The Penguin Declines
January 18, 1967
"As the Joker and the Penguin's zodiac theme become even more grandiose, the Dynamic Duo's dissolution becomes its ultimate goal."
66 minutes
RD Gonna Blow Russo's Mind. Let's hope it's not Scanners style. Vince wishes he had the ratings numbers for this three-parter and wonders why they didn't have two villains at a time more often (budget permitting). The series has two other three-parters upcoming.
Vince has not seen Miracle on 34th Street.
"Lovely" Venus seems to suffer an asthma attack despite Batman's assuages. He easily snaps his chains and pries open the clam to reveal a totally unharmed Boy Wonder.
Robin: "Holy human pearls, Batman!"
Batman: "Correction, Robin. Pearls come from oysters. You came out of that clam."
Robin: "How'd you break your chain, Batman?"
Batman: "Every man has his own unknown inner strength at a time of crisis, Robin. I'm sure had the situations been reversed, you would've found your strength."
They can't take her to the Batcave with her so Batman suggests using "my friend Bruce Wayne's midtown apartment" since he never uses it. RD remembers the Dynamic Duo living in an apartment instead of a Stately Manor in the 70s comics.
Batman: "Of course, you'll have to stand trial for your earlier misdeeds."
Venus: "As should any citizen who breaks the law, Batman."
Meanwhile at the lair Joker inquires how goons Uranus and Mars are doing on "Operation Laundry Bag". They promptly arrive in a prison laundry truck blue van with a snuck out Pengy still in a bag.
Penguin: ""Pengy"? Mr. Penguin to you, sir!" (:12)
Joker at first wants to give him his old clothes back. "For or a minute I thought those were prison issue."
Penguin: "Prison issue? This sartorial triumph a prison issue?"
Joker: "Well, sometime I'll give you the name of my tailor."
Penguin: "Sometime I'll give you a piece of my mind! Like right now!"
Before the two can brawl they hear that their prisoners have escaped. They thus pledge to take down Batman by linking arms and doing a slight dance.
Vince had a laugh trying to imagine a giant clam consuming the entire Batmobile.
Back in the Batcave the Duo wonder about the next crime and its connection to Aquarius (the water bearer). Batman thinks it may be in the sewers. Robin reminds him he tried that once before.
Batman: "Maybe this time he's aiming higher. Maybe he has some mad scheme for stealing the entire Gotham City water system."
Hard cut to the lair.
Penguin: "Stealing the entire Gotham City's water system? It's magnificent, Joker."
But Joker also remembers he tried that once before. Instead he will change all the water into strawberry "Joker-Jelly".
Penguin: "It's very ingenious, Joker. A crime almost as good as one of mine."
Joker: "One of yours? Those piddly escapades?"
Before the two can brawl...again...they remember who they should be really fighting.
Joker needs Pengy's help for the final crime of Capricorn (the goat), which in this case is Batman (if he is in fact the greatest of all time), "by using that suave Penguin charm to captivate a beautiful girl." Said girl is Venus, tracked by a homing beacon in her shoe.
Penguin: "Oh, I'll sweep her off her feet! I'll charm the stars into her eyes! Women of America beware! Don Juan Penguin is on the loose!"
As he prepares for his date with a gallon of cologne and filing his nails while still wearing his gloves, Joker uses another outside shot at a reservoir as he prepares his mixture.
Uranus: "Just think, Mars. You turn on the faucet and out comes strawberry jelly."
Mars: "Yeah, that's a great idea. You know, if you got a sink full of biscuits."
Then hey all laugh.
Thus Robin is the first to get such a red liquid which he immediately drinks. "Holy jelly molds. It looks like strawberry jelly. But it tastes like strawberry axle grease."
Batman declares going to the reservoir with the Batcopter. "It has the portable Batlab in it."
The Bros remark on how different and vibrant the production and shooting of the story was for.
Narrator: "And while the Dynamic Duo are rushing to the reservoir, Gotham City has gone dry as a bone."
Cue montage of the cityfolk getting red jelly, including O'Hara showering while wearing a towel.
The Duo get to testing on the waterside.
Robin: "We'd better hit it pretty soon, Batman, or there'll be a lot of thirsty Gothamites."
Batman: "Worse than that, Robin, if a fire should break out, the fire department would have no way of putting it out."
Robin: "Holy holocaust! [sic] I forgot all about that."
I would assume this is the original meaning, "destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war". But you'd think 20 years removed from the War they may have used a different word there.
Before he can remark on his ward's choice of words, Batman answers his Batphone by plugging it into his utility belt's "mobile phone Batplugs". Gordon informs him Joker wants $10 million. Batman asks not to give in although it will take time to analyze things. O'Hara contributes by wandering into his boss' office still in his bath towel.
Meanwhile in the apartment Venus is getting a random deluge of gifts from Don Juan Penguin. (:28) "Those are no flowers from a bat-eared buffoon. Those are from a mature admirer. Your suitor. Oh, you ravishing rose of womanhood. Waugh! Waugh!"
Despite Venus' requests to go straight, Penguin still wants to "pay tribute to your beauty and your charm and your gaiety and your wit. And to that end I have brought you another little token of my admiration. [Shouting offscreen] Token!"
Said token is given by none other than Rob Reiner in his first televised role, handling "Surplice Number Six", "the most expensive perfume in the whole world" at $1000 per ounce.
Penguin has he and Venus sit down and orders his goons to close the curtains ("Drapes!") and light some candles ("Candles!"). She wants a glass of water but instead gets strawberry jelly. "I guess that's how rich millionaires live." So Pengy seduces her with that hard liquor of..."Champagne!"
Venus: "I really don't think that I should, Pengy."
Penguin: "Why? You want to die of dehydrophalia?"
Venus: "What's that?"
Penguin: "Well, that's the loss of precious bodily fluids due to a lack of liquid in the tissues. Drink it up, my dear! Save yourself from sin!"
Meanwhile meanwhile Batman solves the water issue by...throwing a "special exploding Batarang" with "de-gelatinizing agent". Because of course.
Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile Penguin asks "my sprig of mint" to help him "turn over a new leaf" by getting his criminal record from the Batcave. "Until that is destroyed, I can never feel like an honest man. ... Only you have faith in me, my alluring azalea. Only you can wipe out my past. You ask Batman to take you there, my lovely lady slipper."
Already feeling drunk from just one drink of champagne and still feeling so later in the day after Pengy has gone to be replaced by Batman, she asks the Dark Knight to see the Batcave. (:37)
Batman: "Your decision to lead an honest life was difficult and dangerous. Consider this your reward."
But he has to Batgas her first before she can enter. Robin places her in the passenger side of the Batmobile...then sits on top of her body.
In the Batcave Batman Batgasses Venus again to wake her up.
Venus: "It's fabulous."
Batman: "It's a place to hang our cowls. That's the Batcomputer. And over here is the Batspectrograph Criminal Analyzer. And that is our Batradar."
Joker: "And over here is the Penguin. And over here is the Joker."
And then all the villains jump out of the clown car of the Batmobile's trunk.
Penguin: "Stay where you are, unpleasant adolescent! One pull of this trigger and this deadly umbrella gun will fry you to a fritter!"
RD thinks not many people know about fritters these days, not even in his Midwest.
Venus is apologetic of her actions.
Batman: "He's fooled much shrewder people than you, Venus."
Vince is reminded of when the Rock was cutting a promo on Ken Shamrock who expressed surprise at not being the sharpest knife in the drawer.
The villains gloat on converting the Batcave into the headquarters of the city's villains which would make for an interesting series if DC/WB Discovery ever comes to its senses.
Of course Batman already knew that they would try to sneak in in this way, so he had them come while depleting the umbrella gun's power with a "negative ion attractor", then scanning them with his recently completed Batspectrograph Criminal Analyzer for their physical stats and "other scientific data that
may prove invaluable in the future".
Joker: "Well, your Batspectro junk heap isn't gonna do you any good where you're going, Batman!"
Vince wonders where the writers got all their technobabble (besides gaining ideas from watching Star Trek).
Batman: "Shall we, Robin?"
Robin: "Let's, Batman."
On RD's pinball table this starts a "Holy multi-ball!" but here it just starts a fight with their stunt doubles just bouncing around the atomic pile and laying around on the floor (except for one goon upside down with his legs in the air). During it RD thinks someone snuck in a "Pam!" in the fight bubbles. Joker also tries to carry Robin on his shoulders onto the atomic pile for some reason.
Defeated, the Villainous Duo had still seen the inside of the Batcave...but not the outside, so they still don't know where it is. Before the two can brawl...again...again...Batman breaks out the Batgas.
Back up to Stately Wayne Manor, bra-ed Aunt Harriet reads Bruce's horoscope: "Venus is in the ascendancy." (:50)
Harriet: "But someone told me that both the Joker and the Penguin were after Batman and Robin almost got eaten alive by a giant clam. How could one little clam eat a boy his size?"
Mrs. Deal: "Who told her this? I bet that Aunt Harriet and Chief O'Hara were at some bar getting drunk together."
Alfred shows up to announce dinner to Dick's dismay: clam chowder.
Bruce: "Chin up, old chum. It's one way of getting even."
To the Bros this story was clearly the best that they've seen so far, of which I must agree.
As expected RD found Venus attractive, giving her a "solid" 7.5 Batpoles. Vince, despite his opinion, gives her a "mediocre at best" 5 though he feels he's being too kind. 37 year old Terry Moore was acting in movies since 1940 (including Mighty Joe Young), and 18 years later would pose in Playboy. She also had a relationship with Howard Hughes and supposedly had a secret marriage (without a divorce). Besides that she was married (an additional) five times. Also as of this writing she is still living.
Vince, still wondering how Moore got on the show, next wonders if Madge Blake was using a different voice for Aunt Harriet.
Next day/story will have "That Darn" Catwoman, regardless of if it can live up to this story or not.
- Special Guest Villain: The Joker [6] (Cesar Romero) [6]
- Extra Special Guest Villain: The Penguin [7] (Burgess Meredith) [7]
- Entertain The People: 1
- Brown Hornet Escapes: 1. Batman, Man of Steel (Son of Martha)
- Blue Van: 1
- (Soon To Be) Window Celebrity: 1. Rob Reiner
- Screen Shares: 1. RD
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