil rights or Vietnam. Instead there's Catwoman who, although apparently dead, is being rather generously paroled from prison, and enrolling at uni to do, appropriately enough, criminology. Sadly, all the students- many of them suspiciously old- wear ridiculous uni garb.

It's an odd beginning- a Batan statue is stolen in a suspected student prank- but the plot matters not, here; quite rightly, we have set pieces designed to give Julie a fitting swansong, plus an amusing sequence in which "Captain Courageous", a cop transferred from California, arrests the framed Batman.

It's amusing to see the duo captured again by Catoman's feminine wiles, and a suitably acidic cliffhanger...




Batman Displays His Knowledge

"The way we get into these scrapes, and out of them- it's almost as though someone was dreaming up these situations."

The above line, from the Boy Wonder after the cliffhanger resolution, does splendid violence to the fourth wall. Not only is the author not dead as M. Barthes insists, he is God.

I note the students are spoken of only as "misguided" and potentially jeopardising their futures by protesting- there's no suggestion that democracies need a right to protest, not any consideration that the morals may depend on the cause. But this is prime time network television, and an episode where a French fence turns out to also be a fencer, because of course. Rhere's also the best farcical secret identity scene yet as Alfred types out slow responses from "Bruse Wayne" to the Commissioner.

But we end with the most sexually charged scene between Catwman and Batman yet, and that's saying something. Julie is amazing.

Goodbye, Julie. You're the best Catwoman ever and always will be. I'll miss you.