PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*
Though I deem
“Marsha, Queen of Diamonds” to be one of the weakest villains
created for the Bat-series, her creator Stanford Sherman accomplished
a minor feat in this episode, for in her last appearance I found the
character at least bearable.
To be sure, she
wouldn’t have worked so well had she been teamed with another weak
villain, such as Sandman. But here she’s teamed with the Penguin,
and for once, the Birdman Bandit gets a script worthy of his
character-strengths. Both on the TV show and in the comic, it’s
easy for writers to write Penguin as a buffoon. But he works best
when he’s shown to be capable of inventive crimes. His ingenuity is
the proximate cause of his tremendous ego and resultant pomposity,
and both of these can trip him up. Given the role of ironic humor in
BATMAN ’66, it’s not surprising that many of the scripters chose
to emphasize Penguin’s foolishness, which gave Burgess Meredith the
chance for assorted comic turns, from slow burns to squawking rants.
But “Friend” manages to concoct a clever scheme for the
archvillain while still permitting him plenty of opportunities to
fume and fulminate against his caped opponents.
Where “Death in
Slow Motion” provided a light-hearted salute to the history of
early cinema, “Friend” spends a great deal of time taking shots
at then-contemporary Hollywood. Penguin, once more on parole,
organizes a movie company and hoaxes Batman and Robin into signing
contracts to perform in a film. Or rather, he thinks that he hoaxes
them, for Batman perceives the setup and goes along with Penguin’s
plot in order to smoke out the evildoer’s plans. As for the Queen
of Diamonds, Penguin needs Marsha to finance his phony movie venture.
There’s no indication that she went to jail as the result of her
last caper, so one might speculate that an expensive lawyer might
have got her off. In any case, Marsha’s still flush enough to
finance Penguin’s picture, as long as the Queen gets the chance to
play love-scenes with the Cowled Crusader. The first segment is
replete with many spoofy refereneces to the opulence of Hollywood
historical epics. Perhaps the most erudite of these in-jokes is the
mention of a “milk bath,” which is probably Sherman’s
recollection of a similar piece of exotica in Cecil B. DeMille’s
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. That said, Penguin puts a particularly
salacious scene in his historical epic, and though Sherman never
reveals the nature of the objectionable content, one assumes that it
might be less in line with DeMille than with a seventies production
like CALIGULA. However, a local decency club, headed by the
redoubtable Aunt Harrier, shuts down Penguin’s attempt to become
the founder of “porno chic.” Madge Blake and Meredith play well
off one another, though neither seems to remember having encountered the other in “The Penguin’s Nest.”
Though Marsha fails
to enslave Batman with her love-potion lipstick, Penguin has better
luck overcoming the duo and sticking them in a medieval-themed
deathtrap, from which they escape in improbable fashion. When the
crusaders return to the studio, attempting to mend fences with the
villain, Penguin abandons whatever plan he had to use them in his
movie project and kicks them out. However, the astute senior crusader
hoaxes the villain into believing that the noble Batman has been
bitten by the acting bug, which gives Penguin enough confidence to
invite them back—which in turn leads to a second deathtrap, this
being the second of the season’s three-parters.
The escape from the
second deathtrap registers no better than the first, but Penguin’s
insidious plan begins to come together in the third segment. Perhaps
the best thing about Sherman’s script is that in contrast to many
other Bat-plots, neither the heroes nor the viewers know the
villain’s scheme until the last part of Segment Three. In short,
Penguin makes a very special assault upon Gotham’s subtreasury
building, in order to emulate Goldfinger and spirit away all the gold
therein. Contrary to the first segment’s claim that Penguin
onlywanted Marsha for her money, the diamond-queen plays a vital
role, performing a “dance of the seven veils” to get past the
subtreasury’s guards. In addition, Marsha’s Aunt Hilda, the dotty
would-be witch, also makes substantial contributions to the big
score, and even though she’s still not funny, at least this time
she’s much more integral to the narrative.
In addition to the
jokes about the movie biz, “Friend” also tosses in a few barbs
agains the military, here represented by the officers of “the
Hexagon.” But the most outstanding aspect of the episode is that
it gives Meredith his best outing in the role of the Birdman Bandit.
As for Marsha, at least she’s not like some fickle villainesses,
turning her back on crime at the sight of Batman’s manly physique,
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