(Inasmuch as this is a music blog, the following post is off-topic. Inasmuch as this blog is a sort of memoir, this post is squarely on-topic.)

Fifty years ago today, I was not quite six years old and in kindergarten at Lincoln School. Fifty years ago tonight (or thereabouts), I fell into the first pop-culture phenomenon I ever participated in directly.

On Wednesday, January 12, 1966, Batman premiered on ABC-TV. I don’t know if I was watching that night, but if not, it wouldn’t be long before I was part of the throng of viewers sweating out the cliffhanger every week. By spring, it would be so popular with kids that my kindergarten teacher asked us to stop bringing Batman stuff to show and tell.

(I had, for some reason, an official Batman wastebasket, although I don’t think I took it to show and tell. It’s still in service today, in the little-used upstairs bathroom of Mom and Dad’s house.)

To adult viewers, Batman was a campy satire on superhero comics; teenagers got the added spice of contemporary pop-culture references. But six-year-olds could take it absolutely straight, and I did. I spent many a Thursday contemplating the horrible fix facing Batman and Robin at the hands of some villain and fearing they might not make it out.

I have revisited Batman occasionally over the years. The show ran in syndication on local stations throughout the 70s, turned up on Nick at Nite during that channel’s heyday in the late 80s and early 90s, and aired on various other cable channels thereafter. Some channel high up on our satellite dish ran it briefly within the last four or five years, and I watched a lot of episodes then.

When the first season came out on DVD last year, I picked it up, and I have been working my way through the series again. Adam West’s parody of upright whitebread American manhood is hilarious, but the best member of the cast is Neil Hamilton, who is never better as Commissioner Gordon than when, in the middle of some speech about Batman’s heroism, he breaks the fourth wall with a look that says, “This is ridiculous, but let’s just go with it.” As Alfred, Alan Napier is the most likable member of the cast. On the other hand, Burt Ward plays Robin with over-the-top gosh-yes sincerity, and without the self-awareness of West, Napier, and Hamilton, can be pretty annoying. Stafford Repp (Chief O’Hara) and Madge Blake (Aunt Harriet) have the most thankless roles in TV; O’Hara sucks at his job and Harriet is oblivious to everything.

Of the four major villains, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler is the best; he conjures up genuine menace while being funny at the same time. The rest—the Joker, the Penguin, and Catwoman—are fine, although everything you have read about Cesar Romero’s disinterest in playing the Joker comes through on-screen even in the first season. Of the minor villains, the one that made the biggest impression on six-year-old me was Mr. Freeze. I couldn’t figure out how somebody could live only at 50 below zero, and I found him pretty scary. (I was freaked out by False Face, too. Not when I was six—a couple of weeks ago when I watched his episode again.)

The fun in watching Batman now is in playing spot-the-stars: for example, a smoking hot pre-fame Jill St. John appears in the very first episode broadcast. A procession of 60s starlets and Hollywood bit players rolls by as various molls and henchmen. I have yet to see any of the famous wall-climbing cameos (Jerry Lewis, Dick Clark, Don Ho, and others; see all of them here), which were reportedly arranged without contracts and thus became one of the obstacles to the DVD release. But the show doesn’t hold my attention beyond that. I find myself fiddling with my phone and looking at the DVD display to see how much time is left in each episode.

I wanted to like the newly restored and unedited Batman, just as I did when I was six. But I don’t, not really. I haven’t put away all of my childish things, but I’m going to bid goodbye to this one.