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Like many who grew up in the '60s and '70s (and perhaps even '80s and later), Tim and Paul had the course of their lives changed by the 1966 Batman TV show, from the types of play they did growing up to their present-day interests.

In this series, they discuss the show's allure and its failures, the arc of the show from satire to sitcom, its influences (the '40s serials and the comic books themselves) and the things it, in turn, influenced.

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  1. All Episodes
  2. 2016
  3. 09

#043 Shame: Blazing Guns and Hot Rods

Sep 29, 2016

Shame

Batman faces a showdown when Shame arrives in Gotham City! This swaggering cowboy is after… hot rod parts? This somewhat odd arc by Stanley Ralph Ross is full of references to both the old west and drag racing; what’s going on here? Looking at Cliff Robertson’s first Batman appearance, we also touch on the...

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#042 Marsha, Queen of Diamonds: Lots of filler? Not so fast!

Sep 15, 2016

Marsha and Batman

Various other Bat-commentaries paint this arc in drab tones. What Carolyn Jones (apparently replacing Zsa Zsa Gabor at something close to the last moment) brings to the role of Marsha, Queen of Diamonds, is basically Morticia Addams with a different look, says conventional wisdom. The arc is full of filler scenes that...

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#041 Where’s the “key” to this Joker script?

Sep 1, 2016

Joker and key

“The Impractical Joker”/“The Joker’s Provokers” is Charles Hoffman’s rewrite of a draft by Jay Thompson, and it’s a bit of a kludgefest: interesting ideas are introduced and abandoned; Joker’s strategy and goals (related to keys — sometimes) are a muddled mess; they even botch a chemistry reference....

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