Batman: Shoot a Crooked Arrow & Walk the Straight and Narrow

Shoot a Crooked Arrow

"That malfeasance marksman!"

Oh dear.

It's a new season, and we start with, well, a rubbish two parter and a ridiculous villain- and yes, I know that Batman is supposed to be silly in a high camp sort of way, but this is dangerously close to low camp. That is, except for the suspiciously named character of Alan A. Dale, who is just simply camp.

I mean, just look at the villain, the Archer, a ridiculous concept played with awful hamminess by the terrible Art Carney. A mediaeval themed villain could have worked, but not with that ridiculous thesaurus-swallowing dialogue and those ridiculous cod-Shakespearean pronouns (early modern, not mediaeval), which are used wrongly in any case with "thee" where they should have "thou". None of this has any of the self-referential wit I'd come to expect. And no, illustrating fights with "zap-eth" etc is not funny.

The Robin Hood angle gives us an amusing line about the honest poor of Gotham City returning the stolen cash but then steers close to the potentially interesting territory of Gotham preferring its Robin Hood to Batman, before this plotline is abruptly abandoned. This is so terrible that I'm hardly even amused to see apparent Scouser Alfred describe himself as "the William Tell of Liverpool".


Walk the Straight and Narrow

"Tell him to get some relaxation, and eat all his vegetables."

I've seen some rubbish cliffhanger resolutions in my time, but using "bat-springs" to leap out of danger has to be the worst yet. And Alan A. Dale is the most obvious sinisterly camp baddie of all time; we're not al all surprised to see him in league with the Archer.

There's one funny scene where Maid Marilyn (oh yes, they went there) complains to a cop about Batman driving recklessly, only to be told he lectures on road safety in his free time, but this is dire. Alfred in disguise as Batman, Art Carnet mispronouncing "Et tu, Brute?"-there's none of the usual magic here.Not even stock footage of the Batboat from the movie can save this. There have been less good episodes before, but sadly the opener to the second season is our first absolute turkey.