A Fond Farewell to Adam West, the One True Batman of the TV Generation

West’s passing has me dwelling on the distant past because when the all-star camp classic Batman debuted on ABC in 1966, airing twice-weekly at 7:30 p.m. (because primetime started earlier and ran longer then), I experienced the power of television in a way I have never forgotten. Back in the day it was not only live sports coverage that drew people together in front of television screens (something it continues to do).  Batman did that, too.

I’m old enough to remember when black and white television sets were the norm and color TVs were largely the prized possessions of people with money.  (Indeed, it wasn’t until adulthood that I realized the first season of Star Trek was actually in color.)  My next door neighbors had more money than anyone else in the neighborhood, and the first and only color television set, too.  (It was one of those large floor models that looked like a piece of furniture, just like the one TV Disney Media Networks Co-Chairman and Disney/ABC Television Group President Ben Sherwood watched at his grandmother’s house when he was a kid.)

And so it was that two nights a week every kid on the block scampered over to this family’s house to gather in the living room and watch Batman.  Excitingly, the first episode always ended with a cliffhanger, ensuring that we would all be back for the second.  Our mothers took turns baking treats for these “TV parties.”  They would gather in the neighbors’ kitchen while the kids took over the living room.  This show brought the whole neighborhood together ... though if memory serves our fathers often stayed home and enjoyed treasured moments of peace and quiet, or watched what they wanted to at that early hour when kids largely controlled the one TV in the house.  

Batman ran for three seasons.  (In its third it was reduced to one episode per week.)  To this day, Adam West and Burt Ward (pictured at top) are still lovingly remembered and celebrated as the Caped Crusader and his youthful ward, Robin.  Tens of millions of people, mostly children, once thought they were both among the coolest cats on the planet.  Many still do.  The various Batman movies that have come along since (even the few good ones) haven’t changed that.  Ward seems to have slipped beneath the radar, perhaps by choice, but West never stopped making appearances for fans and welcoming new generations of viewers.  He seemed to genuinely enjoy and appreciate what he had for as long as he lived.

That was the Batman phenomenon.  (It also included toys, games, lunchboxes, a feature film and, later in the series, Batgirl).  People in the decades since continued to gather together and watch certain shows, especially the primetime serials of the ‘80s.  But there will never be another show like this one -- a true comic book come to life in the most literal sense, perhaps even more so than the Marvel and D.C. Comics adaptations currently filling up broadcast and streaming schedules.  Time will tell if the stars of those shows ever achieve the same timeless stature enjoyed by Adam West for the last 50 years.  They should be even half as fortunate.

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