Surf’s Up! Joker’s Under! is 60s Batman at its Best

I like to fall asleep to Batman. The 60s show is pure comfort viewing, outwardly wild and wacky and yet at its core formulaic and impeccably structured. It’s great to unwind to and usually I’ll drift off about 15 minutes in; I’ve seen the beginning of every episode multiple times but so few endings. Yet sometimes there’s an episode so insane I can’t help but perk up, and by the time the credits roll I’m wide awake, reenergised by the sheer insanity I’ve just witnessed. This is perhaps most true of the third season’s Surf’s Up! Joker’s Under!

People treat Batman as a joke. And it is. The thing is is that it knows it. It’s intentional. I’m baffled by people online who begrudge the show as laughable, stupid. As if that’s an insult. It’s a compliment. Some people seem to claim the show is unaware of itself. Oh, it’s very aware. It’s a comedy series and has to be treated as such. Serious for young kids maybe but for adults it’s a farce. And so why not have an episode where Batman and the Joker have a surf-off?

By the third season the show was tired. The joke may be wearing thin. Batgirl had been injected into the mix and the usual two-part episodes had been changed to mostly single instalments (removing the iconic cliffhangers) or even the occasional three-part stories. Any change from the formula (unless you enjoy using the repetitive beats as a sleep aid) is refreshing. Surf’s Up! Joker’s Under! sure delivers that. Right from the beginning this isn’t a usual episode. There are no scenes in Gotham City, no visit to Gordon’s office for a briefing. This episode is all beach, all the time.

The atypical seaside setting also means that instead of stock footage of the Batmobile driving those 14 miles to Gotham City we see every episode, we get stock footage of the Batcopter instead. Now, after just claiming the show is completely knowing of its humour, I have to admit the biggest laugh comes from something likely unintentional: the pilots. They are clearly not Adam West and Burt Ward. The Batman costume just about means the hired pilot gets away with looking enough like the titular hero but Robin much less so. On the glorious high-def Blu-ray he looks about thirty years too old. He makes Ward look like a convincing teenager by comparison.

The episode is part of the third season’s embrace of late 1960’s culture. Earlier in the season there were hippies, now surfing, and next will be the ‘British Invasion’ with three episodes set in ‘Londinium.’ And then there’s the women liberation episode later in the season which is infamously terrible. But for the most part counterculture influence was a positive addition to the series. It might have been informed by a desperation to keep the show relevant, a ‘hey, we’re cool, too!,’ but watching now it has certainly aged decently well, or at least entertainingly. The show is a delightful retro time capsule and this episode more so than most.

Looking back, it’s certainly much more open about that stuff than a lot of other shows of the era. The outlook on hippies (one of whom is discussed as a future president) is certainly better than that of Star Trek, with that show’s episode The Way to Eden portraying them as the most insufferable people ever, needing a tough word from Captain Kirk. He said that they weren’t allowed to enjoy themselves, that they could only reach paradise through hardship (a very TOS mindset that the franchise began to filter out), no doubt because the writers were miliary veterans who lived through the war. By comparison Batman seems to be saying “nah man, you guys are groovy” and joins the rotation.

However, much like The Way to Eden, the episode’s weakest moment is its musical interlude. A Beach Boys style band but with green hair for some reason (I guess because the Joker?) sing a terrible song to a montage of surfing, with the footage taken from the film The Endless Summer. And there’s the worst dancing I’ve ever seen in my life. Thankfully, Gordon and O’Hara are there. The two cops are my favourite thing about the show. I could easily watch them the whole time and not have Batman and Robin appear at all. They are the worst police officers in the history of television and here go undercover like a proto version of Crockett and Tubbs. They sling slang at each other and dress to fit in with the beach goers, mainly composed of beautiful women in bikinis and bathing suits. They bumble around like the gay couple they were always destined to be and it’s a joy to watch.

But, of course, Batman and Robin do eventually leave the Batcopter and reach the beach where Joker has kidnapped the best surfer and transferred his surfing ability into his crazed mind using some machine (a staple of sixties sci-fi). We get the usual kapow fight scene but instead of just yet another terribly choregraphed scuffle (now on a set which is mainly a black void with limited mise-en-scène to save money) we also get the ultimate face-off between Batman and his arch nemesis. It’s how The Dark Knight should have ended: a surf-off. How exactly it’s judged I don’t know. We get a mixture of real surfers in costume shot at a distance and West and Cesar Romero shot against a just-mildly-noticeable greenscreen. It’s genuinely the perfect sequence for this show, Batshorts included: camp, funny, silly, and so incredibly sixties.

Surf’s Up! Joker’s Under! is one of the best episodes of the series, an escalation of the show’s silliness when it desperately needed it in its weaker third season. It’s an essential watch. And yet Adam West himself declared it as his least favourite episode. He claims it was too silly. Impossible! Such a criticism can never be aimed at this series. Batman is a show incapable of jumping the shark; Batman would just use his shark repellent before it got too close.