Super Friends Season 2, Episode 11, Storyline A – “The Fifty Foot Woman”
Original Airdate – November 12, 1977
Short Synopsis: “Surrounded by the vastness of the barren desert, lies the secret laboratory of professor Amy Zahn.” – Narrator
We see professor Zahn take a beaker of blue stuff and poor it into some red stuff and then it becomes all red stuff.
“Soon, women will be as strong as men! We will no longer be the weaker sex!”
Dammit, didn’t we JUST go over this? All aboard the misguided faux feminist train, toot toot!
Her (female) assistant tells her that women don’t need physical strength to be equal to men and Professor tells her she’s living in a dream world.
This was about the time that doping became such a serious problem in the scientific community.
Just like The Incredible Hulk, Professor Zahn shows us that when you grow to gigantic size, your clothes will become tattered but will not actually be ripped from your giant body:
What’s the first thing she does? Evil laughs. Just does A LOT of laughing. She now finds everything funny.
The assistant warns the Super Friends. Wonder Woman tells her to try and find an antidote and she and Batman and Robin will track the professor down.
Please stop saying “streak into action,” narrator.
That’s quite enough.
Wonder Woman takes her invisible jet and Batman and Robin take their visible jet to some place they seem to magically know the professor is at.
“So, women are the weaker sex! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Professor Zahn exclaims joyfully. She is in a REALLY good mood, y’all.
What’s the plan?
“Try to distract Professor Zahn with your invisible jet. Robin and I will put our bat plan to work!” – Batman
First of all, how about the VISIBLE jet be the distraction? Second of all, a “bat plan” is like a regular plan, but extremely shitty and goes wrong immediatly, apparently:
She then tells Batman that he’s perfect for her next experiment: to see if the formula will work on a man, too.
HOLD UP. Why would you want that? That would just make him as big and probably stronger than you. I thought the point was that you wanted to be stronger? For a professor she’s a real dum dum.
She decides that some scientific research ship (which is right nearby) is the perfect place for her experiment.
Now that Batman’s out of the picture…
things are running much smoother. Wonder Woman sends Robin to buy some time at the ship while she flies out to pick up the assistant and the antidote.
How does Robin distract her? Let’s say that the ship is a cookie jar, and Robin is a cookie. She sticks her hand in and then gets stuck.
Wonder Woman then returns with the assistant and the antidote and Professor Zahn is made normal again.
Oh, Good, Lesson Learned.
“I guess I’ve learned that physical strength is not the measure of equality, it’s strength of character that’s important.” – Zahn.
So, so true. All right everyone, let’s pack it in and — what’s that? Wonder Woman, you want to add one last thing? Ok, then.
“Besides, at fifty feet tall, you wouldn’t be able to find anything in your dress size!”
Mother. Fucker.
If you would like to see these shenanigans for yourself, Season 2 is available on DVD.
Amy Zahn? Seriously, writers?
That was hilarious…right up until Wonder Woman’s
coup de grace. Bad Wonder Woman!
Ok, I have to admit, I did NOT catch on to Amy Zahn. I have failed as a Super Friends snarker.
I like that her name is Amy Zahn. It’s like she’s me, if I married Steve Zahn. Which I would do, because I have a weakness for funny, goofy men.
This serum seems to have the same effect that smoking a lot of weed did on people I knew in college. They ALSO thought everything was hilarious but no one around them got the joke. They didn’t grow to be a billion feet tall, though. Not that I remember, anyway.
I think that’s why I missed the pun name – I was also thinking “like Steve Zahn” every time I typed her name.
Why didn’t they just throw on some Barry White and have Apache Chief turn on the charm?
YESSSS! That would have been spectacular!
I heard evil laughter every time I walked by the women studies classes on campus when I was in college. Was this what they were doing?
Why did Amy Zahn (lame, writers) look like your every day female scientist at normla size but as a giant she looked like a backup WNBA center from Czechoslavakia high on steroids?
So funny how the writers still can’t get womens rights stories done in decent way with Wonder Woman to work with. *muwahahahaha* – evil laugh
I’m just hoping we’ve seen the end of it for this season. Not the end of evil laughing, though, that’s always amusing.
Maybe they should have invited some female writers to the show. But I suppose that would have been too progressive.
I need to look and see if they had any. I’m curious now.
If you want to know all the wacky behind the scenes production details of the SuperFriends, I recommend reading (if you haven’t already) this amazing collection of interviews with the writers, voice actors, and animators:
http://noblemania.blogspot.com/2011/07/super-70s-and-80s-super.html
Oh! I just got why she was called Amy Zahn. Nice. It just really bothers me that when the blue potion was mixed with the red potion it turned red instead of purple.
It bothered me too which is why I mentioned it. Just lazy.
Where exactly along the path of destruction that Amy Zahn left behind did she learn that strength of character is more important? Because that sounds something a real weakling would say.
Yeah, it sounds just like something someone who recently became the same size as everyone else would say.
Wow the writers of this show seem really stuck on the feminism thing. Silly girls, trying to be big and strong!