Intent-wise, I consider "Just Schlepping" to be the "nothing special here" category. The singular event of David attempting suicide deserves recognition as something beyond that. He's taking action to rid himself and/or the world of the creature, which for me falls loosely in the same category as cure-related episodes.
Well, forgive me, but I have personal reasons to be deeply upset by the suggestion that suicide can ever be a "cure" for anything. I really, really wish you would not keep linking those concepts, please.
Even setting aside the Early Installment Weirdness of Batman using guns in a few early Golden Age stories, was that a well-established character trait in the era prior to the show...or was it something that later writers emphasized based on evidence of omission (the fact that Batman didn't use a gun)?
It was an explicit and emphatic trait of the character by no later than 1950. I have a collection with a 1950 story, "The Birth of Batplane II" by Bill Finger, Dick Sprang, and Charles Harris, where a mishap causes a group of villains to come into possession of the Batplane and use it to commit crimes. The fact that Batman never uses guns is stated clearly on at least two occasions -- once when the bad guys say they'll have an advantage because "Remember --
Batman doesn't use guns -- and
we do!" and again when a random spectator awkwardly exclaims, "Boy -- watch
Batman fly rings around those crooks! And remember --
Batman uses no
lethal weapons!" The fact that it's presented as something widely known suggests that it was already well-established by then. And if Finger so clumsily underlined it in dialogue in this issue, he probably did the same in plenty of others.
I have to wonder if Liberace did much character acting elsewhere. His attempt at playing the gangster twin brother is so bad that it's good.
Pretty sure the only character acting he did regularly was pretending to be heterosexual.
But seriously, folks... IMDb lists 14 distinct acting roles for him, six of which are "Liberace" and two of which are "Maestro" and "Piano Player/Master of Ceremonies." Three of them are guest appearances in comedy sketches on
The Red Skelton Show. He had a starring role in a 1955 movie called
Sincerely Yours, a remake of a movie about a concert pianist, but it was a huge flop due to his poor acting. As
Wikipedia puts it, "The studio then bought back the contract, effectively paying Liberace not to make a second movie." His only other character role besides Chandell was a cameo as a casket salesman in the 1965 comedy film
The Loved One.
She did get a substantially meatier role here...but you didn't have an issue with her actually brandishing a firearm (whereas, jacket aside, Bruce was shown with a fishing pole)?
Aversion to firearms was never established as a character trait of Aunt Harriet, as far as I know.
It really stretches suspension of disbelief in the first part when the Commissioner talks to Alfred via Batphone hookup from Wayne Manor, right after Alfred leaves the room.
To be fair, telephone signal clarity and fidelity were not always as good back then as they are in these digital times, so it could be harder to recognize a voice over the phone. I think that's why so many characters in old movies were able to impersonate other people over the phone so easily -- because their voices would've been too distorted to recognize.
And we learn that Bruce's ultra-private study not only has an outdoor entrance, but that Bruce leaves the curtains open, such that any henchpeople of the week can walk up to it and see the Batphone sitting there, or eavesdrop while they use the Batpoles.
One would think that, theoretically, the walls of the estate would have alarms that would sound if anyone came onto the grounds uninvited. Although we did see a few episodes where crooks were able to break into the Manor rather easily.
