Surf's Up! Joker's Under!
November 16, 1967
"The Joker plans to become the king of surfing, hoping the fame will give
him control over the hearts and minds of Gotham City. He captures top
surfer Skip Parker, then uses his "Surfing Experience & Ability
Transferometer" to transfer the needed skills and stamina from Skip to
himself. When all the other contestants drop out of the upcoming surfing
match, Batman steps up to challenge the Joker's supremacy."
50 minutes
Vince had to watch AEW Dynamite for the first time in three years, much to the chagrin of RD: ANTIQUE BEACHCOMBER and his surfing Batman and Joker shirt. It was a toss-up to Vince.
Vince also wonders why a surfing episode would air in the middle of November.
Narrator: "Surf's up at Gotham Point, and all the local surfers are shaping up for the forthcoming world surfing championships. Here's Skip Parker, local surfing idol and the hottest wave jockey around riding out the soup to join his current beach bunny, Barbara Gordon."
Barbara's swimsuit is very pleasing to the Bros, especially in publicity shots.
RD still owns YvonneCraigBikiniParty.com. He had told Vince of his purchase the last time he was on the old radio progrem.
Barbara and Skip flirt with each other.
Narrator: "But a fast surf isn't the only thing at Gotham Point that's hairy this morning! Not with this jesting jackstraw, the Joker, on the scene!"
A beach version of Joker's theme plays as he uses his hot-dog transmitter to coordinate his goons (Rip Tide and Wipe Out) kidnapping another surfer named Hot Dog Harrington. He then flirts with his own lady Undine, RD was mesmerized by her look. Vince noted she had a very flat stomach.
Joker sends Undine to get Skip by...walking up to him to tell him he has a phone call. Skip takes one look at her and decides to follow her, much to Barbara's surprise.
For this betrayal Joker gasses him.
Joker: "We'll run him into the Ten Toes Surfboard Shop and get all his surfing secrets out of him. Then after I've gotten rid of Batman and Robin for good, I will rule the waves. Me, the Joker, king of the surf and all the surfers. Then Gotham City. Later, the world!"
Barbara calls Gordon, who calls the Duo. (:15)
Bruce: "Alfred, alert the Batcopter port. To the Batcave."
Dick: "COWABUNGA!"
Cue obvious stock footage of the Batcopter with two people who look nothing like the Duo or their regular stunt doubles. Robin looks way too muscular, even more so than Batman.
Narrator: "And so the forces of law and order converge on Gotham Point by air."
Robin (badly dubbed): "If we land on the beach, Batman, we might hurt someone."
Batman (badly dubbed): "And cause undue attention, old chum. We'll set down in Pelican Cove, just north of Gotham Point and walk down the beach just like ordinary people."
RD: "Also because we have no footage of the Batcopter landing in any sand."
The Undynamic Duo are already there in beach shorts, cheap sunglasses, and floppy hats, as Duke and Buzzy.
Gordon: "Well, most true surfers are known as Duke, Skip, Rabbit, or Buzzy."
They see a woman with green hair dancing to a performing band singing a song about a woman with brown hair. Then a trash can nearby them starts shaking.
O'Hara: "Buzzy, I think this trash can's trying to tell us something."
Gordon: "Nonsense, Duke. It's an echo of the surf."
RD: "This is all I ask. Could the US government let us know at the beginning of each year just send out a pamphlet: here are the terms we're no longer allowed to use? That way I, as an old white man, can make sure I'm not offending anyone."
Gordon and O'Hara Buzzy and Duke go to the Hang Five, Hot Dog Harrington's hangout, followed by the Duo. The staff immediately calls them "gremmies".
Robin: "No compliment. Beach bums. We should have worn our baggies."
Barbara had gone to change into Batgirl the Library, but told them to watch the woman behind the counter, who is Undine.
Batman: "You mean the one talking to her hot dog?"
Undine (on her hot-dog communicator): "They are sitting with a couple of antique beachcombers who were asking some questions about Hot Dog Harrigan."
Joker tells her to leave them be for now, as he shows captive Skip his "Surfing Experience and Ability Transferometer: all your surfing know-how will be drained out of you and transferred to me. And don't forget to switch on the Vigor Reverser, so that all his youthful energy will be pumped into my blood and bones!"
RD: "This is quite the episode."
As if that weren't odd enough, the Duo go back to the Batcave just so that Alfred can show them pictures of feet.
Alfred: "I thought these new illustrated Batslides might prove a bit of a novelty, sir."
Robin: "Holy ten toes."
Batman: "A cryptic comment, Robin. The Ten Toes Surfboard Shop has been closed for some time. The most appropriate hideout for Joker and a hostage. These Batslides are more than a novelty, Alfred. I've learned more in the past minute from these two naked feet than we learned at Gotham Point in one hour. Although we left Buzzy and Duke out there to follow up."
Alfred: "Buzzy and Duke, sir?"
By then Joker has absorbed all of Skip's...surfing power.
"The Surfing Championship of Gotham Point in the palm of my pig board! Oh, the prizes, the honor! The envy, respect and adulation of all the local surfers! Where I go, they will follow! What I want, they will provide! And what I want is Gotham City to plunder and to pillage! And that is what they will provide!"
He orders his goons to put Skip in a dresser drawer. Undine warns him that the two antique beachcombers are "fuzz". Also the Duo have returned to the area, this time in Batmobile.
Joker: "Oh, exquisite. Their tricks for tracking me down have always been clever. But this time I will outsmart them. They will no doubt come through that window. You have the poisonous sea urchin spines, boys?"
Batman: "Ready?"
Robin: "Never ready."
So the two break in straight into a spray of spines.
Robin: "Holy pin cushions!"
Batman: "Obviously spines from a sea animal of the echinoderm family, Robin. Quite painful. Potentially lethal. But the poison can be counteracted if we immediately soak our bodies in hot water and Epsom salts."
Joker: "Oh! Too bad, Batman. But we've just ran out of hot water and Epsom salts"
Batman: "Then I think we've almost run out of time."
Joker ties the two to boards to process them to become...surfboards.
Robin: "Holy human surfboards!"
This definitely deserves a cliffhanger, and by cliffhanger I of course mean commercials.
Somehow the goons oversee the Duo enclosed into two rather thick surfboards with a coat of catalyzed resin, while their boss goes to the surfing competition. They know they've done their job when the boards suddenly explode, revealing the unscathed Duo.
Batman: "Catalyzed resin is a highly combustible mixture. All I had to do is activate this portable ultraviolet Bat-Ray from my Utility Belt to set off the explosion that released us from our foam blank coffins."
Also the explosion dissolved the spines. And somehow their poison which is probably still within the Duo's bodies. Because that's how things work here.
Anyway the Duo find some sandy footprints that lead them to the drawer where Skip is. He leaves to go find Barbara (and apologize to her for ditching her for another woman).
Batman: "Robin, hop a cab or take the subway to Stately Wayne Manor. Take Dick Grayson's car and head for the beach. Batman, in his showdown with Joker, will need the help of Bruce Wayne's youthful ward. Plus his surfboard."
Narrator: "And so the showdown approaches as Batman and Dick Grayson rendezvous at Gotham Point." (:32)
Dick "arrives" and leaves his surfboard outside the Hang Five, red with a white stripe. Inside Joker is regaling the people on his surfing tales. Batman challenges him for the surfing title.
Joker: "It's too late, Batman. The entries are closed."
Dick: "Correction, sir."
Joker: "Correction? You dare correct me? You immature mollusk!"
Dick: "I'm Millionaire Bruce Wayne's youthful ward, Dick Grayson. Mr. Wayne's president of the Gotham Point Surfing Association and in this case I can speak for him. I'm entering Batman in the surfing championships."
Batman: "Shall we go into the men's locker room and put on our baggies? Excuse me, citizens."
So Batman and Joker put swim trunks over their regular outfits.
The two will also be judged on their sportsmanship. Joker: "Sportsmanship?" The two get their boards, and of course Batman has Dick's red with a white stripe a yellow surfboard with the Batlogo. Barbara finally appears in her swimsuit to watch.
And so Batman and Joker surf in front of a green-screen.
While West would write that he thought this was the lowest point of the series, to RD it's his favorite. He always watches it whenever he needs a pick-me-up.
And of course Batman still has and uses the Shark Repellant Bat-Spray.
Despite all this, the production still had two other doubles actually surfing. This is never expounded upon.
Joker rushes out of the (relatively calm for surfing) waters first proclaiming victory, and of course the two are completely dry.
Dick: "I've tallied all the judges' points. You got one. For being the more colorful surfer. (That was not part of the judged criteria of course.) Batman got all the rest including 50 for avoiding a dangerous hazard, a shark."
Buzzy and Duke finally remember there's a moving trash can, which they should probably check. Inside is Hot Dog Harrigan. Joker uses this to bail. Batman asks Dick to find Robin "the Boy Wonder" (forgetting he's now the Teen Thunderbolt).
Dick finds the locker room - at the same time as Barbara. They both change separately. Then they come out of their adjacent changing stalls. Somehow this confuses the two.
Batman, Buzzy, Duke, and the villains all arrive so we can have our fight. Robin does a leapfrog. Joker still has an awful looking stunt double. Batgirl continues to kick and smile, and vanishes immediately afterwards.
Batman: "He's all yours, gentlemen."
Joker: "Gentlemen? These two hodads?"
Gordon: "Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara to you, Joker."
O'Hara: "Cowabunga. (Beat) Begorra."
Barbara reappears (perhaps to recover her swimsuit), having passed by Batgirl earlier. "Are you all right, Skip?"
Skip: "I will be as soon as they hook me and the Joker up to that Reverserometer and reverse it."
Robin: "Cowabunga."
Batman: "Begorra."
Back the Office they note Skip's returned to normal and Joker is behind bars for now.
Batman: "I think these two crime-fighters better call it a day."
Robin: "Let's call it a week, Batman. And really get some sleep."
Batman: "Agreed, old chum."
Narrator: "But just how much rest do the Dynamic Duo have coming? For what startling new crime wave has already begun across the sea from Gotham City? Who are these two new conspirators? Batman and Robin haven't the foggiest notion, but they'll travel 3000 miles to tangle with these treacherous twigs of aristocracy and wind up on the maddest manhunt of all time in that great metropolis of the old world: Londinium. Don't become fogbound! Watch the next episode! Cheerio!"
This would be the season's only three-parter, which is so bad RD sets to review them all at once next recording. It is such a stark contrast from this story, which he considers one of his favorites. And it only needed a half-hour! They noted everyone was having a fun, especially Hamilton and Repp's beach misadventures. To them it was a encapsulation of a typical Batman episode.
Sivi "Undine" Aberg had been in the show before: she was Mimi, one of Chandell and Harry's trio of ladies. The Bros had given her 8 Batpoles then. Vince gives this appearance 8.5. RD gives 8.75, "basically the same as a 9". Sadly there is still nothing new about her online in the year long gap of reviews.
RD wrote about the time during Vince's WCW tenure where Bam Bam Bigelow was counted out against Brian Knobbs in a No DQ Falls Count Anywhere match. Even Vince admits it was "ridiculous".
- Special Guest Villain: The Joker [9] (Cesar Romero) [9]
- Screen Shares: 2. RD, RD
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