I love the way Daniel reacts when Shame shows up. He’ll occasionally have his little growls or kid-melodramatic cries of “Oh, no! Catwoman!” or so, but he found this completely hilarious low grumble for this villain, and every time he or his henchmen do anything mean, he’ll go “Shaaaaaaaame!”
Speaking of henchmen, Cliff Robertson has a pair of hilarious ones in this story. Barry Dennen, who has had small roles in just about everything, plays Fred, an upper-class British man who wears a Mexican bandit disguise in order to fit into Shame’s gang, and Victor Lundin, who we saw back in season one as a scene-stealing member of one of Penguin’s gangs, is Chief Standing Pat, who communicates only with cigar smoke signals that only Shame’s girlfriend, Calamity Jan, can translate.
The quality certainly plunged in season three, but this story is just really funny. Robertson and his then-wife Dina Merrill, as Jan, are having so much fun and it really comes across well. Hermione Baddeley plays Jan’s mother, who doesn’t want any smooching until the wedding’s arranged, and Robertson has a blast with the underplayed mother-in-law jokes that Jan never notices.
Oh, I suppose there are superheroes in this one as well, but with baddies this entertaining, who noticed?
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 