Batman – The Joker Goes to School / He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul

  • Title: Batman – The Joker Goes to School / He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul
  • wiki: link
  • wiki: link

Batman - The Joker Goes to School

In honor of Batman‘s 75th Anniversary we continue to look back at the more memorable moments of the 1966 Batman TV-series starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin.”The Joker Goes to School” and “He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul” are two of the goofier paired episodes in the show’s three seasons. The Joker returns to trouble Gotham City once more, this time targeting the students of Woodrow Wilson High School. His plans involve not only recruiting high school students for his new gang the Bad Pennies but also rigging milk vending machines to give free money to students in an attempt to corrupt them into a life of crime (as, of course, one does in 60s Gotham City).

One member of the Bad Pennies turns out to be the school’s head cheerleader Susie (Donna Loren) who leads the Dynamic Duo into a death trap involving a novelty van, a slot machine, and a pair of electric chairs. It’s odd as Batman and Robin don’t so much escape the death trap but are saved by a power outage and GCPD officers finding the heroes which leads to the bizarre sequence of Dick Grayson undercover agent in a laughable attempt of the character to act like a tough guy to get intelligence about the gang (of course his flimsy disguise is seen through immediately).

The final act involves the reveal of the Joker’s real plan of getting the star basketball team starters suspended allowing him to make a mint on betting on a rival school: Disko Tech. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. In the end Batman and Robin stop the villain, save the soul of a naive young girl, and bring law and order back to the halls of the high school. Various gadgets that play a role in their defeating the Joker including the Anti-Allergy Pill, Batscope, Anticrime Voice Analyzer, and Anticrime Auxillary Generator.