Craig Ferguson Brings Batgirl Back To Television. Sort Of.

I tend to keep the TV on for background noise while I'm working late, and last night, I looked up from what I was writing to see something so monumentally odd that until I got a friend to turn it on and verify that it was actually happening, I was convinced that I'd either fallen asleep or accidentally eaten a healthy amount of peyote with dinner.

I speak, of course, of the "Murder She Wrote 2010" sketch from last night's The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, in which Jessica Fletcher as played by Paul McCartney, who was actually played by Craig Ferguson, teamed up with Batgirl, as played by Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor.

Believe it or not, it's even stranger than it sounds. Check out the full sketch -- which Tambor refers to as "a real career breaker" -- after the jump!

If you're familiar with Ferguson's program -- which I believe was scientifically designed to be the absolutely perfect thing to fall asleep to -- it probably doesn't surprise you that the sketch goes back and forth between the lowbrow of fart noises and the sheer surreality of a Little Nemo strip. This is, after all, a talk show where guests are routinely interrupted by two guys in a horse costume pretending to be Secretariat and then invited to play harmonica to finish out their movie plugs.

That said, this one is weird even by those standards. I mean, I can totally follow the logic of a Batgirl/Jessica Fletcher team-uip -- it is, after all, the perfect Great Comic That Never Happened to get more senior citizens interested in funnybooks -- but it's the part where they decided to load Tambor into a purple spandex suit with glasses that makes this one Batgirl's strangest adventure of all.

Yes, even stranger then the time she was brained with a vase while lecturing a rogue Egyptologist on the importance of the public library:

And probably even stranger than the time Milton Berle knocked her out with a flower and then tried to melt her in a tube.

And yes, even stranger still than the time she avoided being rocketed into orbit thanks to a well thought-out choice of fashion accessories.

Still, even with as weird (and flatulent) as the Ferguson sketch is, I've got to admit that I still prefer Tambor to Alicia Silverstone.