You kind of got the feeling this would be Jerome’s final confrontation with Gordon anyway. The last three episodes revolved around Gordon going crazy trying to catch Jerome, and how much longer could that have gone on with us still caring? That being said, the build up to this episode was stronger than the episode itself. Another mismatched episode of Gotham! At least this time everybody was involved for the right reasons. A children’s benefit brings the people of Gotham together, Bruce and Alfred attend to pick up chicks, Leslie and Selina are there for their reasons, Jerome and company (not sure what happened to the other guys.) want to stir the pot.
Gordon going little nuts after the death of Essen was warranted (even though we never got to know her all that well), so seeing him try to choke Jerome to death was a striking difference from his normal boy scout material. It did seem a bit odd to see Gordon resort to straight-up murder though, and throwing those guys out a window simply to get a name was a bit much. Why they didn’t just go to Jerome’s dad in the first place was lazy and stupid on both the writers and the characters; that’s literately police 101. But Jerome got another chance to monologue and show off his Joker interpretation. It reminded me a lot of Heath Ledger’s, “Want to know how I got these scars?” though not in the sense that it was good or anywhere near the same level, just in the sense that Joker the character likes talking about his pain.
What’s worse, watching your parents die, or getting stabbed at a magic show…
Jerome has been a very wishy-washy character for me; I can’t quite pin him down. There are moments when he is bad due to poor dialog and others when he is simply over acting. But then there are moments like stopping Barbara from stabbing Leslie and telling her she needs to get a watch because it hasn’t been 10 minutes yet. Sure that’s just a not-so-cleaver line that made me chuckle, but in the middle of all the carnage, he seemed to fit his Joker. Yeah, in reality he’s not Joker, but he was doing a weird interpretation of him nonetheless. I can see why you could like his performance as the crazy circus kid, though I can understand even more why he would drive you insane.
I wasn’t certain that Jerome would stay dead until I watched the final few minutes of the episode. I figured that after Theo had stabbed him, it would be revealed that he faked his death, but the strange sequence of kids and teens laughing all throughout Gotham was their way to signify that anyone can grow up to be Joker. While I like that sentiment in keeping with the mystic that is Joker, it became funny watching people laugh and stab a homeless person in montage form, and I don’t know if Gotham wanted me to laugh at that. It’s the same problem the show has had since the beginning: Is this supposed to be serious or comical?
Alfred is Thirsty
I also got the feeling that before Jerome died, Barbara was being positioned as Harley Quinn. Maybe she still is in some weird way, what with all her posing for the camera and laughing whenever Jerome did something awful, but I can’t imagine what kind of impact Barbara playing both sides of the field might have. Flirting with both Brother and Sisters seems like a strange thing to do to get ahead, but I imagine she will be the last one standing when this season ends. Just a hunch.
One of the funnier moments throughout this episode was watching Alfred make the moves on Leslie; he was going hard too! She played it off very politely, yet she did seem a bit interested after the mention of some restaurant. You get the feeling that Alfred doesn’t meet many ladies these days, so seeing him so out of ordinary was a nice change. Bruce’s love life, on the other hand, was pretty boring. Telling Selina that he misses her was somewhat sweet, but honestly, I don’t know why he likes her so much other than the fact that she grows up to be Catwoman. Selina is very standoffish and mean to Bruce whenever they talk. Catwoman is supposed to be flirty, approachable, and able to use men to her advantage, so why have we not seen any of those traits at least start to form in this version of Selina?
Ultimately a mixed bag once again. But at least everyone was in the same episode for a good reason instead of cutting away to Wayne Manor or something. I will say, seeing Penguin again at the end of the episode was a breath of fresh air. He’s such a different kind of villain, not monologuing and grandstanding all the time like Jerome does. His scene with Bullock was fun, and it shows us that the future of this season will be four-to-five episode arcs of bad guys being caught.
