BATMAN: “THE IMPRACTICAL JOKER” (1966)

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

The best one can say about Thompson and Hoffman’s script for “The Impractical Joker” is that Cesar Romero gives one of his most vivacious performances as the Joker—though he doesn’t exactly get any competition from anyone else.

For some reason, the villain decides to become obsessed with keys—largely because he now has a bizarre key-operated device with weird properties. The scripters move the goalposts several times in the story. Does the device merely hypnotize people, as when the Joker immobilizes Batman and Robin by turning the key? Or can it actually change the flow of time, causing people to “run backward” in time or even making Joker’s moll Cornelia turn into a little girl?

While the concept of Batman in any medium is not innately hostile to the tropes of science fiction and fantasy, the Joker’s magic box is far too far-out to fit an earthbound program like BATMAN. At no time is it convincing that the Joker, at home with joy-buzzers and trick streamers, could come up with such a bizarre technological innovation, even if the script suggests that he cobbled it together by accident. Moreover, the box’s existence takes up all the narrative oxygen. Eventually the viewer finds out that Joker’s main plot is to introduce a hallucinogen into Gotham’s reservoir, but by that time, who cares?

This time Batman and Robin get separate deathtraps, and they’re both big and colorful—though Batman escapes his trap thanks to the villain’s usual short-sightedness about removing his utility belt. Joker doesn’t hang around to watch the executions, but this time he does leave his minions behind, resulting in a good fight when the Cowled Crusader has to battle all three stooges by himself. There’s also a funny moment in which Bruce and Dick tune in “The Green Hornet” in a blatant bit of cross-promotion, and moll Cornelia stands out from the pack by constantly preening in a mirror. Joker’s memorable response: “Vanity is a waste of time. I never look at myself.”

But even the agonies of the magic box are mild next to the torture of watching Alan Napier attempt broad humor. Evidently behind the scenes he was stumping for the chance to do something more than play faithful Alfred, so the writers obliged by giving the butler a lookalike cousin, “Eggy,” who happens to be the security guard at the Gotham waterworks, and whom Alfred impersonates to stymie the villain. In the first season, Alfred’s few outings as a detective proved relatively restrained. But every moment of Napier’s attempt to be broadly comical feels like it takes an hour—so that Napier, even more than the scripters, is guilty of wasting the viewers’ precious time.