Review: Batman: The Second Season Part One

Last year, Warner Bros Home Video released the complete classic 1960s Batman TV series starring Adam West & Burt Ward. It was the perfect gift for fans of the TV show, they could finally own the whole run of episodes. But hey, not everybody can afford to blow at least $130 (the current price on Amazon for the series on DVD) all at once, so Warner Bros. Home Video has also been releasing the series in a more piecemeal format, most recently with Batman: The Second Season Part One which is out this week on DVD.

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In theory, this makes a lot of sense. Though completely bereft of any special features, with Batman: The Second Season Part One you get 30 episodes, which is over 12 hours of the classic Batman TV show. These piecemeal DVD sets certainly make more sense for those who only want some episodes or are on a budget. If you or someone you know unabashedly adores this series, this isn’t a bad value.

The problem with this is that I’m not completely sure who Batman: The Second Season Part One is really supposed to appeal to besides this very niche group who simply adore the series but don’t own the whole series.

I would think that even the biggest fans of the 1960s Batman show would have hard time arguing that it was a great series. At it’s best it was campy fun. And if you don’t want the whole series, but want the best of the campy fun, that is Season One in spades. Batman: The Second Season Part One represents a noticeable dip in quality from fun camp bad to mostly just plain painfully awful. You can see this right off the bat (no pun intended) with the first couple episodes, “Shoot a Crooked Arrow” & “Walk the Straight and Narrow”, which feature Art Carney as possibly the worst Robin Hood wannabe I’ve ever seen on television, who for some reason is carrying around a sound board. Sheer stunt casting, such as Liberace as a villain is completely wretched and barely watchable. The worst of the bunch might be “Marsha, Queen of Diamonds” &
“Marsha’s Scheme of Diamonds” which features an extremely convoluted and nonsensical plot that basically has Batman being tricked into marrying the Queen of Diamonds so she can get access to the Batcave to steal a diamond, then calling off the wedding because Aunt Harriet pretends to be “Miss Batman” who has already been married to him for seven years. And this is typical of the majority of of Batman: The Second Season Part One.

Granted, any time there’s an episode that features Catwoman, Penguin or The Joker, those harken back to the more campy fun episodes of season one and are generally at least watchable, but those only make up a handful of the episodes. Most of them feature one-off villains or lesser villains that are done extremely poorly (i.e. the Clock King has a particularly horrible pair of episodes for example).

Simply put, it’s hard to imagine a situation where I’d recommend someone buy Batman: The Second Season Part 1. It has no special features to appeal to people who like that stuff, it represents a noticeable dip in quality from one season to the next in terms of episode quality, so any fan that only wants the best selection has no reason whatsoever to get it (that, again is Season One), and someone who wants the whole series should really just save their money and wait for a really good deal on the complete set.

A copy of the this DVD set was provided to Caped Crusades by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment for the purpose of review.

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