Oh yeah, I freaking love the Eye Slugger!
One of the great things about Ultraman and Ultraseven is just seeing all these crazy random powers they utilise in their fights and action scenes, and though the Spacium Beam is obviously a classic, I'm finding the Eye Slugger to be just as much fun whenever it comes into play.
Plus there was a period of a few episodes there where it was useless against the monsters he was going up against, and then once he got back to some that it *was* effective on he was back to slicing them up all over the place!
And yeah it's definitely one of the things that's different about Ultraseven compared to Ultraman that there aren't as many extended monster fights on average. In Ultraman you're basically *guaranteed* a monster fight every episode, which was one of the cool things about it. The opening title cards were a great little primer for the monster(s) you were going to see in each episode. They didn't reveal much, but they did enough to get you thinking "oooh, I wonder what *that* could be?!" But Ultraseven in comparison often doesn't have *any* giant monsters in an episode; and sometimes Seven doesn't even change size!
It did take me a bit by surprise in the first couple of episodes just how quickly Seven dealt with the threats compared to Ultraman, but I still think it really works, especially with the set-up for this show being more about invading aliens than the "giant monsters *and* aliens" that Ultraman has. It allows for more conflict with human-sized characters even if they don't ultimately end up growing huge and fighting, but you still get the fun of seeing these cool Tsuburaya creatures in each ep. Plus as you say, this show skews a bit more adult, so they probably figured they didn't always need to have those giant monster fights as often as they did in Ultraman.
On a "where I'm currently at" note, I just recently watched "The 700 Kilometer Run!", aka, "the episode with the dino-tank", and that thing was just as gloriously random in-context as it was just seeing random clips and stuff over the years beforehand!
Still, Dan taking out the motorbike "human bomb" had to be the most hilarious part of the entire show so far. He might have just been a regular guy, Dan!!
This show is so much fun!