BATMAN: “HOT OFF THE GRIDDLE” (1966)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

To no one’s surprise, Julie Newmar’s Catwoman survives her alleged death at the end of “The Purr-Fect Crime,” and she returns with a new criminal scheme—though at first she commits assorted petty hijinks as a method of training a new crew of “cat burglars.”

Stanley Ralph Ross’s second Catwoman script suffers from a lot more plot-holes than did the first one. When Batman and Robin sought to deceive Zelda the Great with a false news-item about her booty being counterfeit, that ploy seemed feasible. Here, Batman gets the oddball idea to plant a blurb directed at Catwoman in a newspaper gossip-column, without having the slightest reason to think she reads the column. And Catwoman herself must be psychic, for she already has the column’s author Jack O’Shea (Jack Kelly) in her pocket.

The Duo seek to catch the Princess of Plunder during one of her burglaries. Catwoman is at least consistent with her previous murderous attitude, for after she immobilizes the crimefighters, she abjures the usual deathtrap and orders her henchmen to toss both of her enemies out the nearest high-story window. Fortunately, Batman has rigged a net below that very window, and the crusaders’ lives are spared—though not the sensibilities of any viewer offended by the corniness of the net’s origins: coming from “Captain Ahab of the White Whaling Company.”

One of Catwoman’s captured thugs gives the Duo a clue as to her current hideout, a discoteque charmingly called the Pink Sandbox. Since their earlier caution almost got them killed, the two of them blunder into the club, and Catwoman mousetraps them easily. For what one assumes is the first time, the female felon flirts a little with the Big Bat, saying that he’s the only man “worthy of me.” Her subsequent traps for the Duo—the “hot griddle” of the title, and a pair of giant magnifying glasses to burn the crusaders to death—are better than average torments, and Batman’s plan for escaping the deathrrap is credible enough.

The second part proves far less so. The crimefighters apparently figure out that Catwoman’s going to make a heist at the top of a skyscraper, where one wealthy eccentric is going to exchange a huge hunk of cash for another eccentric’s priceless Stradivarius violions (hence the name of the episode’s second part, “The Cat and the Fiddle.”) The camera follows Catwoman as she assumes the guise of the first eccentric, a rich old lady, and she even flirts a little with a driver played by James Brolin and given the goofy name of “Staphylococcus.” At some point, Batman and Robin separate, and although Robin seems to know all about the villain’s plot—for he assumes the guise of the violin-seller—Batman shows up at the scene and seems to have no idea what’s going on. Though one would have thought Catwoman’s plan didn’t anticipate having either the Duo or the local cops show up, she’s psychic again, having somehow brought a “getaway rocket” into the skyscraper. The heroes defeat the feline’s fiends (including Jack O’Shea) before she can escape, and suddenly Batman seems to know everything again, telling Catwoman that the violins Robin brought are phony.

The weakness of the script holds a few compensations. Batman wonders how he and Robin so often escape all their deathtraps, only to conclude it’s because their hearts are pure. And of course, most fans will prize the episode because in it, Catwoman falls hard for Batman at last, and, unlike most of the femmes who moon over the Crusader this season, the feeling proves mutual.