PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*
This was the last
Catwoman appearance for Julie Newmar, and scripter Stanley Ralph Ross
seemingly decided to ignore the continuity he had established
(assuming, of course, that he was not told to pursue a different
direction).
Catwoman’s
apparent fatal fall is entirely forgotten, and as the episode begins,
she’s in prison—but this time, Bruce Wayne himself is responsible
for securing her early release. Though in other episodes Wayne is
seen extending the hand of the philanthropist to erring
criminals—mostly females like Blaze in “True or False Face”—this
is the first time he personally sponsors a repeat offender. In both
of the hero’s identities, he seems a good deal more smitten with
Catwoman than in earlier episodes. In contrast, Catwoman’s
affections for Batman seem to have cooled somewhat, since she
attempts to kill him off when he wrecks one of her criminal schemes.
The moment Wayne
springs Catwoman, she apparently has her next gambit all plotted out,
for she remarks that she was a college dropout and plans to return to
the halls of education to better herself. While she does attend
classes—including one where Batman himself gives a lecture—her
real plan is twofold.
First, she has her
three flunkies—named for the colleges Penn, Brown, and
Cornell—steal a statue of Batman.Though other villains didn’t
need any such model to produce exact copies of the crusader’s
costume, Catwman apparently requires one, in order to make a Bat-costume, so that one of her hoods can impersonate the hero, commit a crime, and get Batman arrested.
Second, she somehow
gets in good with the entire student populace—though this is not
shown—and encourages them to hold a sit-in. Naturally, no political
grievances are cited for the protest: to some viewers in the sixties,
protesting was just what students did all the time. The demonstration
serves to distract the police while Catwoman and her gang steal a
priceless set of gems known as “cat’s-eye opals.” The protest
doesn’t keep Batman (who escapes jail on his own) and Robin from
skirmishing with the gang. The heroes are captured, and Catwoman,
despite having shared a romantic soda with Batman earlier, puts both
crimefighters in the obligatory deathtrap. They escape
with the obligatory lame effort, accompanied by Robin’s making some tedious comments about the “destiny” guiding their escapes.
Catwoman then has
the displeasure of learning two hard facts of life. The first is that
the fabulous opals are too hot to fence, so she can’t sell them.
The second is that Batman somehow figured out Catwoman’s
object—though the viewer is not privy to his logic-- and that he
substituted phony stones for the opals. Having gone through a lot of
trouble for nothing, the villainess throws profit to the wind and
tries to use her sex appeal to lure Batman into a fatal trap. Again,
she now seems utterly indifferent to the prospect of killing the man
she supposedly loves—a sentiment she reaffirms at episode’s
end—not to mention the fact that she had nothing specific to gain
from Batman’s death at that time. Julie Newmar still gets a lot of
sassy lines as always, which she delivers with aplomb, but once again
scripter Ross gives in to cutesy humor. After her second deathtrap
fails, the female felon makes a show of fighting Batman with
“cat-rate,” and the hero sentenetiously replies that “karate”
is purely a defensive martial art—which doubtless would come as a
surprise to actual practitioners of the art. There are other oddball
aspects of the script, as when Batman seems vaguely superstitious,
and bumbling Commisioner Gordon even tells Batman that he Gordon once
suspected that Bruce Wayne might be the masked manhunter—which
gives the top cop more acuity than he ever had before. It’s a mixed
bag at best, redeemed largely by the interactions of West and Newmar.
No comments:
Post a Comment