The Bird's Last Jest
December 8, 1966
"Discovering why the Penguin wants to return to prison, Batman has a counterplan that needs Alfred's participation."
60 minutes
RD Wants a Penguin Gun. But what about his submarine?
College Vince once bought a Videodisc player from Sears. RD wants to guess what videodiscs he still has. Submit your own guesses to Vince for a chance to win Batman coasters!
Jeff complained that Vince needed a gimmick pop filter over his microphone. Now Vince is complaining that the filter is not secured properly.
The episode aired when the Yankees traded Roger Maris to the Cardinals for who knows why.
This week's summary is longer, since they summarize the previous episode for the last time in the series. Narrator: "Deadly Penguin guns are waiting for Batman and Robin!" RD thinks they shoot miniature Penguins.
The Batmobile goes on a different highway than the norm (on their way to the suburbs). On exit the Duo climb over the shortest fence known to man.
O'Hara is still in his tiny trunk on top of a really short slide that the Duo somehow know to go to before Chickadee pushes it into the poolside. The Co-Bros consider the whole thing very sloppy.
The other goons then start shooting at the Duo with sadly normal guns. The Duo deploy their plastic and clearly labelled Batshield.
Robin: "Holy Guadalcanal Batman!"
Batman: "Robin stay calm. Let's assess this desperate situation."
Vince does not know the meaning of "dollars to donuts".
Penguin is about to flip the electrical switch to fry the pool, so Batman delicately throws a Batpellet that knocks the villain upside down. Once they reach the electrical wire Robin suggests using the Insulated Batclippers, but Batman decides to use his Batinverter to reverse polarity. Because of course you can. This launches the trunk ten feet into the air.
Batman: "It's really simple. By reversing the polarity of the cables, I transformed the swimming pool into a giant anti-magnet. It repelled the metal of the trunk."
Matey D: "CURSES! We're out of ammunition. "
Batman agrees as he has been counting the bullets fired like what he did with Shane. "Surrender you criminals! Up with your flippers!"
Penguin: "Our perfect ploy has gone awry sadly!" This is despite his wanting to be arrested anyway, and attempted murder should normally do that.
Instead Batman sentences him to the "Bar of Justice" i.e. a courtroom. He is thus charged with kidnapping of a police chief, illegal electrification of a swimming pool (Vince: "Is there such thing as a legal electrification?"), littering public property with machine gun cartridges without proper license, attempted murder, mayhem, battery, and compound assault. (:21) As District Attorney Harvey Dent Jefferson Hamfurter is absent (being Hamilton Burger with Perry Mason), Batman asks Judge Moot to take his place. Because of course he can, much like he can be a sudden mayoral candidate.
They ask the Penguin on how he pleads.
Penguin: "In the immortal phrase of Emile Zola: J'ACCUSE!"
He expresses his right to be arrested. "Do we live under a code of law? Or do we live under a costumed mad man's feelings?...As a law breaking citizen, I have a clear right of admission into the Gotham State Penitentiary. Now, deprived of those rights, I had no other recourse but to protect myself by any means at my disposal."
Judge: "In other words, the acts of which you're accused, were merely a citizen's reaction to illegal police conspiracy?"
Penguin: "Solomon himself couldn't have put it in any neater nutshell, Your Honor."
Batman: "But Your Honor, kidnapping, mayhem, the attempted drowning of our beloved police chief?"
RD: "No one loves police chief O'Hara."
Robin: "Holy flip-flop! What happened to justice? You call mayhem a normal citizen's reaction?"
Judge: "Enough, Boy Wonder! I fear you've our of your depth in these thorny matters, way way out. Now our code of law is the cornerstone of our society. Whenever it is violated by those sworn to uphold it, in which case you clearly did Batman, what recourse has this humble citizen but action? Which of us is to cast the first stone?"
Batman: "We're outwitted."
He withdraws his charges, and of course Penguin is angry again that he can't go to jail.
Judge: "Your eloquence has gained your freedom, Mr. Penguin. Now fly the straight and narrow path forevermore."
In the Batcave, Batman paints fingerprints over Alfred's with regular paint.
Robin: "I bet Batman is the only one in the world with a hand steady enough to paint false fingerprints."
Batman: "Come now, Robin, don't exaggerate. All it takes is a little practice and a bit of patience."
Alfred: "It's really fortunate the criminals don't realize you can do this."
Batman: "It wouldn't help them if they did, Alfred. Those poor wretches are addicted to tobacco and alcohol; they lack the nerve control for this sort of work."
Alfred is to go to the Penguin's Nest and not touch anything for 83 seconds. Batman then calls the police's "Special Tip Line" and disguises his voice by putting a handkerchief over the telephone.
At the restaurant Matey D alerts his boss that some "nitwit...that bone headed chief flatfoot" has found a fly in his caviar. Penguin: "What now?" (:29)
Said bone head O'Hara is arguing with Alfred who's disguised himself by...not wearing his glasses. Like the Bros I am definitely sure Batman learned this from Kal-El and thus told Alfred.
Penguin thinks he's actually Quill "Pen" Perch, another master forger, but he has Chickadee get his fingerprints just to be sure, and compare him to his fingerprint records which he just has with him in an exclusive restaurant. Of course they "match", and he moves to shake with a gloved hand.
Vince does not know the tale of St. Patrick.
Suddenly Alfred puts on his glasses, stopping Penguin in his tracks since he now recognizes him. After gassing him with his umbrella gun (and only then realizing he's in the middle of a busy restaurant), he has to vacate the premises with "the outbreak of a sudden epidemic: Moldavian food poisoning. I suggest while you can to run for your lives to your favorite family physician." Once they do leave he tells his goons: "this is an imposter. I recognize him as a busy body who has stumbled into my stew before! Mr. Blue! I want you to prepare fifty pounds of pie-crust. We are going to make a gigantic butler pie!"
In the Batcave Batman is concerned that Alfred hasn't reported back yet: "I may have made a grave mistake in sending Alfred to that devil's lair." The Bros wonder why he wasn't any closer to act in such a situation. So they have to now drive over there in the time it takes the restaurant to paint a "Moldavian food poisoning" sign.
Batman: "Sinister. This could be a crude attempt, a crude but well painted attempt I say, to throw us off."
They enter the lair once more, as shown by the camera Dutch angling almost to the point of falling off. They find Alfred's hat heavily coated with pastry flour.
Robin: "Holy chocolate éclair! What could it mean, Batman?"
Batman: "I scarcely dare to think. I fear it's too grim!"
Back at Stately Wayne Manor Penguin brings in a giant pie as Aunt Harriet tries to shoo away "you hideous creatures!"
"Your nephew Dick" calls asking if anything new has arrived for them. Penguin replies and Robin almost loses his temper.
Batman has to quickly cover the phone: "Careful. You're Dick Grayson."
Robin: "Oh, you mean the Penguin? The famous criminal I've read so much about?"
Penguin: "That's who I mean, Dicky-boy! And you better tell your guardian Mr. Wayne if he wants to see Alfred alive, he better hurry home fast!"
Cue the Duo returning and going up the compressed steam Batpoles into Bruce and Dick. (:38) Upon seeing the gifted butler pie Bruce is bemused: "what an extraordinary pastry."
Dick: "Yes, it's the biggest one I've ever seen."
Penguin: "Its name is humble pie, Mr. Wayne, you're about to eat it!"
As his goons light one of those cooking candles to warm the pie, Penguin demands $1 million in cash or he will serve Baked Alfred. Bruce pats his coat to show his wallet is not on him, and asks to go to his study's wall safe to get it. Penguin lets him go get it without having he or one of his goons follow him to ensure no funny business.
Vince is reminded of Freddie Blassie's opening line on his appearances with Regis: "I have more walking around money on me than you make in an entire year!" RD has Regis' Christmas album where he sings Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with, of all people, Donald Trump. I'm sure to him it's the best selling album of all time, bigger than Abraham Lincoln, and big and strong people walk up to him all the time with tears in their eyes to tell him so.
The Duo of course instead go down the Batpoles to change, then go back up after turning off the "automatic costume-change device". They then do a "small tricky charade" by...shouting very loudly and unconvincingly.
Batman: "Good gravy Dick! Look! Coming through that window!"
Robin: "Bruce, why isn't that Batman and Robin?"
Batman: "It certainly is Dick!"
Robin: "Go get them Batman and Robin! We'll just be out here so as to not be in your way!"
Batman had (supposedly) planted a tracking beacon in Penguin's top hat.
Batman: "Up with your flippers! Surrender that gigantic pie!"
Penguin: "CURSES!"
Cue the fight. Chickadee holds Harriet at gunpoint, but Alfred pops out like a dancer from a birthday cake and grabs the gun, so Harriet can hit her with a vase before fainting. The Duo subdue Penguin by spinning him round (right round, like a record).
Making sure the villains and Harriet are knocked out, the Duo then instantly change back into their civilian attire in a jump cut. Bruce wonders where the Duo went.
Alfred: "They departed through the windows sir, in some haste. Oh and sir, they asked me to give you a message: 'Should you ever again come up against a criminal as the Penguin, don't endeavor to capture him yourselves.'"
Cue the villains waiting in the holding cell of Gordon's office. Penguin is finally happy that he is going to jail at last - until Bruce and Dick show up, having secured parole for a rather giant Ballpoint Baxter.
Dick: "Mr. Baxter is going to teach penmanship in one of the Wayne Foundation camps for underprivileged children."
Penguin: "Oh, no! No! What about the underprivileged criminals?"
Vince wondered why they didn't just release him for that in the first place. I wonder why Penguin tried to do what he did to get imprisoned when he could have just broke Ballpoint free. Or just wait for him to leave on his own accord, like what all the villains seem to do on a weekly basis.
No wonder the police are so incompetent they need the Dynamic Duo.
RD thinks (33 year old) Chickadee was a "very bland" 6 Batpoles. Vince gives her 5. (:50) They think this is a thing of Penguin's, that he doesn't really care for the women around him unlike Riddler and sometimes Joker. Actor Grace Gaynor had only a few TV roles in the 60s, though her last roles were in Fletch and Fletch Lives.
Despite all this the Bros enjoyed the creativity of the story. It certainly helped that the wackiness of the plot and its scenes (especially the courtroom one), helped things lively even if the overall story didn't really make sense.
Vince is still subjecting himself to watching Raw, poor guy. He can't get over how even with prepared scripts, somebody like Naomi Sky can flub a line read pretty badly: "You still haven't eaten Bailey?" RD: "I can't believe I don't watch Raw."
- Special Guest Villain: The Penguin [6] (Burgess Meredith) [6]
- SPEAKING OFs: 2. Batman 66, femme fatales
- I didn’t even know he was sick: 2. Paul Harvey, Dick Dastardly
- Outdated references: 1. Guadalcanal
- Brown Hornet Escapes: 1. Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
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