The Joker's Last Laugh
"We're dealing with a perfectly normal robot."
You know what? I've never exactly dissed Cesar Romero's Joker, but for me this version of the character is no Riddler, Catwoman or Penguin, but with this splendidly witty two parter penned by the always superb Lorenzo Semple Jr I'm certainly warming to him. After all, at this point Batman hadn't been a dark character since his long forgotten earlier months, and the tone of this TV series is quite faithful to the comics as they were in 1967 and had been for years. I ought to remember that the same applies to the Joker, at this point a crook, not a psychopath.
And I'm certainly enjoying his two parters more and more- particularly when, as here, the character is allowed to be genuinely witty. And the script is hilarious- the Joker manages, onscreen, to "slip" a massive recording antenna into the Commissioner's trousers. Plenty of humour is wrung out of the science fiction robots- rumbled because they fail to laugh at a crap joke. The dialogue sings.The plot is just leisurely set piece after leisurely set piece while the script winks at us, but I for one have no problem with that. And Adam West is a comic genius yet again as a "desperate" Bruce Wayne.
The Joker's Epitaph
"Alert your anti-lunatic squad!"
Another twenty-five minutes of hilarious fun here as the cliffhanger is averted by Alfred pretending again to be Batman- and climbing up the side of a building with a Bat-rope. And then we have Joker, installed as deputy chairman of the Gotham National Bank for plot reasons, trying to blackmail Bruce Wayne in amusing schemes. But absolutely nothing is funnier than Chief O'Hara seizing a supposedly insane Bruce Wayne with his "anti-lunatic squad". I'm sure mental health facilities in '60s Gotham City were perfectly fine. Especially with this comedy German quack.
This is a perfectly formed pair of episodes that have given Cesar Romero something cool to do. I'm actually hoping to see the character again.
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