PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*
The first appearance of original-to-TV
villain Egghead credits the story-idea to Ed Self, and the teleplay
to Stanley Ralph Ross. Like most of Ross’s scripts, this one is
full of self-conscious, often cornball humor rather than following
the light touch of the camp approach.
Though Egghead doesn’t have a
backstory as such, he takes on a little more literary life, given
that he claims to be the smartest man in the world, though Robin
considers the villain second best to his masked mentor. In contrast
to many actors who had no experience in playing villains, Vincent
Price had specialized in creating various fiends since getting
“typed” as a horror-icon in the 1950s, and he had a particular
genius for oily, mustache-twiddling villainy that perfectly fit the
camp aesthetic pervading BATMAN. Egghead’s bald pate,
yellow-and-white outfit, and habit of citing innumerable
“egg-scrutiating” egg-puns make him one of the most memorable of
the series’ original creations. He’s also the only villain who
correctly deduces that Batman is Bruce Wayne, which leads to a trap
designed both to kill Batman and to expose his secret.
In addition, Ross also come up with a
better-than-average “big score” for the villain, even if it
happens to be rooted in a form of chauvinistic humor no longer
acceptable. For decades, Americans made jokes about how colonizing
Europeans had hoaxed American Indians into ceding the rights to
Manhattan for a pittance. Gotham City’s charter is barely more
geneous, for the city’s founders gained the land from the local
Native Americans in exchange for nine raccoon pelts, to be paid every
five years to the tribe. However, by the time of BATMAN, the tribe
has dwindled down to just one little Indian, Chief Screaming Chicken
(Edward Everett Horton)—and since his tribe was that of the
Mohicans, he is (wait for it) “the last of the Mohicans.” The
most one can say of the jokes built around Screaming Chicken is that
they probably were not intended to be mean-spirited. The writers’
main concern was surely to exploit the idea of Native American
ownership of Gotham in order to complicate things for Batman and
Robin. And though even Batman is a little hard-nosed about expecting
the chief to remain faithful to the letter of the agreement, he does
tell Robin a little story about how some citizen committed the faux
pas of telling the chief to “go back to his own country.”
Since at the episode’s start Gotham
is due to make their payment to Screaming Chicken, Egghead plots to
block the payment, partly by offering the chief a better deal. The
villain succeeds, and for some time local cops are unable to keep
criminals from ravaging the city, contenting themselves with handing
out parking-tickets. Egghead also bans the caped crimefighters from
the city, but Batman reads the fine print in the charter, revealing
that convicted criminals cannot administer Gotham. The crusaders
arrive too late to keep Egghead from looting the Gotham
Treasury—though the heroes manage to head off the villain by
anticipating his need to stock up on eggs.
On a minor note, though Egghead seems
to have something going with his henchwoman Miss Bacon, she’s more
sophisticated than the average moll, being employed to record the
villain’s exploits for posterity. When Batman chastises her, a
woman of breeding, for falling in with a criminal, she merely
comments, “Just lucky, I guess,”
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