AllofTV.net - Batfink

• Season 1

Batfink is an animated television series, consisting of five-minute shorts, that first aired in September 1967. The 100-episode series was quickly created by Hal Seeger, starting in 1966, to parody the popular Batman and The Green Hornet television series which had premiered the same year. The cartoon was produced at Hal Seeger Studios, in New York City. It was syndicated by Screen Gems and continued to air on local stations throughout the 1980s. Nickelodeon briefly aired episodes of Batfink on its Weinerville and Nick in the Afternoon series in the 1990s. In the UK, Batfink was also shown up until the 80s, but was introduced to a new audience in 2004 when it was included in a number of episodes of Dick and Dom in da Bungalow, and since April 2006 has been enjoying an extended repeat run on BBC One and BBC Two. Batfink's life and wings are explained in the final episode, "Batfink: This Is Your Life", in which he is shown his boyhood, and how his real wings were replaced. Batfink was made quickly and cheaply by re-using many common scenes to the series, instead of having to re-animate almost identical scenes for each episode. Although most serial animations do this to some extent, Batfink did it more than most. Commonly repeated scenes include the intro to the initial briefings by the Chief (the TV screen buzzing into life), Batfink and Karate getting into the Battleac, the Battleac going round mountain bends, the Battleac going over a bridge, Batfink's super-sonic sonar radar and others. Some scenes were reused every episode, some appeared sporadically and some were only repeated once or twice out during the entire series. Often, a scene would be used in more than one scenario, e.g. the Battleac going over a bridge on their way to get to a crime would also be reused during a chase scene or when they are looking all over the country for a specific item or person. Sometimes the repeated scenes would be cut short so that only sections of them could be re-used to fit the storyline more closely. Batfink had at his disposal two main superpowers - his super-sonic sonar radar and his metallic wings. At least one of these would feature in every episode in order to help him catch the bad guy. His super-sonic sonar radar played upon his being a bat. Bats use echolocation to detect their prey and home in on it. Batfink's super-sonic sonar radar was the superpower version of this and usually took the form of the letters "BEEP" emanating from his mouth and then flying wherever he needed them to go, accompanied by a distinctive beeping noise. The "BEEP" acted as a person, was able to see, be scared, evade capture and report back to Batfink on what it had seen. In one episode, the "BEEP" even gets beaten up after being ambushed from behind a tree. The "BEEP" also gets confused, misdirected and lost and Batfink has to rely on other means to find out what Hugo A-Go-Go has been up to. Once, when the "BEEP" was sent to investigate a swarm of villainous bees, it returned with the letters "EEP" swollen with beestings. When Karate asked Batfink about it, he replied "You know, Karate, a bee never stings another B." Batfink's main defense were his metallic wings, which Batfink was able to curl around himself as a protective shield against most attacks, thereby spawning the most famous catchphrase of the show: "Your bullets cannot harm me, my wings are like a shield of steel". (He claimed in some episodes that the wings were stainless steel, but in other episodes he explicitly stated that they were NOT stainless steel.) The wings would also help Batfink fly at enormous speeds and were often used to help him escape certain death or cut through bonds when he had been captured. But sometimes they also hindered him; when in water he would sink because of the weight of his metal wings. Batfink's sidekick, Karate, was his backup in case his superpowers couldn't help him out of a sticky situation. Unfortunately, Karate was a bit clumsy and not the brightest sidekick but was highly trained in martial arts, most famously his Karate Chop. Usually, when Karate did help Batfink escape Hugo A-Go-Go's clutches, it was more by dumb luck than judgement and sometimes it was Karate that landed them both in a situation in the first place. In many episodes events would come to a head with Batfink in a seemingly fatal situation. At this point the action would freeze and the narrator asked dramatically whether Batfink would survive. Then the action would continue with Batfink surviving, either through use of Deus Ex Machina or through him using his superpowers.