Fascinating analysis of a...well, horrible show, guys, and yes, I've punished myself by watching a couple of episodes thanks to my friend who bought a VHS of a few episodes at a comic convention in the '90s!
bat-rss wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 6:22 am
While
Captain Nice brought some really funny moments, it failed to catch on with audiences. Was this simply because the bat-bubble had burst? Or was it that Henry wasn’t the right person to grab the lightning in a bottle that
Lorenzo Semple, Jr., had captured? We look at the strengths and weaknesses of the show, the possible reasons for its failure, and whether
Captain Nice was meant to be a bat-clone, or a conventional sitcom starring a superhero.
The failure of
Captain Nice stems from hubris on the part of Henry--being arrogant enough to assume something along the lines of,
"That superhero stuff is nothing but camp--a joke, so i'm going to play it as a flat-out farce!", which means he took only a scant glance at
Batman and purposely ignored the early, action/adventure tone of the series, where the humorous moments were just that--moments, not the entire drive and feel of the show. Typical of comedians (or comedic writers), instead of capturing the subtleties and ironies of an idea which are still familiar with audiences, but funny if tuned on their ear, so to speak, comedians go overboard in trying to
mock the idea, as if its inherent nature was fit to be ridiculed (see:
Saturday Night Live, which can count around three, random seasons out of 49 which were somewhat funny).
Unfortunately, the motivation behind creating
Captain Nice reminds me of some Batman fans who--in a rejection of
any serious/dark elements to the character and his world--really cheer for or talk up the third season of the Dozier show, as if that was the intent of the series all along (and by extent, a true representation of the character). Its Henry's kind of thinking--and the low points of
Batman's second and 3rd season that convinced Hollywood that superheroes were silly, kiddie nonsense never to be taken seriously, and it was all like
Captain Nice and
Batman's third season. Undoubtedly, that belief guided Hanna-Barbera's production of the buffoon-ish
Legends of the Super Heroes specials in 1979.
Thankfully, in that same decade, a producer such as Kenneth Johnson would only accept developing
The Incredible Hulk if had the promise that it was not going to be like--you guessed it--Dozier's Batman, which Johnson cited by name numerous times.
