Last week’s season premiere of ‘Gotham’ had me hopeful for a more consistent structure to this roller coaster of a show. I suppose that’s what I get for speaking after only one episode. This week’s Gotham relied heavily on the new guys like Jerome and his band of morons that we aren’t really meant to care about. This is Jerome’s show through and through. Whatever ‘Theo’ had in mind for this group of crazy killers seems only to create chaos. And so far Jerome is the one to watch. The rest seem mostly expendable. Besides Barbara of course. Speaking of her, she had very little to do this week, after such a strong, crazy premier for her she took the bench so that Jerome can pretend he’s the Joker some more. And completely absent from the episode all together was Penguin and Selina, a bit odd since most fan’s find penguin the most enjoyable character to watch.
I’ll be very interested to see how people react to Jerome’s obvious portrayal of ‘The Joker.’ It had some high points like the game of Russian Roulette he played with that hairy cannibal but then it also fell into schlock territory with the weird camera recording at the end of the episode. Which brings up ‘Gotham’s biggest problem, Jerome trying to light a school bus on fire with a bunch of 30 year old cheerleaders inside it can’t be played off as a joke the same way you massacre and entire police station and play it off like the worst thing in the world. Even Gordon plays off the School bus thing as if it was a joke. But then once he returns to the police station after it’s been destroyed he’s all somber and serious.
The Best looking Criminals you’ll ever see.
You could kind of tell that Commissioner Essen wasn’t long for this world since we got to know her so much in this episode, she even showed a little affection for Gordon which led me down the comics road, a road that we will never see. It seems a bit early for Gordon to become Commissioner now, I mean he doesn’t even have the mustache yet, but who knows. Maybe even Loeb comes back. Bullock Returning was a nice moment, his and Gordon’s relationship was one of the highlights of last season, they play off each other well. Speaking of relationships that play off each other well, Bruce and Alfred had a disagreement that was fixed in a matter of hours, why he fired Alfred at all is a mystery because he came back less than 10 minutes later. But it led us to Lucius Fox another Bruce Wayne friend that will aid in his ‘Calling’ that we will never see.
Bruce’s plot is so loosely tied to anything else in this show I sometimes wonder why he’s on it at all, this is supposed to be ‘Rise of the Villains’ and yet here Bruce is arguing with Alfred over his Dad’s Computer. So I suppose the more characters we include into Bruce’s story, the better. Nigma is a whole story unto himself; I don’t know why I should care about him and Miss Kringle, but it better have a good payoff for him to be in almost every episode. The Urkle and Stefan game he is playing with himself is certainly on the comical side of this show, and it’s right up there with the Cheerleaders cheering while on the bus.
…I feel like the red gloves are a nod to something…
