Batman: The Sport of Penguins

"I pray for the day when Gotham City is safe from that mocking mountebank."

Phew. This episode is much better, and holds out some hope for this third season after its wobby start- and it manages to do this while being centred around the theme of horse racing, the most boring subject imaginable.

I still have doubts about the new format, but the fact that this is a two parter (although the fact the show is now weekly sadly seems to mean no cliffhanger, which is silly and disappointing as they still try to tease us without one) makes the whole thing less rushed and allows some of the high camp silliness which is the whole point of this series- hence we get the Caped Crusaders' surreal and ridiculously random reasoning ("holy non-sequitors!) which lead them to the glue factory, and Penguin gets lines like "If it's that priceless, I can get a good price for it on the black market", and his haggling at the glue factory is hilarious.

It's also nice that he remembers Barbara jilting him at the altar (actual continuity!), and leaves a ticking trap for her- and I love Barbara's po-faced outrage at his attempted theft in the library. We also get the amusing Ethel Merman as Lola Lasagne, a fairly small time villain with a small time scheme, but an amusing one.

On a personal note, I'm glad these two parters are more loosely connected than before; from this week onwards my weekdays are even more insanely busy than before and a short episode of Batman is something I can hopefully blog where time is absurdly short, so I'll stick to one episode at a time unless things change- on other days, I'll continue to blog Deadwood with films, as usual, at the weekend. I want to keep this blog up; it's strangely relaxing for me after these long days.