Gotham

What have you been watching?

Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Mon Jun 05, 2017 5:42 am

RainyDays wrote:I confess I didn't even know this show existed until I got curious about this unusually active thread. And I'm completely lost reading the reviews, because I don't really know the characters and they all appear to average 4.2 names apiece, and I started reading near the end of a season...

But I don't mind, because reading these reviews was like getting a guided tour through a field of car wrecks. What a wild, baffling mess, but I'm well-entertained reading about it.


*grins like an idiot*

Why, thank you! Always happy to have another entertained passenger on this ever-expanding screaming nightmare bus. It really makes my suffering feel worth it. And I don't think I've ever heard my thread summarized in a way that makes me feel prouder than "a guided tour through a field of car wrecks."

On being lost, that just might contribute to the dreamlike stupidity of the whole mess, but being able to follow the character arcs -- and it hurts me to even call the lines the characters on this show follow "arcs", as it implies some mappable level of internal and external consistency -- from week to week really helps. If you want the context, here's a character sheet, and my psychotic quest goes about as far back as mid-Season 2 (for reference, tomorrow marks the end of Season 3).
  • 5

"Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it." - Eclipse Phase

NEW REVIEW! Judgment / Judge Eyes (2019)
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Re: Gotham

Postby reallifegirl » Wed Jun 07, 2017 3:01 pm

Okay so I will just say this re: the finale:
Spoiler: show
Man, I don't care about anything else, it was all worth it to me to watch Riddler get COMPLETELY FUCKING OWNED by Penguin.

ImageImageImageImage

Which I guess is weird because, technically, Penguin really was in the wrong from the start for killing Isabella (as stupid as that subplot is). But man oh man does it not matter anymore, because that whole sequence felt sooooooo gooooooooooood.
  • 4

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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:58 pm

It's time, at last, for the finale of Season 3. It feels like only yesterday that I was ranting about how terrible Jervis Tetch was as a villain, and now I realize that was almost a year ago give or take a few months. This fucking show is engineered to be ubiquitous. The constant breaks mean the show is never far from returning, and even now, I can barely count this as a mercy because I know it will be back on relatively soon. Westworld, Legion, Mr. Robot, Game of Thrones, Fargo -- good TV takes time to make. The fact that this show just sloshes out of the pipeline 24/7 like diarrhea from a gutted corpse should speak volumes in itself.

But I digress from that little tangent. It's time for the two-part finale, beginning with "Destiny Calling". Let's strap in, 'cause I know this is going to be a nasty one.

Spoiler: show
We open on the immediate aftermath of the bomb, which, as I forgot to make note of last time, had a bizarrely small area of effect for a superweapon that was supposed to completely destroy Gotham. And it's a city that houses millions, but Tasty Rudy -- bless his late, great tasty soul -- only said "thousands" would be affected. And true to this, the chaos that ensues feels absurdly small-scale for something so hyped up. The worst thing we see is a flaming train passing by on the overhead tracks; all the other violence is committed by individuals, small-scale, things like robberies and carjacking and stuff, and it's all still contained to that zone of the city. Was this really the disaster the Court / the League / Ra's al Ghul thought would cleanse Gotham? How is this meaningfully different from the time just a short stretch of episodes ago when Jerome cut the power to all of Gotham and let his maniacs run wild? Hell, that felt more serious, in part because those were actually decent episodes centered around a damn charming villain. But fine, I guess. Let's see where it goes from here.

After the title card, we're at the GCPD, which is currently under assault by newly super-strong maniacs. Unarmed maniacs. Who, as demonstrated by Mario, are completely not immune to even small-calibre bullets. Yet because these are the same dumbfucks who get slaughtered on a weekly basis, the same dumbfucks who got overpowered by five unarmed Luchadores back in "New Day Rising" (to date, that may be the stupidest fucking scene in the whole show), no shots are being fired and the cops are having a real hard time restraining people with their bare hands. But we then pan into the bathroom, where Jim is hunched over a mirror as he hears his own voice whispering "killer" in his head. Bullock walks in and, after a short exchange about his present condition, asks for Jim's gun so he doesn't do anything stupid when the virus takes hold again. To his credit, Jim complies, and then there's exposition about how Lee has disappeared and such. Then Jim asks about Bruce, and we cut to...

Bruce sitting in the interrogation room, looking as menacing as he can possibly muster, as Alfred stares through the glass in sorrow. We don't learn much here, other than that he hasn't said anything since Tasty Rudy was killed, but Alfred wants permission to talk to him one-on-one. Bullock reluctantly gives him this permission, just as Lucius -- whom we haven't actually seen since "How the Riddler Got His Name" -- pops in and plays the pronoun game by saying that he has something Jim and Bullock need to see.

Oh, what a surprise! Lucius has popped up to confirm that Strange was working on a hitherto-unheard of cure to the bullshit blood virus that he just never mentioned! Holy deus ex machina, Batbaby! But on the plus side, Lucius at least doesn't have the formula right away. On the not plus side, it turns out Strange actually got away from the police after Alfred's interrogation, despite Alfred "letting him go" after knocking him unconscious and presumably walking off to tell the police where he was. What fun. And as they race to the downtown train station where they figure he'll be trying to leave the city, we cut to him doing exactly that, only to be cornered and captured by Fish and her beefy bodyguards. Fish continues to somehow not be abysmal. I'm terrified.

So let's recap the current situation: Jim and Bruce are in some kind of peril, chaos is overtaking the setting due to crazy people running amok, the gang are trying to hunt down Strange for his connection to some sort of bomb, and Fish has suddenly popped into the season after a long absence to be a spanner in the works. This is literally just the second season finale two-parter on a slightly larger scale. I have said it before, and I will never stop saying it for as long this madness goes on: THERE ARE NO NEW STORIES ON GOTHAM.

(Also, side note: if you want to see a good version of a "city is overrun by insane superhumans at the behest of a powerful madman" plot, go watch Arrow, which had that happen in its stellar second season. Also, Arrow is a great show again and the most recent fifth season managed to right the ship after the disappointing third and abysmally stupid fourth seasons. This has been my advertisement for Arrow.)

Ugh. We now cut to another view of the skyline, and at least there are some small fires breaking out on skyscrapers to help the sense of scale. Nygma looks out of a towering window, unfazed by the fact that the city is falling to pieces before him, and in fact reciting a passage about Nero fiddling while Rome burned to help the sense of unearned pretension. And who should stride right up out of the shadows next to him but fucking Barbara, who is, against all logical odds, even more terrible than she's been before?! Did the arcane ritual to make Fish a halfway decent baddie require sucking even more substance out of this eternally unbearable bint? Fucking whatever. Barb, of course, sees this senseless mayhem as an opportunity to "consolidate power" and get Nygma to rule with her, probably so she has someone else to bitch about plotting behind her back. Nygma's only interest, unfortunately, is still in hunting down and killing Penguin, so they begin that quest in earnest.

Fish continues to somehow defy expectations and not make me want to claw my eardrums out as she gets Strange to summarize the effects of the bullshit blood virus and promise to build her the army he always promised her. It helps that she doesn't use her unbearable mind control powers this time for some unexplained reason (RainyDays and any other new readers, in case you're confused: this character has/had the power to control the minds of those she touches because Strange put cuttlefish DNA in her dead body. No, I'm not exaggerating for comic effect, it's in the Season 2 finale review).

They make their hasty escape just as Jim and the gang barge into the station, but as Bullock runs off to see where Strange has gone, Jim gets a call from Lee. As I predicted, Morena Baccarin is handed more amateur fanfic writer / David Cage-level dialogue about Jim's "cage" is finally open and they can finally be together because she just wuvs him so, so much. The "killer" voices enter Jim's head again, and Lee somehow accurately knows that the facet of his personality the bullshit blood virus drew out of him was that he likes to kill people. Also, she's hanging out at his house for some reason, drinking his whiskey, but she won't be there for long and Jim can't run to find her anyway. Gotta fill for time somehow. Bullock runs back just as Jim is hanging up, and together, they at least manage to catch up to Fish and Strange in a drainage tunnel where the escape van is waiting. There's not much surprise between them at the reveal that Fish is back in town, but Strange and Fish are surprised to see that Jim is infected, and Fish comes dangerously close to edging back into her old territory when she starts cackling at the revelation. Then the "killer" voices flood back into Jim's head and he threatens to headshot Fish execution-style, only for his gun to be frozen out of his hand out of nowhere because Freeze joined up with Fish offscreen, and an escape is indeed made.

Yep. Even when Fish isn't using her mind control powers or being actively fucking terrible, she's still Bruno Heller's baby, so she gets what she wants offscreen with no hassle at all. Blech.

Back at the interrogation room, Alfred makes a valiant attempt to reach Bruce by reminding him of their shared memories and his parents, but Bruce eventually breaks the silence to shoot him down, claiming that Tasty Rudy was the best friend he ever had and that he'll never forgive Alfred for murdering him. When Alfred tries to respond by calling out Rudy's lies, Bruce gets angry because Rudy took away the pain of his parents' deaths and helped him get revenge, which was more than Alfred ever did. Ouch. He then ominously mentions that the Court merely paved the way for the one who is to come... who is still not being identified as Ra's al Ghul. Stop jerking us off and just let us finish already, Gotham. It's just getting sore now.

Strange is being pinned by Freeze and Firefly in what appears to be Penguin's manor, which makes sense with Penguin now on her side, though it seems like a very bad place to remain hidden. Freeze and Firefly both want to torture Strange to death for how he treated them in Arkham, and they attempt to take one foot each with fire and ice before Penguin calls from behind to have them spare him. And here, at last, we find a glimpse of the old Penguin. As he gloats before Strange, calls himself a "partner" of Fish (and mentions that she already had his independently-created vision of a Gotham run by freaks), and interrogates him on the subject of the antidote for the bullshit blood virus, we finally see a Penguin we haven't seen for the longest time now: a threatening Penguin. A manipulative Penguin. A Penguin who's not just a delivery for amusing one-liners, nor a simpering wimp who can't hold an empire together to save his life, but who is a threatening manipulator with a penchant for casual violence. God, how long has it been since Robin Lord Taylor was this good? The moment when he reflects on his torture at Strange's hands and then casually unveils Strange's old electroshock machine, which he then uses to viciously torture Strange while denying him the chance to give up the info, is just the delightful cherry on top. Keep it up, Ozzy!

Briefly back to the GCPD lobby, where a random cop calls for Alvarez (again, the cop / detective who Bullock always calls to offscreen if he needs police action done, whom we only just saw onscreen a few episodes ago) to do some more work. We get a close-up on Alvarez's head in his hands as he tells everyone to leave him alone, and then reveals that he's infected and assaults the cop as he repeats it. I will admit: if this is a meta joke about how Bullock is always calling to him to do shit, it's pretty good. If they're trying to make Alvarez an actual character now, it does not work in the least. I will graciously assume it's the former.

But regardless, then we go back into the interrogation room for an actually pretty emotionally affecting scene, in which Alfred manages to slightly get through to Bruce by recalling the love he and his parents had for him in childhood, stating that there's no life without pain and loss, and reaffirming to Bruce that he loves and would do anything for him. I'm surprised I've come to care as much as I do about Bruce and Alfred's relationship, but I'm remembering that even back in Season 1, when the show was just a dreadfully mediocre slog rather than an active shitshow, there were still quite a few heartwarming moments between them. And Alfred is still one of the best characters this show has to its name. But it can't all be good, as Alfred rushes out to investigate the gunshots and gets into a brief tussle with Alvarez, who is finally getting the cops to exchange a crossfire (and predictably, they're only grazing him and he's managing to perfectly headshot many of them). Alfred almost gets killed, but Lucius knocks Alvarez out and saves him, only for them to discover that Bruce picked his handcuffs with a pen (somehow -- it's very much out of reach) and has escaped (somehow getting past them despite there only being one exit from the interrogation room).

Also somehow, the nightclub is still up and running (and more crowded than ever) despite the city being ablaze below it. Butch is trying to convince Tabitha to fully double-cross Barb and sell her out to gain all of the power, but before she can give an answer, who should walk in but Lee? Butch walks up to her and asks her why she's here, and there's a horrid exchange of lines that read like unpolished leftover Jerome dialogue (with none of Cameron Monaghan's magnetic charm) before Lee beats the shit out of Butch and reveals to Tabby that her new goal is to find Barbara and rip the head from her shoulders. On the one hand, of course Jim's crazy love interests are now going to be duking it out because of jealousy, because that's all these characters are allowed to be. On the other hand, the prospect of seeing Barbara messily decapitated fills me with a hunger most primal and unquenchable, so I'll let any story failures leading up that moment slide if I get the payoff I deserve.

We briefly find Bruce wandering the smoky streets, where it turns out the National Guard is sweeping into the town and executing all of the infected civilians. Alfred and Lucius, having somehow caught up to him, observe him from the shadows and make the grand leap that he's being controlled or following directions in his mind to the person who's in charge of all of this. Alfred promises to kill the bastard when he meets him, and we cut away.

Fish and her gaggle of cohorts make their way into Strange's secret lab, where he unveils the vials of concentrated antidote that can be diluted and dispersed to cure all of those infected. All seems simple... and then they walk out and find one of the huge bodyguards dead. And then a whole squadron of cloaked figures with mouth masks and swords drops from the ceiling and demand the antidote! FINALLY! It's the League of Assassins, baby! Freeze and Firefly start to engage the ninjas in an exciting-looking battle-

And then we immediately cut away, defusing all potential excitement at the buildup. Oh, Gotham. And it turns out that cutaway is just to have a few more shots of the burning skyline and a quick scene of Bullock getting a call about fires spotted in one of the city's millions of abandoned warehouses as Jim starts to succumb to the virus's effects and gets progressively angrier.

Then we're back to the action, and I know I shouldn't have expected Arrow or Daredevil levels of choreography, but holy shit, this is a clumsy and poorly shot battle. It gets slightly more entertaining once Jim comes in, goes into a rage, picks up a fucking katana and starts slaughtering the ninjas one by-

...

...

...

... Oh.

He impales Fish. She drops the antidote, shattering it obviously, and dies telling Penguin that she doesn't want to come back to life and that she wants him to make Gotham his permanently. Everyone looks on in dramatic shock before Jim tries to follow up by crushing Penguin's neck, forcing Bullock to knock him out.

Fish Mooney is dead.

This is a show where death (whether apparent or explicit) matters very little due to a number of recurring narrative cheats, but this seemed very much like an explicit final goodbye to the character for the purposes of advancing Penguin's narrative. I wouldn't be surprised, given how expensive Jada Pinkett Smith must be. But... I feel nothing. I feel jack shit. There was a time not so long ago when seeing Fish Mooney brutally killed would have gotten me jumping for joy and forgiving this show for many transgressions, but... now I feel neither elation nor sorrow. I feel nothing. I feel a shrug. It was sudden, anticlimactic, and boring. I feel nothing.

... Moving on, I guess. Goddamn.

Strange tells Bullock that he can produce more of the cure, on one condition. All he seems to do anymore is make bargains with the police in exchange for favors, but fine.

Cut to another shot of the burning skyline (it looks sufficiently serious now; I just don't care because it's poorly executed) and then to a prison van being stopped by a parked car. Tabitha gets out of the car and sprays the van with machine gun fire, killing the driver, even though I'm pretty sure these vans normally have bulletproof glass. And guess who's in the back of the van? Jervis "Mad Hatter" Tetch! *heavy sigh* Butch releases him, and then Barbara and Nygma stride up as Nygma monologues about how "his sources" have already told him everything about Fish's death and Strange working with the police to make more of the antidote. Barb wants to use Tetch to give them an edge. This is going to suuuuuuuuuck.

Back with Bruce, who finally finds the building he was told to seek out and enters it. Inside is a whole heaping helping of stereotypical Asian decor, from paper lanterns to Chinese dragons and statues of the Buddha, culminating in a gigantic stone dragon head Bruce touches to open a secret door. Down the spiral staircase he goes as the ominous music picks up higher and higher, and he reaches a basement matching the architecture of the prison he was held in, where several Assassins start to run around in the shadows as they are wont to do. Alfred tries to follow him in, but is stymied by being unable to figure out the obvious dragon head door, so Bruce is stranded by himself for the time being as the music gets more and more foreboding. Suddenly, a dozen Assassins run into formation (in a bizarrely silly and non-threatening manner), and another does a menacing silent finger point telling Bruce where to go. It's very hard to take seriously, and kind of undercuts the menace and mystery they were going for. But hey, then he goes in a door and it's a goddamn glowing green LAZARUS PIT! That's pretty neat.

Suddenly, a raspy voice rings out from the darkness, and figure in long flowing robes steps from the shadows to tell Bruce his name and purpose. Ladies and gentlemen, Ra's al Ghul. So how does Siddig stack up, after all of this relentless buildup toward his arrival? He's... he's not great, honestly. His voice doesn't have much gravity or menace to it, his appearance isn't that threatening, he completely lacks a presence of his own, all of his dialogue is old hat, and he gets into all of the "you must be my heir, Bruce" shit very, very quickly before he's even had time to set up proper context or motives. Even Matt Nable's generally derided Ra's on Arrow (I'm getting a lot of excuses to talk about a fun, pulpy show I'd rather be watching) got off to a better start than this. I'm glad to finally see Ra's played by someone who's actually Middle Eastern, but from this extended scene, I'm making a judgement now: Siddig was a poor choice, and I am thoroughly underwhelmed. Bad show, Gotham. Truly bad show. Way to put a damper on the villain who should be the sum of all your plot thus far.

But I mean, the scene he enables is pretty swell, as he has Alfred dragged down to the room and placed before Bruce. It's Bruce's destiny to take Ra's' place, as he insistently commands, and he can only do that by severing his last distraction and making up for his failure to detonate the viral bomb on his own. In one last, tender scene before the credits, Alfred tearfully tells Bruce the story about the day he was brought home after being born, and how he'll do anything for his young master, including die for him if need be. And Bruce screams, plunging the sword into Alfred's chest, and that's where we cut to credits. The fact that it cuts before we can see Alfred fall off the sword and die, plus the fact that it's fucking Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth, means Alfred has a 99.9999% chance of survival come the second part and this will have all been a big pointless fake-out. I mean, it's not even that great a death scene if Heller does intend to swing his balls around and have Bruce kill off Alfred, mainly due to having to be a cliffhanger and not getting time to set in.

Oh, and I nearly forgot: THEY'RE LITERALLY STANDING INCHES FROM A FUCKING LAZARUS PIT. THE THING THAT'S ONLY THERE TO BRING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE. Which I just realized is going to be this show's next "get out of death free" plot device, a la Indian Hill and others. But oh well.


That was... that was something. That was mediocrity at its finest. So now we move into "Heavydirtysoul," which is actually one word, yes. Never mind that, it's just the show continuing to think it's something more than it actually is.

Spoiler: show
We open on the immediate aftermath of Alfred's stabbing, and to his credit, David Mazouz sells Bruce's grief and sudden awakening from the League conditioning as he holds Alfred in his arms. I say "to his credit" when I'm usually impressed with the kid's acting ability because... what follows isn't good. He starts waving his sword around and doing some Christian Bale-esque screaming at the shadowed Ra's, and it comes off like a real tension defuser that I couldn't help but laugh at. Then Ra's, still as dull as last time, laughs about Bruce breaking free and tells him to use the waters of the Pit as he vanishes into thin air, which leads to Bruce splashing them on Alfred and instantly reviving him. Yep. Can't even keep that emotional weight going for a single pre-title scene. Oh, well. In a better show, Bruce killing Alfred -- or even killing him and then bringing him back to life -- might be a great narrative beat. This is not a better show.

After the title card, we cut to the Expositional News Channel and learn that Gotham is still in lockdown and the virus is still infecting more people despite its small area of effect. All right, fair enough. If it's still lethally infectious even at a fraction of dilution in the air, fine, it finally feels like something of a threat. As the GCPD recovers, Jim watches overhead and suddenly gets a call from Lee, who tells him that she's packing her bags to leave the city on a train and wants Jim to come with her. "The real Jim," whom she knows secretly wants it. Knowing she's likely to get gunned down by National Guardsmen, Jim reluctantly promises to be there, and hangs up just as Bullock runs up and reveals that Barb's gang kidnapped Tetch and has given them a list of outrageous demands if they want him turned over for the benefit of the cure. Jim spots that every demand is Barb's except for Nygma's request for Penguin to be turned over and tries to exploit that, but Bullock is now adamantly against shady backroom deals and refuses to use the former mayor as a bargaining chip. He eventually relents, though not without some ominous parting words.

Cut to Butch and Tabby drinking in the nightclub while Nygma gets a call from Jim about the deal. Butch, meanwhile, is still desperately trying to convince Tabby to kill Barb, and makes some extremely good points before Barb walks up and continues to make me want to run a power drill into my eardrums. Realizing shortly thereafter that Nygma has mysteriously vanished, she runs into Tetch's holding cell and has a horrible freakout at the realization that sly old Ed absconded with him. Yes, yes. Please continue to let Barb's pitiful little dreams crumble. All that's left is to make good on all those promises of murder.

Jim and Bullock have acquired Penguin and are dragging him kicking and screaming to their police car, with both him and Bullock pointing out the many flaws in selling him out and trusting a sociopath's word. Jim goes a bit berserk, though, and forces Penguin into the car anyway. They drive and pull up to yet another in the endless assortment of abandoned warehouses that make up 98% of Gotham's infrastructure, and find Nygma waiting inside with a chained-up Tetch attached to a grenade, which he threatens to pull and remove Tetch's blood (apparently the key to the antidote, somehow) from the equation if anyone tries anything. However, just as Tetch realizes Jim is infected and the deal starts to be made, Barbara screeches Nygma's name and makes herself known with Tabby and Butch at her side. After an awkward pause, Ed pulls the pin and rolls the grenade toward the intruders, forcing everyone into cover and starting a chaotic firefight that ends with no casualties. In the midst of the chaos, though, Penguin manages to ambush Ed and knock him out with some rebar, and Jim, Bullock, and Tetch make it outside to find that he's stealing their police car with Ed in tow. This... bodes well? I don't know. I want this conflict to go somewhere meaningful and I also want Barbara to die already.

Brief cut to Alfred being rushed into the ER, as the Lazarus Pit only restored his life and cauterized his wound. The surgeon asks Bruce what his relationship to the patient is, and Bruce responds, "We're family." D'aww.

Sprinting down the street with Barb, Tabby, and Butch in hot pursuit, Jim makes a split-second decision to run into a massive factory that's belching smoke and fire. When the pursuers get inside, they find that the trio have hidden, and Barbara starts calling for Jim and stalking through the shipping crates as we see Jim and Tetch hiding behind a rack. Ignoring Barb's twanging threats, Tetch and Jim exchange brief words about the infection, and Tetch promises with a gleeful smile that the next time he gives in, it will have control of him forever. As Jim threatens to give away their position with his grunt-shouting, Bullock dashes up and tells them that the building somehow has no back entrances or loading docks or anything, meaning it was intentionally designed for the sole purpose of intense showdowns. Tetch tells him his only option is to give in and use his strength to slaughter the pursuers, and when Jim threatens to kill him with a screwdriver, he cackles that they still need him if they want the antidote. Jim, seemingly calming down, realizes that they don't need all of him -- cut to some agonized screaming, and Barb's crew running down to the source to find Tetch with a slashed throat barely held together by duct tape. We then cut to the GCPD and see Bullock hand off a mason jar full of blood to the lab tech as Jim fights off the infection. Good on you, you sick fuck. Hopefully this ends Tetch's participation in the story.

Wait, so... didn't we just establish that there was no way to escape without being seen. How did they get out? Oh, fuck it. Whatever.

As police cars zoom by, we pan into a parked police car on the side to find Nygma waking up in the back. Penguin taunts him, despite Nygma firing back that gloating isn't an attractive quality, and tells him that they're just hunkering down for the chance to keep driving because Penguin is improvising all of this as they go. Penguin continues to be delightful in his smarminess, but he fails to catch on to the fact that Ed is managing to pick his handcuffs with a convenient pin. Penguin had better come out of this situation as the victor, whatever that may mean by the end. At least he actually has reasonable motivations to be pissed off at his former sweetheart, unlike Nygma, who is still obsessed with a girl I'm baffled hasn't been revealed as a clone or some shit. Seriously, if we're just meant to accept that Isabella was a real person, I'm retroactively docking the entire show 8000 points from an already negative score. That was some "Luchadores overpower the GCPD" levels of terrible storytelling.

Having returned to the nightclub, Barbara is furiously packing weapons and money into a duffel bag as Butch freaks out that the jig is up and the cops will be busting down their door any minute over Tetch's... murder? Near-murder? Is Tetch actually dead? I hope so. Anyway, Barb descends even further down her mental spiral and storms away with the vague instruction to regroup at the safehouse, causing Tabitha to apparently come around to Butch's suggestions that they kill her. If she's not lying about wanting to murder her together at the safehouse, I will have gained a massive amount of respect for this character who's so far just been a boring hanger-on long outliving her relevance. Bring on the Barbara murder, baby. My body is ready. It probably won't happen but a guy can dream

Jim, going even more berserk, beats the shit out of some lockers as Bullock walks in concernedly and reports that a dose of the antidote is ready. Jim walks up to the lab tech and prepares for the injection, but freaks out when he's told that the next dose will take one or two hours to prepare, because he needs to saaaaaaaaave Leeeeeeeeeeee. To this end, he refuses the injection and instead breaks the tech's fingers and steals the dose, blocking the way out as Bullock frantically calls for backup to stop him.

Holy tonal whiplash, Batbaby! We cut from that to Bruce sitting silently outside of the operating room, head in his hands, the only sound being the heart monitor. Selina walks up and asks him what happened, and this startszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz... huh? Where was I? Oh yeah, more Selina and Bruce fighting. It's very dull. She storms off, predictably. Moving along.

Jim has already made it to Lee's house, and he comes in to find her on the couch, disgusted that he's still visibly fighting his "true self" or what-fucking-ever. She offers to help him give into the darkness she wants so they can be together, and as she kisses him, he fails to jam the needle into her neck and instead goes full Dark Jim, kickstarting a passionate makeout session in which she forces him to drop the needle and he crushes it underfoot. Welp. So much for that. I don't necessarily want Lee to be brutally killed the way I do Barbara, but it would be really nice to just have her naturally removed from the show already. Her villainess persona makes zero sense and actively irritates me every time she talks about how much she loves Jim's darkness. I know she's probably going to be Jim's love interest forever and ever because Morena Baccarin and Ben McKenzie are a real-life couple, but goddamn, this show bleeds whenever she starts talking these days.

We then come to Penguin speeding down the street, having donned Nygma's bowler hat, still gloating about what he's going to do to him later. Nygma, meanwhile, finally manages to open the cuffs and starts taunting Penguin back, calling him a fool for not killing him immediately, as well as a spoiled child who throws a temper tantrum any time he doesn't get what he wants, including when the man he loves doesn't love him back. Penguin flies into a childish rage as if fated to prove his point, pulls the car over, and gets out with a gun in an attempt to finish the conflict once and for all -- only for Ed to kick out the door, stunning him, and get his hands on the gun as Penguin falls back on the ground. With death seconds away, Penguin launches into a rant about how Ed's entire persona is based on a lie and would never have come about if not for his help, while he himself at least knows who he is and wears the Penguin name proudly. However, Nygma mysteriously doesn't kill him, instead telling him there might be something he can do to make the lie a truth. Seeing as he was just criticizing Penguin for transporting him instead of killing him right away, I smell some hypocrisy on the horizon.

We come to the train terminal, where Jim and Lee manage to get past the virus inspection checkpoints by bashing their way into a restricted entrance. Inconspicuously donning sunglasses when those are supposed to be off-limits so the eyes can be checked, they nevertheless make it to the platform without being stopped by a single guard or observant bystander, and I am left in awe of how little I care at this point. All of a sudden we hear Bullock sprinting towards them and shouting, and Lee kisses him and tells him to stop Bullock permanently and meet her on the train. She fucks off as the platform starts to clear out, leaving Bullock holding Jim at gunpoint. A fight begins, and seriously, I could not be less invested in this confrontation between the show's ostensible leads. It's over pretty quickly anyway, but Bullock manages to avoid death by giving Jim his badge, which reminds Jim of his duty and various Gordonisms as he walks away. He then rejoins Lee on the train, turning over the badge in his hand, only to find that it was Bullock's plan all along and there are two doses of antidote fixed into the back of it. I won't bother questioning the timescale of development for these doses, but fine, fine, fine. Jim tricks Lee into getting close and then injects her, knocking her out as she stares at him in rage and horror, and then he sits down and injects himself. Problem solved. What a waste of time this all was. And we're only halfway through the fucking episode!

We rejoin Butch as he's loading some equipment to kill and dispose of Barbara into his trunk, only for Barb to walk up behind him with a gun and reveal that she knew all along about the plans to kill her. Butch tries to play dumb and claim it was all his idea, holding out for Tabby's safety even to the very- oh shit, Barb just shot Butch in the head, killing him instantly, all because he said Barb didn't deserve Tabby. Welp. Just as I was actually starting to like Butch again after a long period of him being an obnoxious hanger-on, too. Fucking hell, Barbara. This show has developed a habit of killing off (or "killing off", as I suspect Butch may be resurrected into a supervillain or something -- maybe Solomon Grundy?) long-running characters just as I'm starting to like them for the sake of shock value. If this entitled, whiny, nonsensical cunt manages to outlast everyone in this finale, I swear to Christ, I am dropping this show. I said I would before, and I'm sticking to this line in the sand.

Another revisit with Bruce as he waits by the comatose Alfred's bedside, begging him to wake up and crying as he tells him not to leave him. Damn. It's a shame it's so short and mixed into all of the other nonsense, because these could actually be potent emotional scenes if handled well.

OH, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, REALLY?! Guess where Nygma chose to bring Penguin? The dock. The fucking dock where he shot him last time, and then disposed of the hallucinatory Penguin later. If I never see this dock again in the show's run, it will be too soon. Ed brings Penguin to the same place and points the gun at him in the same fashion, not even bothering to go for a headshot this time so he's sure he finishes the job, only for Penguin to ruin the moment by "waiting" to say his last words even though he's supposed to die (as RLG helpfully documents in her post). Guess what? It turns out Penguin removed the bullets from the gun, planted the pin Nygma used to pick the cuffs, and called Ivy and Freeze to the dock already, having predicted that Ed would bring him here. It was all just one long kick in the balls to make Ed think he had the upper hand. This confrontation is genuinely pretty well-done, for what it's worth, since these are still the best two characters no matter how badly their motivations and personalities may be fucked up. So it turns out Penguin doesn't want to kill Nygma: he wants to keep him around forever as a constant reminder not to let his emotions cloud his judgement ever again. And as he backs off smugly, Freeze, well, freezes Nygma as he tries to reach out for Penguin. This is probably the best result I could have hoped for, and I... don't think I have much to complain about. Glad neither of them are dead or faking death again.

With two conflicts solved thus far, we then join Tabitha as she walks into the safehouse, which turns out to be a rickety, leaky building with almost no walls and no security. Unfortunately, a metal box is waiting for her there, and it contains Butch's prosthetic hand. Not his head or anything more sinister, despite him explicitly putting a hacksaw in his trunk. Barb chose his hand. She then walks up behind Tabby and basically tells her that she has to come back and be her friend and move on from everything because she's entitled to everything she wants. Tabby instead refuses to give her an answer until she reveals whether she killed Butch, and after some prodding, Barb confirms it and immediately blames Tabby for making her do it. FINALLY, Tabby calls Barb out on her bullshit and manages to get into a fight with her, using Butch's hand to knock her off her footing and then tussling with her until she has her pinned against the wall. Barb takes the opportunity to hungrily kiss her for fanservice and then headbutts her, prolonging the fight until she's pinned against the wall again and escapes again. They end up once more with Barb holding her at gunpoint, and Tabby seemingly missing with her whip-

...

...

Could it be true?

It couldn't be true, could it?

Barbara is standing in a puddle of water, and Tabby actually latched onto a floodlight, crashing it into the water and electrocuting the shit out of Barbara to the point that her skin starts to smoke and burn.

BARBARA KEAN IS DEAD! HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH! SING IT WITH ME, FOLKS! BARBARA FUCKING KEAN IS FINALLY FUCKING DEAD, O, WHAT A GLORIOUS FUCKING DAY! YEYEYEYEYEYEYEAH! WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!



I am so happy right now.

... At least, I will be until she inevitably gets tossed in a Lazarus Pit or fixed up by Strange or struck by lightning or some other shit. I'm not stupid. Barbara Kean is Bruno Heller's favorite child. She's the apple of the idiots in the fandom's collective eyes, the vehicle for Tumblr gifs and quotations and exclamations of "YAAAAS QUEEN!" She's to this show as Daryl is to The Walking Dead, except she was never a good character to begin with. And so she will come back. Inevitably. But... just let me have this, okay? Just let me savor this brief moment of respite, this break from the madness, this single moment of karma and agony for the woman who consistently marks herself as my least favorite character in all of collective television.

Just end the episode without showing her bursting out of a grave or something. Just let me have this, please. Please.

*sigh*

Anyway, more expositional news as Bruce sits by Alfred's bedside, letting us know that the antidote has been successfully released all over the city offscreen, and leaving me hopeful that we'll never have to see another mention of the bullshit blood virus ever again. And to make matters better, Alfred wakes up and Bruce hugs him, and tearful words and apologies are exchanged. Bruce then says that he lost his way because he has no idea who he's supposed to be, and Alfred tells him that he has to find his "True North" and let that guide him, and as Bruce contemplates that, he turns to the TV as it mentions that -- just like Batman Begins -- the aftershocks of the virus will no doubt leave Gotham in a worsening crime wave for years to come (even though everyone was supposedly cured, and it was already an explicit hellhole prepped for Batman to arrive). Dun dun dun. Batbaby.

As the only survivor of the BS trio, and someone slightly redeemed in my eyes, Tabitha is hanging around at the nightclub when Selina walks in. They talk about how they're both at a crossroads and have no idea who they want to be, and... of course. Selina eyes the whip, Tabby tells her to give it a whirl, and she instantly knows how to shatter glasses at long range with it. Of course. We knew this was coming somehow, and it arrives at the most unnatural-

Wait. Tabitha. Tabby. Tabby cat. OH FUCKING GODDAMNIIIIIIIIII-!!!

*breathes into a bag*

And wouldn't you know it, more Batman stuff! Penguin unveils the new design for his club now that he's back on top, and he's going to call it the Iceberg Lounge, partly because he's Penguin and partly because the frozen Nygma will be its centerpiece. Lovely.

With only a few minutes to go, Jim walks into Lee's house to see how she's doing now that she's cured, only to find an envelope addressed to him. Turns out Lee is leaving anyway (YAY!), and the letter she left for Jim isn't actually meant for him. Well, it supposedly is in-universe, but it's one of those letters that's really just an on-the-nose summary of the show and what awaits for the future of the city. This begins a montage in which we see Penguin staring proudly at his Ed-sicle (while Lee talks about how only the strongest and most cunning survive), Selina and Tabitha walking out of the club together for training, and... holy shit, I was making a ridiculous joke, but I was right! As we see Butch's corpse in a hospital bed all bandaged up despite a bullet going through his head, we learn that Butch Gilzean was never his real name: he was born Cyrus Gold, aka Solomon Grundy. BUTCH IS SOLOMON FUCKING GRUNDY! Holy hell, that... could actually be fun. Right? This show is allowed to be good in parts, right? They won't irreversibly fuck another iconic villain up, right?

Right?!

Anywho, Lee's letter finishes with more "the city needs saving" and a farewell to Jim, telling him that eventually, the city might be able to save him and lead him back to her. Because FORESHADOWING. Fuck you. Jim walks out and teleports to the GCPD, where Bullock is still kind of pissed at him for beating the shit out of him, but quickly offers to take him out for a drink when he hears about Lee. As they leave, we learn that Tetch was saved just in time and shipped right back to Arkham, so we'll still have to deal with him. At least Jim and Bullock get some decent banter on the way out. End scene.

In the final minute, we cut to nightfall and three people walking down a street in what's clearly meant to evoke the Wayne murders. In fact, those three people turn out to be parents and a child, and a robber comes up to demand money at gunpoint... when a black-clad figure drops from out of nowhere and punches the shit out of the guy, saving the day. When the family tries to thank the figure, they find he's disappeared, and we slowly pan up the side of a very tall building to find that it's Bruce, wearing the dorkiest possible proto-Batman suit complete with a sock mask and meaningless cape. The camera slowly pans around him staring out over the city as the musical score rises higher than it's ever gone before, and we end the season.

Is... is Gotham finally going to be a Batman show? Rather, a Batbaby show? I don't know whether to be excited at the prospect or dreading how they're going to fuck up next.

Also, we really didn't get a lot of Ra's al Ghul after all that buildup. He was barely even in the start of this episode. Not that I'm complaining, because Siddig was utterly bland and uninspired, but it seems horribly anticlimactic to temporarily end that storyline this way. But oh well.


And that's all she wrote. Until Gotham returns, I'm assuming in September, we're left with that. And my feelings are so... mixed. It wasn't a terrible finale, especially compared to everything that's come before it and the dire previous two season finales, but... eh.

Eh.

Ech.

'Til next time, folks. I may do an additional post later plotting out the nonsense character arcs and charting the number of times each particular story has been repeated, but I don't know if I'll do that now or save it for years in the future when the show is finally, mercifully put out of its misery.

Peace.



EDIT: Also:

Spoiler: show
WHERE THE FUCK DID SALTY BOBBY DISAPPEAR TO
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Thu Jun 08, 2017 7:33 am

So I have a few leftover questions now that all of these plotlines have wrapped up. I expect none of them to be answered, because Bruno Heller does not know the answers, but I will pose them for the sake of logic.

Spoiler: show
- Why was the Court having Strange research ways to bring the dead back to life when their grand plans never once incorporated this -- and furthermore, when their real leader knew Ra's al Ghul had a Lazarus Pit underneath a random building in the slums anyway? This is a pretty major hole, because it leaves the entirety of Season 2 being rendered meaningless in hindsight. The assumption at the time was that they were preparing to make comics-styled undead Talons, but this never came to pass. And seeing how we later see Dwight bring Jerome back to life by just shocking him really hard, was it even that difficult a process that they had to have Strange investigate it in the first place?

- What was the point of the crystal owls? I can buy them being reference markers for the Court to keep track of their hidden locations, though that still paints them as rather unprepared idiots. But then, why was one of these super-important artifacts just... placed in a side room of a random goddamn empty building in the middle of the city, protected only by the exact threats needed so the show could do a stupid heist episode?

- Why is Ra's so self-contradictory, and what did he even get out of his whole interaction with Bruce? He apparently wanted Bruce to be his heir all along, but first he had Tasty Rudy brainwash him into a mindlessly loyal Talon, rather than even try to convince him that their chain of logic is something to believe in. And then he just laughed and fucked off when Bruce disobeyed his final command, and allowed him and Alfred to leave the Assassin-filled compound unhindered. This villain makes no sense.

- Why is Ra's so intent on Bruce being his heir already? Generally in Batman canon, he wants this because Bruce is a huge badass who's been protecting his city for a while and sometimes banging Talia al Ghul. What does the Demon's Head want with a teenager who has comparatively pitiful training and barely enough muscle mass to fill out the proto-Batman costume?

- So following the whole escalating chain of command up, we know that the Court of Owls controls every single facet of Gotham, and that the League of Assassins is in charge of the Court, and Ra's is in charge of the League. This means that this incarnation of Ra's is in full control of Gotham already. He has operatives in the city government, in WayneTech and all the other major corporations, and god knows where else, along with a seemingly unlimited army of Talons and Assassins at his disposal. So... surely he could have come up with a better, more efficient way to cleanse Gotham of its sins or steer it to a brighter future than to set off a bullshit blood virus bomb in the middle of a train station, right? The level of control we see here doesn't track with the actual scheme he set in motion.

- Seriously, though, did Ra's really think the viral bomb was enough to wipe Gotham clean? Sure, at its peak it was no doubt the worst thing the city has ever suffered, but it only resulted in incalculable property damage and a few hundred casualties in a city of millions, and it never seemed like something the city couldn't simply bounce back from. And the cure being dispersed means it has even less lasting impact than the fear gas attack at the end of Batman Begins.

- Where the fuck did all the Talons go after Tasty Rudy's destruction of the Court? A few of them helped him shepherd off the viral bomb, and then... that was it. No follow-up. Seems like a pretty big oversight to leave at least half a dozen pitiless, nigh-unbeatable supersoldiers running around, no?

- For that matter, where have the Assassins been this entire time? Why did Ra's only ever bother to send them out once, to try and stop Fish's crew from absconding with the cure? He sure didn't try to send any of them to kill Strange or Tetch, or to raid the GCPD as they were taking their sweet-ass time synthesizing the antidote. And I can't even count the number of times when a small group of ninjas would have advanced the League's / Court's plans much more smoothly and easily than one Talon or a group of hired goons.

- So the Wayne murders were thought up by the Court and approved by Kathryn without Tasty Rudy's permission, and they then passed the order down to Strange for some reason, who in turn hired a random street thug to kill them as conspicuously and traumatically as possible. Why could they not just have sent a Talon to clear the whole family out and make it look like a freak accident? Why could they not just have had them all poisoned at home, or killed in their beds, or anything easier? Why bother to pass it down to Strange at all?

- So... does the Batcave have no further relevance? What was even its point? What was Thomas Wayne actually doing down there, other than leaving Bruce motivational stuff on a lone computer? All the Court killed him for was "speaking against them." The cave appears to have literally just been for a quick and dirty fanservice tease that disappeared after a few episodes.

- Seriously, where did Fish's mind control powers go? Much as I hate them as an unearned cheat for her to get what she wanted all the time, they would have proven very useful in several situations leading up to her death. It's as if they wanted us to forget about the whole cuttlefish DNA thing.

- By the time Lee gets cured, she decides she and Jim still have a chance and tells him to seek her out when he's a changed man? She still wants to be with the man who ignored her miscarriage, mistreated her quite a few times, and then murdered her husband (albeit for just reasons)? Getting super wet over Jim's darkness wasn't just the virus talking? What the blasted fuck is this character anymore?

- Why is this show still on the air when it's apparent from the ratings that its viewership is undergoing an increasing decline episode by episode?
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Re: Gotham

Postby Australia » Thu Jun 08, 2017 6:54 pm

Confession, I've watched maybe six episodes in the last two and a half years (admittedly not as shocking a confession as KK still watching it - I lost faith in any potential after the balloon episode and I'm already hate-watching The Walking Dead), and even then only in the background while I'm doing something online, because I have a limited amount of braincells as it is and I'm evidently busy killing them by paying to see Pirates and Alien sequels if my last month is anything to go by. (I'm starting this month by watching a remake of The Mummy so I've obviously lost the portion of my brain that learns from mistakes - hey, we could be twins!). Nonetheless, I get a strange amusement out of your relationship with Gotham, which I think can be summed up as this:

Image
A scene from yesterday's episode of a show that's actually entertaining week in, week out which, now that I've made the gif, I can't tell whether the context makes funnier or not.

Sidenote: I'm rewatching The Dark Knight trilogy this weekend to remind myself that Batman can actually get out of things using inherent skill as opposed to incoherent luck and shared relative's names that have plagued him in recent TV and movie history. Because with every recap you write, I have to ask myself: why is he my favourite superhero again?
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Thu Jun 08, 2017 7:14 pm

Believe you me, I stopped watching hoping for potential after it briefly got watchable again at the start of the second season. It's never going to be better. I stick with it because I have to see where it goes and how badly it fails at every turn, and I'm in so deep that I have to bring attention to that failure however I can, partly because it amuses people and partly because this abysmal horseshit somehow became the apple of a lot of critics' eyes and one of the more consistently successful shows on the channel.

It's less an abusive relationship and more of a vengeful, obsessive crusade that will almost certainly end in my death. :D
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Mon Jul 03, 2017 9:56 pm

Posting this horrible news here as well just for additional visibility.

Donal Logue, who plays Harvey Bullock on this show, has reported that his 16-year-old daughter Jade went missing last Monday. She was last seen in front of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn around 2 p.m. Jade is transgendered, putting her at high risk for being the victim of a hate crime, but hopefully that turns out not to be the case here.

If any New York residents have possible information on her whereabouts, you're advised to call Detective Frank Liuzzi at 718-636-6547 as soon as possible.
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun Jul 09, 2017 3:24 am

KleinerKiller wrote:Posting this horrible news here as well just for additional visibility.

Donal Logue, who plays Harvey Bullock on this show, has reported that his 16-year-old daughter Jade went missing last Monday. She was last seen in front of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn around 2 p.m. Jade is transgendered, putting her at high risk for being the victim of a hate crime, but hopefully that turns out not to be the case here.

If any New York residents have possible information on her whereabouts, you're advised to call Detective Frank Liuzzi at 718-636-6547 as soon as possible.


She has been found alive.

Thank God, now I don't have to feel bad if/when I make fun of Bullock next season.
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Tue Sep 26, 2017 7:20 am

It's that time again~

FUCKING THREE MONTHS LATER~

REMEMBER WHAT I SAID ABOUT GOOD TV TAKING TIME~

*distant sounds of furniture and walls being violently smashed*

Ahem. Time for a new season of Gotham, fellows and ladyfellows. The requisite hack subtitle for this arc is "A Dark Knight", because... ah fuck it, I can't even be bothered to make fun of it. Let's dive right into "Pax Penguina" and hope this latest can of goat testicle sweat is marginally easier to choke down than the era of Barbara, Fish, and the Court of Sitting On Our Hands and Waiting to Die.

Spoiler: show
Hm, the "Previously On" segment randomly contains a clip about Jonathan Crane, aka Babby Scarecrow, aka the kid and related fear toxin from all the way back in one of Season 1's better episodes whom I expected would be quickly revisited. And here we are, in Season 4, having not mentioned him since. I WONDER IF THIS WILL BE SIGNIFICANT TO THE PLOT

Picking up where we left off in the third season finale -- or rather, apparently just repeating the basics of the last scene of the third season finale -- we find Bruce in his Batbaby cowl standing on a rooftop as the camera sweeps around him and the orchestral score jizzes all over itself. He hears a cry for help as a couple are ambushed by muggers, and he immediately jumps down to subdue them. Admittedly, the fight is decently choreographed by Gotham standards, and Bruce has been through so much ridiculousness at this point that I buy him already being at Batman level. But wait! One of the thugs grunts that he has a license, so Bruce kneels down and picks up a... "License of Misconduct"? Quick Google search gives me no fucking clue what that is, so I'm going to assume it's fictional and will be explained later because it makes very little sense in the context of the scene. Oh well. As Bruce walks off, the camera pulls up to the building he just jumped off, and surprise -- Ra's al Ghul himself is observing Bruce's progress. I hope he'll be developed into a better villain during this endeavor.

After the opening title card that has come to haunt my dreams, we cut to a wedding where a heavily-accented Italian guy is singing Rick Astley's timeless "Never Gonna Give You Up", before a troupe of guys with bandanas and extremely obvious rifles stroll in, going completely unnoticed until they fire off shots. The apparent leader of the goon squad calls out for everyone to hand over their money, jewelry, and other assorted stock armed robber requests... and then we see none other than Zsasz sitting casually at one of the tables! Yay! He calls for the robbers' attention, stands up as the music gets sinister and one of the robbers identifies him, and tells them that everyone who wants to commit a crime in Gotham now needs a license from Penguin, which... well it explains the earlier scene. On the one hand, it's stupid as shit. On the other hand, I kind of like it for how stupid and silly it is. When the leader takes umbrage, Zsasz shoots his finger off and sends them packing, but playfully rebuffs the bride's thanks by letting another squad of gunmen who do have licenses storm into the party. Good: Zsasz leaves the shaken bride behind with a casual "Mazel tov!" Bad: He then overplays it by saying "Best wedding ever!" in the campiest voice I've ever heard him use. Oh well. On the scale of Zsasz scenes, it was just okay.

(Side note: The robber who identifies Zsasz is played by Michael Maize, a somewhat prolific actor on dumbshit procedurals and early 2000s blockbusters whom I instantly recognized for his subdued, but menacing and memorable role as Ray Heyworth's enforcer on Mr. Robot. It's always kind of disheartening to see actors who were on my favorite shows wade into this garbage.)

Speaking of villains on this show who actually deliver most of the time, we're then with Penguin as he speaks to the new mayor and police commissioner about his license system, which they sum up as "unionizing crime" with the benefit of a payout that goes directly to him. During their expositional conversation, we learn the ridiculous tidbit that Penguin's men were responsible for hunting down all of the insane criminals left over after the so-called "Tetch Incident", even though we were shown that the National Guard did most of the cleanup in the finale. As I've said twice before... oh well. If it gets Penguin to a more advantageous position, I'm all for it. And it does! After one of the most hilariously bad attempts at haggling for a cut of the take I've ever seen, the gleefully corrupt mayor and commissioner agree to unofficially cooperate with the license system and let any criminal who's arrested with a license walk. And as Penguin strolls away for the grand opening of the Iceberg Lounge, I'm reminded of how great it is to have the manipulative schemer side of him in full force again after the seemingly endless romantic drama bullshit.

Cut to another random robber holding a coffee shop clerk at gunpoint and shoveling fistfuls of money out of his lockbox. Good ol' Jimothy arrives to grace my screen again, but he hesitantly stops reaching for his gun when the criminal flashes his crime license. You know what? I actually really like this license shit. The idea of legal open crime is fascinating to me, and since Penguin's behind it, I don't hate the antagonist who's responsible for it. Let's hope it's not a single-episode deal, because this is the first time in forever that this show has set up a premise with genuine potential for intrigue. Of course, Jim being Jim, he rams the guy's head into the counter and arrests him anyway.

At the GCPD, Jim grumpily throws the guy into the holding cell as he stammers about his license, before turning around to see all of his fellow officers staring at him with very "this shit again, dude?" looks. We quickly cut to Bullock being read the numbers regarding the improvements to the crime rate, before warning him that Jim's history of doing his job somewhat correctly could make him dangerous. Bullock waves the advisor off and goes out to see Jim, who tries to convince him that cooperating with Penguin is unjust only to be told that they can bust Penguin after his system helps the city recover. Jim mopes up against the Grandstanding Speech Podium, but mercifully doesn't drop more Gordonisms before we get to the next scene.

Ah, the Safest Manor on Earth! Basically, this scene is all about establishing that Bruce feels like he needs to both train for when Ra's returns and repent for his role in Ra's' plan, and it's mostly predictable -- you can probably get the meat of the interaction just from your mental image as you read these words. Alfred does get some good lines about mission creep, but that's about it. Moving on.

And now back to Arkham for more enlightened portrayals of the mentally ill. Oh hey, it's Michael Maize again! I like you, Michael Maize. The robbers from earlier are being led inside past dozens of screaming stereotypes, and all I'm taking from this scene is that the leader looks uncannily like a long-haired Steve Buscemi. Weird. Anywho, after some extensive showcases of Heller's idea of the interior of an asylum, the new warden -- who's overplaying his lines and sneering really strangely in a way that doesn't quite work -- brings them to the cell of young Jonathan Crane, now slightly older but still paralyzed by his constant fear hallucinations of scarecrows crawling around him (it's better than it sounds; I'm actually glad this character gets payoff). These guys want the fear toxin for their own gain, so they drag him off while the warden casually examines a giant scarecrow etching Crane made in the floor, just in case you still don't understand who this character is fated to be.

After the fade to black where commercials would be if I didn't have Hulu Plus, we briefly rejoin the gang at the old Crane home, where Crane digs up his father's fear toxin supply for them to work with. Satisfied, they haul it off and leave a scarecrow behind to keep Crane occupied in a gibbering fit. The guy playing Crane could be better, but I said that about Cameron Monaghan and he eventually made Jerome into one of my favorite villains, so I'll maintain a little bit of cautious optimism for this arc. We then see them strolling into a bank with gas masks and hoses, ready for some grand larceny, and when the proprietor walks up to see their license, he gets sprayed in the face and hallucinates the leader as some kind of zombie-like thing that's actually a little unnerving.

Inspecting the crime scene, Jim thankfully makes an immediate link to Crane Sr.'s toxin so we don't have to spend too much time futzing around that, though Bullock chews him out another time for wanting to investigate these crimes just to thumb his nose at Penguin. They both nevertheless go off to the mental institution (which... I don't actually think is Arkham, bizarrely? It's very unclear) to find Crane, and they have a long interaction with unbearable Weird Crazy Douchebag Overplaying Warden that only gets him to tell them he was threatened by the gangsters and had no choice. I'm not going to summarize that interaction because it is quite rote.

Now knowing that one of the robbers (the one and only Michael Maize) is named Grady Something-or-Other and that he runs with a gang of hicks from Texas, they quickly locate his apartment and peer in to see him slumped over at a desk. Because they've been on this job for three seasons and still can't seem to stop wandering into every single amateur trap set up for them, they fumble their way up to Grady and are both quickly subdued and held at gunpoint by Grady and the leader, who will hereby be referred to as Stove Boscomi. Boscomi stomps the shit out of Gordon and makes some groan-worthy "pig" remarks before he and Grady... just leave them locked in the apartment, not bothering to kill, cripple, or even remotely secure them. Standard behavior for Gotham criminals, at least.

Then we check in as Selena and Tabitha hone Selena's whip skills by having her beat a bunch of guys in an alley in a scene that's far less believable than Bruce's assault on the robbers. Nothing of value is to be had from this. At least Zsasz is waiting for them when they get back to their crummy apartment, informing them that Penguin wants to let bygones be bygones for the whole "murdering his mom" thing and that they should visit his club (I didn't realize / remember that the Iceberg Lounge is being built from Barb and Tabby's club; the endless tug-of-war over the course of these seasons over nightclub ownership never ceases to befuddle me) and get onto his license program. Tabitha angrily refuses to work for Penguin and tells Selena to pack her things, and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

It's late at the GCPD and Jim is sad-drinking over how easy it still is for small-time thugs to make him a chump, when he gets a surprise visit from Bruce. They converse about Jim's failure to find the gang and their mutual frustration over the license system, and Bruce brings up the idea that there must be a master list of licenses somewhere that would let them know not only what criminals they're looking for, but what crimes are still being planned since each license checks off permissions for specific actions. Oh, wonderful, there couldn't be a more apparent deus ex machina waiting in the wings to bust the license system wide open. Sigh. Jim for once knows he's out of his depth, but Bruce implies that he could find the list without setting off any judicial alarm bells, and pulls off his first vanishing act when Jim turns to talk to him again. Usually when Batman or Green Arrow or other similar heroes do this, it's on a rooftop or in a mostly empty building, but Bruce manages to do it on the upper floor of the GCPD with no clear exit other than the closed window, and without any special gear to boot. Weird.

Cut to Penguin giving a press conference in his newly-opened Iceberg Lounge, which looks exactly like the nightclub under Barb and Tabby's ownership save for a more general blue color and the prominent display of the frozen Nygma in the center. I could be misremembering, but I could've sworn a new and radically different Iceberg Lounge appearance was briefly shown in the finale with Ed displayed in a large wall tank, but I guess it saves the set designers some cash to just remix the old hits. As he tries to spin the fact that he has his old advisor's frozen form, Jim walks in and calls him a fraud, telling him that his system will collapse and that the fear toxin gang are already outsmarting him. Penguin gets angry, makes some of the usual threats of retribution, and off we go.

Brief cut to Boscomi and the gang watching a newscaster read off Penguin's insults toward them, outraging Boscomi and getting them riled up for their next heist. Boscomi strides over to the kitchen, where Crane is managing to synthesize new batches of fear toxin for them while still in his underwear and practically shitting himself because they insist on keeping the scarecrow within his view at all times. Despite making amazing progress, Boscomi decides on a whim to have him "spend some time" with the scarecrow and shoves him into a closet with it as he screams for mercy. It couldn't be more painfully obvious that they're setting him up to snap under these pointlessly cruel abuses and take revenge so he can become a full-on villain -- they've already repeated this narrative with numerous other budding villains, the first that pops to mind being Firefly -- but still they insist on following the most trite path to that end point.

We get a brief scene of Penguin monologuing at the frozen Nygma, and Ivy shows up, wearing a new outfit that shows off her navel (SHE'S A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL HELLER), to say some stupid things so Penguin can admonish her like the child she is. I would voice more disbelief at how stupid they insist on making their incarnation of one of the most sly and intelligent villainesses in the rogues gallery, but I'd just be repeating myself for the umpteenth time. Blech. Moving right along.

After a very brief check-in with Crane in the closet cowering in fear, we're back with Jim as he sets up the plan to catch the gang by posting guards at the Iceberg Lounge. Bullock doesn't approve of the plan because he knows Jim wants to take down Penguin, but Jim brushes him off and heads into the locker room to prepare. Inside, though, he's ambushed by officers who want to keep the license system going because of how good life has been for them since it began, and they surround and beat the shit out of him -- and I never get tired of seeing a bunch of guys smack Jim Gordon in his smug fucking face.

We then head over to the Iceberg Lounge, open and in full swing, as Bruce navigates the party to find Penguin. A bit of cheap ego-stroking is all Penguin needs to spill the beans to Bruce about his involvement with the license system, which has somehow only stayed a rumor despite everyone in every public establishment mentioning them to criminals. He then points out Mr. Penn, the guy who was advising Bullock near the start of the episode, as the one who personally deals with the licenses and most likely has the master list. Alfred is impressed that Bruce got his target so quickly, but then Bruce is distracted by... *sigh*... Selina meeting up with Zsasz and Ivy. I couldn't care less about what ensues even though Zsasz is as delightful as ever so YEEAAAAAH

After a quick check-in with Jim as he cleans himself up and talks to Bullock about how they're most likely going to the operation without backup, we meet back up with Boscomi's gang as they peer into the Lounge from... the kitchen? How the hell did they... never mind, because Penguin and Zsasz ambush them anyway, cornering them with the promise that bullets travel faster than fear gas. Rather than simply execute them, Penguin has something special in mind, no doubt involving repurposing their own toxin against them.

Before we get to that, though... ROOFTOP ROMANTIC TEASE SCENE BETWEEN BRUCE AND SELENA AND FUCKING SELENA IS WALKING BACK AND FORTH WHILE PRECOCIOUSLY BALANCING ON A BEAM MURDER ME EXECUTION-STYLE PLEASE

Luckily, Alfred calls Bruce back downstairs because Penguin has the gang lined up before the cameras, making them an example as he gives a speech about how much safer Gotham is with him in control of crime. I guess he is planning to just kill them afterward, so that's dull. Something he says offends Ivy, I guess, because she stomps off and turns off the club's power, giving Boscomi, Grady, and the unnamed others time to grab weapons and make a stand. This is all resolved without much fanfare by a series of standoffs and punches, though not before Boscomi manages to spray Penguin with a delicious mouthful of fear toxin, causing him to hallucinate a thawed and deformed Nygma screaming at him and sending him cowering up against Jim in fright, conveniently in front of all the reporters. So much for his sinister image being recaptured.

As the final minutes tick down and we get another brief mention from Jim about Crane still being out there as an active threat, we come to Mr. Penn sitting in his office -- which looks like a bank vault with the walls covered in strongboxes, but has a single open door leading right out to the street for some reason -- when Bruce pulls his Batbaby routine on him and makes him give up the master list. Bruce then makes his way up a rooftop and happens to see a robbery taking place through a convenient skylight, which then conveniently shatters, conveniently sending him down as the robbers flee and the GCPD busts in, and conveniently pinning him for the robbery because his cowl is just a fucking ski mask with little pointed edges. How convenient.

And in the final scene... yep. The most predictable thing possible happens. Grady, having managed to escape the arrests, returns to the apartment to get another batch of fear gas so he can bust his compatriots out of jail. However, he opens the closet door to find not a cowering teen in a bathrobe, but an intimidating figure wreathed in tatters of the scarecrow he was left with. Yes, Crane is full-on Scarecrow at last, complete with a nice-looking costume that's ridiculously elaborate for the circumstances he made it in, and he says the requisite line for the sea slugs in the audience -- "Jonathan Crane isn't here anymore. I'M THE SCARECROW!" -- before spraying Grady in the face and smashing to the closing title card.


Overall, not a lot to love about this episode, but not a lot to rage about either. It's Gotham at its most stock, bland, and story-repeating. We get a potentially interesting new villain out of it, but little else of interest. Unfortunately for me, if rumors I've heard about the next episode bear fruit, I've got the mother of all rage aneurysms incoming, so saddle up for that next time.

*downs painkillers and vodka by the bottle each in preparation for another whole season*
  • 5

"Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it." - Eclipse Phase

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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Sat Sep 30, 2017 11:28 pm

On to "The Fear Reaper", an episode which bears that title only because they already used "The Scarecrow" on an episode that didn't actually feature the Scarecrow in any meaningful way, shape, or form. I mean, at least it's not an unearned literary or musical reference this time.

Spoiler: show
We open on Jim, Bullock, and a few other cops pulling up to the Crane house where Boscomi said Grady and Crane would be, only to find it deserted and all of the fear toxin drained out of the chemical set (I misidentified the place where Crane was being forced to mix more toxin as an apartment; it was actually the house's kitchen). After finding the asylum uniform that confirms Crane was there, Jim sees an odd-looking scarecrow out in the field and they go to investigate. Turns out it's Grady, alive and intact but still under the spell of the toxin, and he fearfully tells them that Scarecrow is coming. Of all the things they could use as a cold open for a Scarecrow, this is a particularly flat and uninspired one. Certainly bodes well for the episode!

After the title card, we find Bruce behind bars at the GCPD, explaining his arrest to Alfred. Jim walks up, they lie that he fell through the skylight while looking for Selina, and Jim seems to realize something's amiss but unlocks the cell and lets him go free anyway. TA-DA! So that whole cliffhanger was a pointless charade that impacts nothing! I'm shocked, positively shocked, I tell you! This show has neeeeeeeever pulled worthless cliffhangers out of its diseased rectum before!

Cut to Arkham (I think?! I'm completely unsure of whether this is a different mental institution that just happens to also look like a horrible prison, or if all of the sets in Arkham have been drastically redesigned to the point of unrecognizability), where Weird Pointless Asshole Warden is hastily burning some files presumably related to Crane when the man himself shows up, armed with his fear gas sprayer and a scythe. His costume looks considerably dumber when it's taken out of the shadows of the prior episode's cliffhanger, but it could be much worse. After realizing it's Crane under the getup, the warden makes a bafflingly delivered plea for him to just walk away and not take revenge, but Crane starts rambling in a particularly unimpressive way about his treatment at the asylum, all the while waffling in between "yeah, I'm Jonathan Crane and I'm cured" and "Jonathan Crane is dead, I'm the Scarecrow" in a manner that speaks more to script inconsistencies than an intentional psychological divide. The warden then tries to go for his gun and gets a mouthful of fear gas, and he sees... the same thing everyone has ever seen, just a rippling screen effect and some zooms in on Scarecrow's mask. Lame.

... Or not. Well, still pretty lame, but not in such a stock way. After a very brief scene where Lucius gets suspicious of Bruce in the same way as Jim, we return to this scene to see the warden hallucinating a sinister, twitching entity walking into the room as Scarecrow monologues about confronting his lifelong fears... and it's, of course, a clown. Not even a particularly creepy one, despite the mouth stretching and other effects that are supposed to make us feel his fear. Scarecrow urges him to fight, so he grabs his gun and shoots the clown, which is predictably revealed to be a security guard as he runs out, gunning down dozens of other patients and guards while hallucinating them as a mob of attempted disturbing clowns that only upset me because they remind me that American Horror Story: Cult is a thing. I don't care enough to question how he fires off about nine shots in one hallway from a six-shot revolver without reloading. While he's off doing this, Scarecrow goes to a room with a couple of growling patients on beds and makes a speech about how they'll be his army, and how he wants to... get revenge on Jim. BECAUSE WHAT ELSE COULD WE POSSIBLY WANT FROM THESE VILLAINS OTHER THAN THE SAME STORY RECYCLED OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER?

Actually, you know what? Let me go back through the episode listings and get a rough count as to how many times the villain has been motivated solely by hatred for Jim. (I also plan on doing a count for the times when the goal was "kill Bruce", and numerous other recycled plot points, eventually.)

Accounting for my skimming over the summaries (which could make the total higher already), and counting this one, it's about... 25 times. Which means that out of 68 episodes so far, a little over a third of them have revolved in some way around a tension-free struggle to kill or otherwise permanently harm Jim in place of any other interesting motivations and schemes. And this is primarily outside of the first season, as the villains only started caring about him en masse during and after the Galavan arc -- once I count the times Bruce's life has been pointlessly threatened, the number will be even more staggering. This is horrendous. This is a horrendous way to write a long-form television series. Fuck you to pieces, Bruno Heller.

But I digress. Back to the GCPD, where Penguin strolls in and demands to know where Crane is. Jim can't answer him, so a petty little fight happens in front of the gathered press and the crime license issue gets dragged out solely to reheat the same moral conflicts and dick-measuring that happens whenever these two are in the same room. It's all very dull despite Robin Lord Taylor's best hammy efforts, but eventually he gives Jim the ultimatum to catch Scarecrow within 24 hours or admit that he's wrong about the license system... which doesn't quite track as an ultimatum, but fine. Fine. Fine.

But instead of a relief from the boredom, we cut to Selina and Tabitha walking toward a mysterious building in the middle of the night, both realizing that someone left little cards with "An Opportunity Awaits" in flowery lettering on their doors.

*quietly prays it's not who I think it is*

They walk inside, and... "Thank you for coming, ladies."

*why have I been forsaken so*

On comes the light... camera turns... and there stands Barbara Kean, this time with bleached white hair in a bob cut. Two episodes after her supposed death. Looking not even slightly hurt despite me distinctly remembering her skin SMOKING AND SIZZLING, because of course, how could she really be hurt at all? Heller treats his babies nicely.

Image

And there's not even an explanation for how she survived the electrocution -- just a catty reply that Tabby should've checked her pulse because "it's Gotham" and the writers want to make extra sure you're aware that there are no stakes and nothing will ever matter. She also says what happened to her is a "long story", which... NO IT ISN'T. IT CAN'T BE. YOU WERE ELECTROCUTED IN AN APARTMENT A FEW BLOCKS AWAY AND YOU EITHER MIRACULOUSLY SURVIVED OR RA'S PISSED HIS LAZARUS JUICE ALL OVER YOU FOR SOME GODFORSAKEN FUCKING REASON. Seriously. As I said when it happened, I'm not an idiot and I knew she would be brought back very quickly to appease Heller and the legions of trash fans (who, in a break from writing this, I've already seen are calling her return "divine"), but come up with a reason for it, eh? Penguin surviving a few gunshots I can just barely accept because a critical part of his character has been about surviving and adapting, Jerome's resurrection was bullshit nonsense but led to a really fun mini-arc, that Indian Hill shit that plagued the second season was STUPID AND THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE but it was a reason. This is a cop-out spun by a fraud. And it will never be anything but.

........ Anyway, Tabby walks up to try and kill her again, but predictably stands down after Erin Richards flatly monologues about being sorry and not being in her right mind at the time. So they're trying to push "regretful slightly sane ally" Barbara AGAIN, just like they did in Season 2 after her first stupid bullshit survival -- oh Christ on a bike, it's just this again. It's all repeating again and she's no doubt going to descend back into her supposedly abandoned screeching #lolrandom hellbeast persona because that's what the people who watch this show because they think it's great television want to see. After this, Barb proposes that they all work together and that this mysterious fancy building is theirs now, and when Tabby shoots down the idea of another club, Barb steps up to a lever and pulls it... and all of the walls flip around dramatically to reveal dozens of guns and munitions. Zuh?! Okay, we'll just move right on from explaining where Barb got THESE too, so she can reveal that she wants to set up an arms trafficking business with the two of them to capitalize on Penguin's crime license system. Tabby refuses because Butch was the love of her life or something, and Barb asks Selina to talk to her after she storms out.

I hate this.

I hate this all so virulently and passionately I want to scream.

When this scene finally ends, we come to the Safest Manor on Earth, where Bruce is suiting up again and Alfred gets pissy at him for putting his life on the line when he's not ready. Bruce gets pissy in turn and leaves. End scene.

Meanwhile at the GCPD, Jim and Bullock have gotten word of the riot Scarecrow engineered at "the asylum" (am I crazy? Am I actually fucking forgetting something about another asylum or Arkham shutting down again during the Court of Owls thing or... zuh?!), and tries to order reinforcements to come with him. Big surprise: none of the cops are willing to come with him. Equally big surprise: this causes Jim to lob out some more Gordonisms about duty and corruption and how everyone here loves the city as much as he does. Um, Jim, a few things. 1) When has any cop on this show done their job competently or willingly? 2) WHY do you insist on loving and protecting and seeing the good in a city that has had literally nothing but evil and stupidity leaking out of its bloated corpses from the get-go, and the police station is so poorly run that a massacre happens there every other Monday? Regardless, he gets pissy when one of them talks about how much safer it is to be a cop now with Penguin's license system, and he tries to leave with Bullock -- only for Bullock to stand still and refuse the call. The brief argument they have is actually decent, mostly down to Donal Logue's generally reliable performance outmatching Ben McKenzie's frustrated shouting, and after he's told that he'll have to go alone because Bullock won't get pulled in, Jim does indeed storm off alone.

To a riot.

Engineered by a supervillain whose father he killed.

Brilliant as always, Jimothy.

Jim arrives to find the asylum in bloody shambles, littered with bodies and burning wheelchairs, and right on cue a stringy-haired woman screams and crab-walks through a hall behind him like a genuine Ju-On scare attempt. Scarecrow takes notice of him on the security cameras and vows revenge, opening the gates to let the out-of-control patients in, while Jim encounters the rabid warden and manages to steal a shotgun from him, only to discover that it's out of ammo as he's cornered against the only locked gate. How does our valiant "hero" get out of this one? He... punches a few away without much effort and sends the rest scattering with a few warning shots from his pistol without getting a scratch on him. Riveting. Scarecrow allows him to move forward and promises that they'll have some fun or something, and here I'm forced to confront the fact that this is a reeeeally boring and entirely unthreatening Scarecrow. Jerome's youth works because Cameron Monaghan imbues his Joker with plenty of hilarious teenage smarm and arrogance, but when you do Scarecrow, you need someone whose voice has the capacity for either deep gravitas, muted sociopathy, or balls-to-the-wall insanity. Charlie Tahan is trying, but his voice is just too high and the modulation isn't sufficient to make him sound like a threat. It's a real letdown after so much buildup. But what else is new?

Back to Baaaaaaaaaaaarbaaaaaaaaaaaaraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Penguin, Ivy, and Zsasz stroll in to admire the new business, which is just pretense for Penguin to threaten her into obeying his crime license and weapon tax policies while Zsasz poses with various weapons and Ivy... kind of stands around uselessly. Question: if Penguin wanted to threaten the notoriously slippery and backstabbing Barbara into following his rules, wouldn't that magic plant-based mind control perfume Ivy plucked out of her ass last season be beyond helpful? But no, he shuts her up when she tries to talk so that she can pout again and foreshadow some kind of inevitable mistreatment-induced rebellion (and probably supervillain transformation, even though we just did that) that relies on Penguin's characterization going all screwy. And now that I think about it, the hell happened to Freeze and Firefly, whom we last saw in his employ as the biggest weapons in his war against Barb and Tabby? Oh, fuck it, they were terrible anyway. And speaking of terrible, Barbara has dialogue in this scene. Basically, she insinuates that she might not follow his rules when she officially starts her business up, and he in turn threatens that Zsasz will visit her if she doesn't, which seems like a pretty serious threat given that neither she nor her business partners are any match for a machine gun ambush. But Barbs will be Barbs, and she's impervious to any harm, so it doesn't matter.

Oh yeah, and they're trying to make her source of weapons and funding a mystery, but no answer could possibly justify it or make it satisfying so I don't care. It's either Ra's as part of his big plan to destroy Gotham and test Bruce, Falcone because he doesn't like Penguin being unchallenged on top, or a twice-resurrected Fish because God is dead and this show is a burning effigy of my hopes and dreams. I don't care. Just bring on Butch as Solomon Grundy already, you cowards.

Jim manages to make it to the warden's office, presumably having left a trail of dead or injured victims behind him, only to ONCE AGAIN FAIL TO PERCEIVE AN AMBUSH and get knocked out and held at scythe-point by Scarecrow. The crazy young man unmasks himself and rambles about how Jim killed his father just for trying to help people, and then sprays some fear gas in Jim's face and asks him what he'll have to confront. So... we're just doing the "Jim gets drugged and hallucinates to confront his demons" bit again, as if that didn't face-fuck Jervis Tetch's gimmick into the asphalt last season. As Jim looks around in terror, Scarecrow threatens that he might face one of his many victims... and he suddenly finds himself walking into a room to see Lee in a bathtub, in her lingerie, with her wrists slit, because what else could it have been. Lee says exactly the same things as all of their conflicts last season, about how Jim destroys everything he touches and they were supposed to be a family and such and such and such and this is all just recycled conflict over and over and over and over and over. As Lee dies, Scarecrow offers him a razor he can slice his wrists with to join her, and he starts to do so only to break out of the hallucination by convincing himself that Lee still loves him even though he's an absolute monster. Really? REALLY?!

Anyway, with his newfound heroic resolve he finds Scarecrow again and disarms him, but fails to talk him down and he runs away. But... really.

We rejoin Bruce shadowing some random generic thugs and sneaking into the building they're apparently robbing, only to find them waiting in ambush to capture him. They unmask him and share some generic laughing thug dialogue about him being a kid and possibly recognizing his face, but then Bruce makes his escape by tricking one into shooting another and then fending them off with an aerosol flamethrower and grappling out of the window. Right as he hits the ground, he somehow gets held at gunpoint by the lead thug, whom I guess has mastered the power of teleportation, but of course he gets knocked out from behind by Alfred. All in all, a dull, predictable, and mostly useless scene that was only included for some Babby Batman teases.

Nothing much happens in the next scene, except Ivy wants to join the trio of Selina, Tabby, and Barbara. Because of course all of the most obnoxious and mishandled female characters would be gathered together in a neat little clusterfuck out of nowhere.

Rejoining our stalwart Jimbo, he storms into the cafeteria where Scarecrow is commanding a few dozen patients to kill him. Jim beats the shit out of quite a few innocent victims before finding a convenient fire extinguisher that sprays water into a few of their faces, conveniently curing them and restoring them to the "slack-jawed mumbling" phase that all mental patients obviously default to. Jim, realizing that a cold splash of water is all that's needed to counteract a concentrated dose of aerosolized fear, quickly activates the sprinkler system and removes the threat as Scarecrow leaves; however, one big guy remains unaffected, speaking in caveman grunts and manhandling Jim until he cold-cocks him with the empty extinguisher. I would like to point out that Scarecrow once again has his mask and scythe, despite abandoning both on the floor in the previous scene. I'd just... like to make that clear.

Back to Safest Manor (TM), where a pissy argument between pissy Bruce and pissy Alfred is interrupted by a decidedly not pissy Lucius at the door. In he comes with a large case, which he sets on the counter and opens up to reveal... TA-DA! The Batsuit, basically! A prototype body armor Wayne Enterprises happened to be working on! Lucius pretends that he'll just need it for rock climbing, but they all know the truth and it instantly resolves the argument. HEY REMEMBER WHEN BRUNO HELLER SAID THAT COSTUMED SUPERHEROES ARE STUPID AND UNFIT FOR HIS GRIPPING DRAMA 'CAUSE I CERTAINLY DO

Back to BARB, who is swiftly joined by Tabitha and Selina. Barb asks in her new horrible monotone voice whether she's ready to reconsider, and Tabby answers that she'll trust Barb if she lets her take her hand, since Butch got his hand cut off by Penguin and she got her hand very briefly cut off by Nygma. Barb accepts the terms and lays her hand out for Tabby, only for the cleaver to be brought down right above her hand because NOTHING WHATSOEVER CAN HAPPEN TO HELLER'S DEAR SWEET BABY. Tabby now magically trusts her and agrees to work for her. End scene, thank Christ.

Back at the GCPD, Penguin is upset that Jim failed to catch Scarecrow and uses him as an example to other cops, asking them how tired they are of the villains escaping time after time and the GCPD itself getting attacked. Note: just because you lampshade your flaws, writers, it does not mean those flaws are any less gaping or excusable (though I'm sure there are some out there now who believe the constant repetition was brilliant buildup to this). After offering to triple the wage of any cop who comes to work for him, he leaves with his posse, prompting Jim to lob a few more Gordonisms only for Bullock to confront him, cool him off, and offer to buy him a drink for trying. The thing is... Penguin is 100% in the right. Sure, he's doing an abhorrent thing for selfish reasons, but this abhorrent thing is the only model that has ever worked in Gotham to both preserve the lives of cops, cut down on the crime rate by a significant percentage, and get some funding going toward rebuilding what's being destroyed. Penguin is by all rights the hero here, and Jim is trying to stop it and revert things back to how they were for... reasons? I don't know. Because the show has insisted on always showing Gotham as an unbelievably shitty place to live from the beginning, this is the first measure of improvement we're shown, yet we're expected to want Jim to stop it because of setup the show never bothered to do. Fuck off with this. Oswald Cobblepot 2020!

Now it's back to Ivy as the episode winds down, and... HOLY SHIT RETCON TIME. We're told out of nowhere that Ivy got her magic plant-based perfume from a Chinese back alley drugstore of some kind, even though this explicitly goes against what she said about concocting it with various plant combinations and I'm certain we saw her make a batch at some point. But no, even more of her intelligence and independence -- even the part that's unearned and never made sense -- is stripped away as she blows more in the store owner's face and demands to know where the -- and I quote -- "ancient mystical potions from shamans all around the world" he's rumored to have are kept. After being directed to them and warned that they'll rewrite her DNA somehow, she starts downing them one by one, taking ones that increase her strength and stuff before stopping as she chokes and her facial structure starts to rearrange in awful CGI. And now she's Poison Ivy, because fuck you!

1) Is Ivy getting recast again? Please tell me she's getting recast again.

2) For the fucking love of all that is good in the world, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU JUST DID! THIS IS JUST FIREFLY AND SCARECROW AND NUMEROUS OTHER MISTREATMENT-INDUCED SUPERVILLAIN TRANSFORMATIONS OVER AND OVER AGAIN! YOU FUCKS DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO WAIT A HALF-SEASON! THIS IS THE NEXT FUCKING EPISODE AFTER SCARECROW!

*distant screaming into a pillow*

And it's... it's even lazier! Come the fuck on, a newly introduced magical potion store we've never heard of just gets retconned into existence so she can be the character she was meant to be? No actual buildup, no advancement in intelligence, no plant tinkering of her own design. Just magic potions. HOW WAS THIS APPROVED.

No, no, no, no, you know what? Fuck it, fuck it, I don't care, let's just finish the episode so I can move on.

With about three minutes to go, we spend a minute and a half in the bar with Jim and Bullock, who are unsure of what they should be doing when Penguin's strategy is working so well and rallying all of the other cops to his side. When Bullock mentions that they'd need an army to take Penguin on and that he misses the days when Falcone ruled the city with an honorable iron fist (I mean, remember all of the street shootings that went on daily, the rampant subversion and backstabbing in his wildly unstable ranks, and how oblivious he was to Fish setting him up with that spy whom he choked out when he found out she was a spy? Yeah, me neither), Jim gets the bright idea to contact Falcone for help. Bullock reminds him that he killed his son, but Jim is adamant that only Falcone's army -- I'm not quite sure how he still has one, given that he gave up control of Gotham altogether and we've only seen him running small operations with remaining connections since then, but this show has had a somewhat loose grasp on what "army" means before -- is the only thing that can stand in Penguin's way. Hooray, another mob war. Hooray.

And who could've guessed what the final scene would be the moment Lucius showed up? Yes, Bruce is running along the rooftops again, showing off the new body armor that looks slightly less like the Batsuit when it's out of the case but is still clearly supposed to echo it. Alfred tells him to try on the mask that came with it, and he pops on a much more recognizable one that seems to really just be a slightly smaller version of Christian Bale's cowl in the Nolan movies. Except it looks pretty stupid and now Bruce looks more like a bargain bin Daredevil than anything else. But the camera once again pans out slowly and the orchestral score once again creams its jeans because BATMAN YOU GUYS OMG YOU'VE WAITED SO LONG FOR SOMETHING YOU TOTALLY COULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN IN THOUSANDS OF OTHER MOVIES, SHOWS, GAMES, AND OTHER MEDIA! BATMAAAAAAAAN AAAAAAAAAH AAAAAAAAAH ugh.

Last but not least, no Scarecrow stinger, huh? So is he going to be a recurring enemy throughout the season -- which I guess would be fine, even though I've grown tired of his bag of tricks already -- or is he being set up as the new half-season villain in a blatant repeat of Tetch from the first half of Season 3, which would kill me? Who knows, who cares. On with the show.


Wake me up

Wake me up inside

I can't wake up
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"Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it." - Eclipse Phase

NEW REVIEW! Judgment / Judge Eyes (2019)
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Re: Gotham

Postby Marcuse » Sun Oct 01, 2017 9:09 am

I will never watch Gotham, these reviews are about 1000% more entertaining.
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Re: Gotham

Postby reallifegirl » Fri Oct 13, 2017 7:53 pm

The last couple episodes have been a real goldmine in terms of reaction .gifs of Oswald that I must save for future use.

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Encyclopedia Dramatica wrote:Reallifegirl: Is supposedly a girl in real life, but we all know that's false. Gets highest comment roughly 75% of the time, and has never had a single red-thumbed comment. Ever.
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun Oct 22, 2017 6:12 am

Oh shit, my busy schedule (read: procrastination and poor time management) has led me to miss three weeks of this. So I guess that means... OUR FIRST T-T-TRIPLE REVIEW!

...

Nah, not doing that. Probably never doing that. A triple Gotham review would actually give me cancer, as extra salt in the existing wound of occupying several good hours of my day (for the record, each episode's write-up takes about two hours on average, depending on how many times per scene I have to pause and comment on something, and in turn how long it takes me to straighten out my commentary). So let's double review the episodes I've missed, and then some time in the next few days I'll get to "The Blade's Path." Cool? Cool.

Let's begin with "They Who Hide Behind Masks".

Spoiler: show
Well, I could certainly think of less interesting ways to open an episode than with a card reading "Arabia, 125 A.D. A guy on a horse moves through the remains of a battlefield, eventually finding a dead soldier -- played by Alexander Siddig. The guy brings Siddig to the Lazarus Pit and tosses him in, resurrecting him, and when Siddig asks what happened and why he's alive again, the guy cryptically tells him that his mission now is to find his heir so he can be free before giving him a ceremonial knife. Interesting? Maybe? So apparently having the title of Ra's is a curse and the only central goal is to pass it on. I'm not sure how well that holds up with what we know or whether it's a good idea going forward, but it's... it's different and potentially interesting. Now just let Siddig give a better performance so he can maybe be as interesting as the show wants to make him seem.

We then meet Bruce in his weird, shitty proto-Batman costume, and we're plunged into a pretty traditional Batman scenario: Penguin is bringing in an unspecified "big shipment" at the docks, Bruce is talking to Alfred about how many thugs there are and Alfred advises him not to get killed, and then Bruce spots a thief who's clearly Selina sneaking toward the trucks and rushes to protect her, initiating a fight scene. It's competently staged, and I suppose this is what the show was building toward all along (in the sense that anything on this show is built toward rather than torn from Heller's ass in a bloody clump and smeared onto a script one episode at a time), but it just doesn't grab me. It's as limp and generic as any random gunfight Jim gets into. I'm sure some people are head over heels because it resembles Batman stuff, though. Anyways, Bruce doesn't stick around to realize the thief is Selina, and I'm not sure whether Selina's swearing is because she realized her protector was Bruce or just relief at not getting shot. On to the next scene.

SUDDENLY ITALY. OR CALIFORNIA, OR FLORIDA, OR MEXICO, OR SOMETHING, THEY JUST REFER TO IT AS "DOWN HERE" AND "A LONG WAY FROM HOME". And everything is saturated brownish-orange for some reason, which seems like a real waste of the scenery. Bruce drives up to a lavish villa and gets out, glaring at a random attractive woman giving him bedroom eyes before asking a guard/servant to see Falcone. He's taken to the veranda where Falcone is sitting, and shortly thereafter the woman sits down with them and is introduced as Sofia, Falcone's hitherto-unmentioned only daughter. When Jim pleas with Falcone to return to Gotham and help them overthrow Penguin, Falcone drops a bombshell: he's dying of unknown causes, and is living out his last days down in Unspecified State Or Country because the air is better for him. Sofia offers to go in his stead, but Falcone shuts her down for reasons, and she gives the traditional extended middle distance glare that means "I'm going to be a major player this season so pls notice me".

Cut to Alfred sewing up a nasty cut on Bruce's hand sustained during the fight, and they have a small argument over Bruce needing to watch his back before Alfred gives him some advice on how better to investigate the shipment. Same exchange I've sat through dozens of times.

And then... Barbara. She shoots a random guy in the chest with a shotgun in obnoxious slow motion, to the applause of an audience of criminals, and it's revealed that the guy was wearing a bulletproof vest and she was demonstrating the shotgun's tight spread. After one of them orders two dozen of the shotguns (where is she getting these?!), Selina comes in and Barb gets pissy because she doesn't have what Penguin brought in the crate she was meant to steal. As punishment, Barb passive-aggressively tells Selina she just wasn't cut out for this job and orders her to mop the floors. If I didn't know any better, I would say this was yet another incoming mistreatment-induced betrayal to turn Selina fully into Catwoman, but it's Barbara and Barbara can never die so I'm lost.

We then come to a brief bit of Penguin rambling to Zsasz (yay!) about how great the week is going for the business, before Zsasz explains to Penguin that their shipment almost got robbed and he demands for Zsasz to take him to see it personally. As they leave, an unknown woman dressed as a cop sneaks in with a blowtorch, makes some sensual noises while grinning madly, and begins to thaw Nygma out of his popsicle. Oooookay. When Penguin returns and sees Ed missing, we're treated to some of his hammiest scenery-devouring yet as he demands for whoever took Ed to be found and killed (and Zsasz, in all of his gloriousness, remarks that it kind of opens up the room). Whatever gets Nygma back in play, I guess -- assuming he isn't just used for more love bullshit with Impossible Isabella as his core motivation.

What do you know, said mysterious woman revives Ed in a warm bed (quite similarly to Ivy nursing Penguin back after his near-murder) and it's revealed that the whole room is decked out in Riddler merchandise and articles. The fangirl introduces herself as Myrtle Jenkins, someone who has apparently fawned over Ed since third grade (I have a hard time believing anyone would be fawning over the man we saw in Season 1, but all right) and obsessively followed his crime spree from the very beginning, and is now longing to be his sidekick as they take revenge on Penguin for freezing and humiliating him. Myrtle is extremely obnoxious, but at least Ed seems to realize this, which gives me a vain hope that she's just a plot device and not going to be another recurring mess of a female character.

When we get back from the break, cut to Bruce operating on Alfred's previous comment about different masks being good for different infiltrations and walking up to the freighter disguised as a street urchin. In a decently amusing scene, he tricks the guys on deck into letting him aboard under the idea that he's looking for his uncle, only for them to see through it and ambush him as he's looking through the shipping manifest to see what Penguin has brought. Alfred suddenly comes up behind them and pretends to be Bruce's uncle, only the goons to see through that too, upon which he beats them both down and teaches Bruce a lesson about acting and improvising. Fun enough scene, for once.

You know who's not conducive to fun scenes? Barbara. She walks up to Penguin's desk and asks if she can buy a knife he's going to auction later ahead of time for an interested client. Given that the episode started by lingering on a fancy-looking knife that was made a big deal out of, this solidly confirms that Barb's mysterious benefactor is Ra's, which doesn't make a lick of sense as of now and probably still won't when it's explained later. Luckily, rather than bow to her demands like so many others, Penguin laughs in her face and puts two and two together that she's been ordered to retrieve the knife, thusly denying it to her and making her storm off with an idle threat. Fuming to himself, Penguin then wanders over to the crate and pulls out the ceremonial knife for no other reason than the benefit of the 2.92 million object-permanence-lacking sea slugs this episode reached.

Speaking of that knife, we're brought to the Safest Manor on Earth where Bruce has researched it after learning its name in the manifest. It turns out to be an embalming knife used on an ancient Mesopotamian king, and when they wonder why a thief would be trying to steal the least intrinsically valuable item from a shipment full of gold and jewels, Bruce turns a page and finds a convenient detailed illustration of Ra's with the knife. When they see that the illustration is over 2000 years old, Bruce gets a weirdly teary-eyed face and the scene ends.

Back in Orange-Saturated Mexicalifloritaly, Jim drinks on the beach and tells Bullock on the phone that he didn't succeed with Falcone, only to be approached by Sofia, who's donned a cleavage-heavy white dress completely rather unsuited to their location. After chatting about her childhood, the conversation obviously turns to Mario, but after an ominous middle distance stare, she tells him that she knows about the virus and doesn't blame him for her brother's death. And that, oddly, is where the scene ends.

After a quick check-in with Penguin, who apparently believes the thawing of Ed was an inside job, we cut back to Ed and Myrtle, the latter of whom has stuck a bunch of acupuncture needles in the former to help his atrophied muscles recover. While she has him as a captive audience, she unveils a question-mark-covered dress she wants to wear as "the Riddlette", which Ed doesn't take kindly to. The lack of immediate praise sets Myrtle off, so Ed spares himself the trouble by backtracking and complimenting her, which she reacts to by giggling and toddling over to his bedside like the overgrown schoolgirl she is. She proceeds to fan his ego and ask him how he would have concocted an escape plan in the five months it took her to think of "wait until Penguin leaves and sneak in with a blowtorch while dressed as a cop for some reason and not wearing anything to hide her face", but when he smirks and tries to indulge her, his face... shifts. It seems the freezing atrophied more than his physical faculties, and he conveys this with a disbelief and horror that's genuinely affecting even for the ridiculous context it's in. Now this is interesting.

... At least in theory. They address this right in the scene after the break, and decide to try stimulating his brain with some riddles to see if his body follows suit. Myrtle comes up with the absolute most pedestrian riddles, but Ed fails to grasp any of them, and angrily sends her away to bring him a riddle that's worthy of him. Sigh.

Back to the Undiscovered Country, which is even more saturated than before to the point that this beautiful beach now looks like a scene from The Book of Eli. Jim and Sofia walk barefoot on the beach, exchange small talk, and have a "romantic" scene where she takes him into the water and they look out at the horizon together before she kisses him out of nowhere. Motherfucker, is this just Valerie Vale all over again? I know Lee comes back some time in this season for whatever reason. Is Sofia playing him for a fool, or are we genuinely just doing the "love triangle with a more dangerous and exotic woman" angle AGAIN?! Given the amount of repetition inherent in this show's DNA, I have absolutely no clue.

Back at the manor, Bruce and Alfred have a scene in which Alfred teaches Bruce how to fluidly assume other roles, starting with the spoiled rich kid everyone should underestimate him as. This brings us to Bruce loudly and overeagerly bidding on expensive art at an auction and massively overselling his teenage assholery, and I love it wholeheartedly. Bruce's goal is to project the image that he's going on a reckless spending spree so that when Penguin auctions the knife and he buys it, it will only draw the suspicion of Ra's and seem normal to everyone else. It's a smart plan, but unfortunately Bruce has a rival in Barbara, whom Penguin bitterly introduces by stating ONCE AGAIN that no one ever stays dead in Gotham. Fuck off with your endless "self-awareness" of the flaws you keep dipping into, writers. I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- it's only a good joke if you promptly cut way down on the trope you're lampshading and don't just mock it over and over again. Anyway, the bidding for the knife starts and Bruce acts like the biggest, douchiest, most hilarious tool he can with the bidding amounts until he suddenly raises to $2,000,000 and Penguin eagerly sells it to him, rubbing it right in Barb's face. As she storms away once again, Penguin gives a friendly warning to keep watch of the knife because Barb doesn't give up easily. This scene has also been delightful, self-referential jokes aside.

After more stupidly easy riddles, Myrtle reveals in frustration that she was reading them out of a children's book, to Ed's horror. When she tells him that his mind and body must be permanently damaged, he reveals that his body actually healed a while ago, and demonstrates this by grabbing the book and clobbering her upside the head with it, knocking her out cold. How wonderful.

Cut to the Safest Manor on Earth, where Selina sneaks in through an open window (Safest ManorTM) and runs immediately into the waiting Bruce. They fight over the knife. She leaves. It's boring. Moving on.

Back to the GCPD, where Jim is introduced to a new lady detective named Harper, who might be a side character or might actually have a role, I don't know. Sofia walks in to see him, and after some uncharacteristically pervy comments from Bullock, Jim talks to her and finds out that she came to help him, as predicted. Not much to this. Maybe Sofia will be a fun morally grey character, but given that this show's track record for capable and interesting major female characters is currently 0 for 6 (out of Fish, Lee, Barbara, Tabitha, Ivy, and Valerie Vale), I'm not optimistic. At least she's not hamming it up or putting on any pointlessly obnoxious mannerisms.

We then reunite with Penguin and Zsasz, who've found and bound Myrtle and learned that she was the one who stole Ed. She tearfully confesses and says that Ed is no longer the man she "loved," and that the ice broke his mind, which Penguin is somewhat concerned about. He leaves to organize a wider search for Ed and lets Zsasz stay to finish the job, which he does by complimenting her dress before shooting her in the head. Fun Zsasz moment, utter travesty for a single-episode character.

Finally, we come back to Barbara, only to see someone sneaking up on her. At the last second, she denies what anyone in their right mind wants to see and counters her assailant's attack with out-of-nowhere martial arts skills. This assailant, of course, is Ra's, who then counters and restrains her, officially confirming her to be his student. Proving the point I keep making, Barbara demonstrates enough built-up skills in about five months of teaching to genuinely catch the immortal warrior off guard, because she is Barbara and she is perfect and special and amazing at everything. At least Ra's is somewhat more menacing and unique in this appearance than he was when he last spoke in the third season finale... which is swiftly undone when he and Barbara start passionately kissing. Fucking for real? Fucking FOR REAL?! There are only two ways this plays out: Ra's is tricking Barbara and her arc will be that she falls for and is spurned by a man again, or she has genuinely charmed a man almost two-thousand years old because she is Barbara and she is perfect and special and amazing at everything.

Kill me.


Before we get started on the next one, here's your requisite check-in with the utter insanity of this fanbase:

Spoiler: show
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Screen Shot 2017-10-21 at 6.39.06 PM.png (101.41 KiB) Viewed 6414 times


Blurgh. We're moving right along to "The Demon's Head", which promises more focus on Ra's singularly and hopefully no more focus on that. Also, this episode was written by Ben McKenzie himself in his first writing credit, after previously directing "These Delicate and Dark Obsessions," which I'm pretty sure I hated. Let's see how well he writes.

Spoiler: show
We open with Bruce and Alfred having an old historian named Dr. Winthrop examine the knife, promising to tell them anything he can find out about it if they leave it with him overnight. His precociously spunky grandson Alex, who appears to be about Bruce's age or slightly younger, enters at this moment to be somewhat pointless, and the scene cuts briefly to Nygma frustratedly trying to write a riddle before cutting back to Winthrop and Alex studying the knife. Winthrop translates the inscription in the knife's hilt, which turns out to be a prophecy about Ra's that he reads off as the camera eerily cuts back and forth between their office and a shadowy figure creeping through their museum toward said office. Right as Winthrop reads "the Demon's Head", a knock at the door makes him send Alex into the shadows of the back office with the knife in tow -- and when he answers, in steps Ra's, who proceeds to taunt him and smarmily regale him with anecdotes from throughout history about the various artifacts in the office. This is really the first scene where Siddig's Ra's has felt like any kind of threat for me, and I'm steadily warming up to him. He finishes by snapping Winthrop's neck as the alarm goes off, and peering into the office and passing it by before the camera pans down to reveal Alex tearfully sitting somewhere Ra's could probably have seen. Cue title card.

Prediction: the episode's plot will revolve around Ra's and the League going after Alex, who befriends Bruce somehow and is kept alive just long enough for his death to try and wring some emotion out of the audience as Ra's gets his hands on the McGuffin. I struggle to see any other way this show would approach this plotline.

At the crime scene, Jim meets Harper again, presumably confirming that she has a larger role. She says she's filling in for Bullock because he's taken a sabbatical for a few days and... oooooh please tell me this episode wasn't filmed during the week when Donal Logue was searching for his daughter. That would make me very sad. Regardless, Bruce comes by and is shocked that the knife got Winthrop killed, so Jim pulls him aside and asks him to spill whatever he knows. Bruce for some reason doesn't say anything about Ra's even though Jim is at least vaguely aware of the League's existence (He is, right? He didn't forget everything that was said and implied about the Court serving someone higher up, right? He didn't just forget that he was attacked by ninjas half a year ago, right?), but he does say that Barbara was involved in the aggressive bidding over the knife and Jim leaves to talk to her.

Right on cue, we cut to Barbara waiting in her hideout as Ra's steps out of the shadows to wrap her in a lover's embrace and fuck everything about this. Barb says something snarky and Ra's wryly admonishes her for not getting the knife when she had the chance, necessitating the assistance of a few League associates. I was expecting the camera to swing around to reveal a few ninjas standing in front of Barb, but instead, we see a guy who looks like a strung-out biker holding a wide-mouthed, hissing quadrupedal man on a leash. The fuck? All right. Dog guy's name is apparently Anubis, and Ra's wants him to track down the knife and gives him permission to kill Bruce if necessary. That's right, another "villain is coming after Bruce even though he's invulnerable" plot! Yippee!

After an amusing exchange with Zsasz about knocking, Penguin has him summon Sofia into his office. She claims that she is only in Gotham because she's attending to the Falcone family's charities, but Penguin sees through her and threatens her if she's planning on rebuilding the Falcone empire. Sofia leaves, her plans ambiguous, while Penguin congratulates himself. All's good there.

All's unfortunately not good in the next scene, in which Jim goes to meet you-know-who. They talk about how much she's changed and she stays tauntingly monotone before the subject turns to the knife and her mysterious bankroller. She claims to know nothing... and all of a sudden, in storms Bruce, asking if she works for Ra's al Ghul (for some reason now pronouncing it "Resh" rather than the accepted "Raysh" or "Roz") and telling her she doesn't know what she's dealing with. This goes about as productively as you'd expect, and Jim drags Bruce out and yells at him for following and not saying anything about Ra's. When Bruce explains the deal about Ra's and all he's responsible for, Jim immediately understands and gets some officers set on researching and locating him, further proving how illogical Bruce's decision not to talk about him was. They then realize that Alex must be hiding in the library because of something that was said in passing to Bruce that I forgot, and so the hunt begins.

Cut to Penguin in his office being given a message from Ed... in the form of two guys off the street, one beatboxing and the other delivering a riddle in spoken word rap form. Penguin's reaction to this is helpfully illustrated by the second and fourth .gifs in RLG's post, and it is a thing of beauty in action. Zsasz suggests torturing them immediately, but Penguin decides to just follow the clues and find Ed already, ordering Zsasz and his men to wait in ambush and deciding that he wants Freeze to, well, freeze him again. Considering we haven't heard a word about Freeze this season, I'm curious where this is going.

Jim and Bruce head to the library and find Winthrop's private room, and Bruce manages to coax Alex out. I didn't realize it before, but Alex's actor is pretty mediocre, even by Gotham standards. Assuming he'll be dead by the end of the episode, this isn't too bad, so I'll deal with it. Right after Alex gets finished describing in shaky tones what happened at the museum and why he's afraid of going to the GCPD, screams erupt from the front of the library and Jim has Bruce guide Alex to the station while he goes to investigate the fleeing crowds. All of a sudden, they're ambushed by Anubis and his owner, whom I now realize is dressed less like a strung-out biker and more like a strung-out Night's Watchman. Anubis bites and tackles Alex while the handler manhandles Jim, but both are repelled when Jim pushes some bookshelves over. What thoroughly intimidating baddies. And much like the situation with Strange back in Season 2, I have to wonder why Ra's is bothering to send unreliable weird freaks when he could easily just have them locate him and use a half dozen ninjas to do the actual job.

Back to the GCPD, where Jim is going over the search for Ra's with Harper, when who should show up in geeky disguise but Ra's himself? He introduces himself by his real name, possibly unawares that Jim knows who he is, and claims to to be the Minister of Antiquities for the tiny country of Nanda Parbat (which is confirmed to be in the Himalayas here, while most commonly depicted in the Middle Eastern deserts). Jim sends Ra's into his office and talks to Harper about how Ra's was probably tipped off by Barbara and might think Alex already gave them the knife, which Jim wants to use to trap him.

Brief visit with Bruce and Alex in hiding, where Bruce gives Alex a pep talk and Alex says he's cool and they become friends and laser sight targets might as well be rapidly appearing on his back.

In Jim's office, Ra's claims that the knife is a cultural artifact very meaningful to his people, and that there is a legend about a warlord who raised a powerful kingdom using it. Throughout this extended speech only broken briefly by small retorts from Jim, Siddig becomes even more threatening in the role, and while he's still not up to par with villains like Zsasz and pre-Isabella Riddler, he's more satisfying than I thought he would be (if only he'd do the same to Barb that he did to Winthrop). Jim is less impressed than me, however, and makes it clear via insinuation that he sees through Ra's' game and wants him to call the assassins off Alex before he'll give up the knife. Unfortunately, Alfred comes raging into the station demanding to know where Bruce is, and when he sees Ra's in Jim's office, he runs up and socks the fucker right in the mouth. Jim manages to restrain him and reassures him that he knows, but when they look back, Ra's has vanished. Ominous.

Cut to Sofia trying to rebuke three mafia goons who were hoping she would take charge of the city like her father did, but before she can send them away, Penguin marches in with Zsasz talking about how there are a few graves already dug in the yard. When we cut back to the scene after the break, Sofia and Penguin sit staring at each other while three gunshots gradually go off outside, in another scene that's genuinely enjoyable. Once the third thug has been murdered, Penguin gleefully laughs while Sofia puts together that she was only invited so she could be tracked back to her sympathizers, but when Penguin tries to make her be thankful that she was spared, she gives him a brief, pretty good monologue about how her father would have done the situation differently for a better ultimate gain. Again, Falcone's mafia in Season 1 was an incompetent sham, but fine. That's one of the many attempts at retconning competence into the continuity that I can stomach.

Alex brings Bruce to where he hid the knife: in a display case that was already holding a nearly identical knife, right in plain sight. Just as they retrieve it and Bruce promises that he'll keep Alex safe (cue even more laser sights and the distant sound of a grave being dug), they hear a window shattering and rush to hide as Anubis and his handler show up. While they hide in one of the environment displays, Anubis is released into the room and sniffs around in a way that I can't decide if it's creepy or ridiculous. Anubis starts to catch the scent, but conveniently leaves just as they show themselves.

Back at the GCPD, Alfred and Jim yell at each other over respective secrets being kept and Jim's failure to locate Bruce. Both of them have decent points, but because Alfred isn't the guy in this scene whom I want to jump in front of a train, I'm backing him up. Frustrated at the lack of leads as to where Alex might have stashed the knife (and subsequently led Bruce), Alfred takes out an artifact of some kind that might provide a lead. Jim recognizes it and immediately heads off, telling Harper to keep watch over Alfred and think of a reason to arrest him if he tries to leave. So we'll add that to the perpetually expanding list of Jim "We Must Be Good Cops and Protect Gotham" Gordon's flagrant abuses of authority. Fuck this man.

Brief cut to Penguin being given another beatboxed message from Ed after failing to find him where he thought he'd be. When the next clue fails to make sense to him, he takes Zsasz's advice and just has the guys hauled off to be tortured, in one of the only times I'll chuckle over innocent people being tortured.

With just over ten minutes left, Anubis is still hunting Bruce and Alex through the museum while they hide a short distance away. Alex, possibly distracted by the massive amount of overlapping laser sights, spray-painted bullseyes, and black X markers appearing all over his body, drops the knife for no reason and ends up drawing Anubis to them. They make a run for it and Anubis tackles Bruce, but Jim comes in just in time to save the day while still managing not to hit these large, mostly stationary targets with his shots. Jim makes a bit of progress toward escape with the boys before Anubis bites him and the handler throws him through a display into a saber-toothed tiger skeleton. While Anubis hassles Jim, the handler goes to kill Bruce, only for Alex to stab him non-fatally with some glass and save the day; Jim, meanwhile, learns that Anubis behaves exactly like a dog and disposes of him by throwing a bone at the window, making him leap through it to his presumed death. This allows him to rush up and save Bruce by gutting the handler with another shard of glass.

However, sensing that the quirky miniboss squad has been dealt with, Ra's has shown up and managed to drag Alex out into the middle of the room at knifepoint in complete silence. The classic deal is made, the knife for Alex's life, but Bruce refuses to give up the knife because he knows what Ra's is capable of and doesn't want him to become even more powerful. However, it turns out -- as no one could have possibly seen coming -- that the whole endeavor was a test of Bruce's resolve, and Ra's casually slashes Alex's throat (to the shock of 2.75 million sea slugs) and gets on his knees as Bruce screams, simply and chillingly telling Jim: "Arrest me." All right, all right. I officially love this Ra's, however bogged down by all of the previous and current cryptic schlock he might be.

Returning to the GCPD, Bruce is taking Alex's death pretty hard. That's all.

Suddenly, Ed storms into the Iceberg Lounge, brandishing a gun and furiously yelling at Penguin for being too much a cowardly idiot to meet with him. Penguin steps out from right behind him and replies that he didn't meet him because his riddles suck now, and Ed's piss-poor attempts to defend and clarify them only prove the point. Taunting Ed without a care in the world, Penguin walks right up to him and lets the gun press against him, declaring that even though Ed might kill him, only the man he used to be can truly take revenge on him, which obviously cripples Ed's ego and makes him unsure of who he is anymore. I'm not keen on Ed going through an identity crisis again (having first gone through one before deciding he wanted to kill people and then going through one in "How the Riddler Got His Name" and the episodes leading up to it just last season), but the scene is fun, so I don't care. Right then, Freeze steps out from the shadows and Penguin states that he's going to freeze Ed and put him right back where he came from. And the subsequent exchange is the very first time I've liked this incarnation of Freeze in the whole series:

Freeze: "You want the same pose, or somethin' else?"
Nygma: "No!" *assumes virtually the same pose as the first time*
Freeze: *charges his gun* "Got it, same pose."

Obviously, though, they're not just going to refreeze Ed -- he has to go self-discover again. So he inadvertently turns Penguin's own taunts back on him, making him call Freeze off with the realization that he won't be satisfied unless he kills the man Ed used to be. They depart, leaving Ed whispering "Who am I?" just in case you didn't get it yet.

At the old Falcone home, Sofia tells Jim a story about her old life and seems genuinely upset, and I can no longer really tell what her motives are or even what her personality is. They then have sex on the couch, as Jim is wont to do.

And the final scene is... Ra's being escorted into prison and giving an ominous glare to the camera. That's it.


That really wasn't as bad as I expected, mainly down to Barbara's minimal presence, the emergence of Ra's as a fresh and interesting villain, and the genuinely enjoyable Penguin material. Was still a slog, but... you did fine by the Gotham metric, Ben.
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Re: Gotham

Postby LunarTeaHouse » Sat Oct 28, 2017 1:54 am

I must be crazy, but I actually LOVE Gotham? I recognize that it's over-acted and over costumed and over makeup'd, and the dialogue is BEYOND cheesy, and the plot could have been written by a child. But honestly, comic books are supposed to be like that! I love that it doesn't take itself seriously. And the portrayals of Penguin, Riddler, and Falcone are excellent, in my opinion. I hope this opens many more roles for Robin Lord Taylor; I think he is just a joy to watch. Even just watching his eyes or his subtle facial expressions or the inflections in the way he speaks are fun. I think he's a great actor who breathes a lot of life into the show.

I also really enjoy the costumes and the over-dramatization, it feels like watching a stage play. One of my favorite parts of all, however, has to be the set design. Each frame looks like it was ripped straight out of a comic book. The contrasts of light/dark, the silhouette'd alleyways with neon signs and the 70s-style Crown Vic GCPD cop cars...

I dunno. I think it's pretty fun for what it is, you just can't take it too seriously. It's not Citizen Kane or anything, and the scenes with Bruce and Selena are cringeworthy, but it's fairly entertaining overall.
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Sat Oct 28, 2017 3:33 am

LunarTeaHouse wrote:I must be crazy, but I actually LOVE Gotham? I recognize that it's over-acted and over costumed and over makeup'd, and the dialogue is BEYOND cheesy, and the plot could have been written by a child. But honestly, comic books are supposed to be like that! I love that it doesn't take itself seriously.


I won't judge your opinion, since you're not one of the fans who chastises everyone for not getting it as if it's high art. I evaluate it the way I do, however, because:

- Bruno Heller has at several points spoken of his show as if it was a gripping, well-written character drama, while at the same time bashing a few other comic book shows I actually like.
- It's tonally inconsistent; I actually do really enjoy when the stars align and I can see what it's going for, but the last time it felt consistently silly in a good way for me was the last time Baby Joker was onscreen. Those great episodes few and far between just make me hate the show more because of the wasted potential.
- I passionately hate too many of the characters, including Jim Gordon himself, too much for me to just sit back and laugh at their nonsensical antics.

And so on.
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