"Batman" Louie, the Lilac (TV Episode 1967) Poster

(TV Series)

(1967)

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7/10
Not bad, but too crammed for 30 minutes
tforbes-21 April 2011
Warning: Spoilers
When I first saw this episode back in October 1967, I thought this seemed more than just a little bit lame. But I was also disappointed at how the show had slipped so badly from Season Two to Season Three.

That said, this is a decent outing on its own terms. Milton Berle is decent as Louie the Lilac, and it is nice to see a villain's car where some effort was made to customize it. It is also interesting to see Commissioner Gordon and his daughter get into an argument, a rare human moment.

The casting, though, is fascinating. The late Jimmy Boyd, Yvonne Craig's ex-husband, has a role here, though it seems he shares no time with her, which was just as well for both of them. Skye Aubrey's casting was, in my view, strange, given that her father, James Aubrey, was CBS President from 1959 to 1965. Nonetheless, both Mr. Boyd and Ms. Aubrey do great work here.

Overall, the episode seems jumpy, because so much is crammed into 30 minutes, but it is definitely a decent episode. And the flower children make the episode special, giving this a real period charm.
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7/10
THE HIPPIE MOVEMENT PARTICIPATES IN THE SERIES
asalerno1025 June 2022
Louie The Lilac takes over Gotham City's flower market just as a spring festival approaches. His intention is to provide the flowers himself to a hippie community to conquer them and then use them in his future misdeeds. When Batman and Robin try to stop him, they are trapped in his stinking greenhouse and put at the mercy of a giant carnivorous plant. An acceptable episode with Milton Berle as the villain and in which the hippie movement of the late 60s and early 70s is reflected.
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Outstanding And Very Packed Episode
StuOz19 July 2011
Everything in this PACKED episode is just outstanding: Louie the Over-Actor, the flower children, the extras in the park, the park itself, the Billy May music, the man-eating lilacs (I love a good monster show), the women, the Batgirl song at the end, the teaser of next week's episode...this is just a 25 minute joy.

They say the third season was low-budget but this all looks rather movie-like to me, not of the production standard of season one I admit, but I walked away from this episode feeling like I had just seen a 25 minute energy-charged movie! A true winner!

I really don't agree with people who put down season three as I think all 26 episodes of season three have something of interest.
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3/10
Milton Berle in surprisingly serious mode
kevinolzak1 May 2016
"Louie, the Lilac" introduced a new villain in the person of Milton Berle, a purple clad gangster out to corner the flower market so as to control Gotham City's population of flower children. Princess Primrose (Schuyler Aubrey) is their designated leader, falling victim to Louie's hypnotic boutonnière, to the dismay of her friend Dogwood (Jimmy Boyd) and former high school classmate Barbara Gordon (Yvonne Craig), who thinks the Princess has 'flipped a petal or two.' Barbara gets a good portion of screen time, trapped in her apartment by Lilac henchman Arbutus (Richard Bakalyan, previous henchman of Frank Gorshin's Riddler and Victor Buono's King Tut), but her appearance as Batgirl is simply brief and pointless. Most surprising is Uncle Miltie's total lack of humor in playing the character perfectly straight, rendering this Special Guest Villain as more of a common crook unworthy of Batman, though he'd return in "Louie's Lethal Lilac Time." Crippling the episode even further is the already outdated depiction of the flower children, this broadcast following by only a few weeks the fabled Summer of Love spearheaded by The Beatles and SGT. PEPPER.
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