The Dead Ringers
October 27, 1966
"Batman and Robin escape Chandell's trap. Once back in the Batcave, they
deduce his plan to get the Wayne family fortune by killing Bruce Wayne
and Dick Grayson, then marrying the rightful heir, Aunt Harriet. In
order to trap the villain, Bruce and Dick fake their own deaths.
However, Harry has also figured out his brother Chandell's scheme, and
desiring the Wayne fortune for himself, concocts a plan to masquerade as
his twin brother."
64 minutes
RD is sadly not deucedly attractive. Apparently "deucedly" is not an American word.
Thankfully RD is mostly recovered from last week by watching a Woodstock miniseries. Unfortunately now Mrs. and Jr. have to handle it. RD: "I just farted all the time while her nose wasn't working." Vince suggests to pop the eardrums to get some taste back.
RD's old boss was a conservative for all the wrong reasons.
The Narrator calls Chandell "Fingers" and music "dreadful" for some reason.
Robin: "Life: a cup full of surprises to the last drop." (:09)
To get out of their trap, Batman asks Robin to sing the same notes as he. Cue horrible noises from the two. RD: "These men did not sing." Once extricated, Batman explains that they shouted high and low enough to make the recording machine punch the paper around them instead of on them. They would also have to sing extremely high and extremely low beyond even most trained singers (and their own vocal chords). They're just that good!
Batman: "I visualized the chords in my mind."
Robin: "Holy perfect pitch!"
Batman (into the microphone in his hand): "Let's burst in and bag those birds!"
They enter the room while Batman has a piece of paper stuck to his foot. As the women flee Batman immediately knocks Harry down with a Batarang.
Harry is taken for interrogation under a lamp with most of its bulbs out. (:16)
O'Hara: "Alright canary, start talkin'!"
Harry accuses "Fingers" as the one who wants to rob Wayne before attorney Alfred Slye enters to ask for proper treatment of his client.
Gordon: "We only need apply patience and subtlety, the honest policeman's only aids."
So they turn the other bulbs on the "subtle interrogation lamp". Slye gives sunglasses and a helmet to Harry to wear.
Gordon charges Harry with attempting to perforate the Dynamic Duo into player piano music rolls. In response Slye charges the Duo with damaging the perforating machine with foreign objects, "said objects being themselves." Then he and Harry just leave while Gordon questions the world's sanity.
In the Batcave the Duo are also mentioning Fingers who "fits like a glove". (:20) Batman theorizes that if they die then the entire estate will go to Alfred Aunt Harriet, since she is of course related to Dick instead of Bruce. ... oh wait.
Speaking of, Alfred not Slye is to take her to see Chandell again. Batman: "This Chandell is a deucedly attractive fellow. He could pull it off." He asks Robin to access his "super keen musical memory" by closing his eyes and forming a thought bubble of Chandell sitting at a player piano in order to determine his location.
Chandell is in his dressing room serenading Harriet and lays her on a couch, as the Duo eavesdrop in voyeuristic disgust.
Batman: "Self control is tough. All virtues are, old chum. That's why they're called virtues."
Then they return to Stately Wayne Manor before Fingers can do his namesake.
At the Manor Dick causes an explosion in his darkroom (in a hall closet) scaring poor Alfred. RD has to explain what a darkroom is. (:30)
In the lair Chandell reads about a "tragedy at Wayne Manor" while his girls are all over him. He announces his plan to marry Harriet for her $5 million for Harry. "Imagine: farewell, Chandell. I'll cast off my criminal skin like a moulting butterfly." In response they complain about their lot and side with Harry. Alfred Slye also demands his fee of $100,000 by the end of the day or he will give them all up.
Harry: "A legal question. Say this boob marries that Cooper dame. How long until the will's settled and he gets the money?"
Alfred Slye: "Well, considering the current state of our courts, about eleven years."
Harry: "With the Dynamic Duo on our tail, we'll be lucky to last eleven hours!"
Then the ladies bagpipe Chandell and Alfred Slye.
Harry comes to Wayne Manor as Chandell to console Harriet: "they were enlarging a photograph of meeeee!" The Duo watch on the "Wayne Manor TV Circuit Closed" as Harry proposes, then asks her to sing with him before he leaves. After he does she shouts for Alfred: "I need a glass of blackberry brandy!"
Alfred: "This unprecedented request for strong spirits: is something amiss?"
Harriet: "That was not Chandell. There's an old saying: a girl can tell."
Cue Harriet "singing" backstage. (:36) RD wished she was deliberately singing badly. Harry tells her to take off her hat to sing better. Vince is stymied by the word "chapeau". Harriet takes off her hat - and pulls out her gun. "As they say in the movies, stick up your mitts!" He does so and the player piano continues on without him. He then tries to tell her that the bagpipers are behind her but she doesn't believe him. "You think I'll fall for that, you old chestnut?" RD think she was badly attempting to adlib.
The women knock her out and put her in a chest. Harry has his own henchmen put it in a van as Alfred Slye watches. Then Harry pulls out a machine gun and just starts firing - but the Duo pop out with a Batshield. They had tracked her (and her "chauffeur" Alfred) in a planted radio in her handbag and had somehow managed to swap places during the transfer. Yes, without anyone noticing. Yes, while leaving her trunk just there on the side of the road.
Batman: "Time to end this criminal symphony!"
Cue a very quick fight where the folded up Batshield just vanishes. RD: "Well it folds up nicely." The women attempt to strike but with no effect.
Batman: "Poor deluded females!"
Women: "And you, nasty old man!"
This time he has Batgas of his own to knock them and Harry out, just as Chandell and Alfred Slye are about to be fed into the punching machine.
Robin: "Gosh, Batman, maybe we don't know how to turn this machine off!"
Batman: "It is a thought, Robin. It's not much more than they deserve."
Robin: "A lawyer who mocks the law? And an artist who takes up a life of crime?"
In Gordon's office he gives Harriet a "Citizen's Special Anti-Crime Award" for her action of holding a gun. (:44)
Harriet: "A person just does what he has to do. And that's what makes America great, isn't it?"
Gordon: "If only there were more like her!"
He has a note from Chandell breaking things off to leave on a "tour".
Gordon: "With good...performance, it will last about three years."
Said performance is in jail with everyone wearing pinstripes while Chandell plays The Prisoner's Song.
Vince wonders if he can get the women "all at once".
- For redheaded Doe, Vince didn't find her too attractive but gives her a "generous" 7 Batpoles. RD thought she was too masculine and had too much makeup but gave her 6.5. Marilyn Hanold of Queens was a Playmate of the Month and was in The Brain That Wouldn't Die. RD: "She was far more attractive in that, maybe because it was in black and white." She would marry an oil tycoon not long after the series and resides happily in Salt Lake City.
- Brunette Rae is a "step up" for Vince to 7.5. RD gives her an 8. Edy Williams (from the aforementioned Salt Lake City) was known mostly for her work with Russ Meyer, and even being married to him for some time. The Co-Bros forget that she was also the hostess of Catwoman's restaurant-lair The Pink Sandbox.
- Blonde Mimi is Vince's "top of the food chain" at 8, like RD. Sivi Aberg was Miss Sweden 1964. While her credits are scant, it does include an uncredited appearance in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie.
- Vince: "All these women that we've gone through thus far on this series; what percentage of them do you think, they thought this was their big break?"
RD: "Oh, all of them." (Except Jill St. John.)
Next week is the return of the Penguin in a premise that is to be revisited in the Batman mythology. RD points his finger upwards. Vince: "Rectal exam?"
- Special Guest Villain: Harry (Liberace)
- SPEAKING OFs: 3. Clothespins, three, miniseries
- Brown Hornet Escapes: 1. Mask of the Phantom of the Opera
- RD Time Outs: 1
- Screen Captures: 1. RD
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