Gotham

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Re: Gotham

Postby DashaBlade » Tue Dec 06, 2016 7:35 pm

I told you it was terrible. At the end of the episode, I felt like this:



And mind you, I watched it on broadcast TV, where I was able to get up and get a drink during commercial breaks. Believe you me, get drinks, I certainly did.
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Fri Jan 20, 2017 11:24 am

It's the eve of Coronation Day for the Great Savior Trump, so to celebrate, why not dip our heads in some horseshit and start munchin' away? Yes, Gotham is back. I continue my lonesome descent to the depths of insanity for -- hopefully -- your continued amusement.



Let's get right back to it with "Ghosts", presumably named for the wails of the tortured spirits Bruno Heller jerks off to as he writes his scripts.

Spoiler: show
We open on Mario's funeral, which is actually a sort-of decent scene by this show's standards. Mario was a useless mound of pig offal as a character, but everyone looks sufficiently sad about his death, and Ben McKenzie sells some pensive expressiveness and okay lines to Bullock as he watches from the hillside. He's busy justifying the kill, and apparently Bullock knows it was lawful even though the knife conveniently sprouted wings and flew away, but none of that matters -- Falcone looks up as Jim walks away, and we know things are about to go south. Ominous, even if we only got to this point because of contrivances upon contrivances upon contrivances.

Suddenly, we cut from the glare on Mario's mother's sunglasses into Penguin walking through a door, because this show wants to pretend it's cinematic now. He walks into what's apparently a surprise media gathering and is told by a peppy young woman that his latest figures are in, and he prepares for the worst as he walks in. Unsurprisingly, it's the opposite of what he expected -- his approval is through the roof, crime is way down, yadda yadda. After he waves and mugs for the cameras, some blond asshole named Tarquin -- apparently the new Deputy Chief of Staff in Ed's absence -- walks up and tells him about a woman named Margaret Hearst, who has a hitherto-unmentioned show that people nationwide watch, and she's waiting in Penguin's office to meet him. Penguin agrees to capitalize on the opportunity in spite of the fact that Tarquin looks and sounds about as loyal and reliable as Starscream. I'm keeping an eye on him and hoping that he's introduced as a threat that will bring Penguin and Nygma back together.

... Yes. YES. Oh, please tell me this is what I think it is. Jim comes home to find Zsasz in his kitchen, nonchalantly drinking milk and telling him how fucked he is. According to the delightful motherfucker, Falcone is long past the point where negotiation is acceptable, and it's only a matter of time until he gives Zsasz the order to put a cap in Jim's ass. Shooting down all of Jim's attempts to reason and arrange a meeting, he then tells him it's nothing personal and starts walking out, casually thanking him over his shoulder for killing Mario (no one actually liked him) and praising his marksmanship. Oh, please tell me this is finally an episode where Jim has to outrun Zsasz. I'm so hesitant to get my hopes up, but Zsasz has been comically underserved in the past after such an excellent showcase in "Penguin's Umbrella", and if this episode is just about him, I will temporarily forgive ten things I hated about the mid-season finale. Bring it on, Heller. Don't disappoint me again.

After the title card (and "guest-starring Cameron Monaghan"... I'd almost forgotten about that tease and might have been surprised, so thanks, guys), we cut to Selina and her mother staring down in a dingy loft. As much as I hate Selina and think her actress has only gotten marginally more tolerable since the show began, this is also a surprisingly decent scene (the fact that it's not down the tubes yet frightens me). Mommy Dearest makes some excuses about why she had to abandon Selina, but she's unwilling to answer Selina's question about her father and is forced out by a bitter Selina. She also cautiously asks Selina whether she's dating Bruce, which... I hope that's just a parental concern gag and not a hint that she and Bruce are actually secret relatives. On a show with incestuous necrophilia, anything is possible. Also, apparently Selina is 16! That may be the most surprised I've been in this entire season.

Penguin meets the aforementioned Margaret Hearst, who quickly makes clear that she's not a fan of him (given that crime is apparently at a record low in Gotham City of all places, I can't see why) and says that they'll either do the interview live at city hall or she'll leave and take the exposure opportunity with her. Undeterred, Penguin agrees to the utterly arbitrary and contrived terms. Ooh, boy. I can see this goiiiiiiiiiwhat the hell? As Margaret walks out, Penguin sees what I'm pretty sure is the ghost of his father standing in the hall, which walks away with some scare chords as Penguin unsuccessfully limps after it. Hm. I cannot for the life of me imagine a plot development that will make this seem like anything other than unnecessary nonsense.

Back at the GCPD, Lucius shows Jim and Bullock the charred body of a young woman who was found wandering the train tracks the previous night. She's had a few thousand volts run through her system, and she died of heart failure in the ambulance. Then comes the rub: she was actually killed three days prior by her boyfriend and sent to the morgue, where her body suddenly vanished. Apparently she was raised from the dead Frankenstein-style, which... sigh. Bullock gets in a few good lines questioning whether anyone dies in Gotham anymore and referring to the morgue as a motel, but it doesn't excuse the fact that the show is dredging up new ways to bring back dead characters with Strange's bullshit done and over with.

And right then, for maximum awkwardness... Lee walks in. Lee walks into the GCPD with an entourage, decked out in a long black fur coat because we have to signify that this character is antagonistic now, and hollers that Jim should be arrested for Mario's murder. And, uh... apparently even she knows Mario was infected now. So the whole cliffhanger was pointless. It didn't matter that the knife slid off the dock, because of bullshit that was just skipped over. Nobody is sympathetic to her case, especially not when she brings up Michael Chiklis still being alive despite being infected, ignoring the many, MANY extenuating circumstances and differences between the two cases. Lee was a relatively logical character once, but now she's reduced to just another scorned harpy who's promising to make Jim's life hellish. She has completely valid reasons to hate Jim's guts, and I would even support her breaking into his house at night and vivisecting him with silverware, but I just cannot deal with whatever trite bullshit this subplot has to offer. Get to the Zsaszening already!

'Twas a dark and stormy night, and Penguin wakes up to the sound of his certificate of sanity from Arkham being smashed against the floor. Once again, we see Paul Reubens walk by in a nightcap and cartoon pajamas, only this time he stops and tells Oswald to help him, also mentioning that "he is not to be trusted" before vanishing. Yep, Tarquin is duh evulz. Then some police visit Penguin's door and notify him that someone broke into the cemetery and dug up his father's remains. So Tarquin is making zombies, and we're getting ZOMBIE FUCKING PEE-WEE. The incredible stupidity aside, a question: if this is a real ghost, as all evidence seems to indicate, have we had any precedent for the spiritual or supernatural on this show? Or is Heller just introducing ghosts now for the sake of the plot? 'Cause I have a near-photographic memory of this shitshow, and I don't seem to remember mysterious phantoms popping up elsewhere. Kind of an odd thing to bring up when we're two-and-a-half seasons into this universe. Whatever. I'm too tired to care.

Jim and Bullock visit the local morgue, which is staffed solely by a lonesome schmuck named Dwight Pollard. Dwight is a really bad actor with a constant nasally twang, and he's also the spitting image of Eminem circa the early 2000s, so I will refer to him as such because I have nothing better to do with my life. As they examine the slab where the missing corpse was supposed to be, Jim first gets jump-scared by the sound of a janitor mopping (a janitor who wasn't in that shot a second ago), and then sees a small sticker or something with a Joker face on it, which -- for reasons I can't wrap my head around -- he refuses to tell Bullock about. Instead, he vaguely suggests that they wait there and see where Shady takes them.

Bruce and Alfred are at home, pensively studying the crystal owl bullshit they retrieved from their bullshit spy mission in the bullshit mid-season finale bullshit. Bruce suggests holding it for leverage in case they come for it again, which is a brilliant idea when your enemy consists of a presumed army of murderous assassin extraordinaires who no doubt have the entire diagram of your mansion on the record, secret cave included. There's a knock at the door, which turns out to be Selina's mother dropping off a mysterious box full of Important Plot and Character Development Materials that she couldn't just hand off to Selina in the loft because the script said she couldn't. But more importantly, as Bruce leaves the owl unattended, the light shines through and reveals something in the center, glowing and rippling like water in the light waves! ... Because the show had to find something to outdo the stupidity of its magic blood virus!

As they stake out Shady's house for some reason, Bullock gets a call revealing that the guy used to work at -- you guessed it -- Indian Hill. How anyone who worked there was not arrested and prevented from being around any more corpses is beyond me, but for the sake of plot convenience, fine (and apparently it's not Tarquin doing the zombie shit, but that fucker's still evil, I know it in my gut). Shady leaves his apartment and takes a mysterious phone call, which no doubt has something to do with Jerome. If I'm right about what exactly it has to do with Jerome, I'll examine my problems with it in more detail.

Brief cut to Lee and Falcone chatting about how they're both fine with killing Jim. I support this decision enthusiastically in spite of all the bullshit it took to get here.

Bruce and Selina romance... ugh. Blah blah, she's your mother and you have to forgive her, such and such. Oh, and the box contains all of Selina's childhood toys, because of course it does. Then Mommy Dearest walks in, and INSTANT HUG OF TEARFUL FORGIVENESS. Give me a break.

Jim and Bullock continue following Shady as he totes a bag with the Joker face sticker into a dark alley. Tailing him, they enter an abandoned casino of some sort and realize that the annual Gathering of the Juggalos is being held there. Shady takes the stage and haltingly rants out a 13-year-old's manifesto about the media, taxes, and the shackles of the common man's mind, which prompts uproarious applause from the gathered Suicide Squad cosplayers. Once he's done with his terrible acting, he rolls the clip of Jerome's message from the police station slaughter, which everyone has memorized and is laughing and chanting along with and oh my god it really is like an insufferable convention panel of teenagers. I get that it's meant to be heightened and campy when the show can hold that tone for two seconds, but it's just... embarrassing. Jim and Bullock feel the same way and try to break things up, which prompts a one-sided beatdown as they pursue the fleeing Shady. Running out the back of the place through the last squabblings of fleeing clown fangirls, they try to figure out where Shady went, and... OH HELL YEAH, BABY! FINALLY! Zsasz strolls up to a balcony in the background and starts spraying machine gun fire. Jim and Bullock obviously make it to cover without a scratch because they're magic, but as two more punk gunwomen with neon hair close in, Jim assures Bullock that they're only here to kill him and makes a terrible bullet-time run across the path and away from the site.

Jim barges into an Italian restaurant kitchen that I only know is Italian because there's literally a guy shouting "EYYY DA PIZZA-PASTA" in the background. Taking cover behind the counter as the cooks flee, Jim manages to take out one of the women with a single shot, and then captures the other when she stupidly crawls over the counter and doesn't have her gun pointed directly at him. Zsasz strolls in and fires, but Jim uses the surviving chick as a bullet shield because Gotham sure does love and respect its female characters. Jim then takes cover behind a pillar as Zsasz switches to his classic pistol dual-wielding, strolling up and monologuing about how Jim had a good run. For some reason, he doesn't just fill the pillar with bullets. For some OTHER reason, he's then distracted when Jim kicks out a food cart, and he starts incessantly firing at it and looks confused when he walks up and sees that Jim isn't the food cart. Jim then dive-tackles him from behind the same pillar Zsasz saw him duck behind, and they engage in a fight that Jim easily wins as he knocks Zsasz out cold. Again.

Image

- One Dramatic Rolling of the Eyes Later -

Brief revisit to Penguin's manor for more ghost bullshit. This time Pee-Wee clarifies that Penguin is not to trust "the birthday boy," so... I guess happy birthday, Tarquin. I'm also starting to consider that this might somehow be a plot by Ed to drive Penguin insane, even though the planning and technology required to pull this shit off is physically impossible (since Penguin's flashlight reflects the ghost, there's clearly something there that disappears in the blink of an eye). It makes slightly more sense than ghosts, and I have to wonder what he and the Useless Bitch Duo are up to.

For some reason, Lee goes to Arkham and interviews Michael Chiklis, who's now a sneering Anthony Hopkins Lecter type. Lee tries to get Chiklis to say that Mario could've had a normal life and that there's a cure for the magic virus, which only launches him into more manic "I AM JUDGE JURY EXECUTIONER" shit that scares Lee away and proves the point she was trying to disprove. So this little encounter is going to either scare her back into Jim's arms, or she's going to double down on her nonsense beliefs. Either way, I... zzzzzzzzz...

- One Unenthused Nap and Minor Aneurysm Later -

Penguin walks into city hall, exhausted, and hears everyone chanting "Happy Birthday" for Tarquin. Welp. Now I know for certain that it's Nygma's plot, and that Tarquin wasn't actually evil (at least not in this case; sooner or later, I know he would have garroted Penguin from behind and worn his scalp as a crown). Only question is how the fuck, but I'll wait and see. Penguin limps into Tarquin's office and finds his father's decayed corpse stashed in a duffel bag in the closet, and while I completely see how believable it is that Tarquin would hide a rotting corpse away for sexual gratification, I don't know how the once-brilliant criminal mastermind wouldn't see such an obvious frame-up job. Tarquin walks in right on cue, eating some birthday cake that no doubt contains cremated infant remains, but when he reacts with shock, Penguin doesn't let him justify himself. The sad, sick saga of Grand Moff Tarquin comes to an end, then, with Penguin bludgeoning him to death with a golfing trophy just as he's getting called up for the interview -- in his panic, he then rushes away without even trying to hide the trophy or the body.

Yep. Lee strides right into Falcone's chambers and pleads with him to call off the hit. The dialogue in this exchange is structured really weirdly, and the ideas she and he are relating to each other don't really flow together like a human conversation would, but that doesn't matter. What matters is... that Falcone boldly proclaims that Lee still loves Jim. AND LEE DOESN'T DENY IT. This is... I don't even have the energy to call this out in-story. This is tripe. This is hacky, stupid Bruno Heller tripe.

Jim and Bullock rendezvous at home, and Bullock has brought a shotgun just in case. Good thing, too, because Zsasz shows up, wrecks the living room with chaotic fire, and then holds Bullock hostage just before Jim gets the shotgun to the back of Zsasz's head, resulting in a flaccid almost-Mexican Standoff. Don't get too excited, though, because just as it looks like Zsasz might escalate things, Falcone strolls in and calls the hit off. Zsasz at least mitigates some of the disappointment with his casual, happy-go-lucky exit, but it's Falcone's words to Jim that just... kill me.

Falcone: "If it were up to me... you'd be dead."

MOTHERFUCKER, IT IS UP TO YOU. ZSASZ ANSWERS SOLELY TO YOU. YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO LISTEN TO LEE'S TERRIBLE LOVE WHATEVER-FUCKINESS AND YOU ARE CLEARLY STILL GRIEVING OVER YOUR SON. YOU HAVE NOT CHANGED. YOU COULD HAVE ACCOMPLISHED SO MUCH. YOU USED TO BE THE MOB BOSS WHO GOT SHIT DONE. REMEMBER WHEN YOU CHOKED OUT THAT ONE CHICK? PRETTY NASTY. WHAT IF THAT WAS JIM? PRETTY COOL, HUH?! YOU LIKE THAT IDEA? ZSASZ WAS RIGHT. FUCKING. THERE.

Uh... uh... uuuuuuh...

- One Minor Stroke Later -

All right, at least it's minutes from ending. Penguin is conducting his interview, and he predictably botches it when he sees Pee-Wee's ghost carrying the bloodied trophy. He promptly goes apeshit and runs away, losing his mind on national television as we see a few families and cops turn from their TV sets to laugh. Then? Cut to Nygma watching from the sidelines, of course. So how did he accomplish this grand ruse, merely the first step in his plan to destroy Penguin? He manipulated Tarquin (you were playing with fire there, Eddie -- be thankful you didn't catch him on an off day) and hired Clayface from way back in the Season 2 finale to impersonate Paul Reubens. There are a couple of gaping problems with this, namely how the flashbacks do nothing to explain the thoroughly inexplicable disappearing acts and the fact that nobody else ever noticed Clayface strutting around and antagonizing Penguin in public, but fuck it. Fine. I don't have the capacity to care anymore. And of course, we just couldn't go one episode without a special guest appearance from Barb and Tabby, still as illness-inducingly godawful as ever. Seems this "Riddler destroys everything Penguin loves so these catty gal-pals can be on top" plot isn't ending any time soon. Get me out of here.

Selina goes along with her mother to retrieve some things from her apartment before she leaves Gotham, but waiting inside is a man whom her mother seems abjectly terrified of. Apparently, this guy -- "Cole" -- is the reason why she had to abandon Selina and flee the city all those years ago, and he's an unbelievably dangerous enemy the likes of which we've never seen before. Cole wants some money and roughs up the unresisting mother (whose name we learn is Maria) until Selina puts a stop to it, but when she lets slip that Bruce Wayne can pay him whatever he's owed, Cole promises that he'll pay the kid a visit and leaves. Maria reacts like Selina just let a pack of rabid tigers into Bruce's bedroom, and Selina seems terrified as well, even though Cole seems to be a low-level crime boss at best. On the sliding scale of cliffhanger threats, he's barely first season material. The only way he'll be a problem is if he happens to steal the crystal bullshit owl and becomes a nuisance for an episode or two because we have to pad this season out for a while.

With that all done, we have the last scene. Shady (who no longer bears his resemblance to his namesake, but the name stays) strolls into a menacing underground laboratory where a hunched-over Igor type frantically asks him if he was followed. If it wasn't obvious, we now learn that Shady is the leader of a cult trying to resurrect Jerome, and that they either have his corpse in a stasis tank or they've located it. All right. QUESTION: Were we not clearly teased with a shock of red hair and a familiar laugh amidst the lousy bus monster teaser at the end of the second season? I know it wasn't just me: quite a few others in discussions I peered into highlighted the moment. Yet here he is, still being presented as a dead bitch. Just like Mad Hatter didn't actually have anything to do with Arkham or Strange even though Strange had that shitty tease where he was going to use Alice in Wonderland to brainwash someone. You know why this is? Because Bruno Heller is a fucking hack bitch who makes shit up as he goes along, forgets his own narrative, and lives for the social media teases, and I'm fucking sick and tired of it.

I can't even be happy that Jerome's coming back, even though he grew on me. I'm so frustrated.


Ah... I need to go lie down. This was... not good. Less than not good. This was none good. Anti-good.

Fitting for the day, though. Fitting for the day.
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:45 pm

Well, it's been a hot minute, but I've managed to clear out enough time in my busy schedule to look at these two garbage fires. And yes, there's still only two, because Gotham decided to go into ANOTHER EXTENDED BREAK after three episodes from the mid-season finale. It's just that kind of show. Oh, well -- less work and suffering for me.

We begin with "Smile Like You Mean It". This one has another insufferable title and the Hulu thumbnail is just a picture of Barbara, so I know what I'm in for:

Spoiler: show
We open on two cops playing cards in some kind of warehouse, coincidentally getting "joker's wild" -- har har -- before they're surprised by Shady and the hundreds-strong Insane Clown Posse strolling confidently up toward them. Cop #1 opens fire, somehow only succeeding in taking down one of the lunatics off to the side and consistently missing Shady by a few inches. Suddenly, as Cop #1 yells at Cop #2 to call for backup, Cop #2 violently stabs Cop #1 and starts cackling, revealing that he's also one of these Hot Topic edgelords, somehow. The still-laughing cop guides Shady and his mob into the back of the warehouse, where we see the cryogenic tube containing Jerome's corpse that last episode ended on (and we're still not acknowledging the plot hole, but I no longer care). Shady lets loose a really terrible cackle and we're off to the races.

After the title card, we see Jim staring solemnly into the middle distance as it's revealed that the corpse was stolen, with the tube now bearing hip edgy Joker graffiti. Thankfully, we're not wasting any time dicking around -- Jim and Bullock immediately understand that Shady is planning to bring back Jerome, and when Lucius explains the theoretical steps to post-cryogenic corpse reanimation, he gives them a time limit of about three hours at maximum until Jerome lives. Whether this accounts for fixing the damage done to Jerome's throat that killed him in the first place, or if that's already been healed for some reason, I haven't the foggiest -- but knowing Bruno Heller, he forgot exactly how Jerome died and is just hoping we forgot as well. Suddenly, the trio hear a noise nearby; investigating, they find a mortally wounded Juggalo behind some crates. Lucius says that he clearly needs a hospital, but our valiant hero denies this for some reason. Given that he kneecapped two random people for no reason two episodes ago, I fully expect Jim to kick a puppy under a bus in his next scene.

Cut to Bruce and Alfred negotiating with that Cole asshole I'd completely forgotten about. Considering Alfred has enough fighting experience to put this little rat down in seconds, I have no idea why everyone's still acting as if he's a monumental threat, but let's see where it goes (probably to inane bullshit). Cole doubles what Maria owes him to $200,000 arbitrarily, "interest" on the price for some kind of contract she failed to carry out. If they refuse to pay up, he'll leak enough information to the GCPD to put Maria behind bars, taking her out of Selina's life once again. I reiterate, Cole has no actual leverage here, and they would have no incentive to pay him if they only used their brains for five seconds. He has no men backing him, he's apparently unarmed, and he doesn't look like the kind of guy who could set the information to auto-upload from a computer. There are dozens of solutions to this that would resolve the subplot in this scene alone. USE YOUR FUCKING MINDS, BOYS. THIS IS NOT THE MOST DANGEROUS ENEMY ON YOUR PLATE AT THE MOMENT.

Of course, part of me wonders if Cole is actually Selina's father, and this is all part of a con Mommy and Daddy are running to abscond with $200k because they're both heartless rats. But that doesn't change that Bruce and Alfred should know better.

Jim predictably denied the man medical treatment so he could interrogate him, though he was so badly cut up that I'm surprised he even made it to the station. There's a brief encounter with Lee, and it's the usual bickering bullshit that's just setup for when they inevitably get back together, so it doesn't matter. Jim then walks in to where they're holding the man (who looks remarkably better than he did in the last scene), who tells him after light questioning that Jerome's awakening is only the first step, and that they are everywhere. Realizing something as the cackling begins again, Jim has every cop in the district put on the lookout for more graffiti like what was painted on the empty tube. I'm going to guess this is leading to some kind of Joker army, and while I'm not opposed to that in concept -- it's stupid, but it's the right kind of stupid -- I can't get excited for it, because I know this show will badly fuck it up somehow.

Cut to Shady and Igor in the lab, slowly raising the core body temperature of Jerome's corpse to the level that matches what Lucius predicted. When it's done and Igor is dismissed, Shady cackles and pulls the lever to start the shocking, and Jerome's eyes instantly start to flutter open. At least we're not wasting time, right? Who knows -- maybe the kid'll give the energy of early Season 2 back to these episodes.

Awakening in a drunken stupor on his couch, Penguin sees -- ugh -- Barbara reading a headline about his on-air contrived mental breakdown. SHOCKINGLY, Barbara isn't actually mind-shreddingly terrible in this scene, mainly because Erin Richards isn't hamming it up to the nth degree and making her terrible coy remarks and #LOLRANDOM non sequitur "jokes". She just seriously reprimands him and tells him that he needs to get his act together, because the other mafia clans have taken notice and she supposedly fears for her own life if another one gains power. Obviously, she rebuffs Penguin's constant questions of Ed's whereabouts, and walks off telling him to get his shit together. Some tiny, fleeting part of me hopes that Barb's real plan is to double-cross and expose Ed so she can get in good with Penguin, because that would be slightly preferable to the storm of concentrated awfulness that is the current subplot, but... ugh. Just ugh. I hate this whole narrative so much.

Next, we have Bruce, Alfred, Selina, and Maria sitting around with Cole's payment already prepared. Selina advises against paying him because he'll inevitably be back to ask for more money, which is a sound suggestion that Bruce and Alfred blithely brush off because the script demands it. Maria then suggests that she could leave town again as a last resort, in such a casual way that -- whether it's just the actress's poor performance or what -- rubs me the wrong way and makes me more keen on my "long con" theory. Pissed off that the two idiots are just being big dumb idiots, Selina storms off in a huff. Again, I must remind everyone that THEY SHOULD BE FIGHTING THE COURT OF OWLS RIGHT NOW. THIS SHOW HAS NO PRIORITIES.

At the GCPD, Jim and Bullock are examining photos from across the city of the same Joker smile graffiti, and Bullock speculates that the army of followers might be so large that it has to be separated into "chapters" like a motorcycle gang. As they banter about this, Lucius runs up and tells them that a power surge consistent with the requirements to resurrect Jerome just occurred, and Jim and Bullock haul ass to the location with a strike team in tow. As they leave, however, a random cop answers the phone and reveals that he's another follower, somehow. This plot had better not turn into a bunch of mole reveals, because that will get tiresome VERY quickly.

Back in the lab, Jerome... fails to awaken. So I guess we ARE wasting a bit of time, of course. Igor runs in and starts to report that the mole told him the police are on their way, but panics when he sees Jerome still dead and reminds Shady that he spent a year promising the followers that they would get to see their ringleader's face again. After an "amusing" exchange about turning the equipment on and off again, Shady frustratedly kills Igor by scorching a hole in his chest with a live wire, and then... zuh?! Oh. Oh, dear. Shady remarks that the followers do want to see Jerome's face... and positions a scalpel to cut it off. OH CHRIST. Tell me they're not putting their own spin on that wretched New 52 edgelord storyline where the Joker cuts off his own face and wears it like a mask, whether with Shady wearing the face and becoming the new Joker, or Jerome suddenly coming back to life and playing it straight. If that happens... I don't know. I don't know what I'll do. I don't have many more veins and arteries to burst in rage.

... Heavy sigh. Jim and Bullock rush in, find Igor's body, and then find Jerome on the table with his face cut off (rendered with a terrible special effect that just looks like he's splashed in a light coating of paint). Then we cut to another Gathering of the Juggalos, at which we find Shady greeting the shocked crowd while wearing Jerome's face as a stiff, cheap-looking, Michael Myers-esque mask. The crowd is initially upset, but Shady (now muffled worse than TDKR's Bane) gets them back on his side by proclaiming that Jerome never left: they are all Jerome. This somehow convinces them all, and they are united in a cultish chant of "WE. ARE. JEROME. WE. ARE. JEROME." So is this Heller backing down again from making Jerome the Joker, returning us to exactly where we were before-

Nope. Back in Lee's office, Jerome's fingers start to move. So we are doing Faceless Mask Joker, presumably when Jerome kills Shady and takes the mask back. Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

Lucius comes into Bullock's office and informs him that the call tipping off Igor came from within the precinct, and thus, they have a mole. Not keen on wasting time, Jim walks out to the balcony and makes an announcement about it, then starts dialing the number the call came from. The bluff works, and the mole stupidly makes a break for it and gets his ass caught.

So Penguin walks into a bar... specifically, Barb's club. And Barb is back to being terrible. Surprised to find nobody gathered for his supposed comeback when Barb promised to notify everyone of a gathering, he is advised to make an example of two lieutenants who might be plotting to overthrow him (one of them recurring minor mobster Tommy Bones). Instead, he pulls a knife on her and lashes back that he's not that easy to manipulate (err... guess again, buddy), but then gets a call from Tommy Bones explicitly confirming what Barb just told him, along with telling him that they have Nygma hostage. In his lovestruck stupor, Penguin goes nuts and calls up his men to lead a charge on Tommy Bones' hideout. As soon as he leaves, Barb calls Tabitha (who is also still awful) and tells her it worked; Tommy Bones is actually being held hostage by her, and she casually shoots him as soon as she can. Wonderful.

In the interrogation room, the usual routine is done on the mole, ending with Bullock savagely beating him against a wall before Jim pulls him off as Lee walks in, the traitorous cop still cackling. Lee injects him with sodium pentathol to make him talk, and then Jim follows her out as she leaves and they have another stupid confrontation that casts Lee as the spurned, vengeful wife. I'm too tired of the repetition to chronicle any of this in meaningful detail. Doesn't matter, though, because the guy talks and we learn that Shady is planning on taking over a TV station to make a Jerome-esque public announcement. Presumably (hopefully), Jerome will see this and go off to kill him, so we can be rid of this increasingly dull villain and get a good one back.

Despite Bullock hurriedly calling up the station to evacuate, when we cut to them, they're all just standing around in the middle of the studio talking about what to do and why they should be evacuating. As cosmic punishment for their slobbering stupidity, Shady and company march in, killing one and taking the rest as hostages. We've still got a bit to go in the episode, but this feels like a merciful climax.

... There we are. Lee walks into her office to find Jerome's body missing and a guard dead, and is then ambushed and taken hostage by Jerome, who's thoroughly bandaged up his face in a way that makes the bandages, blood, and poking-out hair look like the classic Joker face. Yeah, Jerome is back and better than ever, even though Cameron Monaghan is still doing Heath Ledger-lite. His long exchange with a tied-up Lee about all he's missed during his death is packed with genuinely amusing dialogue, especially the part when Lee tells him that Galavan also came back to life before dying again. It blows my mind that this kid on this shitty TV show is turning in a far better Joker performance than Jared Leto in a triple-A studio tentpole movie. Although there is a rather creepy and unnecessary element of sexual harassment to the scene, as he flirtatiously questions whether they got together while motioning toward his dick before coming creepily close to putting his tongue on her face, but Heller's grotesque fetishes and blatant disrespect for women are old hat at this point. That aside, I am surprisingly glad to see Jerome again.

Brief cut to Jim and the cops pulling up to the TV station, whereupon they see a Juggalo having taken a cop (a black female cop, because even a generally forgiving guy like me grows weary of the pattern) hostage with a bunch of grenades strapped to her chest. And that's it for that.

I was right about the con. But it's not like it wasn't thoroughly predictable from just how stupid everyone was being. No confirmation on Cole being the father yet, but he does call her "baby," so it's likely. Since Selina walks right in to greet Maria and Cole as they celebrate, I'm guessing Bruce (and possibly Alfred) also saw through it -- thus making this entire conflict a pointless bit of filler! Hooray! The scene ends with Selina deciding not to slit Cole's throat and instead storming off, screaming at her mother to never come back to Gotham, because that threatening statement has a history of working like a charm on this show.

Back to the main action, Jim has a call with Shady in which the latter simply repeats lines that Joker said to him during the attack on the gala that saw Jerome die, and intentionally draws parallels between the two incidents. Bored by the repetition (for once, we can agree), Jim hangs up and starts drawing the plan of attack with Bullock as Shady, enraged, screams "I AM JEROME!" while preparing for his broadcast. This looks hilariously ridiculous coming out of a pair of rubbery lips that barely flap around, but I no longer have the energy to laugh at anything other than the real Jerome's lines.

Ah, yes, Barb and Tabby are back in a room together while a couple of mafia heads argue in front of them, and... holy shit, this may be the worst scene in the entire episode, not even just because these two are slices of dull, soggy bread making up a shit sandwich. They loudly discuss how they manipulated the mafia heads and how they're going to kill Nygma after killing Penguin, but nobody turns to them. The argument is not that loud, and Barb and Tabby aren't even attempting a stage whisper, but everyone's just magically deaf while this loud exchange happens beside them. After another kiss meant purely for more of Heller's lesbian sexploitation, Tabby grabs a machine gun, stands up, and guns down the mob bosses WHILE FUCKING "AVE MARIA" PLAYS IN THE BACKGROUND. Jesus. This isn't even an attempt at being faux artsy or ironically campy. It's just bad. So fucking... shameful. SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.

Brief cut to Jerome watching Shady make his fumbling, awkward, lip-flapping broadcast with the still restrained Lee. Jerome mocks Shady's lack of stage presence and charisma before putting on a cop's uniform and heading out to go reclaim his face, leaving Lee as a bound-and-gagged damsel in distress for the umpteenth time. We follow him as he pulls out onto the street, drives along, and gleefully hits some random guy before speeding away from the screaming crowd. You know what, Jerome? You're all right.

Meanwhile, Jim, Bullock, and the strike team infiltrate the building through a conspicuously unguarded man-sized air duct, free the hostages, and promptly gun down every clown in the broadcasting room. Shady makes a sloppy run for it, but is effortlessly caught and arrested anyway. Hopefully he dies soon, because his awkward cackling is getting on my nerves.

Yep. Bruce saw through the ruse, Selina is mad at him for lying. Moving right along.

As Shady gets marched away in cuffs, Lee -- rescued offscreen by the other cops -- calls Jim to tell him that Jerome is somehow back to life and on his way to their location. Jim runs after the cop escorting him (last seen mere seconds ago), only to find him somehow knifed to death silently and magically in full view of several witnesses. Shady is nowhere to be found, until we cut to him and Jerome speeding away in their police car, with the face preserved in a freezer bag.

Immediately thereafter (where a commercial break would normally be if I wasn't catching up on Hulu), we find Jerome surgically stapling his face back on in a rather wince-worthy display, completing the transformation to look very much like Faceless Mask Joker. He claims not to be mad at his impersonator -- whom I'm now going to refer to by his real name of Dwight, since he might have further importance -- but I can't tell whether he's serious or not. He does make Dwight his assistant as he sets something up, saying that they have big plans tonight, so we'll see how that pans out.

With only a few minutes to go, Penguin is standing before his remaining lieutenants and screaming at them for not checking harder at any of the places Ed might have been held hostage. Even his brick-stupid mobsters can see through the ruse and try to tell Penguin that Nygma's plotting against him, but since plans in Gotham can only succeed on the stupidity of their victim rather than the intelligence of their planner, Ozzie's still too lovestruck to believe it for a second. Just then, Ed calls him up, claiming to be at a place called Kane Chemicals (or Cane Chemicals, or Cain Chemicals; I'm not sure); thus, Penguin shoots down all of his men's pleas and orders them to mobilize for that place.

Back at the GCPD, Bullock is told that random violence has broken out after the broadcast despite Dwight's general incompetence, but just when things can't seem to get any worse, Jerome suddenly starts broadcasting from a stolen news camera. I changed Dwight's name back just in time, because it turns out Jerome really was mad -- the poor, dull little fucker is now strapped to a ludicrous amount of explosives, ranging from a grenade belt to a bunch of explosive barrels beside him and more. I won't even ask where they procured all of this, because I like the setup too much. Before lighting the fuse and skipping gaily away, Jerome announces his resurrection to the city and gives everyone permission to lose their minds and riot after what he does next; as he makes his escape, Jim recognizes the background as a power plant across the river and races desperately to the roof just as the fuse ticks down to its last nub. And in the first genuinely exciting cliffhanger Gotham's had in a long while, the plant explodes in the distance and the whole city goes dark, heralding madness to come.

So help me, I hope they don't pull an Azralavan and kill Jerome off for good after his resurrection. That'd be a shame.


All in all... a mediocre episode that got surprisingly good, and leaves me genuinely excited to see what's next. We'll see if the show continues its pattern of letting me down with "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies", yet another pretentious title loosely connected to whatever Heller feels like referencing at the time. Let's-a-go:

Spoiler: show
Pretty decent start. The lobby of the GCPD is in chaos as the cops try to herd the cosplayers into cells, but people start getting loose and wreaking havoc anyway. As Bullock shouts orders and Jim solemnly stares into the middle distance, a molotov flies through the window and sets some bit of furniture alight. A clown screams that Jerome is everywhere and that tonight, Gotham will be awakened. Cue title. Please, please, please don't let me down with this. If there is one thing -- one thing -- that Gotham can do well, it's utter campy lunacy, and I want this lunacy to hit all the right beats now that we have Jerome on the loose.

Picking up right where we left off with Penguin, he and two guys (could've sworn he addressed three last time) storm KaneCaneCain Chemicals and are greeted by a dramatically slow-walking Nygma. Oh, dear. This is where the confrontation starts, and I have bad feelings about the resolution. Although when Ed reveals himself and takes out both of Penguin's allies, we get another gold line we've been dry on since Ed lost himself to the temptation of the Barb Side:

Ed: Did you bring anyone else?
Penguin: No, why?
Ed: *coldly draws and headshots both of the guards* Just wondering if I was going to have to reload.

But yeah, we continue on this path in earnest. Ed shows Penguin the car wreckage and screams about how Isabella was his everything, and it just... it still doesn't work. The actor sells his rage fine, but this whole thing was never fucking earned at all from a narrative standpoint. Isabella was a magical non-entity who came into being solely to be Ed's dream girl, she clung to him for too long, and then she just died a few episodes later. We were never invested in them, we don't buy Isabella as a human being (much less as a character), and so it's impossible to see where Ed's rage comes from. This confrontation between the show's best characters, which could have been something truly special, is reduced to piddling Batman v. Superman levels of happenstance and contrivance that I can't muster the will to give a single shit about. *heavy sigh* But let's see where it goes, shall we?

Holy shit, that escalated quickly. Gotham is now completely in flames and laughter echoes through the skyline, making it feel altogether more like a big deal than any mid-season or season finale thus far has tried to be. We're briefly treated to a purposefully vague conversation between Katherine and the mysterious ring-wearing man from "Red Queen" as they overlook the chaos; Katherine suggests that they intervene and derides the faith he places in "him" (Jim, presumably), but the man tells her that the city will bend long before it breaks, and that's that.

At the GCPD, Jim is informed of the rapidly spreading riots, and how it's both Jerome's followers and ordinary citizens who are participating in the looting and killing. Bullock angrily tells him that Penguin is missing, so nobody is in charge of the city right now, and the power won't be back on until tomorrow morning at a minimum. Also, nobody's seen or heard from Jerome, and no one knows what he wants... except, Jim realizes, for Lee. And given that the last thing Jerome mentioned to Lee, and the part they highlight in the "Previously On..." bit, is about how Jerome was this close to killing Bruce Wayne... you son of a bitch. DON'T YOU FUCKING GO BACK TO THIS FUCKING PLOT LINE, HELLER! YOU'D BETTER FUCKING NOT! NO MORE ENDLESS RECYCLING! NOT HERE! NOT NOW!

The confrontation tragically continues as we find Ed binding Penguin to the hood of Isabella's car, right underneath a trap that's part Saw and part Golden Age camp in a way I can't decide if I love or hate: a chain is held in place by a slowly melting block of ice, which will eventually lead to a vat of acid dumping onto Penguin and melting him to death. Ed angrily recounts every step of how he tricked Oswald into going along with his plan, and I have to credit the actor for this: when Ed growls, it sounds demonic. Like, echoey and earthy and powerful in a way I didn't know someone so scrawny could be. Could be post-production, but I'd prefer to believe it's just talent. Anywho, Ed angrily reprimands Penguin for suggesting that he killed Isabella out of love, intones that he cannot truly love because he would sell anyone out to save his own life, and growls a goodbye to Penguin and leaves him thrashing there, making the same mistake Maroni did when he tried to kill Penguin with a car crusher: he's not sticking around to see the results, and an escape will inevitably ensue.

YUP YUP YUP WE'RE BACK TO THIS SHIT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Jim has another encounter with the all-too-snide Lee, who eventually relents and remembers that Jerome wanted to kill Bruce. Jim has her call Alfred right away as he hurries off. Now, there's a slim chance this might be a fake-out, given we're so early into the episode... but if it's played straight, this will be yet another instance of the show wasting a great setup on a simple quest to kill the one character we know for a fact can't be killed. Please tell me it's a fake-out. Please tell me that for once in his miserable life, this hack fucker is being clever.

... We come to Bruce and Alfred trying to find candles for the power outage, and the phone rings. Alfred goes to answer it, pauses ominously, and seems to be listening to something. Then... he's bashed over the head by a clown as he tries to draw his gun, and more clowns appear from the shadows as Jerome strides in, croak-laughing and doing his best strut. The clowns surround him. Jerome taunts him. We're doing this again. We're doing this again. We're. Doing. This. Again. Because. There. Are. No. New. Stories. killemall1989iamtrashmanworldisafuck

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...

...

*sighs heavily, returns to his computer with a glass of a beverage that is absolutely not alcoholic, clicks "Play" and hesitantly resumes analysis*

Alright, at least we have Jerome. For all that every fucking step of this well-worn process was tired by the second season, Cameron Monaghan greases the wheels a bit and has successfully kept me chuckling with all of his lines. Whether it's his grandstanding declarations, his wavy movement, or his quick and muttered "I'm aware" to Bruce's dramatic statement of his name and importance, I just love the fuck out of this sick little bastard and he's the only thing keeping me from checking out right now. So to summarize what goes on in his scene:

- He shatters the mysterious crystal owl for fun, either rendering that whole heist plot worthless or meaning that something will get revealed within it that was previously invisible.
- Bruce manages to stall for time by getting him to relocate the murder spot to somewhere more public and dramatic, which Jerome completely acknowledges is a bluff for time even as he agrees and hauls Bruce away.
- After a surprisingly heartfelt goodbye, Alfred is left to fend for himself against some rifle-wielding clowns with orders to kill him, and I genuinely don't see how he can make it out of this one.

And that's that for now.

Oh, for the love of the screenwriting gods, fuck you, Bruno Heller. As the ice block rapidly melts under the flame and starts to dribble acid between Penguin's legs (wonder whether it was intentional that the gay man is basically threatened with chemical castration before death -- this is a coupling of Bruno Heller and FOX, so it wouldn't surprise me), a random-ass bumbling cop we've never seen before stumbles upon him and is convinced to cut him loose just in the nick of time as the acid pours down. Penguin didn't have to use his cleverness to get free, nor did Ed have a change of heart, nor was it anyone we have any familiarity with who got him out -- just some random-ass cop in the middle of an abandoned chemical factory. Fucking perfect. 10/10, well done, way to devalue every stake you've set for this episode.

And what should follow it but the swift and easy escape of the other predicament I was briefly genuinely worried about? Yep, as these four armed clowns are toying with Alfred and refusing to kill him for god-knows-how-long, Jim sticks his head around the corner and Alfred blatantly signals to him where each assailant is and what they're carrying so they can take them down together. It's all basic stuff, a couple of headshots and a gratuitous machete to the gut by Alfred to finish things off. Then they're off to rescue Bruce, and this episode... this episode...

This episode...

All right. Bruce has a hood over his head through which he can vaguely see and hear carnival sights and sounds. And when Jerome rips it off, where should he be but a demented indoor carnival/amusement park thing where his followers have captured a bunch of civilians and are now torturing and splattering them in the various attractions? This is such a demented, delightful touch that I'm not even going to question the improbable logistics of it, and I hope this setting is used for all it's worth. But alas, the plot shows its hand: Jerome delays the execution until he and Bruce have had a little fun, thus giving Jim and Alfred the perfect amount of time to storm in and do what they will do.

This episode.

Jim and Alfred are recovering at the GCPD, and Bullock pulls up a list of the locations Jerome's men have completely taken over, the last of which is a boardwalk circus that fits the description we just saw. Jim remembers that Jerome was raised in a circus (I'd almost forgotten how shitty Jerome's origins were), and they decide to mobilize the strike team to that location.

Cut back to the circus, where Bruce is enduring the horrible, agonizing torture of... having his face painted like a sad clown. Jerome almost spices things up by suggesting the carving of a smile into Bruce's face, but instead he flips his dagger around, viciously guts a clown standing next to him ('cause villains who murder their own henchman are EXTRA SCARY) and using the blood to paint a frown on Bruce's face. The horror.

Penguin storms back into his manor to order his men to find Ed, only to be ambushed by Butch and Tabby, who state that all of his soldiers and supporters cleared out. Some terrible exchanges ensue, including Tabitha FINALLY reminding everyone that she killed Penguin's mother (which he has a shockingly muted reaction to -- not even tranquil fury, just the facial equivalent of a shrug while he suffocates on her whip), and they decide they can't kill him until Nygma's dead. So Butch pistol-whips him, and they carry him off to surely shittier pastures.

Once more unto the circus, we find Jerome forcing Bruce to watch as he tries to dunk a man into a tank of piranhas. While he winds up and taunts Bruce, he delivers what's basically the Killing Joke "one bad day" speech mixed with that bit in Fight Club when Tyler Durden lists off the mundane occupations who make up his ranks to the guy he almost castrates. Bruce is helpless... until he tries to distract Jerome by insisting that there are good people in Gotham who will stop his maniacs, and Jerome responds thusly:

"Gotham has no heroes."

And god-fucking-damn it all, the Dark Knight-esque horn score swells as Bruce gets a determined look in his eye and gazes upon his future nemesis. Now in full Batbaby mode, he breaks from a clown's grip and shoves Jerome as he tries to throw, causing him to miss the shot. Jerome manually dunks the guy anyway and smiles as Bruce screams into the reddening water, but he decides he'd better take Bruce up on the offer to kill him instead of anyone else and takes off his carny hat to prepare. A bit of his face is falling off, so he clumsily staples it back on, and when Bruce mockingly asks him if it hurts... Jerome responds by putting three staples in Bruce's arm, progressively further up the wrist until even Bruce's pain resistance training can't stop him from breaking down and submitting to being dragged away. That was a bit more hardcore than I expected, and I guess that's the closest thing I'll get to Bruce being meaningfully affected by this experience.

Jim, Bullock, and Alfred pull up in front of the circus, but it turns out all of their backup was conveniently waylaid by another riot on the way. Nevertheless, they get out and prepare to rescue Bruce, because that's how it's done on this show. Inside, Jerome has found time to dress up as a ringmaster and set up a lovely little circus pit for Bruce to be executed in. How will he be executed? Tied to a pole, he has a cannon rolled over to him that will fire a cannonball, some swords, and other unpleasant trinkets point-blank into his face when it goes off. A messy way to go, sure, but also one I can already visualize being prevented. It's just a waiting game now. And bizarrely, the episode's barely half over -- what more could there be?

Well, we get to Jim and company coming in, and they conveniently get word that the strike team has just arrived, so they don't have to put forth any actual effort by themselves! Jim fires his gun into the air as he is wont to do, and the circus turns into a huge riot as the gun-wielding riot cops storm in to break everything up. In the chaos, Jerome manages to light the cannon's fuse before escaping, and nobody is near enough to help without getting pummeled by the many clowns who have yet to be gunned down. What does Bruce do? He messily rips two staples out of his arm and uses them to pick his handcuffs, falling to the ground just as the cannon fires and obliterates the pole. Yet when Jim looks over, Bruce is just... gone. Vanished in the span of a second. Where the hell...?

Brief cut to Penguin being brought before Her Majesty Barbara Kean, Queen of Bullshit, Mother of Aneurysms, First of Her Name, long may she reign. It's an awful scene in which the bad acting, awful hammy camp, and various mannerisms that annoy me about her are all on full display, and she exerts dominance over the character who used to be my very favorite. It's established that if Penguin helps Barb, Tabby, and Butch find Ed, things will go better for him, whereas if he doesn't, he will die. I'm guessing this deal is supposed to tie back to what Ed told him earlier about him being willing to sell anyone out for his own gain, so we'll see how that ends up playing out. My guess is that it will be very similar to Tabitha letting Ed chop her hand off to protect Butch, and Ed might see the error of his ways when Penguin lets himself almost get killed. But we'll see.

Where else would Jerome catch sight of Bruce entering and pursue him than a house of mirrors? In here, there's actually briefly some impressive cinematography as Jerome stalks into a multi-mirror reflective chamber, but it's a sequence that's all too short and ends rather anticlimactically. Bruce menacingly approaches with his reflection on all sides, Jerome panicking and firing at a mirror instead of his true target, and it turns out Bruce intentionally lured him in here to make him pay for what he's done. It might be fun to see Bruce finally channel Batman, but he's still got that stupid clown makeup on and it's impossible to be remotely invested.

Back to the Penguin v. Barb confrontation, and a heaping helping of unfortunate implications about homosexuality to go with it. Penguin refuses to call Ed and find him for the terrible trio, and he goes on a rambling monologue about how he didn't truly love Ed before, which can be summed up with the idea that the show's sole gay male character only ever thought he loved Ed because he needed to be coddled and saw a replacement for Mommy's affection. Eeeeeuuuugh. But apparently he's ready for real love now, and just like I predicted, he refuses to give up Ed's location under penalty of an agonizing death. Thus, Ed comes out to pop the bubble and reveal that he was in it together with them, but that he now doesn't know what to think because he expected Penguin to sell him out. Yep yep yep, all according to my foretold plan.

Time for the big funhouse showdown! Not all that much to say about most of it; Jerome stalks around and occasionally shoots fleeing reflections of Bruce, and then when he challenges Bruce to a fistfight, Bruce tackles him from behind, engages in a little Batbaby fistfight, and violently beats him on the ground. The beating he gives is nasty, with Jerome's face slowly yellowing and coming off, blood sloughing out, the exposed flesh burning red with every punch, and Jerome laughing all the way. But it can only end one way: Bruce stops his beating long enough to grab a mirror shard off the floor and raise it above his head, ready to put Jerome down for good... and then he sees himself in the mirror, bad clown makeup and all. GET IT BECAUSE HE NOW FEARS BECOMING THE JOKER. He drops the shard and leaves Jerome giggling madly on the floor with a half-shredded face, silently vowing to never kill anyone I guess. And thus, the rivalry is formed.

In all honestly, it's not a bad showdown. Just ridiculously on-the-nose.

Following his little epiphany, he runs outside and is greeted by Alfred, whom he thought was dead. There's a tender little reunion scene that's actually somewhat nice... until Jerome stumbles out, his face still bloody and partly hanging off, wielding the mirror shard. Jim happens to run up at that moment and strikes Jerome across the face, ripping out half of the staples and sloughing off the face enough that it's hanging eerily, distracting him almost enough for Jerome to kill him. Then he swings home again and knocks Jerome's face clean off, landing it in a puddle where it just might be destroyed by the moisture. Faceless Jerome gives us a clear look at his damage, which is slightly better than the last episode's rendition if still not that good, and then passes out as Jim looks solemnly on.

As the sun rises, we get a brief check-in with Jim and Bullock at the GCPD essentially summarizing the damage and reporting that Jerome will -- of course -- be sent to Arkham as soon as his face is reattached. As Bullock tries to cheer him up, Jim sees Lee staring at him and huffily walking away, and goes off after her.

Then we have this scene. The Batman scene, basically. Bruce confesses that it felt good almost killing Jerome, like justice would have been done, and Alfred motivates him and assures him that he can control himself with a set of rules, "no killing" being the first one. As the music swells, Bruce repeats "I will not kill", and Alfred tells him that they'll have to get to work on putting those rules and all of his training to some use. It took a lot of constraining and not-quite-logical character arcs, but Bruce Wayne is finally Batman. At least, he's the Bruce Wayne that Batman uses as a disguise. At the age of... fifteen, generously, if Selina's age is to be trusted. Hurk. Ugh. Guh.

Cut to Katherine discussing something with someone out of shot, and... holy shit guys. MOTHERFUCKIN' SALTY BOBBY HAS RETURNED! SALTY BOBBY COMETH! THE SECOND COMING OF SALTY BOBBY IS HERE! He's being dressed up (they trimmed his surfer hair, those rat bastards) and told he'll be able to help save Gotham somehow. The mysterious man with the Gordon family ring reinforces this. End scene.

Then we cut to Jim's apartment, as he's preparing to drown his sorrows (great minds think alike) when suddenly there's a knock at his door. Is it Lee, coming to make up and bang him? Is it Valerie Vale, proving she wasn't just a prop? Nope -- it's the mysterious ring man, whom Jim promptly identifies as his uncle Frank. DUN DUN DUN!

At the very end, we have Penguin pleading Ed not to kill him. Ed is holding a gun to him at what looks like the same dock where Jim originally tried to banish him from Gotham, and it doesn't look like things are going great for Ozzy's chances. Ever the self-sabotager, he tries to convince Ed that they love each other by launching into a frothing rant about how "I CREATED YOU" and such. And Ed... he can't be convinced, even though Penguin had previously proven himself capable of sacrifice. He loved Isabella, somehow, and that's still enough for him to... to... shoot Penguin in the gut and push him off into the water, where we see the last shot of him sinking into the depths with his mouth open in a "not holding breath" position. Which, if he'd really wanted to, he could have done in the first place. Motherfucker.

Do I actually think Penguin is dead? Don't know. On the one hand, he's a popular character, and it's Gotham, so even if he is dead there's a chance he'll be brought back to life somehow. On the other hand, the way the character has been so steadily humiliated, turned into a dumbass, and shunted off after coming to terms with his sexuality reeks of "Bury Your Gays," possibly even a mandate from FOX that he had to die. So anything could happen. If this is the final death of the character who was once my favorite and not just an amateurish cliffhanger, I don't feel much of anything. I'm not sad, or angry, or in shock. And I'm also not opposed to the idea of Penguin dying, or even of Ed ultimately killing him -- that could make for a fantastic story in the right hands. I'm just kind of vaguely, head-shakingly irritated by the circumstances of it, and all of the ridiculous contrivances and logic leaps it took to artificially force these characters to this conclusion.

If this is the end, then goodbye, Oswald. We had some good times, and you were one of the few bright spots in the darkness. And now you might be gone, and I'm... vaguely annoyed.

C'est la vie.


That may have been the best episode of the season and it still descended into... that. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.
  • 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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KleinerKiller
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Re: Gotham

Postby DashaBlade » Sat Feb 11, 2017 10:10 am

KleinerKiller wrote:
Spoiler: show
Do I actually think Penguin is dead? Don't know. On the one hand, he's a popular character, and it's Gotham, so even if he is dead there's a chance he'll be brought back to life somehow. On the other hand, the way the character has been so steadily humiliated, turned into a dumbass, and shunted off after coming to terms with his sexuality reeks of "Bury Your Gays," possibly even a mandate from FOX that he had to die. So anything could happen. If this is the final death of the character who was once my favorite and not just an amateurish cliffhanger, I don't feel much of anything. I'm not sad, or angry, or in shock. And I'm also not opposed to the idea of Penguin dying, or even of Ed ultimately killing him -- that could make for a fantastic story in the right hands. I'm just kind of vaguely, head-shakingly irritated by the circumstances of it, and all of the ridiculous contrivances and logic leaps it took to artificially force these characters to this conclusion.

If this is the end, then goodbye, Oswald. We had some good times, and you were one of the few bright spots in the darkness. And now you might be gone, and I'm... vaguely annoyed.

C'est la vie.



My guess is

Spoiler: show
Oswald's gonna get Indian Hilled by the Owldudes. They obviously didn't have a problem with him becoming Mayor, otherwise they would have sent someone to kill him because villains on this show have only two modes: Plotting, or murdering the shit out of people. And when it happens, I'm going to kick something hard.

If they want to impress me, they'll have the Dollmaker bring him back instead. Because, oh shit, they forgot all about the Dollmaker and I doubt very seriously he has anything to do with this silly Owl nonsense except possibly in a peripheral way. And there's got to be a reason they didn't have Mary Sue Mooney kill the guy instead of just wounding him, or maybe I'm giving Heller more credit than he deserves.

Also, regarding this whole Isabella thing: If I was running the show, which I am not, I would bring yet ANOTHER Kringle clone on. And eventually the whole thing would be revealed to have been a plot by those Owls to bring Nygma under their wing (pun intended). After all, he was at Arkham while Dr Strange was doing all his mad doctoring, and was involved in the whole "interrogate and then gas the shit out of Bruce Wayne and Lucius Fox for no clear reason" thing. At the very least, it would redeem that bit of useless filler and make it plot-relevant - that Strange was using Nygma as an interrogator without giving him all the information at the behest of the Court, because they were considering whether or not he could be of use to them. And the gassing was just Nygma being a proto-Riddler, because he does that kind of shit.


I bet I could write fanfic for this show and it'd be better than the stuff that's actually on the show. And in my sleep. Which is how I'd have to do it because writing it while conscious, using the characters as they are established in the show, would give me a migraine.
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Thu Mar 02, 2017 10:22 pm

Ra's Al Ghul is coming to Gotham for some reason, even though we're not even through with the Court of Owls shit yet. I'm sure that in the grand tradition of the show, they will bring this iconic antagonist to life in a creative and intimidating manner that stands the test of time and has real impact on the seasons to come.

Oh, and he's being played by a Game of Thrones actor. That's good! But it's a guy from Dorne who did nothing and then died. That's bad!
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed Apr 19, 2017 12:56 am

So, a vote: who wants me to keep doing these write-ups once the show comes back on? I've enjoyed typing them up (draining and genuinely infuriating as they may so often be), and I've gotten a lot of praise for them in the past, but right around the start of this year it seems like everyone abruptly stopped paying attention to the thread except for Dasha. Same thing kind of happened in my review thread, but I can still at least scrape up some occasional thumbs there and I know a few are still reading.
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Re: Gotham

Postby Matthew Notch » Wed Apr 19, 2017 9:06 pm

Nobody is on the forum anymore. You must do these writeups for yourself and you alone. But also I'll read them.
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Re: Gotham

Postby Jack Road » Fri Apr 21, 2017 1:59 pm

I was not aware you were doing these reviews, KleinerKiller. Now that I am aware, I demand you continue.
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed May 03, 2017 1:43 am

Did you think we were done? Did you think I'd given up on waging war against Bruno Heller?

WE'RE BACK, FUCKERS. I'M BACK WITH A DOUBLE REVIEW. NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER SURRENDER. LET'S GO. LET'S FUCKING GO.

This part of the season has changed its shitty, pretentious hack subtitle to "Heroes Rise", because somehow we're going to do Batman I guess? And the episode is called "How the Riddler Got His Name," which... I was very much under the impression that he'd been doing riddle-themed crimes since "Mad Grey Dawn". You know, the episode where he spray-painted question marks all over the place and literally became the Riddler.

Whatever. Once more unto the breach.

Spoiler: show
We open with a professor of some sort walking into his study at night, where Nygma is waiting to ambush him. The prof gets tied to a chair and is forced to answer a series of riddles, all of which he answers incorrectly, causing Ed to go into an increasingly psychotic and hammy rage. It's here that I'm reminded that even though the character work we took to get to this point was absolute goddamn fucking shitty nonsense of the lowest caliber, Cory Michael Smith has been a terrifying delight since Season 2 and he's still one of the only villains on this show I genuinely like (Penguin -- assuming he's alive -- now hovers beneath him and Jerome, since I still like his performance but the writers have just settled into making him a humiliated idiot). Anywho, Ed ultimately reveals that he's been hunting down the top scientific, artistic, and philosophical minds in Gotham and killing them in a bizarre attempt to "find himself" after his "best friend" told him he was nothing before their relationship. This makes little sense and keeps revisiting that abysmal plotline, but... fine. He releases a bunch of flammable gas into the room and walks out of the building as it blows up behind him. Maybe he can still be a good villain if he just stays the hell away from Barb and Tabby.

After the opening title card, we cut to... MOTHERFUCKIN' SALTY BOBBY! All prim and proper without his salty surfer locks, so it's not the same, but still. He's standing before Katherine (the old Court of Owls chick, if you've forgotten) and reciting the tiresome story of Bruce's parents getting shot from his own perspective as Bruce, which leads Katherine to tell him he's ready to take Bruce's place or something. She calls up Uncle Frank (Jim's Court of Owls uncle) and tells him the good news as Jim pulls up outside his house, and then goes back to having Salty Bobby recite Batman trivia.

We then rejoin Ed, who's collecting news stories about Penguin's disappearance and popping nondescript pills that make him... oh. Okay. He deliberately takes LSD or something to hallucinate a waterlogged Penguin walking around his study. That's... interesting. Penguin taunts and belittles him in that classic Penguin way (reminding me of the good old days when he was a real threat) as Ed tries to justify his quest: he's killing the top minds who fail to solve his riddles because he's searching for someone who can solve the riddle of himself. Woooo, so profound. But then it turns out this is code for finding someone to teach him how to be a supervillain, and he launches into a scenery-chewing rant about how the best villains are defined by the men who hunt them. You get three guesses as to who he picks and the first two don't count. Even Drug!Penguin is openly tired of this.

(Oh, and Drug!Penguin mentions how he became a supervillain by throwing Fish Mooney off a building, once more bringing to mind that we've not heard a single thing about her and Strange since Penguin uncharacteristically allowed them to escape for no reason, and once more dredging up my fear that we'll never see them again and she'll get away with everything. Uuuuuuuuuugh.)

Back to the GCPD, where Lucius Fox is trying to explaining to Bullock that someone is killing all of the smart people in Gotham. Bullock predictably shoots him down -- not because such people are as rare as talking unicorns in this world, but because the police are still trying to recover from Jerome's night of savagery. Right on cue, however, a man dressed as a bunch of grapes (???!?!?!) walks in and effeminately reads out a singing telegram that's revealed to be a clue for Jim to follow. Lucius tries to convince Bullock that it's related to the case, but Bullock only begrudgingly lets him solve the clue. It has something to do with a king and queen, and a bunch of scribbled lines, which Lucius somehow figures out means Ed's about to target a chess tournament.

At said chess tournament, Ed is overlooking from the balcony and pops more acid to bring out Wet!Penguin, who starts munching on some Dream!Popcorn to watch the fireworks. At the push of a button, Ed somehow does something to the machines by the chess players that turns on little red bulbs no one notices. Wet!Penguin questions why Ed is doing this and beseeches him to face the truth, acting more like a real ghost than a drug-induced hallucination, and stalls him just long enough for Bullock and Lucius to walk in and try to evacuate the building. When people start trying to get up, however, they get electrocuted to death, revealing that (again, SOMEHOW) Ed has turned the machines into motion-sensing electricity traps. Bullock tells everyone to freeze, and somehow no one notices Ed maniacally laughing a few feet above their heads with a clear line of sight on everyone.

Cut to Jim asking Uncle Frank why he's here. Why are any of us here, Jim? Why am I still here when I could be watching something- oh, he just wants to know why Uncle Frank called him there, and why he abandoned him as a kid. Uncle Frank spouts off some vagueness, and we move on.

At the Safest Manor on Earth, Alfred is teaching Bruce how to throw knives, which is a great skill for a non-lethal vigilante hero to have (I know, I know, Batarangs, but Alfred can't possibly see that coming). For some reason, he insistently distracts him as he's about to throw, causing him to eventually shatter the window and get upset. This has something to do with him brooding over Selina being mad at him, so zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Cut to the chess tournament, where everyone has magically been evacuated offscreen, rendering the previous cliffhanger pointless. Lucius finds that all of the chess pieces SOMEHOW have green felt and numbers on the bottom, which nobody noticed. I know he's incredibly smart (discounting the whole Isabella plot), but how did Ed possibly accomplish this? A lot of bribery? Future-sight? Time freezing powers? Someone tell me. Regardless, the numbers turn out to be a phone number that Fox calls, and Ed picks up to growl the next clue and some ominous threats at him, choosing him to be Jim's substitute in the big game. Ed chooses not to use a voice modulator for some reason, but nobody seems to recognize his voice anyway -- even though Bullock knew and arrested him and Lucius was held hostage by him in the Season 2 finale. Then Ed hangs up and turns to a painting of Penguin, dramatically revealing his green question mark insignia over it as if it's the first time we've seen the iconic mark on the show, once more proving that I have a better memory of this show than Bruno Heller does.

Jim is now on a hunting trip with Uncle Frank, and deliberately misses a deer to "make sure his gun works" as he grills Uncle Frank for more -- FOOOOH FUCK. Uncle Frank just outright brings up the old legends of the Court of Owls, explains exactly what they are to Jim, and reveals that Jim's father used to be a member and he still is. And for some fucking reason, they actually want Jim to join them!

*physically restrains himself from throwing laptop through screen*

Brief scene with Bullock and Lucius grilling yet another Italiano stereotype thug who kind of fits one of the parts of the clue. Nothing happens here. Moving the fuck on.

More stuff about Alfred mentoring Bruce about Selina. SKIP!

Ed is back in his lair, trying to work on the next phase of his plan as Moist!Penguin harangues him for moving from underworld manipulations to ostentatious and easily trackable murders, and also for popping a bunch of bath salts and not sleeping for several days (again calling into question how the fuck he manages to get away with everything). Ed shouts him away, but then... Penguin appears again as the room is bathed in blood-red light and puts on an impromptu musical number with mildly seductive lyrics. For. Some. Reason. This helps Ed admit that killing Penguin killed a part of himself too, but he doesn't regret and will continue on his search to be born anew. Man... his motives really don't make a lot of sense, and I'm already fucking sick and tired of the forced riddle motif. A great performance can't make up for awful characterization, Heller.

After Bullock leaves to give a speech for some new recruits, Lucius visits Lee in her office, where she's dissecting a body that came in a few days ago with a crudely stitched incision on his stomach. Nygma's clue mentioned "the belly of the beast", so Lucius has her cut open the cadaver, while she takes the opportunity to reflect on the nature of serial killers by laying out Ed's precise motivation for the benefit of the audience. Just as she finishes, out of the bloody wound pops Bullock's badge, which he'd mentioned he was missing in an earlier scene, and which I cannot fathom how Ed acquired unnoticed. Lucius logically takes this to mean that Bullock is the next target, and races to stop whatever's about to happen.

At the speech, Bullock is trying to rehearse when Ed strides up to him, clapping sarcastically and making vague statements about their missing mayor. Despite having just heard his voice over a speaker phone, knowing that the killer has a grudge against the cops, and also knowing about the killer's motif for riddles and the color green (Ed happens to be wearing a gaudy green suit), Bullock makes absolutely no connection before Ed pulls a chloroform-soaked rag out of his pocket and abducts him. Remember when Bullock was the savvy, street-smart foil to Jim who was always watching his back out of paranoia, rather than just another in the endless succession of convenient dumbasses the villains can trod all over at their leisure? Those times seem so faded now, like distant dreams.

Back to the Bruce and Selina plot, Bruce follows a note Selina apparently wrote for him asking if they can meet, only to meet her making a deal with some thugs and having no idea what he's talking about. After she angrily rebukes him and tells him never to speak to her again, Bruce gets mugged by the thugs and the show tries to do a Book of Eli-style fight framed in shadow under an overpass, because this adorable little show thinks it's cinematic and artsy all of a sudden. Needless to say, Bruce manages to beat all of the thugs down because Batman. At least we're halfway done.

With Bullock presumably tied up somewhere, Ed steps out in front of the crowd and makes a horribly uncomfortable speech that should immediately tip off all of the rookies that something's up. Then, after giving them his next riddle, he tosses out gas grenades and puts on a gas mask as they all start choking and falling over. At the same time, Lucius enters the building and learns from a singing telegram that Ed is the one responsible, because everything has to be told to our characters rather than letting them figure it out, because our characters should be deemed incapable of functioning for themselves. Ed calls Lucius and invites him upstairs, where he reveals that all of the cadets have been dosed with a deadly toxin only he has the antidote for; said antidote is in a (very small for how much gas was released) bottle around Bullock's neck, and he's tied up precariously on the balcony over a fatal drop. Ed promises that if Lucius just gets one of three riddles right, he'll release the antidote and spare Bullock, but every wrong answer will result in him cutting a rope, and getting all three wrong means everyone dies. Predicting it now: he'll get two wrong, and then get the last one right, because how else would this situation play out?

...

Yep. There was a rather pleasant twist where Lucius stalls for the third answer by putting together that Ed killed Penguin, causing him to have a brief nervous breakdown, but otherwise it plays out exactly like I knew it would. Lucius gets the last riddle right, the rope snaps anyway but Lucius catches Bullock without breaking the bottle, and Ed makes his daring escape because we still have to pad time for the last ten minutes. *sigh*

Elsewhere, while Bruce is trying to recover from his fight in an alley, he sees Salty Bobby standing behind him in a broken mirror and realizes he's dressed exactly like him, down to the exact hairstyle, and also finally understanding that the note luring him out was a trap. How the Court of Owls knew what Bruce would decide to wear, how he would do his hair, and all those other variables is left a mystery, as Salty Bobby shoves a needle full of Plot-Convenient Tranquilizers into his neck and tells him that he's going to take his place. M'kay. My apathy toward this storyline cannot get any deeper, so we'll see how it goes.

Back at Uncle Frank's Mystery Cabin, Jim and Uncle Frank are still busy discussing the Court of Owls and why they want Jim to join them. The second question does not get a clear answer, but I'll chalk it up to plot convenience and move on. Uncle Frank claims that he secretly despises the Court, and that they killed Jim's father and set it up to look like a drunk driving accident, as generic villainous secret societies are wont to do. Uncle Frank proposes that Jim follow their request and join them, so that together they can take down the Court leadership and bring the rule of peace, democracy, and any intelligence level higher than blithering idiocy back to Gotham. It's pretty obvious that he's lying, but Jim's reticence and suspicion leads me to believe that he might actually be telling the truth, because Heller's Razor holds that whatever Jim Gordon believes, the opposite must always be true (unless he's right, in which case everyone else must act like a moron to make him look perceptive). So if Jim accepts, we'll now have two storylines focusing on taking down the Court, although one (the crystal owl that was supposed to destroy them somehow) never panned out and could lead to a great deal of bullshit down the line.

And of course, it goes without saying that all of this exposition feels detached and unearned, and Uncle Frank doesn't fit in anywhere and feels like an abrupt narrative cheat. But that's just Gotham.

At the manor, Alfred is listening to the news about the cadet attack when Salty Bobby walks in, and as tends to be the case with impersonators on this show, he does a pretty shitty job of acting like Bruce -- though when Clayface can fool everyone by acting like Jim is a hyperactive coke-snorting pervert, I guess the bar isn't very high. The scare chord when it cuts back to Alfred might indicate that he isn't fooled, but I have absolutely no hopes at this point.

The cops finally raid Ed's house, finding nothing but the painting with the green question mark on it, which the camera once more lingers on as if it's the scariest thing ever. Simultaneously, Lucius walks to his car in the dark (without a police escort, even though he knows a murderous criminal is still after him), and wouldn't you know it, Ed is waiting in the back seat with a gun. In the ensuing conversation, he reveals that the "deadly toxin" was plain old knockout gas, and the whole game was a charade to draw out his potential and make everyone fear him. The show then tries to retcon that Ed wanted to be evil his whole life, which -- again -- makes almost no sense, but Lucius nearly cripples him by questioning why he killed Penguin if Penguin was the only one who understood him. This almost makes Ed realize his actions were insane and that he was just trying to hold onto Penguin for a little bit longer, but then he doubles back and says more shit that doesn't make sense even if we buy that he's completely lost it. Lucius then questions who he is, leading to the line we've all totally been waiting for:

Nygma: "Oh come on, Foxy." Camera zooms in and the lighting suddenly gets weirdly bloom-y and saturated. "I'M THE RIDDLER."

He then pistol-whips him unconscious and laughs maniacally. End scene. Are you happy, Heller? Is this really how you wanted this to go? Is this really the sum of everything you've written for Ed thus far? How? How can you be so content with this miserable, meandering journey, fueled by petty revenge over bullshit that dismantled one of the best character dynamics in your show and turned a great villain into a muddled mess? I... I just... from one writer to another, I pity you sometimes.

Anywho, we then cut to Riddler (his new title in these reviews to simplify things, unless I just forget and start saying Ed again) waiting at the dock where he shot Penguin, and Moist!Penguin pops up again to comment on how much he hates the place. Riddler tries to apologize and tell him he loves him, but Penguin's having none of it, telling him that nobody will fear "the Riddler". Riddler responds that they will soon, and dumps the pills in the sea, causing the hallucination to magically disappear because that's how drugs work. As the music picks up for what really seems like the final scene even though we have three minutes left (this is a recurring sticking point for the show's poor editing), he dons a bowler hat -- thus completing the classic Riddler costume, which looks pretty good on him -- and walks toward the camera, jump-cutting forward every few musical chords for some reason.

... UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH GODDAMN IT. We rejoin Ivy, who is still terrible despite her long absence, as she wakes up someone she's tending to in her bed. Surprise! It turns out that Ivy somehow was in the right place at the right time to pull Penguin out of the river and perfectly heal his gunshot wound despite having a child's knowledge of medicine. Penguin's first response is to laugh and say that there's someone he needs to kill, because now we get to see that tiresome plotline reversed to likely no ultimate point. And Ivy will tag along for the ride. Yippee.

In the last minute of the episode, we return to Uncle Frank sitting down with Katherine over tea. They discuss how their plans are going perfectly, and Katherine says that the clone is in place and that the real Bruce will be waking up soon. Cut to Bruce now locked away in an elaborate dungeon-style prison, which strikes me as the first thing the extremely non-threatening Court of Owls have done that actually feels like something the comic Court of Owls would do... and then it gets undercut when he looks out the window and sees a snowy mountain that might be Everest. Wonderful.


God. Those last two episodes with Jerome really weren't all that bad. I guess nothing's changed.

A Brief Tangent
While I'm recovering and steeling myself for what's next, I want to highlight this note I found on the A.V. Club's review of the episode:

Screen shot 2017-05-02 at 2.54.21 PM.png
Screen shot 2017-05-02 at 2.54.21 PM.png (10.47 KiB) Viewed 6670 times


Of all that site's problems, be it their abandonment of classic features in favor of clickbait, their aggressive rejection of opposing viewpoints, or the fantasy world they cling to where all YouTubers are MRA Nazis, their universal fondness for Barbara is perhaps the most disturbing. And this also made me realize this episode had one positive point: no Barbara.

Side note: I made the mistake of exposing myself to the comments flooded with people who think this show is amazing, and that Bruno Heller is some kind of subversive mad genius. Give me a moment to down some bleach to calm my nerves.


Moving on from that brief tangent, we come to "These Delicate and Dark Obsessions," an implausibly pretentious title if there ever was one, and guess what? This one has Barbara in the Hulu thumbnail. I guess someone's happy, but fuck me.

Spoiler: show
We open on Katherine and the other Owls in their Eyes Wide Shut masks standing around an altar with feathers in their hands. Katherine proclaims that they now have "a weapon" in place for their ultimate plans, and they need a unanimous vote to move ahead. Uncle Frank seems to waver a bit, but under Katherine's scrutiny, he contributes his vote with the rest of them. Katherine -- whom I'm only now realizing is meant to be the end-all-be-all leader of the Court rather than just a higher-up representative, and is thus an extremely boring Big Bad -- announces that their plans can finally be fulfilled, and that Gotham must fall. Why does the council whose sole purpose is to corruptly rule Gotham want to destroy it as if they were the League of Assassins? Your guess is as good as mine or Heller's.

Meanwhile in Antarctica (or wherever the prison is), Bruce sees his cell door open and shouts into the shadows, demanding to speak to whoever's in charge. Out steps an old man who looks exactly like every other ancient old wise master, and when questioned about why the Court has taken Bruce there... he responds that the Court is nothing more than an inconsequential tool. Oh my god. I was right. I was fucking right. There's someone even above the supposed Big Bads (probably Ra's al Ghul, considering his casting and what I just said in the last paragraph), and that someone is probably going to get held responsible for the Wayne murders because this is just Heller doing Red John all over again. Fuck my life, I'm actually angry about this. But anyway, the old guy tells Bruce that he needs to eat and regain his strength, so that they can begin soon. So this is how he gets his Batman training. Neato.

We come back to the GCPD, where Bullock helpfully informs the audience that with Penguin presumed dead, Mayor James is back in power. So after all of this, the boring Nixon clone they were originally trying to take down is right back in the seat and nothing has changed. Jim is back to work, too, and Riddler is still at large. Anyway, Jim is studying the file of the supposed drunk driver who killed his father and was then conveniently killed in prison. Jim latches onto the point on his medical file that he had chronic persistent hepatitis, which Bullock helpfully defines because it's known as the "Irish Curse", and it means that the driver couldn't be drunk because he would be dead. Admittedly, that's a fun little clue to latch onto, and I like the way Bullock handles the scene. Alright.

*sigh* Time for Ivy. She's caring for Penguin in a massive abandoned greenhouse, part of a convenient estate that she conveniently found abandoned conveniently. The scene boils down to Penguin getting frustrated with her, condescending to her, and ultimately having to give her very simple instructions about how to get him an army for revenge. I am still baffled by the decision to have this iteration of cunning, manipulative Poison Ivy be such a fucking moron. She's a little girl in a grown woman's body, sure (we've covered how fucking disgusting that is already), but she seemed much smarter and savvier when she was played by a child actress. She's so fucking annoying and creepy, and her unearned plant obsession is completely forced, and I hate having her on my screen.

We cut to the grave of Jim's father on a hill, framed against the sunset and with fog rolling in for maximum drama. Uncle Frank walks up to join Jim, who tells him that he now has reason to believe that his father's death was murder, and their discussion about that in the last episode gets repeated. In turn, Uncle Frank tells Jim about the mysterious weapon the Court intends to use to destroy Gotham. When Jim questions why the Court would want to do this, Uncle Frank gives a vague, waffly answer that some higher-ups believe the city should be cleansed for some reason, and they've done it twice before while magically going unnoticed. Again: this is now just the League of Assassins and Ra's al Ghul. What a waste.

Then we cut from that grave to the long-forgotten Mario's grave, where Lee is standing and Jim is approaching. Jim tells Lee about Uncle Frank, and Lee once again tries to make us feel bad about Mario -- who was a non-character and then a murderous asshole -- dying as she chews Jim out for the destruction left in his wake. As she storms off, Bullock calls him and updates him about the drunk driver: turns out he was a career criminal, and his lawyer was paid for by none other than Carmine Falcone. DUN DUN DUUUUUN!

Then we're back to the Greenhouse of Fun, where Penguin's recurring hench-moron Gabe is hugging him and exclaiming his relief that he's not dead. Penguin tells him that he wants to build an army and get revenge, and Gabe happily goes along with it and promises to call up the crew right away. As he's doing this, Ivy walks up to Penguin and talks about her magic brainwashing perfume, which she wants to use on Gabe because she doesn't trust him. Penguin obviously dismisses her, and she storms off, shouting about how she thought they were friends FOR SOME REASON. And then it turns out she was right, and Gabe knocks Penguin out, presumably to be delivered to the only characters who infuriate me more than Ivy.

Back at the prison, Bruce sees his cell door open again and tries to make a break for it, only to somehow run right back to where he started and find the old man in his room. He repeatedly tries to find a way, but runs back eventually and interrogates the old man, who speaks in possibly the most cryptic pseudo-profound riddles this show has ever dished up. The old man promises to show Bruce some amazing things if he sits down, which, uh... is setting off a lot of red flags for me.

Jim shows up in Falcone's study, and the two exchange barbs before Jim reveals what he knows about his father's death. The usual conversation about the Court of Owls plays out, Falcone shilling them with ominous threats about how dangerous and all-powerful they are, and I recall once again that we haven't seen them do much to make us fear them the way we're supposed to. But that doesn't matter, I guess, because it turns out Falcone was just following orders and he didn't put out the hit on Jim's father: it was Uncle Frank all along! The guy we met in the last episode who delivered a bunch of exposition turned out to be untrustworthy! DUN DUN DUUUUUUN!

Jim then teleports to Uncle Frank's apartment and holds him at gunpoint while he nonchalantly pours some whiskey. When interrogated about the hit, he admits to it and says that he did it so the Court wouldn't be tipped off that someone was getting close, and that it doesn't matter anymore because he needs Jim to help him bring down the Court. Jim threatens to shoot him, and Uncle Frank welcomes it, but Jim being the unbelievable brain-dead numbskull sucker-putz that he always has been, he tries to handcuff and arrest him for the murder, believing that it's the only path to justice. I reiterate: knowing that an omniscient secret council controls everything in Gotham, he tries to arrest one of its top members in connection to an open-and-shut case with absolutely no evidence linking him to it, and thinks this will do anything other than reveal his investigation to the Court. Thankfully, Uncle Frank headbutts some sense into him and tells him that the weapon will be arriving at Dock 9C, meaning that this weapon isn't Salty Bobby like I thought. Jim retreats, tail between his legs, and Uncle Frank goes back to drinking.

If this weapon has nothing to do with the crystal owl and that whole massive plot point turns out to have been casually dropped like a hot rock, I will be very irritated. Not because I thought the owl was a good plot point, but because I can't stand Heller's habit of randomly dropping things that were supposed to pay off.

At the greenhouse, Penguin is tied up in a wheelchair while Gabe brings his own men in. Apparently he doesn't want to kill Penguin; he and his guys are going to put the right to kill him up for auction to the highest bidder, which is a fairly sound business strategy, albeit one that's sure to draw in the dreaded Barb and Tabby. And while this goes on, Ivy watches from outside and gets smug about how right she was... only to get a gun held to her head because she wasn't paying attention. This is presented as a serious problem even though she has magic brainwashing perfume on her person at all times.

Back the GCPD, Jim gets Bullock up to speed on the Court of Owls, Uncle Frank, his father's death, and the mysterious new weapon. Bullock thankfully takes it all in stride, having already confirmed some of it with Falcone, so we don't have to have a Cassandra Truth plotline and Bullock vows to stay firmly by Jim's side. D'aww, that's actually kind of sweet. But then they raise the question of who they can go to who has power, but isn't connected to the Court and won't tip anyone off.

Oh.

Oh no.

OH GOOOOOOOOOOOOD THEY HAVE TO GO TO BARBARA AGAAAAAAAIN

I feel genuinely nauseous.

Cut... to... a shaky old man kneeling and offering someone a stack of cash while "Love Hurts" blares in the background. We see Barbara in a lavish throne and an extravagantly shiny bejeweled dress (which I'm sure everyone loves because "OMG SHE SO FAB YAAAAAS QUEEN"), complaining that the payment feels too light and that she needs money for a new pair of stilettos. She hands the cash to Tabitha, takes off one of her heels, and cracks the poor old man's face open with it before casually tossing it away and bitching about her day. Before too long, her phone rings, and she gleefully purrs about Jim coming to ask for her another favor, because we weren't done having Jim stupidly ask favors of powerful mob bosses and this one is the worst one ever.

The old prison man (who is credited as "the Shaman," but whom I will refer to as Tasty Rudy until his actual name comes up because it amuses me) tells Bruce that he's been waiting a long time to see him, and when Bruce asks to go back to Gotham, he says that they're both headed for the same destination. Don't know what the fuck that's about, because this guy is certainly not Alexander Siddig, the guy cast as Ra's. Regardless of his intentions, he pulls out some long needles with weird symbols at the ends and holds one of the symbols up to Bruce's face, whereupon it starts glowing in a horrendous CGI effect before the needle touches Bruce's forehead and everything goes white. Bruce and Tasty Rudy then appear in a version of Gotham -- specifically, Crime Alley (CHRIIIIST) -- with all of the light blown out and overexposed. Guess who walks by right then? Yep. We have to watch the shooting of Bruce's parents from the first episode again. They pop out of the hallucination before too long, but it's still groan-worthy. Tasty Rudy says that he knows how to travel into peoples' minds and access their memories, along with more vague mystical bullshit, and tells him that he needs to move past the shooting if he is to accept what he needs to be taught. Ugh.

In one of Gotham's abundant empty warehouses, Tabby is strangling some sap with ropes while Barb grills him about what's coming in from Dock 9C. Erin Richards' performance and delivery are somehow only getting more unbearable, but that's to be expected. The guy is initially in denial, but as soon as she gets up in his face, he tells her that something already came in through 9C and that even Falcone knew not to mess with the ones who brought things in from that dock. Barb tortures him some more for fun, and then he points her to the crate that just arrived, which is still in the warehouse. It's emblazoned with the Indian Hill logo, because that storyline was just so amazing last time and it makes so much sense for the Court to still be using the branding of a known criminal laboratory. But bafflingly, instead of immediately sending her men over to open or at least secure it, Barb wants the guy to help her call the Court for some reason. Which ends up not mattering, because all of a sudden, another Talon (remember how awesome and threatening and totally not dull the first one was?) barges in and wrecks all of the gunmen with his katana while Barb and Tabby make it out miraculously unscathed.

Back to the greenhouse! Gabe has his guys take photos of Penguin for the auction, and they also have Ivy tied up next to him because of course. When all of the hostage-takers get distracted by one of them bringing in a batch of cannolis (yes, really), Ivy gloats to him about him getting tied up and claims she'll be fine. She refuses to tell him what her plan is, though, and instead screams at the top of her lungs at him for not being nice to her (which none of the men take notice of even though they're mere feet away). Long story short, she tricks one of the idiots into smelling her perfume (and it's still super fucking skeevy) and has him kill everyone except Gabe before letting Penguin and her go. I admit, I actually kinda-sorta liked Ivy in this part, because her childlike delight in giving the gunmen hers and Penguin's commands was sort of endearing. It doesn't make up for anything else, though. Now free of his predicament, Penguin kills the brainwashed guy and promises to make Gabe's death a slow one.

Aaaand we return to the Court of Owls, who have surrounded an unmasked Uncle Frank and are grilling him about Jim's reasons for investigating the murder of his father. Since Uncle Frank failed to bring him in, Katherine declares that Jim must be killed, because that will totally happen and there's so much suspense to that kind of story.

At the GCPD, Jim relays what happened with Barbara to Bullock, and in the process clarifies that the crate we saw was empty. Okay. Barb could still have tried to take the crate in and it was incredibly stupid of her to think a dock worker could point her to the Court leadership, but fine. While they debate what the Indian Hill logo could mean about the weapon, Jim gets a call from Uncle Frank, telling him that they're running out of time and to come to his place alone. Any bets on whether Jim sees this obvious trap coming?

Still holding him at gunpoint, Penguin has Gabe lay out all of the corpses in a planter full of dirt as presumable fertilizer, and asks him if he could be loyal to him again. Gabe makes a dramatic vow of loyalty, but Penguin now knows he doesn't need to hear anything and sends Ivy over to confirm if he's telling the truth (after having to repeatedly clarify what he wants her to do, because she is very dumb). Gabe smells the perfume, but still says that he can't be loyal to Penguin because never was -- all of the men followed him out of fear, never loyalty or respect. Still brainwashed, Gabe calls him a pathetic freak, and this screws with him so badly that he grabs a gardening fork and brutally claws Gabe to death with it while hammily shouting "FREEEEAAK!" in the first Penguin line delivery I genuinely haven't liked.

Jim thankfully recognizes the trap and walks into Uncle Frank's house with his gun drawn, whereupon he meets Uncle Frank holding a glass of alcohol in one hand and his pistol in the other. Uncle Frank rattles off that he was supposed to kill Jim because the Court no longer trusts him, but that the Court also still wants Jim on their side and is only doing this because they no longer see how it's possible. Telling Jim that he has to join the Court to take them down, Uncle Frank shoots himself to make it look like Jim did the deed, though he does it in a way that makes it obvious it was a suicide and not murder. Bye, character we knew for all of two episodes as a shifty exposition machine and couldn't form an emotional connection to.

Bruce tries to tackle Tasty Rudy the next time he comes in the cell, but is overpowered and hypnotized, and we're forced to sit through the shooting again. This time, Bruce tries to charge the gunman after his mother's death, only for them to disappear and Rudy to make himself visible. Bruce tries to fight Rudy, who turns out to be an unbeatable martial artist who whoops his little punk ass so hard that he somehow gets a bloody lip out in the real world (this is handwaved away by Rudy stating that if someone believes something in a dream hard enough, it affects their body in the real world, which... eeeeh). Bruce demands to know why he's being put through this, and Rudy reveals that he and whoever he's with have tried to stop the cycle of crime in Gotham for centuries, only for it to start back up again (LEAGUE OF ASSASSIIIIIIIIINS), and that he believes Bruce can finally be the one to give Gotham a hope-inspiring protector. Of course.

Once more unto the greenhouse, Penguin is burying Gabe and admitting that he was a little too cocky, while Ivy observes. Crestfallen, he tells her that he has to give up on his revenge against Riddler and Barbara because he no longer has any allies, only for her to suggest that they form an "army of freaks" by recruiting the people he met down in Indian Hill. Oh my god. Oh my fucking god, pleeeeease don't tell me he's going to try to ally with Fish. I will... I don't even know what I'll do if that is seriously where the story is going. I don't even know. Heller, you fucking monster.

Finally, Jim returns to his father's grave and lays a picture of Uncle Frank by the headstone, and right on cue, he gets a call on Uncle Frank's phone from Katherine. He goes along with the story that he killed Uncle Frank and wants to meet the Court in person, and Katherine agrees as the camera pulls up to reveal that there was already a limo waiting for him. Jim hangs up and walks in gratuitous slow motion towards the open limo door as the music picks up, and we finally cut to credits.


Welp, Gotham is back, and I felt more entertained and intellectually stimulated watching this on a loop than I did watching either of these episodes. I am so aggravated and utterly dreading what the future holds for this show, which of course means the show is in top form once again.

This show. This fucking show.
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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 reallifegirl » Wed May 03, 2017 2:55 pm

I agree that it was random as fuck, but:
Spoiler: show
I will never, ever, ever stop loving the random-ass Penguin hallucination Amy Winehouse musical sequence. It's like he became a hybrid between Annie Lennox and the Emcee from Cabaret and THAT IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE AESTHETICS DAMMIT.

Image
Image
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WORK IT BOI
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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 » Thu May 18, 2017 6:57 am

Hey gang, I was going to do another double episode review and got halfway through "The Primal Riddle", but I'm too stressed out over the FCC net neutrality vote going on tomorrow to finish it. Sorry to keep you waiting if you've been anticipating some updates.
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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

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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Sun May 21, 2017 5:25 am

It's been a minute because I haven't been able to catch up on any of my shows for two weeks, but guess what that means! AW YEAH BABY ANOTHER DOUBLE REV- *pukes out what remains of heart*

This next one's entitled "The Primal Riddle," which I assume means that this'll be the first episode revolving around full-on Riddler Ed. You know, other than the innumerable other episodes over the course of these three seasons that blared "NO THIS TIME HE'S REALLY THE RIDDLER YOU GUYS WE TOTALLY AREN'T JUST REPEATING THE SAME BEATS AND MAKING SHIT UP AS WE GO ALONG." Let's hold our noses and dive right in.

Spoiler: show
We open in an indeterminate snowy tundra somewhere ambiguous, where we see two figures in parkas hiking toward a gigantic igloo on the horizon. It was at this point that I started rubbing my temples, under the assumption that this was Bruce and Tasty Rudy about to meet the League of Assassins, but the reality is almost as bad. Somehow, this is actually Penguin and Ivy trekking out to reunite with Mr. Freeze, whom we haven't seen since his inexplicable duel with Firefly at the end of Season 2. Turns out he was trying to live a normal life in Gotham and then got driven out by Penguin's campaign rhetoric calling him a monster, which we never saw or heard even though this would be a potentially interesting narrative beat for this extremely boring Freeze. He's understandably pissed at Penguin and tries to kill him with an ice axe, but he instantly forgives him once Ivy reveals that they liberated Freeze's suit from a government black site. So he's on their team now, despite being a thoroughly underwhelming presence last time around.

How did Penguin and Ivy know where to look for Freeze? How did they manage to both recover the suit and trek out into the middle of nowhere to reach him, even though we last saw them barely scraping by in the greenhouse? I'm guessing even Heller doesn't know, so fuck it.

Picking up where we left off with Jimbo the Deathbringer, he has a hood pulled off his head to find himself in Katherine's oft-visited meeting room, facing down the woman herself. This exchange is so meaningless, uninteresting, and full of the same tired cliches every Court of Owls scene has been filled with -- the only new tidbit gleaned is that Katherine expects Jim to prove his loyalty beyond killing Uncle Frank if he wants to be a real Owl -- that I couldn't give more a transcription if you held a gun to my head. At this point, that would be a fucking mercy. I hate this storyline. I hate this flavorless and self-contradictory iteration of the Court, and I hate Katherine, a primary season villain whom we still have no idea about, but who exudes pointlessness and inevitability rather than mystery and intrigue. I just want all these old fucks to die already so I can have them off my screen. For a show its psychotic fans insist doesn't take itself seriously and just wants to have comic book fun, this whole arc is an active drain on any semblance of delight to be had. I hate it all.

Anyway, cut to Jim walking into the GCPD as Bullock and Lee are discussing Uncle Frank's body, which the Court have set up to be fished out of the river as a suicide victim. Lee is suspicious of Jim's muted reaction to the news of his uncle's death, and launches into yet another harpyish tirade because that's the only dialogue this character is allowed to have anymore. She storms out in a huff for no apparent reason, whereupon Jim explains everything from Uncle Frank's suicide to his meeting with Katherine. Bullock asks him zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz oh shit what was going on? Certainly not meaningful plot development. Anyway, the scene ends with Bullock holding up a newspaper bearing the headline "RIDDLER STRIKES AGAIN," which provides a convenient segue to our next scene.

OH GOOOOOOOD BARBARA. Please give me a minute to collect myself. Okay. The ever-intolerable creature stomps into Riddler's hideout, demanding to know why he's been blowing her off and calling him "Ed" so he has a convenient excuse to introduce himself as the Riddler. They then get on to discussing the Court of Owls, the shipment from Indian Hill, and... zuh?! Okay, so fuck me twice, I guess. Apparently I was right to complain about Barbara not checking the crate and the Court just leaving it lying around, because it apparently wasn't actually empty, contrary to statements later in that episode -- everyone was really just that stupid. Okay. Great. Barb demands that the Court all be killed because she's a little brat who wants to be the only one in power, and Riddler gleefully agrees to root out the truth behind the big dumb secret society by interrogating Gotham's elite. *sigh*

He's decided to do this by marching out onto the stage of a high-class play attended by a bunch of wealthy socialites, boasting about his plans to torture every one of them for information, and then spearing the lead performer with a sword. On the one hand, this is ridiculous in a fairly good way, and it's an entertaining showcase for Riddler. On the other hand, it's just about the worst possible way to get to the truth about the Court without getting them on his trail as well, along with alerting every authority in the city. So I am... conflicted on how to feel about this.

Then we meet back with Salty Bobby and Alfred, who initially seems like he's catching on to the fact that Bruce isn't the real Bruce, listing off a lot of out-of-character behavior as they play a Chess Game of Symbolism (TM). Sadly, despite being one of the few consistently good characters trapped in this smoldering train wreck, and also despite knowing about Salty Bobby's existence, he's not allowed to even have suspicions. Instead, he assumes that it's down to drama with Selina, which Salty Bobby lies about and exploits for sympathy. When Alfred dumbly walks off to prepare dinner, Salty Bobby's nose starts bleeding, and he calls Katherine to tell her that "it's happening again." Wonderfuru. So now in addition to the "character replaced by a clone and nobody's the wiser" tired story arc, we're also being gifted a "clone is degrading, as symbolized by nosebleeds" tired story arc. This cannot get any better, can it? Is that too vain a hope?

Back to the stage, where Jim and Bullock are examining the crime scene and speculating about Riddler's statements, as they are wont to do in every episode. They get an all-clear from the bomb squad to open up a box left behind by Riddler, and after rooting around in green packing peanuts for a few seconds, Bullock pulls out a scroll containing a poem that Jim helpfully points out is written in iambic pentameter. The poem gives a ludicrously easy clue that Riddler's after Mayor James, but Jim and Bullock take a few exchanges with their thumbs up their asses to come to this realization, and then it's off to the usual races.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUGH DIALOGUE BETWEEN BARB AND TABBY AT THE NIGHT CLUB PLEASE GOD IN HEAVEN MAY YOU STRIKE ME DOWN WHERE I SIT SO AS TO RELIEVE ME FROM THIS AGONY

Although to give that scene one small concession, it features a wonderfully meta sequence where Riddler tries to justify his need to loudly announce his crimes to the cops before he does them as the insufferable bitches stare in bafflement. It made me chuckle and it briefly relieved my torment. So good job, I guess.

Then we come to Mayor James pigging out on donuts, because we have to once again demonstrate that this character is a corrupt, lazy asshole. Jim and Bullock want to put him in a safehouse until Riddler is caught, but James acts like the knuckle-dragging dumbass he is and refuses to acknowledge the danger. Suddenly, he feels pain he claims is his blood sugar acting up from too many donuts, revealing that the box was given to him by "an appreciative citizen." Then he tries to take his pills, only to find that they somehow all have little green question marks on them, and everyone realizes too late that the donuts were a trap. Can James now just be poisoned to death? This character brings nothing to the table and I he's long outstayed his welcome. Of course, knowing Gotham, Heller sees something he likes in this character and will keep him around forever and ever no matter how implausible his survival is.

When we cut back from the break (and my two-day nerve hiatus), we find ourselves with Penguin and Ivy at a steel foundry. And here we rejoin another rogue we last saw in an unimpressive scene in the Season 2 finale: Firefly. As is the way of Gotham, massive character development has just happened offscreen because the writers got bored -- Firefly states that she just "got over" her delusions of being a fire goddess, and her personality has thus been replaced with a bland, Fish-esque air of undeserved smugness. Ivy runs down who she and Penguin are and begs Firefly to join their "family" of freaks, but Firefly declines and says that she doesn't mind people treating her like a freak. Then her boss walks by and calls her a freak for no reason, and she abruptly does a 180, signs on, and hurls a handful of molten steel in her boss's face. The biggest thing of note from this, aside from yet another dull villain tacked on, is that the freak army is now being treated like a family, because of fucking course it is, and Penguin doesn't mind this interpretation, because his personality and motives radically change as the plot demands.

Salty Bobby sits before Katherine as he's being examined by a doctor, and it's confirmed that the nosebleeds mean he's degrading and dying. However, here we learn that Bobby is only meant to take Bruce's place for a very short time frame -- the enigmatic Tasty Rudy will eventually be done with him, and then when he returns to Gotham, it will herald a lot of people dying somehow. Salty Bobby seems disturbed by his purpose, but Katherine shuts up any questions he has by once again repeating that Gotham must fall because reasons. This is not a character. This is not a villain. I couldn't care less. Moving on.

We then come to a hospital, where Mayor James is being rushed into the E.R. in critical condition and Bullock shouting to keep out everyone who isn't a patient. They manage to save his life just in time, but as Jim and Bullock obliviously prattle about the situation, Riddler's voice comes in through the intercom to taunt Jim. Jim races up to the communications room, but surprise surprise, it's just a tape recorder set up next to the microphone. From this recording, though, Jim at least learns that Riddler is after the Court and tells Bullock about this, allowing everyone to be on slightly more equal footing. All of a sudden, dozens of bikers are rushed into the room, apparently victims of an explosion, and their biker buddies start a pointless brawl when the doctors try to keep them out. In the chaos, Riddler strides up to Mayor James in disguise, and when Jim realizes it's a trap seconds later, he finds both of James's guards dead and James himself abducted from his bed without any other onlookers noticing. I won't bother questioning this, because this show has trained me to understand that villains automatically gain +10 Strength, +10 Agility, and +10 Luck whenever they step outside of Jim's vision cone.

Where should Jim immediately run but the *hurk* dreaded nightclub? Mercifully, Barbara isn't there at the time, but Tabitha and Butch are and Jim interrogates them because he knows Riddler and Barb are working together. Tabby tries to play innocent, but Butch instantly spills the beans to spare us from more Gordonisms, because some part of him still remembers being a good character. Jim gives Tabby an ultimatum where he'll pardon Barb for all of her crimes if she tells him what Riddler is up to, because all characters in Gotham are aware that Barb can never ever be punished or inconvenienced in any way, but she still refuses to give up the location because she can't betray her bestie or whatever. Jim conveniently gets a call from Bullock about another riddle that just turned up, so he leaves the shitheads in peace.

The mercy can only last so long, however -- Heller hates me enough to sense when I'm starting to feel relief. Cut to Riddler and Barbara interrogating a blindfolded Mayor James for whatever information he has; Riddler's tactics all fail to break him, but Barb obviously gets what she wants instantaneously by whispering in his ear and threatening to box and whip him again like she did in the Galavan arc. Unfortunately for them, all he knows is that the Court is called the Court, but Riddler is ecstatic anyway because that's at least tangible proof that they exist that he can use to force them out of hiding. Yes, the unrecorded testimony of a recently-poisoned man under heavy duress is plenty of evidence, Ed. On cue, Tabby walks in and confronts Barb about Jim knowing everything, stating that she thinks it's a mistake that they ever got Riddler involved. God, I hope this is a lead-up to Tabby double-crossing Barb -- that might alienate the sycophantic pissbabies (aka: critics and fans) whose response to Barbara winning is "YAAAAAS QUEEN", but I can hope. Tabitha is a nonsense blank slate of a character with an abysmal story arc, but I hate her marginally less than I hate Barb.

Brief check-in with Selina at her apartment, where Salty Bobby walks in and a tiresome fight occurs, ending with Bobby reluctantly revealing that he's not Bruce. Kay.

Back at the GCPD, Lee confronts Jim with a ballistics report proving that something about Uncle Frank's death was staged. When he tells her to drop it, she launches into yet another spiel about how he knows something she doesn't and she's going to make him pay one way or another. I miss the times when this character was a relief from Barbara's nightmarish hypocrisy and not a screeching madwoman fueled to vengeance over her man. As tired of her as we are, Jim pushes past into Bullock's office, where he's given the second riddle. He puts together that he should turn the TV on, and he turns on the news to find Riddler broadcasting Mayor James with an explosive collar around his neck, threatening to blow him up should the Court not come forth to him. Katherine calls Jim to tell him that it's up to him to prove his loyalty by bringing Riddler to them, because she insists that there's absolutely no way this secret organization running every facet of the city and with a good number of superhuman enforcers at their disposal could possibly eliminate a guy on a public broadcast without exposing themselves. Jim then calls Riddler and offers to give him everything he knows about the Court if he comes alone to the GCPD, an offer which Riddler accepts.

After the next break, Jim waits patiently for Riddler to show up in the empty station, and he does after tossing the panicked James in first. Jim proceeds to ignore RIddler's threats of blowing James up rather than give him any information about the Court, and when Riddler calls his bluff, he finds that the collar has actually been functionally disarmed by a radio signal interrupting the detonator. Apparently, Tabitha called Jim offscreen and told him exactly how to deal with the bomb. Yaaay. Riddler insists that nothing has changed despite having just lost all of his leverage beyond his gun, which Jim pressures him into dropping by promising that if he lets them go, he'll drive Riddler straight to the Court and the riddle won't have to go unsolved. It is going to be exceptionally frustrating if the once-terrifying Nygma can just be instantly cowed now by the very mention of an unsolved riddle, but hey, "exceptionally frustrating" is the name of the game.

Back at Selina's apartment, Salty Bobby has just finished explaining his whereabouts since the last time she saw him, and begs her to get out of the city before his masters destroy it. After she's finished poking holes in his logic for following his orders, she realizes that he's been taking Bruce's place and demands to know what happened to him. Despite assurances that he's fine and out of the city, she tries to push past him and, when blocked, slings insults at him over how he'll never be half the man Bruce is, and threatens to reveal his secret to Alfred. Salty Bobby responds by... suddenly shoving her through the window to her apparent death / classic origin story in the alley below.

Prediction: she'll be aged up and slinking around in a leather catsuit within a few episodes, all so Heller can watch two beautiful women with the minds of young teens in the throes of exploitative lesbian fanservice with each other. And I will hate it.

Then we're back with Jim and Riddler, sitting in a car on a darkened street. As he's held at gunpoint, Jim brings up the time Riddler and Ms. Kringle came to Lee's for dinner, and how he was put off initially but ended up having a good time and considering him a friend. This is actually kind of a nice exchange that calls back to the days when Riddler was the best villain on the show, until Riddler abruptly derails it by rebuffing the very concept of friendship because of his HORRIBLE UNFORGIVABLE BETRAYAL at the hands of Penguin. Before we can dwell on that memory too painfully, another car pulls up -- Katherine, by all indications the sole leader of the Court (aside from her hitherto-unseen master assumed to be Ra's, who doesn't factor into the narrative for the time being and is the leader of the Assassins anyway), has opted to come alone with only one Talon backing her up. It fits her group's demonstrated intelligence level so far. As promised, Jim hands over Riddler, and he gets in the car as Jim is told that he'll be utilized for his intellect rather than killed, because of course. I don't think even his presence can spice up the deathly dull Court at this point.

On the cues of a terrible screeched rock number, Barbara pouts her way into her nightclub, pointlessly bashes one of her waiters over the head with a glass, and runs screeching up to Tabby and Butch about Jim taking down Riddler. Tabby calmly reveals that she told Jim how to disarm Riddler's bomb, which sends Barb into a growling, snarling, face-contorting fury that just makes me horribly embarrassed for Erin Richards. Revealing that she only ever wanted power for herself and that she was never planning on letting Tabby kill Riddler as was their deal, she practically sprints further into the depths of the club, screaming furiously. Butch tells Tabby that this was inevitable and he's seen it happen many times before, but Tabby mysteriously refuses to accept everything that just happened and shoves past everyone to sprint in the opposite direction. Just kill her already, Tabby. You'll shoot way up in my book.

For some reason, Penguin, Ivy, Freeze, and Firefly decide to make their home in Penguin's manor, despite presumably trying to go unnoticed for the time being. Freeze and Firefly get into a pointless fight for no more reason than the "OMG COOL FIRE VS IIIICE" battle they got into last time we saw them together, and after a mildly amusing exchange between Penguin and Freeze, Penguin sees a news report about Riddler supposedly escaping police custody and bitterly criticizes his choice of name. Now more determined than ever to get revenge, he tells everyone to rest up for their big day tomorrow. Oh boy. I cannot wait. zzzzzzzzzz

Back in the alley, a bunch of cats swarm out of various nooks and crannies to shroud Selina's motionless body. Yep. It's happening.

Finally, we come to the meeting room of the Court, where everyone is sitting in their owl masks, looking incredibly stupid and unimpressive despite the clear attempts to make the scene look intimidating and mysterious. Katherine brings Jim in and has the other Owls applaud for him to welcome him as their newest member, and Jim dons one of the owl masks, looking just as dumb as the rest of them. We get a slow, dramatic zoom in on his stupid face, and the episode mercifully draws to a close.


There's no point to post-episode commentary here. All I can say would amount to a written sigh.

Side note: fuck it, "Riddler" is way more cumbersome to write than "Penguin" is, so I'm gonna go back to alternating between it and Nygma from here on out.

Let's move right along to "Light the Wick". Can't imagine this going any better.

Spoiler: show
We open at Arkham, where we see Michael Chiklis for the first time in a while as he's being escorted to a prison transfer van. He manages to overpower both of his guards in a scene that threatens to be vaguely interesting, but then it's derailed when we pan to good old Jervis Tetch watching from his window and narrating everything that happens in his trademark terrible rhymes. Before too long, a Talon drops out of nowhere and jabs Chiklis with a syringe of Instant Plot Tranquilizer, and Chiklis succumbs just before he can manage to break the Talon's neck. Cut to Chiklis waking up strapped to a rack in an undisclosed Court of Owls facility, as Katherine tells him that she wants to use him to purge the city of those unfit to live. He's initially agreeable, but then it turns out she doesn't want him -- she wants the bullshit blood virus inside of him, meaning we're back to that royal fucking nonsense. And who should pop up to accomplish the extraction of said virus? None other than our old idiot friend Dr. Hugo Strange, unseen since his bullshit escape with Fish at the start of the season.

Which undoubtedly means Fish will pop up again.

Hoo.

Fucking.

Ray.

After the title card, we're back at the GCPD to watch Lee stride up to Harvey's desk and lay down yet another venomous ramble about how Jim no doubt murdered his uncle in cold blood and he should go to prison. Now, if Jim had actually murdered him or helped the Court cover it up, she would have a leg to stand on and this would be a Cassandra Truth plot. But it's not. She's digging into the belief that Jim committed the murder and actively shouting down the thought that Uncle Frank shot himself, and while I agree that Jim should be imprisoned or killed at this point, she is genuinely wrong to pursue this lead, and even more wrong for basing her revenge on the rightfully murdered Mario and not THE MISCARRIAGE JIM IGNORED. Bullock calls her out on just using the case in another attempt at revenge for Mario's death, and she storms off, because that's all the once-noble character of Dr. Leslie "Lee" Thompkins is now. That's all Heller knows to make female characters into.

Brief cut to the Court, where Katherine states that they'll be suspending all other activities for the time being until preparations for Gotham's destruction are complete. To that end, she enigmatically mentions that everyone should turn in their lists for approval before the set date. Don't know what that's about, but at this point, I don't care. There is no possible payoff to these mysteries that would make me care about the Court as villains.

Then, because I'm actually in a Jacob's Ladder scenario right now and I can't accept my death to make my torment end, we're right back to the nightclub with Ivy and Tabby. The former walks up to the ladder asking where Selina is, and Tabby initially brushes her off until she's pressured more and more. Mysteriously, she knows that Selina fell out of a window and is in the hospital in critical condition. Do not ask me how she's aware of this. Do not ask me why Ivy's first thought was to come to Barbara's nightclub. Do not ask me where any of this is going. Just... don't.

Sudden cut back to the Court boardroom, where Jim for once makes an actually smart decision and uses Katherine's mask to extract a fingerprint they might use to determine who she is. He's taken be surprise when another Owl walks in, but he manages to bullshit his way out of it by asking about the list. Turns out they're all writing down lists of loved ones they want spared from the coming disaster, which I suspect is supposed to make them slightly more sympathetic by showing that they love people too, but really just makes them seem like selfish idiots and reduces their threat level even further. Jim writes a name or two down to keep the gag going, but we don't know yet if that will mean anything.

And then we're back with Ivy, racing into Selina's hospital room! The show usually doesn't cut between the same two plotlines this quickly, but whatever. Ivy is in disbelief that Selina could've been done in by a fall of all things, and uses her magic perfume to hypnotize a nearby doctor into telling her whether she'll be okay. God, why is it the most obnoxious characters who get the power to just make people do what they want? If Barbara gets her hands on this shit, I will stop watching this show forever, I'm swearing it now. Anywho, the doctor reveals that they've done all they can, and all they can do now is make Selina comfortable for when she inevitably slips away. Ivy isn't satisfied with that answer, and I suspect her solution will involve magical aging.

Then we're back to Strange, watching as he flits between his instruments, purifies the blood taken from Michael Chiklis, and listens to dissonant classical music as evil generic scientists are wont to do. Katherine hovers over him and demands to know if he's making progress, and in the following conversation, we're treated to the knowledge that Strange successfully saved Fish against all odds and was being forced to act as her manservant before the Court showed up and took him captive instead. Great. Fucking wonderful. And for additional bullshit, he reveals that he's successfully weaponized the virus even more than it was already weaponizable, in that it can now be aerosolized. If this is seriously the weapon the Court has been talking about so much -- even though that'd make absolutely no fucking sense -- and this plays a huge role in the resolution of the arc, I'm going to scream. I cannot deal with this. The blood virus bullshit was bullshitty enough when it was just in the Tetch / Chiklis / Mario arc, and now it's in the hands of the Court and Strange? I cannot be fucking bothered.

At the mysterious ice prison, Bruce is being forced by Tasty Rudy to battle a Talon with some martial arts sticks, with the promise that he'll be set free if he can defeat the superhuman foe. Bruce puts up a fight that's way closer than it should be against a fucking Talon, but he's soundly defeated as we're treated to repeated flashbacks of the Wayne murders. Rudy explains that until Bruce can let go of his rage, he has no hope of overcoming his obstacle, and thus offers to shorten the process and magically release him from said rage, somehow.

The fingerprint results come back as Bullock is on the phone with Jim, and we're given a bit more information about this eminently bland antagonist. Katherine's real name is Katherine Monroe, she's a part of one of Gotham's oldest families (obviously, since this is the Court of Owls), and her address in Gotham is... 450 Clinton Ave. Yes, the scary old blonde woman who's painted as being behind every one of the show's disasters resides on Clinton Ave. I think one of our writers might be trying to make a statement about something. Anyway, Jim wants to visit Katherine's home because he's sure he'll find out what the weapon is there, since she's too cautious for the "rank-and-file" to find out about it at their headquarters. Seems a bit odd to refer to the council of Gotham family heads as if they're just mafia mooks, but the Court has been consistently treated as a mafia reskin anyway, so I guess it's moot. Bullock fills Jim in on Lee's state and Barnes's unexplained transfer (turns out the guards were also Court members, I guess), and then Jim is off to the races.

Of course, he can't take three steps out of his place before he's ambushed by Penguin and Firefly, the latter of whom holds him hostage as the former explains that he's very hard to kill and he wants to take revenge on Riddler. Penguin demands information about the Court, and particularly what they've done with Ed, as he's put almost everything together based on what he's seen on TV. Jim tries to threaten him into backing down, but Penguin puts on his puppy eyes and calls it a "favor" -- god, remember when this show consisted entirely of Jim and Penguin's repetitive calling-in of favors, yet it was somehow more tolerable than what it is today?

Anyway, after a break, we get to Jim staking out Katherine's address. When a man leaves and gives him an opening, he enters and starts searching the place. No sooner does he open the first drawer he finds than he finds a predictable false bottom, and inside that false bottom is -- WHO COULD'VE GUESSED -- an executive access card for Wayne Enterprises. Now, why Katherine keeps this card in the false bottom of a random cabinet marked by a golden owl imprint, I haven't the foggiest, but I'll roll with it. As soon as he finds and processes this, however, Katherine enters the home from another entrance, and the guy (I think it's one of her servants) enters from the door Jim entered through, leaving him no choice but to step out and expose himself. When she predictably demands to know what he's playing at, he reveals that Penguin now also knows about the Court, and demands that he be allowed to sit among the topmost executives of the Court so he can be privy to the secret information he came for. This causes Katherine to launch into another fucking spiel about how Gotham is diseased and needs to be purged of its criminals by showing the city its darkest self. Oh, for fuck's sake. For fuck's sake.

FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

Yes, the big mysterious weapon the Court is going to use to pass judgement on Gotham is the bullshit blood virus. Which they just had to extract from Michael Chiklis. So what actually arrived in that massive crate from Indian Hill at Dock 9C? And if the blood was the ultimate endpoint, why did Strange's schemes for the Court revolve around resurrecting the dead? Why didn't they start working on the weapon when they had Alice in Strange's illegal captivity for years? Why didn't they pluck Tetch or Alice off the street once they became relevant? What purpose was the crystal owl for, anyway?! Why? Why fucking any of this?! THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE, YOU FUCKING HACKS! THIS IS WHAT MAKING SHIT UP AS YOU GO ALONG DOES!

*massages temples*

Ugh. Okay. Jim has Lucius identify the Wayne Enterprises lab where Michael Chiklis might be being kept, and heads off to stop the inevitable. Fine. Fucking fine.

Meanwhile, Ivy has a few hypnotized nurses bring in pots full of a special healing plant she's been cultivating for exactly this kind of situation, but which has never been mentioned before. Did someone say deus ex machina? Then she gives a little speech about how Selina has always been there for her, and zzzzzzzzz

We then return to the prison, where Tasty Rudy is talking to Bruce about the process of revisiting his first memory of rage over his parents' deaths and removing the destructive emotions from it so Bruce can move on. He's understandably concerned and hesitant, but Rudy repeats his "protector of Gotham" speech and says that it needs to be Bruce's choice. Bruce then accepts it, and they return to a particular memory: the wake of Thomas and Martha. This is apparently where Bruce first truly understood what had happened and thought of himself as an orphan, and he starts going into a rage about how everyone was concerned about him instead of being angry at their untimely deaths. He talks about a pair of precious cufflinks he was supposed to have his father buried in, but which he couldn't give up in time; Rudy has him give them up in the dreamscape, and Bruce is suddenly in the real world, supposedly freed from his anger. Rudy then tells him that together, they'll make Gotham pay...? I guess?

Jim and Bullock find the lab where Michael Chiklis is supposedly being held, and instead find it in shambles, all of the guards and scientists brutally murdered. As they discuss what could have happened, the test subject Strange sprayed with the virus runs out, tries to justify his killings, and then pounces on Jim while roaring like a tiger. Okay. Before he can crush Jim's neck, though, Strange runs up from behind and jabs him with more Instant Plot Tranquilizer, solving the problem. Strange explains that he was held against his will and forced to help Katherine, and also that the crate at Dock 9C contained the dispersal mechanism that will be used to reenact the end of Batman Begins with the bullshit blood virus. We get no mention of how he survived the test subject's rampage, however. Bullock tries to arrest him, but he states that if he's arrested, the Court will know Jim is onto their plans and might release the weapon right away; he also gives them the blueprints for the device and a sample of the viral compound, blackmailing them with gratitude out of arresting him later. From this, they put together that he's been playing both sides for his own ends, which may be the first genuinely intelligent thing Strange has ever done on this show. Jim hands Bullock the evidence and goes off in his own merry way, just as Katherine calls to tell him that she might accept his request to be a higher-up.

Returning to the prison, we see Bruce once again fight the Talon, this time triumphing over him in a scene with decent fight choreography. When questioned, he says that this time, he felt nothing at all, and Rudy offers to either have him sent home right away or to continue the training and take all of the pain away. Bruce wants the latter option, and commands the Talon to get up so they can fight again. All good there.

Back to Jim, as he meets Katherine to discuss their terms. Turns out the meeting place is a hall overlooking a party for the "Daughters of Gotham", two-hundred young socialites who believe they're the most influential people in the city, to Katherine's disgust. She's brought along the weapon -- a dispersal bomb that just looks like a bland metal tube -- to use as a test for the purging of Gotham. One of her servants carries the bomb out to the middle of the party, and Katherine tells him to prove his loyalty by not interfering, lest the Talon kill him in return. If he finds some way to avert this, I'm going to be rather annoyed, because I think this is actually a decently interesting dilemma and a genuine moral line-crossing for Jim to undertake in the name of destroying the Court. I just know he's going to find a way, though... and right as I'm typing that, he takes out his phone, dials Penguin, and pulls an extremely obvious maneuver where he loudly says all of what he wants Penguin to know about the location and bomb under the guise of asking the Talon obvious questions. And the Talon is too stupid to figure it out. Great.

We briefly stop at the GCPD, where Lucius is taking stock of what they know about the virus when Lee strides up to him and accusing him of also being in on the Jim Gordon Conspiracy Hour. He acts incredibly suspiciously in response and says that he can't tell her what's going on. She storms away. Moving back to the important matters.

With minutes left on the bomb's timer (you'd think if they wanted to actually have a successful test, it would be remote-detonated rather than timed), Jim decides that Penguin isn't going to show up and makes his move, somehow managing to grab a metal plate and bash the Talon over the head with it despite the latter's superhuman reflexes. He then fights the Talon and manages to hold his own, again, despite everything we've seen the Talon do making this extremely implausible at best. Just in the nick of time as Jim is about to die, though, Penguin and Firefly show up and Firefly torches the Talon, sending him through a window and down into the party to his crispy death. Penguin tries to interrogate Jim about the Court again and demands to meet them, but Jim runs off to stop the bomb because he has priorities, and manages to evacuate the panicked crowd and seal the room off before it detonates (note: despite being consistently referred to as a bomb, it doesn't actually explode, just spins and disperses the gas). In doing so, he's presumably completely torched his chances with Katherine, making the whole "infiltrate the Court" plotline pointless.

Speaking of Katherine, we briefly check in with her as she gets a call from Tasty Rudy, who's confirmed to be her boss, which we already knew from his introduction but which the musical score treats like a shocking twist. Tasty Rudy implies that he's just yanking Bruce's chain about being the protector, though I don't know what he's actually training Bruce for in that case.

Cut to Penguin yelling in his manor with his back turned to Firefly (where has Freeze been this whole time?) about the failure of the Court to get in contact with him after he killed one of their assassins. Right on cue, another Talon springs out and takes down Firefly, cornering him.

Another cut brings us to Selina's hospital room again, which has now essentially become a greenhouse of the healing plants. Selina's hand starts to twitch and Ivy freaks out as she springs back to life, only to be sent into her standard state of dumb confusion as Selina pulls off her monitoring wires despite just coming out of a coma. When questioned, she says she has to go to Wayne Manor immediately -- to kill Salty Bobby. Oh boy.

Back... to... Lee. Jim rushes into her office as she's packing her things, and she says she's resigning because she believes Jim has infected the entire city and destroyed any chance of a life she has left, and I DON'T FUCKING CAAAAAAAAAARE

We cut back to Penguin with only a few minutes left, as the Talon tosses him into a cage and leaves him behind despite his shouts. At a growl of his name, he turns... and it turns out he's been conveniently caged up right next to Nygma. Robin Lord Taylor actually does some nice subtle physical acting here, lunging at the bars to try and attack Ed, but reverting to a softened facial expression that conveys both rage, pain, and longing. It's one of the only bits of genuine subtlety I can remember in the whole run of this show. So good on him.

And in the final scene, we see Katherine talking to the restrained Michael Chiklis. I notice they've been putting him in a Bane-style mask this whole time, but he can't be Bane. I refuse to believe that until he starts shouting that he's "the bane of criminals" or whatever. Regardless, Katherine tasks him with killing Jim since he has betrayed her trust. Yep. YEP. We are doing that storyline again. Not just threatening Jim with a death that won't come, but specifically having the main villain of the season unleash a villain from earlier in the season, now superpowered, to take Jim out despite there being much simpler ways to go about this. Yes, we're repeating Azralavan, and I don't even have James Frain to comfort me this time. Fucking kill me already.


... See you next Monday, if I haven't suffered a premature stroke from my impotent rage over this entire story by then.
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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

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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Tue May 23, 2017 10:23 pm

*gasp* A relatively on-time review the day after the episode aired? What is this thread coming to?

I've got nothing better to do right now, so given the choice between watching this episode and hammering nails into my dick, I hesitantly chose this one. Let's dive into "All Will Be Judged" and savor the awfulness to come.

Spoiler: show
Thankfully, we open the episode picking up where we left off with Penguin and Nygma, and... goddamn it, I forgot how delightful these two are together. Even when they're at each other's throats over a completely bullshit fight that still doesn't make sense (I'm half considering making a post highlighting the main character arcs so far and how little they've earned what they're doing now), they shine when they're in the same room. Robin Lord Taylor and Cory Michael Smith have superb chemistry, and they get a fair bit of solid banter in this exchange as they each threaten to continue the cycle of pointless, petty revenge. I hope beyond hopes that they're back to working together before the season closes, preferably with Nygma realizing Isabella was a whole bunch of bullshit.

The reunion can't take up the whole episode, sadly. Returning to the Safest Manor on Earth, Salty Bobby is drawn by an alarm to the study, where he finds that Selina has broken in and wants to stab him to death. The ensuing fight is clumsy, poorly paced, and full of ever more awkward Selina dialogue, as is to be expected. Salty Bobby eventually gets a wicked stab in the side, but Alfred storms in and restrains the seemingly insane Selina before she can land a killing blow, allowing Bobby to knock her out with a fireplace poker. Then, finally, the charade is mercifully put out of its misery when Alfred notices the stab wound and how intent Bobby seems on finishing Selina off, and finally puts together that Bobby is the clone who can't feel pain, not the real Bruce. This revelation is followed by a much better fight sequence and some nice Alfred threats, but sadly, Bobby manages to get the upper hand and knock Alfred out as well. I admit, this whole scene wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and at least the tiresome clone masquerade is out the window now. Let's see where it goes.

Cut to a car pulling up in front of a secluded old stone house. Out of the car steps... Tasty Rudy?! Oh, apparently this is Bruce being brought back to Gotham. We're made to feel like it's a triumphant moment as he overlooks the darkened skyline, but he's only been in Plot-Stalling Prison for three episodes, so it really doesn't mean much. Oh, well.

After the title card, we're back with... *sigh*... Lee. How fucking amazing is it that I now regard the formerly sane and competent love interest in the same light as I did pre-insanity Barbara? She's just a tiresome, hypocritical harpy blinded by love, because that's all these female characters are allowed to be. She has a bit of a pointless nightmare where she's back with Mario and spends a rather long time recounting to him the events of the first half of the season, and then he cuts his wrist open and makes her drink his blood because symbolism I guess. I don't know. I'm guessing they're building up to her being killed off at the end of the season and finally letting her animosity for Jim go in her dying moments, because really, what else could they possibly do with her after all of this? I don't care. I'll be a little miffed over yet another fridging (remember Valerie Vale? No? Me either), but just get her off my screen already.

Then we're at the GCPD with Jim and Bullock discussing where the bullshit blood virus might be being kept. Jim and Lucius have found a discrepancy in a tenement building plan Katherine publicly owns, so he suggests they check it out. After a mildly amusing exchange about trusting Lucius's idea of where in the building she would hold the virus (Bullock's reasoning for not wanting to follow his plan: "he's smarter than me"), the dynamic duo are are suddenly searching the basement of the building and quickly find (and open) a secret door in the bricks. Through the door is... *sigh*... another crystal owl identical to the one that was made a big deal out of when Bruce and Selina did their stupid heist for it, but which panned out as nothing. When they shine their flashlights into it, it turns out the real significance of these artifacts, the "thing that could destroy the Court" that was so heavily hyped up in the first half of the season, is actually just a ludicrously elaborate light map showing where the other secret locations that have crystal owls in them are. Also, while the crystal owl in the middle of that random building from the heist episode was protected by several guards, a laser grid, and a Talon, this one is completely unguarded for the convenience of the plot. Suddenly, before the sloppy storytelling can set in, a grenade rolls out of nowhere to separate Jim and Bullock, and out of the dust steps... Michael Chiklis dressed like a bad cosplay of the Winter Soldier. He's got some kind of blade attached to his hand and talks about his need to punish Jim, but he decides to just knock both of them out, because of course. Fine. Let's follow this plot to the only conclusion it can reach.

Before we can see where that surely delightful rehash goes, we check back in at Wayne Manor, where Selina is recovering from the poker to the cranium as Alfred furiously tries to call Jim. When he fails, he tells Selina that he knows Bruce is still alive, and that she's going to help him find him. She refuses -- because of course she does -- and Alfred launches into a rant about how Bruce has always been good to her and she's being a petty hypocrite long after what she's pissed about has stopped mattering. It... It's a little bit unfortunate that we have another primary female character whose arc boils down to being pettily bitchy toward the hero she's supposed to love and getting called out on it, no? Just a little bit? Ugh.

We then return to the scene of the crime, where Jim has been abducted and Bullock is trying to piece together what happened. Another cop brings in a young man who saw Chiklis take Jim to a car and drive off, and this kid has such a strange appearance (big curly hair and ridiculous coke-bottle glasses with thick black frames) and demeanor that I'm positive he's either a tease at a canon character or supposed to be significant later. All we learn is that Chiklis is taking Jim somewhere, where he will arbitrarily wait just long enough before killing him that he can turn the tables just in time.

Back to Penguin and Riddler, yay! Penguin starts off the scene well by needling Nygma over his choice of moniker, and repeatedly drones his real name in a flat monotone until Nygma snaps and more barbs are exchanged. We then get some hijinks as Nygma tricks Penguin into thinking his coffee is poisoned and then shooting him with a dart he stole off a guard, which causes Penguin to fall over and start choking as Nygma starts picking the lock on his cell door, only for Penguin in turn to bang his tray on the walls of the cage, alerting the guards to come in and kick Nygma's ass. The "mutual loathing" dynamic will wear thin fast if they drag it out much longer -- and again, the path that led us here was irredeemable BS -- but this was a fine scene in a vacuum.

And then we're back to Bruce and Tasty Rudy meditating in that old house. What significance this house has and why they couldn't just finish the process in the ice prison, I don't yet know, and I fully expect it to be glossed over the sake of the plot. Rudy explains that the last step before Bruce can attain his true power is to be released from the pain of the actual murder of his parents, meaning we have to repeat the exact same "put the precious memory in the safe" scene from the last episode, but here represented -- because nobody has ever tapped this well before -- by Martha's pearl necklace rather than some cufflinks. Bruce tries to give it up, but chokes at the last second and pulls back, explaining that he can't let go even though he wants to. Tasty Rudy then ominously decides that it's time to tell Bruce "the truth." Oh boy, another hidden truth about the Wayne murders? I can't wait.

We cut from the shot of the necklace to chains around Jim's arms as he wakes up restrained in an inexplicable abandoned courthouse of some sort, with Katherine and Michael Chiklis facing him. Katherine explains that she caught on to him stealing her card, though for some reason she wasn't immediately suspicious when she saw him in her house despite supposedly not knowing her real name. There's more and more of the usual Court of Owls schlock about cleansing the city and Jim being unworthy, while Jim makes vain attempts to turn Michael Chiklis against Katherine. Eventually, Katherine marches away from the scene and leaves Jim to Chiklis, who takes the judge's stand, attaches his axe-blade gauntlet (this feels extremely familiar, but I can't place what comic villain he's supposed to be), and proudly announces that he's "JUDGE, JURY, AND EXECUTIONER" because we haven't hammered that motif in enough yet.

UUUUUUGH. Now we're at Arkham, with Lee interviewing Jervis Tetch yet again about the bullshit blood virus. This time, though, she specifically wants to know why he infected Mario instead of her if he wanted to make Jim suffer, because she's been so busy blaming Jim that she never stopped to think about why he died. Tetch launches into a long, winding, terrible ramble that basically amounts to "I wanted to make you hate the hero for drama", and then tells her that it's not actually Jim or himself to blame for Mario's death -- it's her. Because by loving Mario, she got him in Tetch's crosshairs, ergo she's to blame for daring to have eyes for anyone other than Jim. And she readily agrees with this judgement.

...

Heller, you exhaust me so.

...

Penguin and Nygma, save me from this madness. This scene is short, but sweet: all that happens is that they decide they need to escape if one wants to kill the other, and they agree to help each other do it. The rules they settle on for their escape -- no sabotage, no murder on the premises, and a six-hour safe window after the escape so they both have a fair shot at killing the other later -- are just delightful. I'm really sad that this can't just be the whole episode, because it's hands-down better than any of the other arcs.

But alas, we rejoin Bruce and Tasty Rudy as the latter drags the former into one of his own memories. Here, we see Rudy in a business suit standing before a kneeling Owl, who's informing him in a panic about the Wayne murders and the fact that Bruce is still alive. Rudy stabs the Owl in the throat, revealing that he didn't actually want the Waynes dead (or opening up the possibility that he's able to manipulate his memories and show Bruce lies to make him agree to whatever he's planning). Back in the real world, he again brings up that the supposedly all-powerful Court were never more than a simple means to an end to keep Gotham under control while the real higher power -- which he again refuses to explicitly name yet, because we need to stall forever on making actual progress -- focused on matters elsewhere, and that he now supposedly wants to make them pay for their crimes. But we know he's a part of the League of Assassins, so that can't be true, making this pointless.

With a little under half the episode left, we rejoin Jim as Michael Chiklis stands before him, reading out his "crimes" and deciding that the sentence must be death by beheading. For some reason, as he once again puts on his axe gauntlet (no idea why he took it off after making such a big deal of putting it on; good job with the continuity, guys), he's now making a bunch of mechanical whirring noises as he moves the arm it attaches to. For some reason, he's apparently had his actual arm replaced by an artificial one, even though it has little use other than to hold a weapon he could just as easily carry in a real hand. Strange. Anyway, he prepares to kill Jim, but gets repeatedly stalled by queries, pleas, and eventually Jim's "final request" to be killed while wearing his badge. When Chiklis honors this last one and pins it to his suit, Jim manages to pull the pin on one of the many extraneous grenades Chiklis has on his bandolier, distracting him as he gets rid of it. By the time he does and tries to execute Jim again, Bullock and the cops rush in, and Chiklis is forced to leap out of a window. This was the only thing that could ever have happened, because it's the only thing that ever does happen in these scenes. So we're just moving on.

We return to the GCPD as Jim suits up to visit Katherine again, only for Bullock to inform him that they've already been to her house and she's being brought in for questioning. Can't see any way for this to go wrong. Just as they're trying to talk strategy for dealing with the Court and the rampaging Michael Chiklis, Alfred barges into the GCPD and interrogates Jim about where he's been. In the ensuing discussion, Jim and Bullock get filled in on exactly what's been going on with their side of the Court investigation, the fact that they've both found crystal owls, Bruce's disappearance, and the existence of Salty Bobby (which hilariously makes Bullock reach for his flask as soon as he hears "clone"). Now everyone is at least on the same page, which alleviates some of the tedium slightly, and they agree to try reassembling the owl that was broken by Jerome, which at least means that plot line hasn't been completely dropped even though it still makes very little sense.

Another all-too-brief check-in with Nygma and Penguin. They wind up making their escape by tricking the guards into thinking Nygma is slashing Penguin's throat through the bars (using red Jell-o as fake blood that wouldn't fool a blind man) and stealing their tranq dart guns when they come into the cages, knocking out one and killing the other. Delightful.

Katherine is brought into the GCPD and swiftly put in the interrogation room, where Jim questions her about everything they've just learned regarding the maps and Bruce. She initially plays coy and pretends not to know what he's talking about, obviously, but when he brings up that she's the leader of this whole plot, she can't resist confirming everything he's just said in front of cameras by mocking him for thinking she's the real leader when the real powers are making their move. I guess it's only fitting that the supposed leader of this apparently inconsequential secret council of idiots would so quickly show her hand like that, but I can't get over how unforgivably dumb everyone on this show is. Luckily, Alfred alleviates some of my rage by storming into the room once he learns Katherine is inside, questioning her about Bruce's location, and then FUCKING STABBING HER HAND when she doesn't comply. Unluckily, Michael Chiklis disrupts my laughter by storming into the GCPD and tossing smoke grenades because it's about time for our episode climax.

After the break, Bullock goes out to check on the explosion sounds as Alfred continues to stab the shit out of Katherine's hand. He sees Michael Chiklis ranting and trashing the place as unconscious cops helplessly lie around, but he isn't seen and he hastily sneaks back into the interrogation room to inform the others. Continuing to hold Katherine at gunpoint, they all sneak out and try to escape, only for Katherine to lure Chiklis over with her shouts. Somehow, Chiklis happens to be hanging from the ceiling right above them despite being a portly older man with one hand replaced by an axe. A pitched battle ensues in which Chiklis hits people with the bladed side of his axe hand quite explicitly dead-on, but they only seem to get knocked around rather than even a little bit scratched up, rendering the threat of the blade pointless. Consider me baffled. In the midst of it, Katherine shouts at Michael Chiklis to take her away and stop his pointless crusade, and...

...

Huh.

Michael Chiklis gets angry because she called his crusade pointless, and he swiftly decapitates her, rendering her the only actual kill he gets with that hyped-up axe. There goes our stupid villain, I suppose. I'm not mourning her loss.

Anywho, as Chiklis turns his attention to Jim and starts lumbering sloooooooooooowly up to finish him off, Jim manages to get his hands on a shotgun and blows off Chiklis's gauntlet-covered hand, which inexplicably turns out to be his real flesh-and-blood hand. Why were there constant mechanical noises? Your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, he slumps over, but rather than finish him off with the shotgun and take this lame cartoon villain (and a waste of a talented actor) out of the picture, Jim just knocks him out, solving the immediate problem.

Here we come to what I assume is our last Penguin and Ed scene in the episode, tragically. They manage to bust out of the building they were kept in with five hours left in their safety window, and after scaring away the homeless people in the alley they emerged in, they bid farewell to each other. Nygma taunts Penguin that he has Barbara and all of the gangs in the city on his side, but Penguin reveals his army of Indian Hill freaks in response (I'm not sure a bratty idiot with mind control perfume and two bland people with elemental guns qualifies as a platoon, much less an army, but fine) and promises a war to settle their mutual desire for revenge. With blood-soaked smiles to each other, they part ways at last, leaving me hoping that the upcoming war will result in Barbara being stabbed, shot, frozen, and burned to death all at once so Penguin and Nygma can bond over her hilarious corpse.

Back at the GCPD, Lee marches in as everyone is recovering and furiously rebukes Jim when he asks if she's come to help out. Despite her apparent change of attitude after the Tetch conversation, she's more vengeful and angry and screechy than ever, and launches into another copy-pasted tirade about how Jim needs to pay for what he's done to her. Jim is appropriately befuddled when she mentions that she's paying for what she did as well, because he can actually see the logic that Lee is almost blameless in Mario's death, but this resolves nothing and she just storms out without having done much of anything. Then Jim talks to Bullock about what Katherine said regarding the mysterious leader above even her. Could we be gearing up to finally reveal Alexander Siddig's Ra's al Ghul? I certainly hope so, if only to see whether we finally have a remotely interesting villain to cap off this sloppy, muddled, aimless season.

We're back to Bruce and Tasty Rudy's meditation, though now we see a shadowy man standing in the corner of the room before we transition to the dreams. Despite his pain, Bruce is now finally able to put the pearl necklace in the safe as triumphant orchestral music plays, and Rudy thanks him for letting go. Back in the real world, Rudy asks if Bruce feels anything when he thinks of his parents' deaths, and Bruce emotionlessly answers that he doesn't. The shadowy man steps up as Rudy smiles, and it turns out it's just yet another Talon. However, we now learn that Rudy is one of the people responsible for making Talons, and that the entire process of letting go of his pain was actually Bruce being turned into one himself. Rudy has the Talon chop off his own finger to demonstrate how unflinchingly loyal they are, but then he confirms that he wasn't lying when he told Bruce they were going to destroy the Court -- Bruce has become the weapon he will use to take them down. I no longer have any clue where this arc is going, and I can't find it in myself to care. Bruce will get out of this anyway, and it will be bullshit.

One minute left, and Jim and Bullock are informed by Alvarez (have we ever actually seen him before now? I swear he's always just been the generic cop Bullock calls to offscreen) that Michael Chiklis managed to escape transfer to Arkham despite missing one hand and is loose in the streets again, so we have to deal with that nonsense once more. Oh, and it gets better! As they're led into the M.E.'s office, we see the safe Lucius was keeping the bullshit blood virus samples in. It's empty. Jim is confused, because the only people who had the combination to it were himself, Lucius, and -- as it dawns on him -- Lee.

... It was at this point that I stopped writing and began whispering "are you fucking kidding me" repeatedly at the screen, so numbed was I by what I saw and what I'll have to deal with in future episodes that I was finally struck into complete and utter disbelief by this godforsaken show.

Cut to Lee sitting at home, tying off the veins in her arm like a heroin addict, and injecting the bullshit blood virus into her arm as she smiles at the camera. Roll credits.

We did it. We got to this point. Lee has transformed herself into a supervillain out of her screeching madwoman rage over Jim killing Mario. Despite all of the logical arguments she's been presented with, all of what she knows about the bullshit blood virus from talking to Michael Chiklis and Tetch, she decides that her life isn't worth living without Mario and wants to get revenge on Jim by injecting herself with the bullshit blood virus. Bruno Heller and his staff consider this good writing, and his fans will surely give the exact same argument that was made with Barbara in season one -- that we were actually supposed to hate her all along because she was going to be a villain, which means that her shrill illogic since Mario's death was intentional and brilliant foreshadowing rather than bad characterization.

I... I don't know anymore.


Oh my god. Oh, Christ on a bike, this episode didn't even start off that bad. I'm still in disbelief right now. My brow has never been more furrowed. I just... why is this happening?
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Re: Gotham

Postby KleinerKiller » Wed May 31, 2017 6:16 am

Next up is "Pretty Hate Machine", possibly the most apt title for this show ever created.

Spoiler: show
We open on Tasty Rudy making a speech before the gathered Court leadership (who are revealed to be meeting in a huge, official-looking building the middle of the city because fuck logic) while Bruce waits in the sidelines. Rudy announces that Thomas and Martha Wayne's murders were a terrible crime and that their blood is on the Court's hands, despite some other Owl punk's attempts to defend their decision because Thomas stood against the Court. Here we have it officially confirmed that Rudy is the complete leader of the Court and Katherine was only his second-in-command, and I imagine we'll have it revealed in this episode or the next that Ra's is above him. Anyway, Rudy has a bunch of Talons step up behind the Owls and asks Bruce to give the order, but despite having been clearly brainwashed last time, he hesitates, causing Rudy to signal the Talons to brutally slash the entire Court to death. So... that's it. That's the Court of Owls down for the count. Yeah, there are still footsoldiers and Talons and Tasty Rudy to deal with, and the bullshit blood virus is still a problem, but this is what we were building to for the Court itself. They were destroyed not by the crystal owls, not by planning and teamwork between the protagonists, but by their leader in a cold open.

And I couldn't care less, because they were the most bland shit ever. What a waste.

After the title card, Jim, Bullock, Alfred, and a bunch of cops storm the building, only one among all of the locations revealed by the crystal owl. Instead of finding Bruce, though, they find the dead leaders and ponder who could've done such a thing. Conveniently, despite having a slashed throat, one of them is only mostly dead and he's able to spill everything to Jim about Rudy and Bruce killing them. God forbid Jim would actually have to do some investigative work for the first time in the show's entire run.

The ramifications of the heads of Gotham's richest families being found dead in part of a massive secret society are not explored before we cut to the GCPD, where Alfred is denying the possibility that Bruce could be behind the killings, and we also learn that dead Owls were found at every site the police raided. So yeah, the entire Court really is down and out. Jim initially seems worried about why the leader is suddenly turning on the Court and whether the viral bomb is still active, but he's actually worrying about Lee, because of course he is and we're going to have to stomp into that muck soon. Bullock, for once having a fraction of a logical brain cell, reassures him that it would be stupid and ridiculous for Lee to inject herself with the bullshit blood virus, but Jim has a gut feeling / a copy of the script, so he knows the utterly illogical must be true. Off he races to confront her at her house.

Cut to uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. The nightclub. Always the motherfucking nightclub. In this riveting check-in with our most insufferable cast members (and Riddler, who somehow manages to still be entertaining even though his motives are ludicrous and his character arc has gone sour), we find Nygma filling Barbara, Tabitha, and Butch in on what just happened and what's coming their way. At Barb's unnecessarily hammy, bitchy demand, all of what he knows about the Court and Katherine is revealed to her, which is completely redundant because they're all dead now. Wouldn't want precious little Barb to have to do actual work for her power, would we? Regardless, Nygma insists that Penguin and his monster "army" (you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means) are the bigger threat, and that he'll be coming for all of them since he considers them all responsible for his downfall. Barb begrudgingly agrees after a whole lot more spiteful bitching at Ed and Tabby, and they start to plan for war. Please, Oswald, just slaughter all these fucktards and pull Nygma back to your side. I want to care about something again.

We then rejoin Jim as he jogs up to Lee's place, dismissing the officers keeping lookout at the scene because who the fuck needs backup when you're dealing with a vengeful harpy and her magic bioweapon? Once that nonsensical contrivance to put himself in danger is out of the way, he enters the house and is obviously surprised by Lee, who dramatically steps out of the shadows with varicose virus veins, sinister mascara and eye shadow, and a completely different hairstyle for some reason. She starts taunting him and oh god, they actually did it, they ruined Morena Baccarin the same way they ruined Erin Richards. It's all just flavorless scenery chewing now.

And even worse, Lee reveals that it's not her hate for Jim that the bullshit blood virus brought out of her, but her LOVE, because it turns out part of her actually got super wet when he killed Mario and did all those other horrible evil things. So now all she does is writhe against him and ramble endlessly about the darkness and violence inside of Jim. The show keeps pushing this angle, but it's never worked, because Jim isn't a morally complicated dark anti-hero; he's a blank-slate numbskull who occasionally turns into a petty jackass and can't stop going to evil people for favors and advice. I hate him because he's poorly written and played by a decent-at-best actor, not because he's gone into an engaging downward moral spiral. You're not fucking Vince Gilligan, Heller. But all that aside, she goes on and on about how she's going to be with Jim forever, but first he has to accept his true self, meaning she's going to inject him with the virus because the show has never decided whether it exaggerates your personality or turns you into a frothing, insane muscle zombie. She throws him across the room, says she has a secret, seems like she's going to keep talking, and then... really abrupt end scene. The fuck? That's some poor-ass editing right there.

Back at the GCPD, Bullock and Alfred are examining a map they've made of all the locations revealed by the crystal owl, when Bullock points out that the house where Alfred and Bruce found the original owl wasn't actually a marked location. This means that the Court didn't mark all of their important black sites -- just most of them, up to and including the meeting place for the leadership. Rather than point out their absurd idiocy, Bullock takes it to mean that Bruce is probably in an unmarked location, and asks how Alfred found the house in the first place. Against all odds, we get another reference to the Whisper Gang, and it looks like we'll be revisiting whatever's left of them because they might know the other locations. Yeah, check in on the supposedly massacred smuggling ring we haven't mentioned at all for the better part of a season to get all the answers. That doesn't scream deus ex machina at all.

At Penguin's safehouse, we find Ozzy breaking everything in a fit of rage as Selina and Ivy look on. It turns out that while he was being held captive (apparently for weeks; Gotham's recurring problem with expressing timescales strikes again!), Freeze and Firefly decided he wasn't coming back and left, and he needs to find them so he can have his "army". Dude, they're two fucking people, and neither of them are particularly smart, strong, or dangerous. All that makes them special is their resilience to cold and heat, respectively, and their guns -- one of which is just an ordinary flamethrower. I don't get how this is such a crippling problem. Once he's done with his hissy fit, though, Nygma and Butch kick the door down and hold them at gunpoint, with only Selina managing to escape without being noticed. Penguin and Ivy are completely dead to rights and Nygma could literally solve all of his problems with two trigger pulls, but he forces Butch to stop because he feels like something isn't right, giving Penguin the chance to dramatically pull out a detonator-shaped switch and brag about how he outsmarted him. After a few more seconds of baffling refusal to finish the job, the switch turns out to shut off the lights and open up a secret bookcase package for Penguin and Ivy to slip through while Nygma just stands still, yelling at them that he'll get them next time. This is a cartoon. This is a fucking children's cartoon masquerading as a dramatic police thriller.

Bruce is meditating in front of Tasty Rudy's fireplace when Rudy walks up behind him and asks him what he's feeling. He states in brainwashed monotone that he feels like a failure despite finally having gained anti-climactic justice for his parents' killings, because he failed to give the order to the Talons himself. Rudy reassures him that he'll have another chance to prove himself worthy, and Strange walks in on cue, accompanied by a few Talons and the viral bomb. Strange is impressed with Tasty Rudy's mental manipulation techniques, but Rudy waves him off as he collects the bomb's detonator, mentioning that "the one he serves" (GEE, WHO COULD IT POSSIBLY BE) believes Bruce has a great destiny awaiting him. Turns out it's Bruce's job to detonate the bomb, just like it was Jim's job to watch the mini-bomb detonate a few weeks ago, because we can do nothing but repeat story beats for our protagonists. Rudy also tells him that when the bomb is detonated and Gotham is destroyed, "a dark hero will rise," because there's an active betting game going on in the writer's room about who can make the most on-the-nose reference to Batman in spite of all logic and context.

Brief cut to Bullock and Alfred, who now have a possible location for Bruce because they seriously visited the Whisper Gang offscreen and got exactly what they needed. *sigh* And we also see Lee tossing a body bag containing Jim into the trunk of her car, because like every single villain who gets his or her hands on one of the protagonists, she feels the instinctual compulsion to kidnap him instead of using the virus we know she has with her to accomplish her goal immediately.

Then we're back at the house with Tasty Rudy's gang, when all of a sudden Bullock and Alfred burst in, shooting one of the Talons after a brief struggle and arresting Strange (I do like his deadpan, eye-rolling surrender; it's a very Hugo Strange thing for a not-very-Hugo-Strange character to do). Rudy, Bruce, and the remaining Talons manage to wheel the bomb to another hall as Bullock handles Strange, and only Alfred is on hand to catch up to them (why the hell did they not bring other cops like they did for the previous raids?). Unfortunately, Bruce prevents him from shooting Rudy, and he thankfully realizes from Bruce's speech Rudy's brainwashed him so we don't have to dance around "oh why would master Bruce do such a thing" for too long. One of the Talons then rushes up and knocks him as the others make their escape with the bomb.

Returning to the GCPD after a break, Bullock tosses Strange in the ever-reliable lobby holding cell and Alfred fills him in on Bruce's state, and they come to the realization that Tasty Rudy wants Bruce to detonate the bomb and "fulfill his destiny." It's nice to have everyone on the same page. Then a cop tells them that Jim and Lee have gone missing, and Bullock is about to put out an APB on her car when -- guess what? Lee strides right into the place. Bullock tries to act natural, but all she has to say in response to him asking where Jim is is that he should be waking up soon.

Cut to... Jim waking up in a coffin, buried alive in the woods, and furiously calling Lee's name and trying to smash his way out. Huh. Okay. Unexpected.

Lee reveals Jim's status to everyone and gets the entire station's attention on her as she makes her grandiose speech about Jim getting in touch with his darkness. I'm happy that Morena Baccarin finally gets something to do on this thankless piece of shit, I'm just sad it had to go down like this. Once her speech is over, she whips out a walkie-talkie and gets in touch with Jim, announcing the rules of her little game to him and everyone else: he can either die in the coffin, or he can inject himself with the virus stashed inside his pocket and smash his way out with his newfound bullshit strength. So that gives a reason why she didn't just do it herself, at least, even if it's cliched, unearned, and once again makes her look like a senseless idiot who should be easy to take down. Everyone's predictably upset by the idea of Jim injecting himself, but he promises not to do it, so Bullock orders Lee thrown in the holding cell right beside Strange and has the cops regain focus on the viral bomb while he sorts out Jim himself. Now knowing that he has an hour or so of air left, Jim gives Bullock the idea to have Lucius track the radio frequency, and focuses on conserving his air until then. I just know he's going to inject himself, though, and I also know that it won't have any lasting impact beyond the season finale.

Once more unto the nightclub. Selina has come there to meet with Barb and the gang, telling them that she was only hanging out with Penguin because he wanted her to locate Bridget / Firefly for him. Once she learns that Penguin's "army" has deserted him, Barb goes into #lolrandom mode, and when that shit's over, Nygma has the bright idea to have her pretend she found Firefly to lure Penguin and Ivy out. Barb then shoos Tabby away in the most unpleasant way possible, because she's still pissed about Tabby not being perfectly loyal to her and doesn't want her knowing the details of the plan. Oh, and Selina makes her promise not to hurt Ivy when they find her and Penguin because, and I quote: "she's stupid, but she's a friend." I will never get over the treatment of this character. For shame, Heller.

Let me establish this now: Barbara needs to die. She needs to die soon, she needs to die slow, and she needs to die screaming. She cannot go on just getting everything she wants, being the unchallenged queen of the underworld for another season, and tearing the best dynamic on the show apart for another season. If she successfully gets Firefly and Freeze on her side to make the odds even more stacked against Penguin, I'm fuckin' out. If she still reigns supreme by the time the season finale is over, I'm fuckin' out, unless I hear in the next season that she gets violently deposed and killed. This is my line in the sand. The only thing that could possibly keep me on board in the event that she doesn't suffer any losses is if Siddig's Ra's al Ghul turns out to be the best villain they've ever had on the show, and somehow I doubt that's going to be the case. So let's fuckin' see.

Anywho, we cut back to Jim in his coffin, and he gets the news that Lucius managed to determine that the signal is coming from a specific park within a mile of the station, even though he couldn't isolate an exact location. Jim is uncertain that they'll be able to find the right place in time, but Bullock reassures him before he's stopped by Alfred, who wants to know if devoting even a fraction of manpower away from the search for Bruce and the bomb is a good idea. Bullock resolves it by putting Alfred on the official task of interrogating Strange as brutally and illegally as he wants until he gives up the relevant information, which is admittedly an awesome prospect.

And cut to Alfred dangling Strange off the side of a building by his tie! Go, Alfred! Drop this son of a bitch and finally close off this character arc! Ah, but no, Strange gets to live for now. When it finally becomes clear that he's not going to crack that way, Alfred pulls him down and offers him an exchange: his freedom for Bruce's location. Highly unethical, but it works. Turns out the bomb is going to go off in twenty minutes, it's at Union Station, and Bruce has been taken back to Wayne Enterprises, which -- if I'm remembering correctly, and we've already demonstrated that I know this show better than Heller and his cronies do -- we haven't been back to in any meaningful extent since Season 1, with the Molly Mathis and Sid Bunderslaw plot that ended up going absolutely nowhere. And no, I didn't have to look up their names, I remember that years on because it's so egregiously pointless. Regardless, Alfred seems to let him go, but then adds the condition that he can run "when he wakes up" and karate chops in the head to knock him out. Good old Alfred, one of the few reliable characters we have left.

We then rejoin Bruce and Tasty Rudy as they look out onto the towering view over Gotham. Bruce confirms that he's ready to meet his destiny if his destiny truly is to destroy everything he sees, and Rudy once again gives him a bunch of vague hints about "the one above" being very eager to meet Bruce and having great plans for him. I have to wonder, does Heller think that Ra's al Ghul is an obscure piece of Batman trivia? Every Bat-fan who would get anything out of the name "Ra's al Ghul" already knows he's appearing and had him pegged as the master manipulator from the start. Why bother keeping it a secret for this long? It's so pointless.

As Jim's air gets thinner, Bullock and a squad of cops with tracker dogs have begun to comb the park, but they both realize there's too much ground to cover with too little time. Bullock relents and tells Jim to take the virus, since they'll know he's infected and they can figure out a way to help him, but Jim adamantly refuses because he doesn't want to become a monster and let Lee win. Bullock then gets the news of the bomb's detonation time and location, and immediately rushes all available units to the site, urging Jim to just inject himself already. However, Jim puts together that the bomb will be hidden in the clock tower at Union Station, but his connection conveniently cuts out before he can tell this to Bullock. Out of options, Jim finally decides to jab himself in the neck, and literally within seconds he has the super-strength necessary to smash his way to freedom. I've said it before, and I will say it as many times as I have to. Bullshit. Blood. Virus.

Cut to the greenhouse estate, where Penguin is drinking and ranting to a gardening Ivy about how the mob used to run by codes, and while Falcone and Fish and the like had their faults, Barbara and Nygma wouldn't be grime on their boots. I can't believe this show is making me nostalgic for the fucking mob war storyline, but it is. When Penguin says that they have no other safehouses left to run to, Ivy then mentions that they have a ray of hope, because Selina called and said she found Bridget / Firefly, though she mentions that she was acting weird and asking where they were and if they had guns. She sees nothing wrong with this even as Penguin froths at her for being a fucking dumbass, because she is an unbelievable fucking dumbass even for a sexualized child in an adult's body. On cue, the whole unpleasant crew marches into the greenhouse, once again having them dead to rights, but it's not the finale yet so I'm guessing /hoping Penguin will find some ingenious way to escape again.

As the music starts picking up, Bullock and the search team finally stumble upon the hole where Jim smashed his way out, and when he sees the empty syringe, he realizes what's happened and knows Jim will be on his way to Union Station. Meanwhile at the GCPD, Lee hears this over the police radios, smiles, and somehow manages to knock a guard out by thrashing at his arm through the bars, steal his keys, and make her way to freedom. Even though the holding cell she's in is directly in the lobby in eyesight of- oh why do I fucking question it anymore, she's surrounded by people who let themselves be beaten by five unarmed Luchadores.

Back to the greenhouse, where Nygma gives Penguin an ultimatum: he can address him as the Riddler and die quickly, or he can refuse and die slowly and in agony. Everyone, including me, reacts to this with temple-rubbing disdain, but it can't be helped. Penguin refuses to call him by that ridiculous name and begs to be tortured to death rather than be humiliated, WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN FUCKING FISH MOONEY STROLLS INTO THE GREENHOUSE WITH A SQUAD OF GUNMEN AND RESCUES HIM AND FUCKING FUCKING FU-

...

*blinks slowly*

I... I... actually don't think I minded her here.

Image

*clutches temples and curls up in a ball*

Am... I going crazy? Has Jada Pinkett Smith actually improved as an actress since we last saw her, is her dialogue slightly tightened up in this scene, or has my brain just strangled itself on its own stem because I just can't handle the show anymore? Because I genuinely didn't find her that bad here. Fish fucking Mooney wasn't flavorlessly hamming it up, snarling unnecessarily, or saying "bitch" a lot, she was actually kind of tolerable. I actually almost felt a smile coming on when she strode right up to Barbara and politely asked to have Penguin, and she got some amusing one-liners. I have a fucking pit in my heart as I type this. I'm genuinely freaked the fuck out. Maybe... maybe I've just been stuck with Barbara for so impossibly long, the slightly less terrible character comes as a breath of fresh air? How is that possible? HOW?!

Image

Okay. Okay. Let's wait until she appears again before I make any rash judgements about my mental state. There's a good chance that scene was just a fluke, my exhausted mind clinging to any scrap of not-horribleness to survive the storm. Let's wait and see. And hey, if I'm wrong and they actually managed to fix Fish as a character, I'll have gained way more respect for this fucking trainwreck.

We've got about two minutes left, not counting credits, and we've finally hit the climax. Jim rushes through Union Station, berserk in his desire to reach the bomb (I'm guessing the personality trait it exaggerated magically was "sense of justice" or "protection of innocents" or whatever), while Bruce and Tasty Rudy look on. Rudy tells him it's time to push the detonator, but right on cue, Alfred rushes into the hall and aims his gun at Rudy, urging Bruce to drop the detonator lest he be turned into a mass murderer. While Jim reaches the room with the bomb and kicks the shit out of a terrified Talon using his newfound abilities, Bruce steps into Alfred's line of fire again and questions if he's going to shoot him to stop him from pushing the button. Alfred begs him not to make him do anything and says they're going to get him help, but Rudy grabs the detonator in an attempt to force Bruce's hand, which causes Alfred to finally put two bullets in Rudy's chest. Bye, uninteresting time-wasting villain!

It's too late, though, because the detonator was pushed and it starts a 30-second timer in big flashing red numbers on the side of the bomb. Why, exactly? Why is the detonation not instantaneous? Why would Ra's and Rudy give the bomb any remote chance of being defused? Whatever. Jim tries to disarm it and is almost successful, but then, out of nowhere, Lee clocks him in the back of the head with a wrench and excitedly tells him that they'll have company soon. Lee had also better be dead or out of the way by the end of this season, because this one episode alone has pushed her from insufferable to unbearable. The clock slowly winds down, though... to the point that I'm not sure the detonation can be stopped. The final two episodes are next week, so I wouldn't put it past them to set the bomb off to raise the stakes before solving the crisis at the end.

With his dying breaths, Tasty Rudy -- God rest his tasty soul -- implores Bruce to seek out a certain building with a weird name and find the Demon's Head, though he still doesn't explicitly say Ra's al Ghul. Which is baffling, because not only was there a huge press thing about Ra's al Ghul coming to the season, not only is it obvious to everyone by now, but the DVR description for the next episode puts his name right up front. It's a very weird choice. But that aside, as Rudy finally passes into the great tasty beyond, Bruce flies into a rage and tries to beat down Alfred, who easily fends him off as cops come in to restrain him. But just as they've got the situation under control -- and just as Lee tells Jim to come find her when he's ready -- the bomb goes off (in the same distinctly non-bomb manner as the mini-bomb) and Union Station is instantly enveloped in bullshit blood virus gas. Bruce gazes at Alfred blankly as he's dragged away, and we finally cut to credits as chaos starts to envelope the packed station and the rush-hour road outside.

So what's it going to be, Gotham? Is the bullshit blood virus going to act like the fear gas at the end of Batman Begins and turn everyone into berserk zombies, or is it going to draw out every civilian's inner good or evil? I know for a fact it's going to be the first one, because the bullshit blood virus only dramatically affects primary characters -- unnamed people just instantly go into a psychotic frenzy. This has happened again and again. And I couldn't be more bored to actually see it take place. The fact that I'm more interested in seeing where Fish's arc goes next week than anything else should be the greatest testament ever written to how badly Bruno Heller has fucked this show to pieces.

Good lord.


Next week is the two-part season finale. Hold me, I just can't contain my excitement. Woo hoo.
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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

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Re: Gotham

Postby RainyDays » Mon Jun 05, 2017 5:22 am

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.
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