The Riddler is back, but with Frank Gorshin still in contract negotiations, they recast him… with John Astin. And as much as I love Astin and his style, his look and his delivery, he simply can’t compare to Gorshin’s manic delivery. I’m all for Astin making a guest appearance in the series, but maybe they should have created a new villain for him to play.

This two-parter was written by William P. D’Angelo, and the first episode, Batman’s Anniversary debuted on 8 February, 1967.

Batman (Adam West) with Robin (Burt Ward) are summed into Gotham by Gordon (Neil Hamilton) and O’Hara (Stafford Repp) but they won’t say why. When they meet the Caped Crusaders at a set location, Batman is surprised to see the city is throwing him an anniversary party, celebrating the first day he started fighting crime in Gotham.

The party is interrupted by Riddler, who is out of prison again, and this time he plans to steal all the money raised by Batman’s party and hard work, which will be donated to one of Bruce Wayne’s favourite charities, and keep it for himself.

And he’s going to do his darnedest to make sure the Dynamic Duo aren’t around anymore to cause problems. How will he accomplish that? By getting them to stand atop a giant cake made in Batman’s honor which has quicksand colored to look like icing, and our heroes are sinking deeper and deeper into it as we are delivered this story’s cliffhanger break.

The second episode, A Riddling Controversy aired the next night on 9 February, 1967. The Caped Crusaders are able to escape from the cake trap by slowing their movements, and eventually activating the untested rockets in their boots!

But their escape may have come too late, Riddler has enough money to purchase the next step in his plan, a demolecularizer. And with it, he plans on holding Gotham, hostage. If they don’t pay an exorbitant amount of money, he will start disintegrating the buildings of the city, starting with the police headquarters!

But Batman has a plan, one that not only involves the bat-copter and the bat-cycle, and some science (?). Batman and Robin are able to confront the Riddler and his gang and stop the character once again.

It’s a fun episode, and like I said, I love Astin, but he’s just not the Riddler. I wish they had given him a different character and that way he could return and also be able to give the character his own interpretation instead of standing in for Gorshin.

And for those keeping count, these are episodes 44 and 46 (!) of season two! That’s incredible to think about as today, short ten episode seasons, limited series, and more seem to be the standard. Even twenty episodes a season now seems like a lot. How the times have changed.

Next time the Joker returns!