The Batscholar on Episodes 55 & 56

By Joel Eisner

The first Joker episode of the second season has the fiend attempting to take over Gotham City with the aid of his key controlled invention and key shaped pills he placed in the city's water supply. It allows him to control time, moving it backwards and forwards at will.

A rather bizzare story science fiction story, but this would not be the last, especially for the Joker, who would later return with homemade androids and later a flying saucer complete with Martian henchman. I suppose this was the producers way of competing with time slot rival Lost in Space. The Joker, whom according to Batman was a famous hypnotist earlier in his life, first creates a flashing box of lights and sounds to hypnotize Batman and Robin, and thus carry out his crimes. Joker then creates his time machine and can control all of Gotham City, but as the series progressed, Joker was reduced to a childlike clownish buffoon. He was great with mechanical gadgets, but his mental state was reduced, to the point he was almost on the same comical intelligence level of Dr Smith on LIS. I loved the Joker and Cesar's performance, but by the time the series reached the end of the second season and into the third, just about all of the villains were being dumbed down, to the point the plots made no sense whatsoever.

There are some good points to the episode, Alan Napier gets to take a turn as his lookalike gravel voiced cousin Egbert, the night watchman at the water works. And as such is able to fool Aunt Harriet, who drops by while he is on duty. It was also the first appearance of Alfred's Alfcycle.

Another is actor Chrisopher Cary, as Angus Ferguson, a fine character actor, who is best remembered as the title character of Merlin the Magician on the Time Tunnel tv series.

There is a window cameo by Felony Squad (another Fox show) star Howard Duff, who would later return with his wife Ida Lupino as Dr Cassandra's husband Cabala.

Burt Ward's second wife Kathy Kersh, (who was several years older than him) appeared as Cornelia, the Joker's latest girl.

According to Executive Producer William Dozier: “We didn’t have serious problems with Burt Ward. He was very young and very broke when I first saw him. We were interviewing guys, and my assistant, Charles Fitzsimons, a very able man and a very bright man who was the head of the Producer’s Guild, was interviewing people. One day he came into my office and said, ‘I think this may be the guy.’ So, he brought this Burt Ward in. Burt introduced himself, and I said, He is the guy, all right, if he can walk and talk.’ He and his wife were living on turned-in pop bottles. Really, literally that is what they were living on. So, we put him in the show, and he was very good. I think he was exactly right for the part. Not long after the show got started, he dumped his wife and married Kathy Kersh (the ex-wife of the guy who played Ben Casey, Vince Edwards), who was a barracuda. She ate him alive and encouraged him to spend money. He spent his money as fast as he made it, thinking it was going to last forever, and became very star-struck. He thought he was a star, but he was too young and too inexperienced to evaluate his position, whereas Adam evaluated his position completely. Adam was smart; he saved his money. He knew this was a freak thing that wasn’t going to last forever. And to get the most out of it, he and Burt would go out on weekends and open supermarkets in their outfits and the Batmobile. We had three Batmobiles, and they’d clean up. They would make a lot of money on those weekend things.”

The interesting thing about the Joker and Cesar was the no matter had ridiculous and stupid the plots became, he managed to instill life into the show. Cesar became funnier, the dumber the Joker became.He overcame the material to uplift the show, but it also showed the series was already running out of steam.

Next, Morticia Adams (without the black wig) aka Carolyn Jones as Marsha Queen of Diamonds.