Must be Tuesday

Gotham S02E06 “By Fire” REVIEW

by with No Comment Reviews

Gotham S02E06 “By Fire” REVIEW

Must be Tuesday

stars 2.5

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 10pm
Writer: Rebecca Perry Cutter
Director: TJ Scott

Essential Plot Points

• butch

  • Butch is having his entrance interview with the Galavans. It’s going well. Less so for the chap behind him in the noose, balancing on a pile of books. Butch gets the job, the noosed gentleman, who turns out to be a Congressman, gets to live in return for backing Galavan for Mayor. Cautious yay!

• Jim in pursuit

  • On the mean streets of Gotham, Jim Gordon is chasing his man down! His man in this case being a disfigured former arsonist who, in the first of several dreadful lines this week, tells Jim that a female arsonist is “Mad real, like a unicorn.” Jim beats the guy up to get this non information.
  • The Strike Force members who are accompanying Jim tell him Captain Barnes has ordered them to write up all infractions of conduct, even with superior officers. Jim Gordon doesn’t care! He gets results!

• Selina and Bridgit 2

  • At Selina’s squat, Bridgit is hiding out. In fact, Bridgit is cleaning up because she doesn’t know what else to do. Selina suggests they do some crime and takes them to a human trafficking auction. Bridigt is adamant that they should help the women being auctioned off but Selina’s all about the money. They rob the place and make a pretty good team. In fairness as well, the fact that combined they weigh maybe 150 lbs and there are only two of them is offset by the fact Bridgit HAS A FLAMETHROWER and clearly enjoys using it.
  • MEANWHILE, AT THE GCPD!

• Captain MachoFace

  • Jim Gordon’s results include a note in his file. Barnes writes him up and Jim fights him on it. Jim argues that Gotham requires grey areas, Barnes believes it’s black and white. He also, intriguingly, hints at something very bad in his past that gave him this black and white world view. He tells Jim they have a lead and shows him security footage of Selina and Bridgit escaping from the human trafficking auction. He then tells Jim they’re going to take down the killer. Which sounds a lot like executing the killer. Which, if that’s true, means Barnes is a colossal hypocrite or has no short term memory.
  • Jim recognises Selina and goes to talk to her. Harv suggests he take the Jimshirts, sorry Strike Force, but Jim decides to go in quietly.
  • MEANWHILE, AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR!

• Alfred and Bruce box

  • Alfred and Bruce are boxing. Alfred is in the process of tucking his young ward up like a kipper when Bruce bites him. Complementing his student/boss/ward for fighting dirty, Alfred tells him Silver invited him over for dinner. Bruce blisses out.
  • Alfred punches him in the face.
  • Bruce accepts that he maybe needs to focus a bit more and goes back to training.
  • MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE GCPD!

• Nygma

  • Yay it’s the Ed scenes for the episode. Ed overhears Leigh and Kringle talking about Dougherty and himself. Kringle admits that she wants Ed to be a little more forceful and he steps in, maximum suave, and tells her what they’re having for dinner that night. It is, in fairness, actually quite sweet.
  • Nearby, Harvey interrogates Ivy Pepper. Remember her? In return for a candy bar (which Harv may have stolen and be eating himself in later scenes), Ivy gives up Selina’s location and then patiently waits to be used again in another ten episodes time.
  • MEANWHILE, NEAR THE GOTHAM BUS STATION

• The Pikes

  • Selina walks Bridgit to the bus but is interrupted by the Pike brothers. Boo! They are both evil and awful awful characters! They kidnap Bridgit and Selina, despite kicking one brother’s ass and getting his gun off him does precisely nothing other than look a bit sad as her friend is driven away.
  • The reason? The guns she had at home were better, apparently. She’s tooling up when Jim shows up and they have a standoff. Selina explains Bridgit’s past and Jim orders her to stand down. She refuses and Jim promises he’ll do everything he can to bring a wanted cop killer in. I’m sure this will go excellently.
  • MEANWHILE! BACK AT THE PIKES!

• Joe tortures Bridgit

  • Bridgit is chained to a radiator and her brother throws firecrackers at her until she agrees to work for them again. The Pikes, because they’re idiots, are overjoyed and tell Bridgit to fix dinner. Instead, she decides to fix VENGEANCE.
  • MEANWHILE, BACK AT PENGUIN GARDENS!
  • Penguin is very amused by Butch’s new hand and not at all amused by how little finding Penguin’s mother he’s done. He sends the big guy back into the fray and Butch isn’t happy.
  • MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE PIKES!

• Firebug

  • The Pike brothers stand very still while Bridgit incinerates them to death. Not long after, Harv and Jim arrive and find the corpses. One of them wakes up, spits the word “BITCH” and is kicked the rest of the way dead by Harvey.
  • This actually happens.
  • MEANWHILE, BACK AT EVIL TOWERS!

• Butch and Galavan

  • Butch finds the remote cunningly hidden on Galavan’s desk and discovers nothing that Penguin didn’t already know. Galavan arrives, good naturedly sees through Butch’s lies and figures out Penguin is controlling him. He offers to “help”.
  • Tabitha comes in and beats Butch up unconvincingly.
  • MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE GCPD!
  • Jim is now completely on board with bringing Bridgit in alive. Barnes wants her, its implied, dead.

• Hug

  • Selina meets Bridgit at the pigeon loft they used to hang out in. She asks why her friend doesn’t just leave and Bridgit says she wants to stop the people who hurt them, like her brothers. Selina hugs her friend and leaves her to her fate.
  • MEANWHILE, AT EVIL TOWERS!
  • Bruce has dinner with Silver and the Galavans. Tabitha arrives late and has WHAT IS CLEARLY BLOOD ON HER FACE. No one says anything.
  • MEANWHILE, AT NYGMA TOWERS!
  • Ed and Kringle have dinner. Ed confesses he likes her. She feels the same. They kiss and head off to the bedroom.
  • MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE HUMAN TRAFFICKING AUCTION!

• firebug justice

  • Jim gets a call from Selina saying she thinks she knows where Bridgit is going. She’s right. Bridgit goes back to the auction, torches a guy and lets the victims out.

• the budget

  • The GCPD arrive and Jim tries to talk her down. Barnes orders no one to fire and, of course, someone does, opening a leak in Bridgit’s suit. She then, for no reason other than the plot requires it, torches a GCPD car until it explodes and sets her on fire too.
  • MEANWHILE, BACK AT EVIL TOWERS!
  • Galavan talks to Bruce. He assures him his father was a good man and if elected mayor, he’ll help Bruce clean up Wayne Industries. Bruce is very cool with this.
  • MEANWHILE, AT PENGUIN GARDENS!

• Butch and Pengy

  • A bloodied Butch staggers back to Penguin, sans mallet and tells him he’s found his mother. Penguin is overjoyed and, maybe, not paying attention. Butch may not be under his control anymore…
  • MEANWHILE, AT HOME WITH JIM AND LEIGH!
  • Selina is holding a gun on Leigh. Just go with it, Leigh does. When Jim comes home she demands to know what’s happened to Bridget and Jim tells her she’s dead. Selina goes for Jim, telling him he promised and Jim defends himself very very badly. He even, in arguably the most callous moment in the last two episodes, tries to get Selina to flip on who employed Bridgit. She lets slip it was Penguin, refusing to believe Jim will go after his “friend” and leaves in disgust. And you can’t blame her for it either.
  • MEANWHILE, AT LOVENYGMA TOWERS!

• ed and doughertys badge

  • Kringle, in a genuinely sweet moment, opens up about being frightened of Dougherty. Ed reassures her by first confessing and then proving that he murdered Dougherty. Kringle panics, tries to flee and Ed inadvertently suffocates her to death while trying to explain he’s not a murderer.
  • And montage!
  • Ed cradles Kringle’s lifeless body, sobbing hopelessly.
  • Penguin and his boys tool up to go get Mrs Penguin.
  • Nearby, Selina cries for her friend.

• Indian Hill

  • At Indian Hill, a Wayne Industries facility, two interns explain the plot to us as Bridgit, very much not dead, is wheeled into a room lit like a pop video. She’s a monster now, she’s fireproof! Her suit is melted to her skin! Dramatic music!

 

Review:

The short version of this review is, “This is a bad episode of Gotham.” The plots stumble over one another, things happen for no reason other than they need to and there’s some dismally bad dialogue.

Here’s the long version. This episode demonstrates everything that’s wrong not with Gotham individually but as a concept.

Firstly, the ludicrously big cast. While it’s always nice to see Cockney Butlerman and his amazing sidekick Billionaire Boy, we get Alfred for maybe two minutes here. Those two minutes are entirely expository. He’s not the only one either; poor Leigh is reduced to being the foil for Kringle and Selina in her two scenes.

This happens every week, as I mentioned last week. But this time it’s different. This doesn’t feel like a natural collection of characters. It feels like a show working off a tick list of who is scheduled to be in this week’s episode. Some of it works but some of it, a lot of it, really doesn’t. It feels disjointed and choppy, like you’re changing channels inside the TV show.

Then there’s the wildly uneven tone. I’m increasingly thinking of Gotham as a 1990s action movie filtered through the old Adam West Batman TV show because there really is that amount of tonal movement inside every episode. Sometimes inside scenes too. We get jet black comedy, sickening violence, moments of impressive character work within seconds of one another and the whiplash that leads to is difficult to sit through at times. Witness the massively uneven Galavan stuff this week, veering from the cartoon lunacy of Tabitha showing up to dinner with blood on her face to Galavan sweet talking Bruce and Tabitha “deprogramming” Butch. That’s horror, psychological drama and badly-staged action all in the space of 43 or so minutes.

That brings us to the action. For a show that promises one gunfight a week or your money back, Gotham’s actually getting worse at staging fights. Selina vs the Pike brothers is nonsensical, Bridgit vs the GCPD (Round Two) is a bad cover version of their first, also badly-staged fight. Worst of all, the Butch and Tabitha scene exists to do nothing other than remind us that Tabitha likes whips because it’s sexy and that the show has no idea what to do with the one-note gag of Butch having a mallet for a hand. Inside this season, we’ve had the genuinely impressive fight between Gordon and Aaron, the terrifying havoc the Maniax wreaked and Alfred and Gordon taking on a room full of thugs in a manner that was brutal, practical and character driven.

This week? No snap, no spark to the action and very little point.

Worst of all though is the show’s tendency to get in its own way. There’s actually a lot of good stuff this week. Selina and Bridgit’s plotline is great. Their similar upbringings and different world views are the most Batman-like thing in the episode and Selina in particular benefits hugely from this plotline. She feels. She doesn’t want to, and denies it, but Selina cares about people. The seeds of the woman she’ll become and the razor line she’ll dance between hero and villain are sewn here and done so in a manner that’s subtle, organic and impressive.

Then Bridgit’s carted off to the monster factory as Intern Exposition explains the screamingly obvious.

Gotham isn’t a good show. It’s not a bad show either. It’s about five wildly variable TV shows struggling to gain your attention and constantly being pushed aside by their siblings. Most of the time, the fun elements come to the fore. Sometimes all you hear is five different voices screaming for attention. That’s this week. Next week, who knows?

 

The Good:

  • “I tried to help her it just went a different way.” “IS THAT WHAT YOU CALL IT WHEN SOMEONE DIES?!” This is great Jim’s a sanctimonious ass who has no idea of the consequences of his actions a lot of the time. It’s way past time someone called him on it.
  • “Ah yeah, my kicks did it maybe it’s because he was FRIED LIKE A TAQUITO!” Nice line. Awful characterisation.
  • “There’s a line. I learned that the hard way.” “Respectfully sir, this is Gotham. There are grey areas. I learned that the hard way too.” I love this. It’s one of the smartest things they’ve done with this version of Jim Gordon. He’ll go toe to toe with anyone, including a man who’s basically him in 30 years just minus the ’tache.
  • “Hey! Last time we saw this chick she had a shotgun pointed at us. Maybe you should take the Fascist Youth huh?” I think Harv might have a problem with the Jimshirts. Hard to tell.

• Butch's new hand

  • “Dear me, a mallet.” THIS IS PERFECT. It’s a ludicrous plot that gets even more ludicrous this episode but Penguin’s delivery, along with Butch’s Barney Bear-esque glower is wonderful.
  • “You’re cute. For a Doctor.” “Thanks, you’re cute. for a gangster.” Despite having no apparent reason for existing, the Selina and Leigh scene is actually rather sweet.
  • “Hi Selina. Sorry about this Leigh.” “Oh hey no problem.” Again, the At Home With Leigh & Jim sitcom within Gotham gets the best moments. You can almost hear the laugh track on this and I mean that as a compliment.

• at home with leigh and jim

  • The Captain Barnes/Jim ethical do-si-do at the centre of the episode is interesting ground. I really want to see this build to a head, either with Barnes forced to compromise himself or Jim forced to do something for the greater good long-term not short term.

 

The Bad:

  • The Pikes aren’t characters they’re walking cliché machines. Not only are they playing snaps when Bridgit comes in but they stand there like idiots for a good ten seconds before she incinerates them.
  • You’re two of the only honest GCPD cops. You’ve just found a crime scene with two deeply charred bodies. Do you…
    A) Confirm they’re dead?
    B) Call the paramedics immediately?
    C) Make an off-colour gag about barbecue and then kick the one survivor the rest of the way dead while panicking?
    Yeah. Thought so.
  • There’s a lovely moment of fight psychology where Selina uses her smaller size and lower centre of mass to flip one of the Idiot Brothers and take his shotgun. It is instantly negated by her doing nothing with the loaded weapon in her hand as Bridgit is driven away.
  • The lingerie model human trafficking auction. The one that Bridgit liberates. The one where, the way the episode is cut, it looks like the cage the slaves are being kept in IS NOT LOCKED.
  • Why exactly was Selina holding Leigh hostage? Was it to try and force Gordon into bringing Bridgit in alive? If so could she maybe have told him that?
  • “They tell people she’s dead. But that’s a lie.” In an episode dotted with staggeringly bad dialogue, Interns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern explaining what the Secret Facility they’re in is for is a new low.
  • Tabitha Galavan sits down to dinner with three other people, one of whom is very clearly not evil, with blood on her face. It’s very very clearly blood. There is nothing else it could be. It’s treated like she has spinach in her teeth. I’d love to think Bruce notices, notices that no one else is making a big deal out of it and is suspicious. But let’s face it, the chances of that aren’t high.
  • The Butch/Tabitha fight is lousy in a couple of dozen ways. The choreography’s awful, the selling is worse and the story behind the fight is completely lost in the half-assed way it’s blocked out.
  • “Oh snap, Bridgit’s gonna get it!” STOP.TALKING.
  • “Damn. I hate how it smells like good barbecue.” Much like Captain Barnes’ line about the exploding arsonist last week this is a pretty good gag. Exactly like Captain Barnes’ line about the exploding arsonist it’s also a ludicrously callous, unfeeling thing to say that makes a previously sympathetic character look like an enormous tool.
  • “There’s a freaky firefly chick on the loose with a flamethrower. Let’s start there.” No! Bad Gotham! No alliteration for you!
  • “It’s mad real! Like a unicorn or something!” The really sad thing isn’t that this is a Godawful line that should never had escaped from first draft. It’s that his point about women getting to do anything meaningful in Gotham is pretty much true.
  • This episode Leigh talks to Kringle about boys and is held hostage. I can only assume Morena Baccarin is catching up on her reading during the vast swathes of nothing to do.
  • It’s tempting but too early to call Bridgit’s story as yet another, “You who are hideously disfigured must become a monster for only handsome people are good!” story. That particular framework has blighted comics and related media for decades. Remember how every time there was a slightly alternate or non-squeaky-clean kid on Smallville’s first few seasons they’d be the meteor freak of the week? Yeah. That.
  • Anyway it looks like whoever’s running Indian Hill is building their own little monster farm and that may not go well. But we’re not there, so let’s give them a shot.

 

The Random:

  • Shot of the week is this gorgeous silhouette of Selina’s brief moment of badassery during the fight. Shame the episode didn’t do anything with it.

• Selina kicks ass

Review by Alasdair Stuart

 

• Read our other Gotham reviews

 

Jim and Barnes

Gotham S02E05 “Scarification” REVIEW

by with No Comment Reviews

Gotham S02E05 “Scarification” REVIEW

Jim and Barnes

stars 3

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 10pm
Writer: Jordan Harper
Director: Bill Eagles

 

Essential Plot Points:

• the galavans

  • MEANWHILE, AT EVIL TOWERS! Penguin begs for his mother’s life and is rebutted. As he storms out Tabitha complains that she is bored. See? She really HAS been reading her scripts. Theo comforts her with the discovery of nasty Mr Bundeslaw from Wayne Industries in a box and asks Mr Bundeslaw if they can borrow something. That something, it turns out, is going to be removed from him via Tabitha’s favourite, very curvy knife…
  • MEANWHILE, AT A ROOM FILLED WITH MEN IN PANTS! The Strike Force storm one of Penguin’s money laundering operations. They are accosted by a man with a rocket propelled grenade launcher. They deal with him in the only way the Barnes GCPD knows how and Captain MachoFace expresses astonishment at the weapons they’re up against.
  • Gordon explains that there is a big box store in town called The Merc where all the criminals shop. They were never allowed to hit it but now they can. The poster boy for no due process and his amazing friends saddle up.
  • A messenger arrives to tell Penguin about the money laundering. Butch, who’s been here before, gets clear as his boss beats the guy half to death with a poker.
  • MEANWHILE, AT THE PLOT NO ONE CARES ABOUT! Jim arrives back at the precinct and Leslie reminds him it’s date night. Nygma immediately arrives and talks his way into a double date with them. Leslie agrees to make fondue and Jim complains. Comedy GOLD. Seriously it actually is, they make this face at each other and it’s adorable.

the look

  • Theo shows up at the precinct and bonds with Jim over killing a man. He oh-so subtly slides this into asking for an endorsement for mayor and Jim rebuffs him. Theo plays it cool.

• Tabitha visits Penguin

  • At Penguin’s still amazingly nice house, Tabitha shows up. She tells Penguin they need some places burnt down and hands him a box with something horrible in it. We know it’s one of Bundeslaw’s eyes but the show is weirdly coy about showing us it, just lots of hardened criminals going “EWWWW” whenever they look inside.
  • Penguin sends Butch to Selina’s crashpad and he asks her to take him to see the Pikes, the best arsonists in Gotham. The one problem is, they’re Fish loyalists and Selina, who Fish loved, is needed to vouch for Butch, who shot Fish. Kind of. It’s complicated. They barter a while and she agrees.
  • The Pikes listen to Butch’s pitch and accept. They’re also abusive tools to Bridgit and Selina notices and comforts her as well as she can.
  • The youngest Pike goes off to the Merc for more napalm. The Merc is AMAZING. It’s an actual store with labels and branding and staff and shopping baskets. IT’S THE BEST. He however is the worst and shoplifts some C4 which gives you a clue as to how bright he is. The GCPD storm the place and he runs, Jim and Barnes in pursuit. They corner him, he pulls a gun on them and they kill him a LOT.
  • Then he explodes.
  • No, we know that’s not how C4 works.
  • Fondue night is, amazingly, not awful and weirdly charming.
  • With their brother exploded, for some reason, the Pikes are out of luck. They blackmail Bridgit into becoming their new partner and, faced with a choice between risking her life and being homeless, she accepts.
  • Her brothers mess with her relentlessly and she’s burnt on the way out of the first job but they retrieve what they were sent for thanks to Bundeslaw’s eye and the vault it unlocks; a knife, with the Wayne family crest on it…
  • Bridgit, still hurt, realises she likes the work. She begins building herself a fire resistant suit when Selina arrives and tries to reason with her. Bridgit argues she belongs, Selina argues that she’s a slave and leaves.

flashback

  • Penguin is desperate for information on the knife, sensing that it’s something that matters to Galavan and a potential weakness. Butch, because he’s amazing, knows a guy. Or rather, a lady. Edwidge, an old lady who runs an antique store in his neighbourhood. She, reluctantly, explains that the knife was used 200 years ago when the city was ruled by five noble families. One, the Dumas, were erased from history after Caleb Dumas was found consorting with Celestine Wayne. The punishment for this was the removal of a hand, using the knife and the obliteration of his family’s name from Gotham. The family fled to a religious order they’d set up and changed their name.
  • To Galavan.
  • TWIST!

penguiy and bush

  • Later, Penguin invites Butch to have a drink, proving to them both the conditioning is still working. He explains that Butch will go to Galavan and explain that Penguin has thrown him out. He’ll infiltrate Galavan’s organisation, find Penguin’s mother and rescue her. Butch, who is so clearly not cool with this, points out it’s a basic play. Penguin “reassures” him that they can sell it by cutting Butch’s hand off with a cleaver. BUTCH, NOOOOO!
  • Jim and Harv figure out the buildings hit were all Wayne Enterprises properties and stake out the next possible target. They find Firefly, looking pretty great in her suit and she panics. She lays down a wall of flame between them but her flamethrower malfunctions and Garrett tackles her. They struggle, Garrett is soaked in fuel and she accidentally lights him on fire. As Jim and Harv try and help their guy, she escapes with the help of Selina who followed her.
  • After the catastrophic fight with Firefly, the Strike Force are back at the precinct. Harv tries to make Jim feel better about Garrett at the same time as pointing out how cynically Galavan is using the photo op.
  • Barnes informs them Garrett died and that he won’t stop until the cop killer is brought to justice. The other Strike Force members, who it’s pretty clear are this show’s redshirts, are devastated.

Gordon and Galavan shake

  • Jim goes to Galavan and asks if, should he become mayor, he’ll help in the war on crime. Galavan agrees, Jim gives him his endorsement and they shake on it. And the moment Jim’s back is turned? EVIL GRIN. Honestly we expected him to go, “MOOHOOHAHAHAHA” on his way out of the building.
  • Galavan returns to Evil Towers to find he’s not alone… It’s F Murray Abraham as Father Creel the evil monk and head of the Dumas family order. He has plans for Gotham and is pleased with how Theo’s work is progressing. Now they just need to murder Bruce Wayne…

 

Review:

It’s good news/bad news whiplash this week.
Bad news! The Pikes are AWFUL characters with the exception of Bridgit. Incompetent, abusive, stereotypical and dull.
Good news! Bridgit is ace. She’s really smart and weird and dark in the Burtonian way this show sprays automatic gunfire at on a weekly basis. Her story is close to Jerome’s, that of a kid broken by the hideous city they live in and it’s got the potential to be as much of a highlight of the show.

Bridget at the safe

Bad news! If Bridgit’s origin is done well, her clash with the GCPD is very much not, for reasons detailed below.
Good news! Selina gets stuff to do and it works. There’s an interesting divide shaping up here between the old and young characters. Selina and Bridgit work well together. Selina and Bruce work well together. The kids and anyone other than Cockneyman the superbutler? Not so much.
Bad news! No Alfred at all this week.
Good news! There’s a Nygma scene that’s actually great! The show’s doing a good job of balancing multiple plots this season and the fact some people get weeks off now really helps.
Bad news! This episode is AMAZINGLY violent. Ludicrously so in fact. Someone explodes, two hands get chopped off, a guy gets set on fire. Gotham is still aiming for Tim Burton era Batman but it’s still landing on late ’90s Clint Eastwood action movie. That’s sometimes a good thing. When it turns Barnes, supposedly a paragon, into a violence crazy oorah machine, it’s a bad thing.

• penguins sass

Good news! Lots of Butch and Penguin stuff this week, and the Penguin has a plan. An awful plan. That will probably work. Gotham does a lot of things wrong, repeatedly, but the Penguin reimagined as a barely under control furious psychopath is actually brilliant. He feels dangerous here. And again, within sight of the Burton era, especially DeVito’s definitive Penguin turn.
Bad news! The Strike Force need characters and arcs, and plots. Soon.

So, as is becoming common, a curate’s egg of an episode. Some very good stuff, some terrible awfulness. But, if nothing else we’ve got a villain origin with emotional weight, Selina and Butch off the bench and one of the show’s most gloriously crazed ideas ever all in one episode. It’s not enough to balance the ludicrous violence and terrible decisions but it’s damn close.

 

The Good:

  • “Read ’em their rights. Doesn’t say squat about pants.” Nathaniel Barnes, a cop for whom Due Process is less a code, more a set of guidelines.
  • “Belay that order, no one gets pants!”A lost line of dialogue from the weirdest Star Trek episode EVER.
  • “We can’t leave, we’re already home! TRAPPED” The Jim and Leigh, amiably rubbish couple stuff really shouldn’t work but it’s adorable. Mackenzie and Baccarin are straight-up delightful on screen together and Leigh may be the only woman on the show regularly written as something approaching an actual character.

• The Merc

  • The Merc, the criminal version of B & Q or, for our American friends, Costco. THEY HAVE SIGNS! THEY HAVE CARTS! The Merc is the BEST. It’s also ridiculous which just makes it bestier.
  • The increasingly bizarre occult history of Gotham City has been one of the highlights of the current Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo run on Batman. It’s nice to see that translated here. Not only does it fit the bat’s-arse lunacy of Gotham but it gives the show the weight it at times desperately needs.
  • Yay Selina getting stuff to do! Gotham this season is starting to look like later seasons of Scrubs, where one or two characters would regularly sit out on a rotating schedule. Selina’s been benched for the first quarter of this season but her relationship with Bridgit is one of the most interesting things they’ve done with her so far.
  • Michelle Veintimilla is very good as Bridgit. She lands the character’s combination of terror, trauma and increasingly brittle joy. A lot of Batman’s best villains are operatic in their tragedy but Veintimilla and Harper’s script play Bridgit’s tragedy as small scale and intimate. It’s an amazingly welcome change and pays off massively.

fondue night

  • The Nygma scene is actually kind of nice. I mean you’ll get that “WHAT? NO! GO AWAY ED!” response for the first few seconds as usual but it plays out weirdly sweetly. Which means we’re maybe two weeks off that whole thing assuming the shape of pear.

 

The Bad:

  • Good God the other Pikes are terrible characters. The greatest arsonists in Gotham mess with their stepsister by almost getting her blown up? One’s a cigar-chomping escapee from The Departed whose accent arrives with the third commercial break? Come on, Gotham.
  • No cockney butler! Booooo!
  • So all the Strike Force members have full names… except Josie? Seriously? The really depressing thing is Josie is apparently Josie “Mac” Macdonald. First introduced by Judd Winick at the top of the century, Josie Mac was a plain clothes GCPD detective with very odd low level superpowers. She was also one of the best characters in Gotham Central, the amazing GCPD-based comic that Gotham is essentially a 1980s hairmetal cover version of.

Barnes

  • Nathaniel Barnes, ex soldier! Nathaniel Barnes, hard charging GCPD chief of dxetectives! Nathaniel Barnes, Man with NO IDEA HOW TO DO HIS JOB! I know the GCPD having to go all wild west is a big part of the show but the sequence with the money launderers left a nasty aftertaste. The police storm in, don’t announce themselves, don’t control the situation and are surprised when a guy from central casting fires a rocket launcher at them.
  • We’re not saying the GCPD should be perfect… actually no that’s EXACTLY what we’re saying. And so is the show. We’ve had the idea of the Strike Force as the best of the best rammed down our throats for two episodes now and seeing them kicking the door in and yelling, “No trousers for you matey! We’re the Sweeney and you’re nicked!” is ridiculous. There’s a ton of dramatic potential for the show in these cops trying to stay true to themselves too and so far it’s doing exactly none of it. I talked before about this maybe being the point with Barnes and I only hope it is.
  • The amazing exploding arsonist. Firstly it’s horrible science. This show treats C4 like it’s magic exploding fairy dust. C4 is triggered by a detonator. It can be shot and not go off. So exploding arsonist? Not so much.
  • Also that is just a horrible scene. It’s pointlessly gratuitous, further reinforces the GCPD as cowboys and exists to do nothing but give the episode yet another deeply nasty moment and Barnes a line that makes him sound like a desensitised, callous bastard.
  • “What the hell are you packing?” SEE?
  • We find out the name of a strike team member just as he gets killed in a profoundly stupid way. BEST OF THE BEST.
  • Garrett’s death. I can just about buy that he’s a rookie and has maybe been hit in the head a few times so thinks tackling somebody wielding a flamethrower is a good idea. The fact he doesn’t react to being doused in fuel or is able to easily take down a significantly smaller, not even a little well-trained opponent? BEST OF THE BEST. MOSTLY.

 

The Random:

  • Hi F Murray Abraham! Welcome to Gotham playing an evil monk! You were great in All The President’s Men, Scarface, Amadeus, By The Sword (SUCH a great movie!), Star Trek: Insurrection, Mimic, Muppets From Space and everything else you’ve been in!
  • Jim and Leigh are just the cutest. Seriously I would watch a sitcom about them.
  • Isn’t Leslie a doctor? If so, Nygma referring to her as Ms Thompkins is a nicely subtle, sexist character note.

aaaaaand evil

  • Shot of the week. This is so great, I can almost hear him saying, “AAAAAAND EVIL!”

Review by Alasdair Stuart

 

• Read our other Gotham reviews

 

• penguin court

Gotham S02E04 “Strike Force” REVIEW

by with No Comment Reviews

Gotham S02E04 “Strike Force” REVIEW

• penguin court

stars 3

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 10pm
Writer: Danny Cannon
Directors: TJ Scott

 

Essential Plot Points:

  • Penguin is holding court and it looks FABULOUS. Like a Duran Duran video exploded inside a Mad Max knock-off. He demands to know who was responsible for recent events and decrees that no one undergoes any major criminal activity without checking with him first. As the meeting disperses, Tabitha Galavan, probably grateful to be in more than one scene this week, tells him her brother would like to chat…

• CHIKLIS

  • At the GCPD Gordon is yelling at a corrupt cop. Must be any day of the week, ever. The argument is disrupted when Captain Nathaniel Barnes arrives, breaks a chair, screams at the cops and tells everyone that if they don’t feel ashamed now is their chance to quit.
  • No one quits.
  • Barnes reads out the names of the officers he knows are corrupt and Harv visibly looks for exits. Barnes reads out six names, none of them Harv, lines them up and fires them. When one cop resists, Barnes arrests him inside his own precinct.

• JIM IS SO EXCITE

  • He then calls Gordon into his office and explains he’s also ex-military. He makes Gordon his second in command and tells him they’re going to clean up Gotham. Gordon is super pumped about this. Harv, we suspect, less so.

• JIM IS SOMEHOW EVEN MORE EXCITE

  • With the mayor and deputy mayor both varying flavours of dead or in the wind, an election is needed. We see Theo Galavan watching a news cast that mentions the two other candidates – Janice Caulfield and Randall Hobbs – but says the election is really about him. He is of course delighted.

• Galavan plots

  • He’s even more delighted when Tabitha, now in two whole scenes and counting, shows up with Penguin. They chat and Galavan unveils his plan for Gotham.
  • Which looks a surprising amount like Delta City from RoboCop.

• metro city-wait what

  • Penguin, who’s seen those movies, points out that the new development involves bulldozing residential homes.
  • Galavan agrees and asks him to be his executioner, murdering the other mayoral candidates so he can stand unopposed. Penguin refuses, showing rare and honestly touching civic pride in his horrific Dante’s inferno of a city.

• The Galavans have Penguins mom

  • Tabitha points out that they have Penguin’s mother. Penguin agrees, reluctantly, to do it.
  • Leigh answers the phone the next morning to Captain Barnes. He asks for Jim, tells Gordon to meet him at the Police Academy and reassures him that “everyone knows he’s banging the ME”. This is a thing that happens.

• True Detective season 3

  • At the Academy, Barnes tells Jim his plan; a new Strike Force of fresh recruits who haven’t been tarred by the city. Along with one of Gordon’s old training officers, they interview a group of elite recruits. Barnes names them Strike Force Alpha and places them under Gordon’s command. There is obviously nothing that can go wrong here.

• diverse redshirts

  • Galavan gives a press conference and is asked to run for mayor. He’s halfway through denying to when a driveby hurtles past and he saves everyone. Galavan almost literally says, “Oh, okay then…” and the campaign is on.

• steampunk penguin

  • Elsewhere, Penguin murders Caulfield at her campaign headquarters. It’s a nasty, off-kilter scene. But Butch being avuncular and threatening to her staff is kind of nice.

• thug

  • MEANWHILE AT GOTHAM PREP! Alfred is waiting for Bruce. As is Selina. Until Alfred slaps her for killing his mate Reggie last season. He, disappointingly, does not tell her to sling her hook but the intent is clear.

• Alfred

  • Splendidly, Alfred hands Bruce his PE kit and tells him to run home. After all, they are training again…
  • Nygma agonises over asking Kringle out. Again. He then asks her out.
  • Barnes gives the Strike Force a pep talk. Gordon is totally pumped. Harv could not be less pumped. The GCPD get word that Caulfield is dead and roll out to the crime scene. There, Gordon intimidates a witness and they finally get a description that’s clearly Penguin.
  • Elsewhere, Galavan takes Bruce out to dinner and promises to help him investigate the murder of his parents. He also all but promises him his ward, Silver St Cloud. Yay, Gotham women.
  • Penguin drops Zsaz off to murder Hobbs and, because he’s a great henchman, Butch asks his boss what’s up. Penguin comes clean about his mom and Butch reassures him. Bless.

• zsaz

  • Zsaz has big fun in Hobbs’s house and dismantles his guards with his usual ease. He’s about to finish the job when…JUSTICE WAGON! Gordon, Harv and the Strike Force roll up and do surprisingly well. They see Zsaz off, save Hobbs and the only bad thing that happens is Josie gets shot because women can’t be competent in this show.

• the date

  • Kringle and Nygma have dinner. Nygma lets slip he’s glad her former boyfriend is dead. This is news to Kringle and when Nygma yells “GET OUT!” she thinks he means her. He, in fact, means Tylder DurdNygma and, amazingly, he tells her this. Even more amazingly, she’s okay with it! Even more amazing still, it’s a Kringle/Nygma scene this season that’s actually good!
  • Jim goes to see Penguin who calls him on his sanctimonious nonsense and points out Barnes would throw him off the force if he knew the truth.

• Go team strikeforce

  • The Strike Force is celebrating and ribbing Josie about taking one in the vest because ha! Girls right? Harv points out how dead they all nearly were and Barnes gives them their first target: Penguin.
  • Jim is not pumped.
  • MEANWHILE! AT GOTHAM PREP! Bruce and Silver bond.
  • MEANWHILE! IN THE SLUMS! Selina is haunted by her encounter with Alfred.
  • MEANWHILE, AT EVIL TOWERS! Galavan plans his campaign.
  • MEANWHILE, AT PENGUIN’S HEADQUARTERS, he rages as the search for his mother continues.

 

Review:

Okay, first off: there is nothing on Earth that is not improved by Michael Chiklis. His arrival as Captain Barnes kicks a hole in the speaker, pulls the plug and busts the show for corruption while yelling about being a warrior. He’s GREAT, like some colossal justice bulldog and that goes from fun, to charming, to kind of terrifying, to actually terrifying.

Barnes is a very tough, very competent cop who is horrifically naïve and I think we’re going to see Gotham break him if it hasn’t already. There’s a crucial moment in here where Gordon quietly raises concerns about sending rookie cops into the line of fire and Barnes basically goes, “Enh! Most of ’em will come home!” The look on Gordon’s face is the same as the one on ours; the sneaking suspicion that this immensely good-natured, well-meaning guy is also a terrifying naïve Dudley Do Right who is going to get a lot of people killed.

That whole plot is big fun, although as you’ll see below the Strike Force suffer awfully from the needs of TV drama. A good chunk of this week’s other major plot is fun too, with Galavan attacking the city on multiple fronts. One of those, his mayoral campaign, is surreal in its rapidity. Seriously, he sets up the most obvious press opportunity in human history and… it… works. It’s an immensely weird scene, the whole thing shot like Tim Burton got his hands on an unused Adam West script and violenced it up. It’s fun, certainly, but it is patently ludicrous.

The other half of Galavan’s plot, well, that’s just skeevy. We see him cosy up to Bruce and in doing so essentially pimp out Silver St Cloud, Galavan’s ward. It’s played breezily but Galavan is, at best, weaponising a child here. At worst he’s shoving her into Bruce as a means of wrapping the Wayne heir around his little finger. It’s certainly an evil move for an evil man but if it’s done wrong – as, let’s face it, it might very well be – it’ll be a disaster. Galavan right now is teetering on the edge of pantomime villainy and if anything knocks him over the edge it’ll be this.

Elsewhere we get some nice business with Alfred teaching Bruce how to get fit and a deeply nasty moment where he slaps Selina in the face and tells her to take a hike. Selina remains horribly underused this season but her reactions to that moment, not to mention Alfred’s own, sell it as the one piece of violence that feels like it has real weight this episode. I’m interested to see where that will go and if nothing else that’s a promising do over for one of season one’s most difficult plotlines.

But while the core of this episode is fun, the cracks are showing everywhere else. Penguin being blackmailed into being Galavan’s hit man feels rushed and unearned, with Carol Kane reduced to an on-camera cameo. Worse still, the show continues to have absolutely no idea what to do with its female characters. Josie is deliberately set up as the weak link of the Strike Force, the only female mayoral candidate is the one we see die and the regulars are reduced to bit parts or single lines. It genuinely feels like the writers’ room has no idea what to do with the female characters and, in the case of Tabitha in particular, seem genuinely annoyed at having to write her. Compared to the occasional flashes of nuance and complex stuff you get in the Gordon/Barnes relationship it stands out a mile. And, I get the nasty feeling, it’s only going to get worse.

Gotham is still the fastest-paced, often nastiest, hour you’ll see on TV. That’s carried it through the first month of season two with none of the glacial pacing and unwieldy character arcs of last year which is a really good thing. I just hope that new-found focus hasn’t come at the cost of anything for the female characters to do. And, right now, that’s exactly what it’s starting to look like.

 

The Good:

  • The direction and art design. Just stunning throughout the episode. This, shot of the week, is one of a dozen gems.

• penguin enraged

  • Harv not bothering to stand to attention is a lovely, meaningful character beat.
  • The Strike Force being ethnically diverse, and no big deal being made of it is brilliant.
  • Zsaz’s growled, “UNEXPECTED!” in the fight with the Strik Force is great. As is his clear annoyance at having to deal with these kids.
  • Hightower was corrupt?! You son of a-I WATCHED ALL THOSE POLICE ACADEMY MOVIES! EVEN THE ONES YOU WEREN’T IN!
  • “You’re a troublemaker, a fighter. That an accurate description?”
    “Yes sir.”
    “Good.” Barnes is a touch macho.
  • “Welcome to my unit you sadass army hump. Tough is what we eat for breakfast.”
    “Jarhead huh? Who woulda guessed?” Did we mention Barnes is kinda macho?
  • “Gotham doesn’t have straight lines.” Harv has been here before and it never ever ends well.
  • “You need an assassin! This is Gotham you can find them in the phonebook, under A.” Some good Oswald stuff this episode, this being his finest moment.
  • “You’re a warrior, Jim. So am I.” Hey Barnes! Mention war again! It’s been about ten minutes!
  • “I remember this guy, he argued a lot.”
    “I like to think I was raising questions.” There’s a subtle sense of relief to Gordon’s interactions with the Academy staff, like mutual relief he’s not there anymore.
  • “Gotham gun range. One of my mother’s three jobs was cleaning it. When she died the owner let me go there after hours and practice till I worked out my anger. I still go there.”
  • “Why are you doing this?”
    “Darlin’? I got no freaking idea.” Oh, Butch you’re so sweet. Everything he does in this scene from the slightly too tight arms round the witness’s shoulders to moving them out of his boss’s way is a delight.
  • “So you do yourself a favour, treacle and JOG ON!” ’AVE IT Alfred Pennyworth! None more cockney innit!
  • “…So they move well.” Harv’s grudging admiration of the Strike Force is adorable.

 

The Bad:

  • “Get ready to get real busy. We’re going to be sending you a whole lotta dead bad guys.” Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Let’s break this down: you are woken by your boyfriend’s new boss who good-naturedly yells at you, then politely informs you that your job is about to get way busier because he’s going to clean up the GCPD by essentially turning a blind eye to the shooting of suspects. HOW IS THAT NOT TERRIFYING?
  • One single female officer qualifying for the Strike Force is rubbish. Especially as she doesn’t even qualify for a second name, an interview or any personality other than “Good at badly staged TV boxing”.
  • We desperately hope Barnes’s gung ho, “Send the kids in to a meat grinder! OORAH!” approach is going to bite him on the ass very soon. Judging by Jim’s facial expression at that moment, he’s certainly expecting it to.
  • Tabitha Galavan, Queen of the Four Lines or Fewer Per Episode.
  • In fact, every single female character gets a crappy deal this week. Again. Silver is pimped out by her Uncle, Leslie gets to be good-naturedly yelled at by Captain MachoPants, Kringle gets to do nothing because Kringle is a plot hook rather than a character, Tabitha gets to be grumpy and bisexual and Barbara gets to hand a male character a drink, explain she’s bored and leave.
  • Oh and Josie gets shot. And, apparently, has no last name. Because Gotham.
  • Penguin’s mom being entirely off-camera. Did they only have Carol Kane for half an hour or something?
  • Also there are two mayoral candidates; one man, one woman. Guess which one gets horribly killed. Yeah.
  • Galavan’s, “Me, run for ma… GET DOWN!” *MACHINE GUN FIRE* “WELL OKAY THEN I WILL!” approach is possibly the single stupidest thing this show has done. And remember, this is the show that thought Tabitha Galavan having a whip fetish for a whole entire scene was a good idea. That bar is LOW.
  • The single female team member being the one Zsaz gets the ego boosting hit in on is sexist nonsense and even this show should damn well know better.
  • Fight nerd moment: Josie’s heroine moment in the boxing ring at the Academy shows that even in this ridiculously good age of TV there are still limits. Firstly, the choreography is a mess, chock full of movement to disguise the fact that neither actor is as well-trained as their characters. Secondly, there’s the fact that any trainee boxer anywhere ON EARTH throwing punches that hard is going to get warned, warned and then thrown the Hell out, let alone two trainee police officers.
  • And finally? HEAD. GUARDS. Concussion trauma is a thing that happens A LOT. It’s the dirty little open secret of every contact sport on the planet and this sort of nonsense just perpetuates the belief that you can take full force shots to the noggin with no lasting effects. It’s not irresponsible, quite, but it is a really bad call. Do better, Gotham. Especially given what a great job the show did a couple of weeks ago when Aaron turned Gordon into bloody pulp.
  • Speaking of that, where the hell is Aaron?
  • HEY! TEAM ALPHA! *HEADGUARDS*! I get it, I really do. You’ve got lots of actors on screen, you don’t want their faces covered. But it’s a bum note the episode just doesn’t recover from. Gordon and Harv lead a group of kids into an insanely dangerous gunfight with no headgear and face off against the best hitman in Gotham. It’s a miracle they’re not all dead.

 

And The Random:

  • I choose to believe Penguin’s mom is going to survive this ordeal, move to the other side of the city and became Kimmy Schmidt’s landlady.
  • Galavan’s “Oh YOU!” moment at the TV when he’s getting positive press is adorable. Which makes his pimping of his teenage niece even skeevier.
  • The music over Nygma’s cooking montage is “Just A Gigolo” by Louis Armstrong. I suspect it was his choice and not Tyler Durdnygma’s given that it’s a) kind of dorky and b) chipper.
  • Natalie Alyn Lind who plays Silver here has appeared previously in One Tree Hill, The Goldbergs and Flashpoint amongst others.
  • Butch is back this week! Yay! Drew Powell’s amiable, over-articulate teddy bear of a thug is always a pleasure to see. Powell’s always great, and he’s turned in memorable performances in two episodes of the excellent Leverage, one episode of the also excellent The Librarians and was a recurrent player on The Mentalist.
  • Fellow kick-ass Big Guy Character Actor, Michael Chiklis makes his debut this week as Captain Barnes. It’s a nice piece of casting as Chiklis is best known for his role in The Shield. An excellent and staggeringly nasty cop show it starred Chiklis as Vic Mackie, the sort of cop Barnes would fire and who would return later that night to burn the precinct to the ground.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

 

• Read our other Gotham reviews

 

Jim is DONE

Gotham S02E03 "The Last Laugh" REVIEW

by with No Comment Reviews

Gotham S02E03 “The Last Laugh” REVIEW

Jim is DONE

 

stars 3

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 10pm
Writer: John Stephens
Directors: Eagle Egilsson

 

Essential Plot Points:

  • Literally the first thing we see this episode is a man being hurled from a window. Jim and Harvey interrogate his terrified friend and he offers to help. They tell him to put the word out that the GCPD are coming for Jerome. Then throw him out of the window too. Never switch to decaf, Jim!

jessica lucas wondering when her lines will arrive

  • MEANWHILE, AT EVIL TOWERS! Barbara and Tabitha have, it’s implied, spent the night together. Tabitha is getting suited up to go clean up a loose end. And, this being Gotham, her idea of incognito is bullwhip, knives, all-leather catsuit and stiletto heels. Barbara kisses her, tells her to bring back bagels and then has breakfast delivered by Theo. Tabitha does not look happy. Neither do we.

tabitha and barbara

  • Theo, whose toast rack is awesome by the way, explains that the Maniax are just stage one and Barbara will be front and centre for stage two. He explains his family built Gotham and have been forgotten and he plans to change that.
  • Back at the GCPD, Gordon coordinates the surviving officers. They chase down leads on the circus Jerome grew up in. Gordon sees someone take down the crime scene tape over Essen’s office and he cooks off, yelling at the other cops.

Jim and Leslie

  • Leslie finds him and they chat. She reminds him of the charity gala that night and Jim flatly states he can’t go. She jokingly mentions there’ll be a magician and he relaxes for a moment. They kiss and Harvey appears to explain they have a lead. Jerome’s dad left the circus and is still in the city…

jerome and dad

  • At Jerome’s dad’s apartment, the blind old man is met by his son and Tabitha. Jerome torments his father, explaining that his callous worldview is what made Jerome what he is. He plants plans for Arkham, knockout gas and letters with secret coded escape instructions and prepares to kill the old man. Defiantly, his father tells Jerome he’s a curse and…

final moments of jerome's dad

  • …Jim and Harvey knock on the door. They hear a scream and kick it in to see Jerome’s father dead with a knife sticking out of his eye. Jim runs for the window, Harvey disturbs the knockout gas boobytrap on the body and they stagger outside. Jerome and Tabitha attack them but Tabitha warns the young man off. She calls dibs, kicks Jim in the face because that’s pretty much all she’ll get to do this episode and they leave.

but there ain't peace enough

  • MEANWHILE, AT THE GALA! Alfred and Bruce rock up. Bruce complains that he has to be there and Alfred points out the Waynes were patrons of the charity so he has no choice. Leslie greets them, looking stunning and Alfred clearly forgets how to think anything other than ‘…’ for several seconds.
  • He recovers, sends Bruce for a water for Leslie and flirts with her in a surprisingly good natured and charming way.

The Galavans, totally not evil

  • The Galavans are talking to the deputy mayor who good naturedly drills Theo on his past and how he does everything he does. Tabitha replies, “He’s a monster in the sack.” In other words, “My brother is excellent at sex and I MIGHT have firsthand knowledge of that.” The deputy mayor gets the hell out of dodge as Theo wonders what’s got into Tabitha and we wonder if this show is ever going to write a non-hetero woman who isn’t a ravening psychopath.

Selina

  • Anyhoo, nearby Bruce spots Selina and tries to make up. The young thief is busy working and shuts him down, hard. Alfred suffers the same fate and when Bruce returns he asks to leave. The butler turns him down and, with Leslie on MC duties, she persuades them to stay,
  • Backstage, an aide asks someone how he knew their magician had had to cancel. Jerome, in a frankly hilarious beard, replies, “Magic!”

The Great Rodolfo

  • The show begins and there’s a neat fakeout where it looks like Jerome and Barbara as his lovely assistant are about to cut Bruce in two. Instead the young boy escapes unscathed. Then, Jerome calls the deputy mayor to the stage…

Exhausted Harv

  • Back at the GCPD, Jim and Harvey are resting up from the effects of the knockout gas. Harvey politely calls his partner on his, “I AM THE NIGHT, I AM JUSTICE!” schtick and points out that not only did he know Essen longer, but he owed her more.
  • At the gala, the mayor heads to the stage. Barbara bows, her mask falls off and she winks at Leslie. Leslie calls Jim and is immediately kidnapped as, on stage, Jerome murders the deputy mayor. His henchman lock the doors and all Hell breaks loose.

Barbara revealed

  • As does Alfred who kick so much arse to get Bruce clear. Bruce instantly spoils this by going after Selina and Alfred gets knocked out. The Bat-Teen and his not-quite-girlfriend escape though.

AVE IT

  • Jim rolls up and tries to call Leslie. Instead he finds himself negotiating with Jerome who is still broadcasting live. Leslie is now tied up on one of those spinning wheels magicians throw knives at and Jim decides to go in to get them. The GCPD officer on site, not unreasonably, points out that Jerome murdered a lot of his friends and they’re not equipped to deal with him. Jim spots Selina emerging from the entrance she snuck in through and decides to go it alone.

Gordon faces off with uniform

  • Theo Galavan makes his move trying to talk Jerome down. He gets knocked out for his trouble, after begging for the audience to be released.
  • Bruce, who refused to leave without Alfred, watches as Jerome threatens his butler with death unless Bruce reveals himself. He’s just about to when Gordon, who snuck in with Selina’s help, stops him. He gives the teenager a gun and sends him out. Alfred hugs him, takes the gun and Bruce takes to the stage. Jerome sends someone to check behind the curtain and…

Jim fires blind

  • ACTION! Jim and Alfred demolish Jerome’s cronies but he still has Bruce. Neither man has a clear shot and it’s a standoff until Jerome is stabbed in the neck… BY THEO GALAVAN!

Galavan kills Jerome

  • EPIC TWIST! Galavan apologises to the confused young psychopath as he dies. He had other plans…
  • Barbara makes a run for it and, magnificently, escapes via one of the magic tricks. Evil Debbie McGee lives to fight another day.

penguin

  • Nearby, the Penguin watches in disgust as Jerome dominates the air waves. Harvey arrives and threatens him, telling the new King of Gotham to leave Jim Gordon alone. As he leaves, he reminds the Penguin that Harvey still owes him for Fish Mooney…

Alfred shakes Galavans hand

  • As the scene is cleared, Jim and Leslie thank Galavan and Alfred for their help. Bruce points out he, Alfred and Jim are a team and Jim, in an ever so slightly creepy moment, tells Leslie to kiss him. She does so and Alfred gets the point. The audience breathes a sigh of relief as one love triangle is exorcised before it can fully form.
  • At Evil Towers, Theo and Barbara watch the news, pleased with how things went. Tabitha watches as they kiss and the audience screams as the worst version of a love triangle takes form in front of us! NOOOOO!
  • At the GCPD, Jim and Leslie take down the tape over Essen’s office.
  • All over the city, news of Jerome’s death is greeted with relief by some and horrible joy by others. We watch as his maniacal laugh is adopted by murderers, thugs and monstrous pieces of humanity. We cut to the Gotham morgue and Jerome’s face, frozen in a terrifyingly familiar grin as his father’s line about him being a curse plays one more time…

Jerome and what he will inspire

 

Review:

Well that escalated quickly. Jerome is no more, but the Joker is alive and well and everywhere. We’ll get to Gotham’s treatment of that in a moment. First, the very good and the very, very bad.

I cannot say enough nice things about the direction on this show. Eagle Egilsson does great work this episode and the final scene in particular is a brilliantly handled piece of bottled-up action direction. It’s also just a little bit over-the-top, and Egilsson has a lot of fun with slow motion, intense perspectives and close-ups. Plus it fits absolutely with the previous two episodes. This is a show that has a really strong visual identity and that helps paper over the cracks that are starting to form in the story arc.

Thankfully none of those cracks involve the central characters. Jim Gordon, grumpiest man in Gotham is being particularly well served so far. Ben Mackenzie’s always been great in the role but this episode sees him start to step into a leadership role and has the courage to show him not being very good at it. Jim is a weird combination of a ruthlessly efficient soldier and a slightly demented gunslinger and we get to see them both here. Even better, we also get to see him buy into his own hype and the moment where Harvey gently but firmly calls him on his nonsense is really nicely played.

Even better, Jim and Leslie continue to be an actual couple of actual grown-ups with occasional issues that don’t make you want to put your foot through your screen. Morena Baccarin brings an effortless intelligence and engagement to Leslie Thompkins that would have been all too easy to make passive. Instead, she’s consistently written as a smart, perceptive woman who is acutely aware of the shortcomings in her boyfriend. She doesn’t try and bully him into fixing them either, rather steering Jim towards the best version of himself. It’s a subtle, sweet relationship that anchors the salvation of Jim Gordon without taking anything away from Leslie and the show’s to be applauded for that. Similarly, Harvey’s reinvention as dutiful, if still cheerfully violent, cop is very welcome.

That brings us to the bad guys. Jerome first off, because the little fella wouldn’t want to wait in line. Cameron Monaghan has been a massive asset to this show and it’s been amazing to see him go through the toyboxes of previous Jokers and see what he’s keeping. We’ve had the mannerisms of Nicholson, some of the delivery of Ledger and the gleefully malicious theatricality of Hammill all wrapped around his own unique delivery.

Superficially it’s bad that he’s gone. In practice I think this is the best possible way they could have handled it. The idea that Jerome inflicts the wound on Gotham that becomes the Joker is one the comics have played with before and it’s very well handled here. Jerome, to borrow a line from Nicholson, gave a name to Gotham’s pain. Whoever comes next will give it a face. I don’t envy them given the talent that’s played the role before. Talent Cameron Monaghan deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with.

Elsewhere on the dark side of the street, things take a turn for the worse. Tabitha Galavan is reduced to little more than eye candy, not that she was much more than that previously. Worse still, the show runs exuberantly at the lowest hanging fruit of all drama tropes; the love triangle. I talk in detail about just why this is an awful plan below but one of the largest reasons is also the simplest; it’s boring. Worse still, its ground the show has trodden before during the season long horror fest that Barbara endured last year. She deserves much better, the show deserves much better and so do we. The bag of clichés that the show’s non-heterosexual characters keep pulling from didn’t work last year. This year it’s even worse and, if the show keeps going down this road with Barbara and Tabitha, then it’s going to go very wrong very fast. And when it does, it won’t even have Jerome to use as a distraction.

 

The Good:

  • Gordon and Harvey do actual police work! That involves actual thinking! As well as throwing guys out of windows!
  • Jim and Leslie are just straight up adorable. Plus Leslie’s magician joke makes Jim do this face.

LOOK AT HIS LITTLE FACE

  • Alfred’s rabbit-in-headlights reaction to Leslie’s frankly stunning outfit and hairdo is one of the most endearing moments the series has yet produced. There’s the slightest hint that Mr Pennyworth is trying to get more in his life than simply training Bruce. I’d really like that as, out of all the versions of Alfred we’ve seen, this is the one that seems to need it the most.
  • Galavan’s turn to camera and introduction during the hostage situation is wonderful. You can almost hear the maniacal chuckle he’s tamping down.
  • Alfred and Gordon dismantling the Maniax is both a great action scene and a good character beat. These two guys are ex-soldiers. They will kill to protect their friends and get the job done. Even then, there’s clear distance between them. Gordon is focused entirely on the stage and Alfred, you’ll notice, takes time to shoot a downed criminal in the head. Which is both very very grim and speaks to just what level of bad man he used to be.
  • “Bring back bagels.” For a single shining moment it’s just possible Barbara and Tabitha are a happy, if psychotic couple. Then it all goes to hell.
  • “We carved the bed rock on which it stands but there is not a bridge, an alley, a DITCH that carries our name.” James Frain is so good here. There’s real malice and intellect below Galavan’s good natured, ebullient psychopathy.
  • “Look, I’m just sayin’ I’ll chuck mokes outta windows till the cows come home but at some point we gotta go see Penguin.” Harvey Bullock, Gotham’s Finest.
  • “Sarah Essen and nine of your brothers were killed in this house! IN OUR HOUSE! Their murderer stood right there and he LAUGHED AT US! Never forget that!” For the first time, Jim’s starting to feel like a natural leader. He’s a really tightly wound one sure but still.
  • The“‘but there’s going to be a magician” running gag is one of those deliciously odd gags that only Gotham can really land. I love how everyone’s so excited about it, even Jerome and Barbara who clearly have huge fun doing the stage act.
  • It’s nice too that Bruce and Selina are the only two who don’t dig it. For the adults, the magician is a chance to be a kid again. The children of Gotham have lost their innocence already so they don’t see the point in it.
  • Like I say it’s an odd gag but it works. If nothing else for the ludicrously sweet Grumpy Jim/Leslie moment it gives us at the top of the episode.
  • “Hiya pops. Long time… NO SEE.” A little on the nose, Jerome but hey, never turn a good pun down.
  • “You will be a curse on Gotham. Children will wake from sleep screaming at the thought of you. Your legacy will be DEATH and madness.” Excellent speech you awful awful man.
  • Every evil bastard in the world was just a kid once.” This all-new, all-contemplative Harvey is really fun. I hope we get to keep him.
  • “Alfred says there’s gonna be a magicia…” “I’m working. And I hate magicians.” Aside from how great the magician running gag is, this piece of delightful teenage awkwardness is just lovely.
  • “Well it gets a bit tedious after a while, parachuting into one global hotspot after another, warlords putting ridiculous bounties on your head. Gets a bit boring.” Alfred Pennyworth, international man of mystery ladies and gentlemen
  • “YOU SON OF A BITCH!” “True but… not the point.” Oh Jerome. You precious, spiky, terrifying little flower.
  • “47 million dollars, a helicopter obviously, the dry cleaning I left at Mr Chang’s – be careful the man is a crook – and oooh, I don’t know… a PONY!” Cameron Monaghan never met a line he didn’t chew up during his run on this show and that’s what makes his proto-Joker so great. This entire speech.
  • The seamless gear change from the maniacal laughter to, “I think that well,” is perfect. Oh Jerome, we will miss you.
  • “See, someone like that has no interest in building things.” This show is WEIRD. The same episode that deals with Tabitha with all the subtlety of a Whitesnake album cover gives us this. One single line and we know everything that makes the Joker and the Penguin different. Cobblepot wants to build. The Joker, as another version of Alfred says, just wants to watch the world burn.
  • “Aw bugger.” “Alfred.” “You knew didn’t you?” “I didn’t know, Alfred.” “You did, you let me make a right mug of meself.” I will take an entire episode of Sean Pertwee and the increasingly great David Mazouz arguing any time you want to produce it, Gotham.

 

The Bad:

  • “Some people say Bruce has a split personality.” On the nose, Jerome. WAY too on the nose.
  • The Leslie/Alfred/Bruce love triangle is an awful idea that passed so close to being real we can feel the breeze as it passes by. Thankfully, it leads to a moment that’s actually kind of sweet and funny.
  • The Galavans/Barbara love triangle is an awful, AWFUL idea that hits centre mass. Let’s move aside the implication of incest that we pretty clearly get (because EWWWW) and take a look at just why this is rubbish. Firstly, it robs Barbara of pretty much all the agency she spent the entire first season being denied. She’s a pawn, again, this time between two siblings. Now there’s every possibility she’ll either see that or is already playing them off against one another but even that’s a bad move. Because if she is then Barbara is another in the long line of, “bisexual equals slut” pseudo characters that TV inflicts on us every time it tries to be edgy.
  • Secondly, it pretty much officially turns Tabitha into this season’s Barbara. Poor bloody Jessica Lucas, playing a character who looks like a 1980s BDSM fantasy, isn’t even given a name for her first episode and whose job appears to be “grumpy horny lesbian sniper”. Tabitha’s an empty space where a character should be and tacking something as cookie cutter as a love triangle onto her only makes that so much worse.
  • Right now, Gotham is saying that being bisexual, or a lesbian, means you’re either insane, a criminal or also enjoy sleeping with a relative. The fact that Lucas is now the only non-Caucasian cast member there is upgrades this from simply extremely bad to full on disastrous. Fix the character or write her off and take a third run at writing a non-heterosexual woman who is both sane and defined by something other than her libido.

 

And the Random:

  • Deputy Mayor Harrison Kane is played by Norm Lewis, a giant of Broadway and the first African-American actor in history to play the lead role in Phantom Of The Opera.
  • Paul Cicero, the oh so doomed father of the proto-Joker, is played by the magnificent Mark Margolis. He’s been in loads of stuff including recent turns in Elementary and Constantine, a memorable role as Tio Salamanca in Breaking Bad and Antonio Nappa in Oz. He’s also Ace’s landlord in one of my favourite scenes in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
  • The music playing as we see people enter the gala is “The Dirty Boogie” by the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

To camera, Theo

  • Shot of the week is Theo Galavan’s epic Blue Steel

Review by Alasdair Stuart

 

• Read our other Gotham reviews

 

Jerome at the GCPD

Gotham S02E02 “Knock Knock” REVIEW

by with No Comment Reviews

Gotham S02E02 “Knock, Knock” REVIEW

Jerome at the GCPD

stars 4

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 10pm
Writers: Ken Woodruff
Directors: Rob Bailey

 

Essential Plot Points:

evil tower

  • At 1 Evil Plaza, Theo Galavan has the mayor of Gotham with his head in a box. He convinces the man he’s about to put a live rat in the box and the mayor agrees to “run away”. Galavan opens the box, shows him there was no rat (and one presumes, no spoon) and threatens him again.

mayor in a box

  • Nearby a Gotham newspaper’s day is interrupted by people being hurled from the roof of its offices. The victims have letters on their chests that spell out: MANIAX. Jerome and the others are making a statement.

maniax

  • The GCPD mobilise, placing Gordon in charge. He and Essen begin breaking the case down and discover the victims all worked at one of the Gotham shipyards. Essen and Gordon bond over the case and the GCPD’s newfound desire to actually do police stuff. Gordon, oddly, doesn’t mention all that extortion and murder he did last week.
  • Back at 1 Evil Plaza, the Maniax are celebrating with an enormous plate of donuts. Galavan congratulates them and suggests stagecraft training for their next gig. Most of them “audition” but all of them are blown out of the water by Jerome’s cackling, maniacal theatrics.

barbara and playmate

  • The Mayor, still in the box, is whipped into the room by Barbara and Tabitha Galavan who complain about being bored. Galavan assures them their time is coming and asks them to make sure the mayor isn’t dead. Tabitha whips him again, he whimpers.
  • MEANWHILE! AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR! Bruce and Alfred are in the not-yet-a-Batcave. Bruce is overjoyed he’ll finally get some answers. Alfred is terrified and smashes the hard drive. He explains to Bruce that this room is clearly what got his father killed; pointing out the bulletproof vest with two rounds in it and the blood fridge. Thomas Wayne was into something very bad, and Alfred refuses to let his charge have any part of it. Bruce fires him.

Alfred is fired

  • Things are going south at 1 Evil Plaza too. Galavan leaves the Maniax alone with boxes of weapons and returns to find Jerome and Greenwood fighting with a chainsaw and a katana. Both want to lead the Maniax and Galavan suggests they resolve the dispute with Russian roulette. Jerome wins when he plays three times on the run and Greenwood backs down.

russian roulette 2

  • At the bar, which if it isn’t called HARVEY’S clearly should be, Gordon seeks counsel from his old partner. Harvey commiserates with the younger cop while his fiancé, Scotty, almost runs Gordon out on a rail. Before he goes, Harvey gives his old partner a lead; why did the Maniax kidnap shipyard workers?

scotty

  • Gordon builds on the lead and discovers the Maniax stole a shipyard fuel tanker. They use it to hijack a bus full of cheerleaders and douse it in gasoline. The GCPD just get there in time and the Maniax flee, leaving Dobkins to light the fuel. He succeeds but Gordon takes him down and drives the bus to safety. He questions Dobkins who is promptly shot and killed by Tabitha Galavan from a nearby rooftop.

tanker

  • At the station, Alfred is joined by Bruce. The two make up and Bruce asks to be trained again. Alfred returns, on the condition that Bruce do everything he says. Bruce gives Alfred a condition too; he has to fix the computer.

Alfred and bruce

  • Back at the GCPD, Leslie is conducting the autopsy on Dobkins. She calls him as being sniped at range and Gordon and Essen realise they’re back to square one. Gordon, with his usual eloquence, sort of sidles up to making sure Leslie’s okay. She, with her usual good humour, lets the world’s manliest man know she’s fine.

Nygma

  • Nygma manages to completely fail to ask Ms Kringle out. Tyler Durden Nygma is both unsurprised and openly mocking of him.
  • Alfred meets Lucius and, in the most fun you’ll have with TV this week, manages to intimidate and confuse him into working with them by using a combination of cockney metaphors and threats of violence. Lucius agrees to work with Alfred, and also to fix the computer.

LUCIUS!

  • Barbara calls Gordon at the GCPD. He tries to talk to her then looks up as he realises he can hear her without the phone. THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE BUILDING! THIS IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT HAPPENS!
  • Gordon chases her outside as a group of uniformed cops come in and ask to see Essen. It’s the Maniax, who proceed to slaughter very nearly every police officer in the building.
  • Outside, Barbara confronts Gordon who tries to reason with her. On her orders Aaron attacks Gordon and hands him one of the nastiest beatings you’ll see (or perhaps not given its Channel 5) on TV. She leaves him, mockingly suggesting he go check on his colleagues.

jim and barbara

  • Jerome taunts Essen who stands her ground with the young psychopath. Jerome also murders Greenwood which we can all universally agree is probably the only good thing he’ll ever do.

manly jim

  • Gordon makes it back to find Leslie, Nygma and Kringle very nearly the only officers left standing. They find a critically wounded Essen who dies whispering, “A new day,” her battle cry, to Gordon.
  • Stunned, Gordon stands in the Commissioner’s empty office. He’s joined by Harvey, who’s back on the force. One of the other survivors alerts them to the video the Maniax left for the news. They watch Jerome crow and leave just as backup arrives, promising he and his friends will be back…

 

Review:

Jerome
The brakes are off, the Maniax are driving and Gotham is a very different series this year. The trudge of, “Hey look, it’s a one-off case that features the father of a Batman villain! Again!” of a lot of last year has been replaced by a straight-up serial. Stylistically this is closer to 24 than every other superhero show on air right now and, as we’ll see, that’s not entirely a good thing.

But the good news first. The show really has doubled down on the “Adam West Batman with more blood” feel that was introduced last week and it’s paying off in two fun ways. The first is that the Maniax, Jerome in particular, set the screen on fire every time you see them. They’re dangerous and actively disturbing, wild cards that use the city for whatever they see fit and don’t want to be reasoned with. While Galavan obviously has an endgame in mind, their actions are powering the show quite happily right now. Especially as Cameron Monaghan as I Can’t Believe it’s Not The Joker (Yet) figure Jerome is turning in amazing work. You’ll see hints of Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson and even Mark Hamill’s definitive take on the role in Monaghan’s work. Jerome is measured, theatrical, over articulate and clearly brilliant. He’s a sociopathic cat with a city sized mouse and is easily the best villain the show has ever had.

The other side of the law gets some fun stuff this episode too. Sean Pertwee’s Alfred remains an absolute bleedin’ delight and the show’s doing some of its best work with him. Like Bruce, this Alfred isn’t done baking yet. He’s not the unflappable right hand man we’re used to but rather a goodhearted, frequently bloody knuckled man trying to look after the only family he has left. He’s frequently very bad at it too and that learning process ties him to Bruce in thematic ways that are subtle and often poignant.

leslie

Gordon gets a wonderfully gruff, emotionally constipated moment of affection with Leslie too that says more about the character than a thousand words could. Likewise Harv gets a couple of excellent moments including one that the show treads all over as we’ll see a little later. Essen too gets some amazing scenes and she’s set up as a stable, calm force at the heart of a police department that desperately wants to be like she is.

Then the show kills her.

In the same episode Tabitha Galavan has maybe 15 lines of dialogue, Leslie has maybe 10, Kringle gets two, Scotty gets eight and the only female character with any degree of agency is a violent psychopath.

That’s the problem with the aping of 24 and other action-driven serials: the inevitable fondness for incident over character. In fact, character, Essen specifically, is sacrificed for action this episode. In context it works but when you look at the tiny roles Scotty, Kringle and Leslie have it starts to leave a nasty aftertaste. The absolute worst excesses of comics have always been their dismal treatment of female characters and even now that’s often the rule not the exception. For Gotham to set up a strong, non-caucasian female Commissioner then immediately kill her tells us exactly where the priorities are; action not character, style not depth. It’s a short term solution that works well and a long term one that kills shows faster than those shows can kill their women. I hope it’s a detour and not where Gotham is heading.

The Good:

  • Alfred’s default to parade rest stance is a subtle note of characterisation in a show where almost nothing else is subtle. It’s not that the rest is bad either, it’s just little touches like that stand out.
  • Please can we have an entire episode of Alfred threatening people using cockney vernacular? That was wonderful.
  • “Aaron? Would you kindly?” Cameron Monaghan relishes every line he’s given and he’s got some crackers this episode. It’s almost impossible to not hear this in the same cadence as the Jack Nicholson Joker saying, ‘Gentlemen! Let’s broaden our minds! Lawrence?”
  • “…Never mind.” James Frain, like Monaghan, so clearly gets the joke inherent in these characters. His Galavan is arch and dangerous and somehow just a little absurd too.
  • “How many people can you eat before this schtick gets old?” “I COULD EAT ONE MORE.” And then there are exchanges like this, where you’re reminded that for all the show’s unblinking, frantic charm it’s still filled with monsters.
  • “Hey Greenwood? What’s the secret to good comedy?” CLICK “Timing. And what’s courage?” CLICK “Grace under pressure. AND…Who’s the boss?” CLICK. “I’M the boss.” Again, Monaghan just controls the screen. At this stage we don’t know if Jerome really is the Joker. We do know that if he isn’t he’s got to be a big inspiration. The kid is terrifying.
  • “I’ve sat back and watched old, corrupt lazy men buy their way into this job and waste it. Not me, Jim. Not me.” Oh Commissioner Essen, you were officially too good for this world.
  • “Is that all you’re taking with you?” “It’s all I have I, sir.” Admit it, you heard the sad walking away music from the end of the old Hulk TV show at this point, just played by Chas’n’Dave. And if you didn’t, you do now.
  • “Gimme an O! Gimme an N! Gimme another O! What does that spell? O NO!” Again the show walks the line between horror and absurdity. It’s a ludicrous moment but it’s one they push through the disbelief on and arrive at sweaty palmed horror.
  • “Holding up?” “Holding up.” “Love you.” “Likewise.” The banter between these two is adorable, especially as it feels so genuine. Jim Gordon is amazingly bad at emotions. Him saying this here is huge and Leslie’s reaction is sweet and awesome.
  • “Lairy little scallywag. Too smiley by ‘alf. Never trusted ‘im.” I want an entire episode of this scene. An entire episode of possibly mildly drunk Alfred intimidating Americans who aren’t entirely sure whether they should be frightened or not.
  • “You let me down, Onslo, I will tuck you up, sunshine. Like a KIPPER.” I do not know what any of this means. I do know I never ever want to make Sean Pertwee angry. EVER.
  • “If it turns out I can’t trust you, I swear on my mother’s grave that you, my old sausage, are a dead man.” See? He’s terrifying! In a jovial cockney way.
  • “I could explain it but you should probably get back to work. Who knows what went wrong while you were gone?” I’m increasingly convinced that this season has been designed at least partially as an apology to Erin Richards for the ridiculous stuff she had to work with last year. This moment, and her blood-stained grin, is leagues ahead of everything she’s had to work with to date.

 

The Bad:

  • Essen got short shrift. Not only was Zabryna Guevara great but swapping out one of the relatively few female characters for another white dude on a show chock full of them leaves a nasty aftertaste. Fridging is unfortunately still a thing and a show this high profile using a trope that lazy doesn’t help.

 

And the Random:

  • Hey Jim? Uncle Frank’s been writing about you. “The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He’s dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he’s a hero the whole time.” Frank Miller. Also, SIT DOWN our kid, you look like Hell.
  • In one episode we get: six people being thrown off a building: a chainsaw/katana fight; a man being whipped; a busload of cheerleaders being doused in gasoline and almost set alight; an entire precinct full of police officers being gunned down; the lead character getting the living hell beaten out of him; and the police commissioner murdered. In 44 minutes. I’m not saying Gotham’s bloodthirsty, especially as to its credit all this violence has weight to it. I am saying the show has been watching way too many early ’90s action movies and maybe needs to lay off the sugar.
  • Was Thomas Wayne doing a lot more than researching? That bulletproof vest in the proto-Batcave has seen some use.

welcome back harvey

  • This is both the shot of the episode and everything wrong with it. It’s a moment that’s moving and poignant. Harv was out, he’d got a new life, a new perspective. Then he comes back because you don’t leave your friends behind. It’s subtle and understated and entirely undercut by the line about Scotty either understanding or not. Male characters deciding what female characters will like is not something that ever plays well and on a show like this, even less so.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

 

• Read our other Gotham reviews

 

oh COME ON

Gotham S02E01 "Damned If You Do…" REVIEW

by with No Comment Reviews

Gotham S02E01 “Damned If You Do…” REVIEW

oh COME ON

stars 4

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 9pm
Writer: Bruno Heller
Director: Danny Cannon

 

Essential Plot Points

  • Previously on Gotham: The Waynes killed! Commissioner Loeb! Baby Joker! Barbara goes mad! Penguin goes to the top! SECRET CAVE BENEATH STATELY WAYNE MANOR!
  • And we’re off!

Indiana Bat

  • At Wayne Manor, Alfred and Bruce discover a set of stairs leading down to a key-locked door. They try the keypad but can’t open it.

bullocks bar

  • Bullock is tending bar. In doing so, he carefully wipes the bar down, lifts a drunk off it, wipes under and keeps going. Welcome back, Harv. We’ve missed you.
  • Penguin is welcoming someone new to the fold… just long enough for Zsaz to execute them.
  • Barbara walks into Arkham to begin her stay and all eyes are on her.
  • Jim gets dressed for work in his new position working traffic.

gordon and leslie

  • Elsewhere, a man in improvised armour is fed a curious liquid by someone we can’t see.

zardon the soul reaver

  • The man arrives at Jim’s traffic stop, proclaims himself ZAARDON THE SOUL REAPER! And proceeds to cause very incompetent havoc. Jim takes him down and arrests him. In doing so he shoves his replacement, late on shift.
  • At the station Jim books Zaardon and chats briefly with Edward Nygma. He doesn’t pick up on how nervous the scientist is before being called to Captain Essen’s office. Edward’s other personality berates him from the mirror and he leaves, trying to block it out.

nygma

  • Commissioner Loeb has received a complaint of assault from Jim’s relief, the man he shoved earlier. Essen argues for her officer but Loeb insists he be dismissed. Jim accepts, thanks Essen for the chance to work with her, shakes Loeb’s hand and vows to bring him down.

Gordon's hearing

  • Later that night, Leslie and Jim talk. She’s relieved Jim is off the Force but he can’t let it go. He admits there’s something he can do, which would be outside the law, to get his job back. She tries to reason with him but sees he’s obsessed.

gordon broods

  • In Arkham, Sionis has taken a fancy to Barbara and sends Jerome over to talk to her. The young psychopath explains she needs a friend and a bored, annoyed, Barbara gets the biggest man in the room on her side in under a minute.

the fabulous

  • At Penguin’s offices, Jim arrives to ask for a favour. Penguin welcomes him and sends his coterie, aside from Selina, away. He explains exactly what Jim wants without the former cop having to say a thing. He’ll get Jim reinstated, and all he has to do is collect a debt for Penguin. Jim refuses and leaves.

Penguins lair

  • He goes and gets drunk at Bullock, who’s been sober for a month. His former partner points out what a good man he is and that he’s happy off the force. Jim embraces him and goes to see Bruce, who he apologises to for not being able to fulfil his promise. Bruce, clearly a little angry and distracted by the secret door, coldly forgives him and also points out that sometimes the right way is the ugly way. Then rushes to the secret door as soon as Jim’s left.
  • Back at Arkham, Barbara asks Sionis for a phone.
  • Jim goes to collect Penguin’s debt. It goes horribly, badly. In short order he’s threatened, assaults three men, robs the man he came to collect from, flees the scene, narrowly avoids being arrested by former employees and shoots (albeit in self defence) the man he just stole from.
  • This bothers him. A LOT.
  • MEANWHILE! BACK AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR! Bruce is building a fertiliser bomb. Extremely badly. Alfred tries to reason with him but finally gives in and helps. As well as putting the kettle on.
  • Gordon hands the money to Penguin, disgusted at the realisation he was set up. Penguin denies it, almost sincerely, and Jim returns home. Where Barbara calls him, and then Leslie. Leslie suggests they leave the city and that nothing is keeping them there. Jim admits he did something bad and they can’t leave.

zsaz

  • Commissioner Loeb wakes up to find Penguin and Zsaz in his house. Penguin, in the episode’s best scene, has both sides of the conversation with the commissioner. He ultimately concludes the only way Loeb will give him what he wants is to kill him and forces Loeb to accept the alternative: retirement.
  • The next day, Essen is sworn in as new Commissioner and Jim is reinstated. At the ceremony, Theo Galavan, a major new civic figure in Gotham gives a speech. But unknown to everyone, he’s the one who gave ZAARDON THE SOUL REAPER! The potion.

Loeb retires

  • And speaking of ZAARDON THE SOUL REAPER! He’s admitted to Arkham, picks a fight, passes out, belches knock-out gas and dies. It turns out Galavan, a gifted scientist, set him up as an elaborate stun grenade for Barbara, Jerome, Sionis and co. They’re knocked out and a mercenary team storms the Asylum and rescues them.

Galavan sister

  • At the ceremony, Essen assures Jim they’ll do good work together. And, seconds later, he learns that Barbara has escaped.
  • The inmates come round in Galavan’s penthouse. There he introduces himself and his sister – who led the rescue – and tells them he has a plan. They will be a team of masterminds who will bring chaos to Gotham. Sionis refuses to participate, offers to buy his way out and is killed. The others are all in.

city of love

  • MEANWHILE! BACK AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR BOMB SCHOOL!

Bomb school

  • The fertiliser bomb is done. Alfred and Bruce hide, detonate it and the door is blown off its hinges. They step through into a cave filled with dusty computers. Bruce finds a letter from his father that implores him to choose happiness unless he has a calling. As he reads it, we see Gordon suiting up to go back to work…

back to work

 

Review:

city of justice

Gotham had a big problem last season: it had no idea what it wanted to be. The wild, feverish camp-with-added-blood approach worked sometimes. A hard-bitten police procedural worked others. Nothing worked, or was on screen, for very long. Most egregiously, it horribly fumbled the ball with Barbara Kean, Jim Gordon’s doomed fiancé.

This, howwver, is the best episode of Gotham to date. The reason is simple: it’s still feverish and changes gear a lot. But now it’s having fun with it.

The Bruce plot is a perfect example. Its classic adolescent whining, and some glorious sass too, mixed with real poignancy and mystery. Bruce is a child in a situation adults would find horrific and the tragedy of it is Alfred is utterly unequipped to help. Even better is the fact Alfred is trying to do the right thing in raising the boy and realises he should be doing the ugly thing, and helping him find out the truth. It’s subtle, clever, weird and involves a fertiliser bomb and the world’s most obvious code, all at once.

The Jim plot is much the same. We sprint through him being fired, turning criminal and being restated in a single episode. It all makes narrative sense too, with the notable exception of the world’s least successful smash and grab. As mentioned below, that’s a low point for the character and the show really needs to come back to it in later episodes. Jim Gordon, the paragon of virtue in the GCPD is also now an armed robber. That distinction should be uncomfortable and for a long time.

There’s some other fun stuff going on here, especially a great Penguin and Zsaz scene but the real highlight is Barbara. Who knew that would ever happen? From the moment she walks into Arkham like she’s dressed for a premiere, she owns every scene. Brilliant, bored and angry she’s immensely fun and signifies the show’s first stable tone. She, Sionis, Jerome and the rest are the villains from a classic Adam West episode. The only difference is in the present day they’re both broad, exuberant characters and terrifying villains. They also clearly can’t wait to cause some havoc and their maniacal energy powers the whole episode.

Something big has come to Gotham, and there’s going to be a hot time in the old town before it’s done. In other words, Gotham’s back and this time, Gotham is embracing its… issues, just like Barbara. And, just like Barbara, it’s ready to cause some trouble.

 

The Good:

  • “Zaardon, that spelt how it sounds?” “Two As.” This episode is really funny, always on purpose too. I love this little exchange.
  • “May I ask why? Police work in Gotham is such a thankless job?” “Good pension.” This one too. The perfect summation of Jim’s gravelly manliness and Penguin’s cheerful sociopathy
  • “I’m sober. I have a woman who does not dislike me. I live in a house…” Aim high, Harv!
  • “Surely sometimes the right way is also the ugly way.” Such a lovely turn of phrase and the axis the entire episode revolves around. Do a bad thing to get something good later and hopefully it’ll take the red off your ledger.
  • “You don’t know the first thing about bomb making do ya?” “I READ A BOOK, ALFRED! IT SEEMS SIMPLE ENOUGH!” This entire exchange is glorious but this the best line.
  • “And I’ll put the kettle on.” Best Butler EVER.
  • “Sexual jealousy always poisons the well.” We don’t get much from Galavan this episode but this line promises much in the future. He’s clever and has tried this before. Interesting to see how this latest… erm… Suicide–ish Squad plays out.
  • “You can’t have both happiness and the truth.” That should be the city motto.
  • The episode looks GORGEOUS! Cannon makes every frame sing and the slightly wobbly feel Gotham had last year is replaced with something that looks like an explosion in an art deco factory. Hurray!
  • Barbara’s evil makeover is immense fun. Yes it’s over-the-top but it ties into the “Adam West Batman but soaked with blood” vibe the show is playing with. Plus, after a year of having to suffer frequently terrible writing of her character, Erin Richards seems to be relishing cutting loose.
  • The episode is frequently very funny in the exact, jet-black, off-centre way that it seemed to aim for but rarely hit last year.
  • Ben Mackenzie. He’s the anchor of the show, he’s playing a man who’s trying to be good and frequently being anything but and he’s nailing it. Just an amazing central turn.

 

The Bad:

  • Jim Gordon just killed a man. A LOT. Probably on surveillance footage. Whilst running from his property with money he stole for Gotham’s new mob boss. It’s EPISODE ONE of season two. Jim is obviously going to fall a long way before he gets back up. But honestly I’m not entirely sure how much lower they can go. Here’s hoping there’s consequences to his actions this week. If nothing else Penguin has dirt on him now.

bonding

The Random:

  • I choose to believe that the always-excellent Todd Stashwick as Richard Sionis was killed off so he can go be in 12 Monkeys season two lots.
  • Alfred getting all cockney every time he gets agitated is adorable. I especially liked the, “GET IN!” when the bomb worked.
  • Danny Cannon’s a hell of a director with a hell of a pedigree. As well as making every shot in this episode look brilliant he wrote and directed the superb Young Americans in in 1993. Two years later he directed the first Judge Dredd movie which probably makes him persona non grata to some people. That’s their loss because since then Cannon’s directed and produced for the CSI franchise, co-created Dark Blue, worked on Nikita and Alcatraz and currently serves as an executive producer on Gotham.
  • Bruno Heller co-created and wrote a vast chunk of the HBO series Rome, which gave us the bloodiest version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ever in Vorenus and Pullo. He’s also the creator of The Mentalist as well as Gotham.
  • James Frain is one of the best, and prolific, villain actors of his generation. Throw a rock and it’ll hit a TV show he’s been in including the likes of Spartacus, 24, Lie To Me, Flashpoint, True Blood, The Cape and most recently a memorable turn as Leet Brannis in early episodes of Agent Carter.
  • Jessica Lucas has a series of excellent performances in movies to her name, with Cloverfield being the particular standout. She was also great in the Evil Dead remake and has done good work on TV too in the likes of CSI, The L Word, Melrose Place and most recently Gracepoint.
  • David Fierro, who has a memorable cameo here as ZAARDON THE SOUL REAPER! is one of those character actors who turns up everywhere. You’ve seen him in The Blacklist, Birdman, Blue Bloods and Side Effects amongst others.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

 

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oh COME ON

Gotham S02E01 “Damned If You Do…” REVIEW

by with No Comment Reviews

Gotham S02E01 “Damned If You Do…” REVIEW

oh COME ON

stars 4

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 9pm
Writer: Bruno Heller
Director: Danny Cannon

 

Essential Plot Points

  • Previously on Gotham: The Waynes killed! Commissioner Loeb! Baby Joker! Barbara goes mad! Penguin goes to the top! SECRET CAVE BENEATH STATELY WAYNE MANOR!
  • And we’re off!

Indiana Bat

  • At Wayne Manor, Alfred and Bruce discover a set of stairs leading down to a key-locked door. They try the keypad but can’t open it.

bullocks bar

  • Bullock is tending bar. In doing so, he carefully wipes the bar down, lifts a drunk off it, wipes under and keeps going. Welcome back, Harv. We’ve missed you.
  • Penguin is welcoming someone new to the fold… just long enough for Zsaz to execute them.
  • Barbara walks into Arkham to begin her stay and all eyes are on her.
  • Jim gets dressed for work in his new position working traffic.

gordon and leslie

  • Elsewhere, a man in improvised armour is fed a curious liquid by someone we can’t see.

zardon the soul reaver

  • The man arrives at Jim’s traffic stop, proclaims himself ZAARDON THE SOUL REAPER! And proceeds to cause very incompetent havoc. Jim takes him down and arrests him. In doing so he shoves his replacement, late on shift.
  • At the station Jim books Zaardon and chats briefly with Edward Nygma. He doesn’t pick up on how nervous the scientist is before being called to Captain Essen’s office. Edward’s other personality berates him from the mirror and he leaves, trying to block it out.

nygma

  • Commissioner Loeb has received a complaint of assault from Jim’s relief, the man he shoved earlier. Essen argues for her officer but Loeb insists he be dismissed. Jim accepts, thanks Essen for the chance to work with her, shakes Loeb’s hand and vows to bring him down.

Gordon's hearing

  • Later that night, Leslie and Jim talk. She’s relieved Jim is off the Force but he can’t let it go. He admits there’s something he can do, which would be outside the law, to get his job back. She tries to reason with him but sees he’s obsessed.

gordon broods

  • In Arkham, Sionis has taken a fancy to Barbara and sends Jerome over to talk to her. The young psychopath explains she needs a friend and a bored, annoyed, Barbara gets the biggest man in the room on her side in under a minute.

the fabulous

  • At Penguin’s offices, Jim arrives to ask for a favour. Penguin welcomes him and sends his coterie, aside from Selina, away. He explains exactly what Jim wants without the former cop having to say a thing. He’ll get Jim reinstated, and all he has to do is collect a debt for Penguin. Jim refuses and leaves.

Penguins lair

  • He goes and gets drunk at Bullock, who’s been sober for a month. His former partner points out what a good man he is and that he’s happy off the force. Jim embraces him and goes to see Bruce, who he apologises to for not being able to fulfil his promise. Bruce, clearly a little angry and distracted by the secret door, coldly forgives him and also points out that sometimes the right way is the ugly way. Then rushes to the secret door as soon as Jim’s left.
  • Back at Arkham, Barbara asks Sionis for a phone.
  • Jim goes to collect Penguin’s debt. It goes horribly, badly. In short order he’s threatened, assaults three men, robs the man he came to collect from, flees the scene, narrowly avoids being arrested by former employees and shoots (albeit in self defence) the man he just stole from.
  • This bothers him. A LOT.
  • MEANWHILE! BACK AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR! Bruce is building a fertiliser bomb. Extremely badly. Alfred tries to reason with him but finally gives in and helps. As well as putting the kettle on.
  • Gordon hands the money to Penguin, disgusted at the realisation he was set up. Penguin denies it, almost sincerely, and Jim returns home. Where Barbara calls him, and then Leslie. Leslie suggests they leave the city and that nothing is keeping them there. Jim admits he did something bad and they can’t leave.

zsaz

  • Commissioner Loeb wakes up to find Penguin and Zsaz in his house. Penguin, in the episode’s best scene, has both sides of the conversation with the commissioner. He ultimately concludes the only way Loeb will give him what he wants is to kill him and forces Loeb to accept the alternative: retirement.
  • The next day, Essen is sworn in as new Commissioner and Jim is reinstated. At the ceremony, Theo Galavan, a major new civic figure in Gotham gives a speech. But unknown to everyone, he’s the one who gave ZAARDON THE SOUL REAPER! The potion.

Loeb retires

  • And speaking of ZAARDON THE SOUL REAPER! He’s admitted to Arkham, picks a fight, passes out, belches knock-out gas and dies. It turns out Galavan, a gifted scientist, set him up as an elaborate stun grenade for Barbara, Jerome, Sionis and co. They’re knocked out and a mercenary team storms the Asylum and rescues them.

Galavan sister

  • At the ceremony, Essen assures Jim they’ll do good work together. And, seconds later, he learns that Barbara has escaped.
  • The inmates come round in Galavan’s penthouse. There he introduces himself and his sister – who led the rescue – and tells them he has a plan. They will be a team of masterminds who will bring chaos to Gotham. Sionis refuses to participate, offers to buy his way out and is killed. The others are all in.

city of love

  • MEANWHILE! BACK AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR BOMB SCHOOL!

Bomb school

  • The fertiliser bomb is done. Alfred and Bruce hide, detonate it and the door is blown off its hinges. They step through into a cave filled with dusty computers. Bruce finds a letter from his father that implores him to choose happiness unless he has a calling. As he reads it, we see Gordon suiting up to go back to work…

back to work

 

Review:

city of justice

Gotham had a big problem last season: it had no idea what it wanted to be. The wild, feverish camp-with-added-blood approach worked sometimes. A hard-bitten police procedural worked others. Nothing worked, or was on screen, for very long. Most egregiously, it horribly fumbled the ball with Barbara Kean, Jim Gordon’s doomed fiancé.

This, howwver, is the best episode of Gotham to date. The reason is simple: it’s still feverish and changes gear a lot. But now it’s having fun with it.

The Bruce plot is a perfect example. Its classic adolescent whining, and some glorious sass too, mixed with real poignancy and mystery. Bruce is a child in a situation adults would find horrific and the tragedy of it is Alfred is utterly unequipped to help. Even better is the fact Alfred is trying to do the right thing in raising the boy and realises he should be doing the ugly thing, and helping him find out the truth. It’s subtle, clever, weird and involves a fertiliser bomb and the world’s most obvious code, all at once.

The Jim plot is much the same. We sprint through him being fired, turning criminal and being restated in a single episode. It all makes narrative sense too, with the notable exception of the world’s least successful smash and grab. As mentioned below, that’s a low point for the character and the show really needs to come back to it in later episodes. Jim Gordon, the paragon of virtue in the GCPD is also now an armed robber. That distinction should be uncomfortable and for a long time.

There’s some other fun stuff going on here, especially a great Penguin and Zsaz scene but the real highlight is Barbara. Who knew that would ever happen? From the moment she walks into Arkham like she’s dressed for a premiere, she owns every scene. Brilliant, bored and angry she’s immensely fun and signifies the show’s first stable tone. She, Sionis, Jerome and the rest are the villains from a classic Adam West episode. The only difference is in the present day they’re both broad, exuberant characters and terrifying villains. They also clearly can’t wait to cause some havoc and their maniacal energy powers the whole episode.

Something big has come to Gotham, and there’s going to be a hot time in the old town before it’s done. In other words, Gotham’s back and this time, Gotham is embracing its… issues, just like Barbara. And, just like Barbara, it’s ready to cause some trouble.

 

The Good:

  • “Zaardon, that spelt how it sounds?” “Two As.” This episode is really funny, always on purpose too. I love this little exchange.
  • “May I ask why? Police work in Gotham is such a thankless job?” “Good pension.” This one too. The perfect summation of Jim’s gravelly manliness and Penguin’s cheerful sociopathy
  • “I’m sober. I have a woman who does not dislike me. I live in a house…” Aim high, Harv!
  • “Surely sometimes the right way is also the ugly way.” Such a lovely turn of phrase and the axis the entire episode revolves around. Do a bad thing to get something good later and hopefully it’ll take the red off your ledger.
  • “You don’t know the first thing about bomb making do ya?” “I READ A BOOK, ALFRED! IT SEEMS SIMPLE ENOUGH!” This entire exchange is glorious but this the best line.
  • “And I’ll put the kettle on.” Best Butler EVER.
  • “Sexual jealousy always poisons the well.” We don’t get much from Galavan this episode but this line promises much in the future. He’s clever and has tried this before. Interesting to see how this latest… erm… Suicide–ish Squad plays out.
  • “You can’t have both happiness and the truth.” That should be the city motto.
  • The episode looks GORGEOUS! Cannon makes every frame sing and the slightly wobbly feel Gotham had last year is replaced with something that looks like an explosion in an art deco factory. Hurray!
  • Barbara’s evil makeover is immense fun. Yes it’s over-the-top but it ties into the “Adam West Batman but soaked with blood” vibe the show is playing with. Plus, after a year of having to suffer frequently terrible writing of her character, Erin Richards seems to be relishing cutting loose.
  • The episode is frequently very funny in the exact, jet-black, off-centre way that it seemed to aim for but rarely hit last year.
  • Ben Mackenzie. He’s the anchor of the show, he’s playing a man who’s trying to be good and frequently being anything but and he’s nailing it. Just an amazing central turn.

 

The Bad:

  • Jim Gordon just killed a man. A LOT. Probably on surveillance footage. Whilst running from his property with money he stole for Gotham’s new mob boss. It’s EPISODE ONE of season two. Jim is obviously going to fall a long way before he gets back up. But honestly I’m not entirely sure how much lower they can go. Here’s hoping there’s consequences to his actions this week. If nothing else Penguin has dirt on him now.

bonding

The Random:

  • I choose to believe that the always-excellent Todd Stashwick as Richard Sionis was killed off so he can go be in 12 Monkeys season two lots.
  • Alfred getting all cockney every time he gets agitated is adorable. I especially liked the, “GET IN!” when the bomb worked.
  • Danny Cannon’s a hell of a director with a hell of a pedigree. As well as making every shot in this episode look brilliant he wrote and directed the superb Young Americans in in 1993. Two years later he directed the first Judge Dredd movie which probably makes him persona non grata to some people. That’s their loss because since then Cannon’s directed and produced for the CSI franchise, co-created Dark Blue, worked on Nikita and Alcatraz and currently serves as an executive producer on Gotham.
  • Bruno Heller co-created and wrote a vast chunk of the HBO series Rome, which gave us the bloodiest version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ever in Vorenus and Pullo. He’s also the creator of The Mentalist as well as Gotham.
  • James Frain is one of the best, and prolific, villain actors of his generation. Throw a rock and it’ll hit a TV show he’s been in including the likes of Spartacus, 24, Lie To Me, Flashpoint, True Blood, The Cape and most recently a memorable turn as Leet Brannis in early episodes of Agent Carter.
  • Jessica Lucas has a series of excellent performances in movies to her name, with Cloverfield being the particular standout. She was also great in the Evil Dead remake and has done good work on TV too in the likes of CSI, The L Word, Melrose Place and most recently Gracepoint.
  • David Fierro, who has a memorable cameo here as ZAARDON THE SOUL REAPER! is one of those character actors who turns up everywhere. You’ve seen him in The Blacklist, Birdman, Blue Bloods and Side Effects amongst others.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

 

• More on Gotham

 

 

Batman

Batman: Arkham Knight Review

by with No Comment Reviews

Batman

Rocksteady Studios’ final outing in the Arkhamverse is packed with bombastic set-pieces, its own brand of bone-crunching (and now tyre-screeching) combat and a tale worthy of the best Batman comics, all set in the most stunningly realised Gotham City that’s ever existed on page or screen. The game itself looks gorgeous, with cutscenes switching seamlessly into the beautiful, dark world Rocksteady have brought to life. The attention to detail runs throughout the game’s intensely layered Gotham City. As always, there is a mountain of side missions, collectables, secrets and challenges to be found. Every street feels gritty, authentic and completely at home in this setting and the alleys are littered with unique quirks and wider references to the DC universe, from Lex Luthor’s messages on Bruce Wayne’s answering machine to the thugs’ ever-entertaining chatter that you pick up whilst scaling the city’s towering rooftops.

(Very mild spoilers to follow)

Batman: Arkham Knight is a masterclass in modern storytelling, taking the Caped Crusader into uncharted territory as he faces his deepest fears in a uniquely gratifying way. Following the events of Arkham City, Batman struggles with his inner demons. Racked with guilt and heavy trauma following the Joker’s death, he is called out by The Scarecrow along with many of the series’ classic villains, all hell-bent on his destruction. The mysterious Arkham Knight emerges into the fray, boasting an enormous arsenal of drone tanks and intel on the Bat that stands to turn the odds in his favour. With the Arkham Knight’s insider knowledge and Scarecrow’s willingness to exploit those closest to Batman, the player is taken on a ride that shows off more twists than an M. Night Shamylan film, more DC royalty than Alan Moore’s desk drawers and offers an unrivalled look into the mind behind the cowl.

Scarecrow

Whilst Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight are at the forefront of Batman’s third night of terror, Rocksteady find creative ways to keep the Joker at the centre of the story, ensuring this feels like a true Arkham experience and a fitting finale for their outstanding trilogy. Every character is fleshed out, especially in Batman’s immediate support system, from the ambitious but held-back Robin to the coolly intellectual Barbara Gordon. When the focus shifts away from the Bat himself it’s always welcome, widening the scope of the story. The voice acting is as strong as ever: Kevin Conroy lends his iconic vocals to Batman with more growl than ever, while Breaking Bad‘s Jonathan Banks makes a distinctive debut as James Gordon and John Noble commands your attention as Scarecrow. Ashley Greene packs a supremely defiant punch as Barbara Gordon, Troy Baker returns as the menacing Two-Face and David Cross is masterful as the Riddler once again. It is truly a golden age for video game acting and these powerful performances bolster the cinematic atmosphere in the Arkham series.

The grandest addition to the game is, of course, the inclusion of the Batmobile, which looks like the Dark Knight Trilogy Tumbler with added flare and a significant increase in firepower. With two core setups, pursuit and battle mode the Batmobile adds a diverse tool to the Dark Knight’s arsenal. Pursuit mode fulfils the dreams of any Bat-fan since his very creation, allowing players to speed through the streets of Gotham at dizzying velocity, giving chase to unwitting bank robbers, bringing down Arkham Knight’s fleet of armoured cars or even solving elaborate Riddler courses set up throughout the city. It’s high-octane carnage at its best.

BAK_Sshot165_1434448124

The battle mode turns the rapid rescue vehicle into a tank designed for all out warfare. In battle mode, Batman is often placed in arenas and charged with fighting off an army of conveniently unmanned drones. The mobile combat system is slightly clunky, as your Vulcan Cannon has a recharge time equal to watching all three Godfathers back to back, and the machine gun’s range is simply not enough to overpower the multitude of armoured vehicles sent your way. All of this does make for some challenging encounters filled with explosions and the odd stealth section against the Cobra Tanks, whose Death Star-style weakness means that they can only be hit from behind. All in all, the battle mode gameplay is enjoyable, but the sheer quantity of Batmobile missions in the main campaign often slow the pace and detract from the sheer pleasure players can get from playing as Batman himself – something that Rocksteady worked for years to achieve. Also, the overload of drones, missiles and unmanned helicopters in some missions occasionally caused havoc with my frame rate. In one particularly taxing battle I was plummeted straight through the floor and sent spiralling endlessly through fog until I landed in the same spot and proceeded to explode.

The regular gameplay, on the other hand, takes what’s best in the previous instalments and builds on their successes. The impact of each punch is accompanied by a satisfying thump that’s kept its appeal since the beginning: it’s still a joy to dole out punishment to Gotham’s riotous renegades. With the hyper-powered shock gloves found in Warner Bros. Games’ Batman: Arkham Origins, Arkham Knight offers new features for both the Dark Knight and the grunts that he leaves sprawled across the alleyways of Gotham City. The World’s Greatest Detective gains a couple of new toys, including a voice modulator, which allows Batman to impersonate his enemies and order their thugs around, and a device allowing him to control the Batmobile remotely. The grunts of Gotham are kitted out with aerial drones that scan the environment for signs of unwanted sleuthing, electrified thugs who can’t be countered and medics who can revive unconscious grunts who’ve already received their bat-kicking.

GCPD

Each feature adds an extra element of strategy, whether you’re stealthily taking down a room of armed grunts or in all-out brawl. The AI have been given a healthy upgrade to boot, now learning which style of take-down you favour whilst hidden and adjusting their behaviour to combat it. When combined, these tweaks are not just a great addition to the Arkham series’ existing stealth gameplay, but can be explained in the game as the result of the Arkham Knight‘s knowledge of Batman’s special brand of ass-kickery. It’s this kind of care and attention to detail in the games’ design that tie together Rocksteady’s story and gameplay and set it apart from the rest.

Ultimately, Batman: Arkham Knight proves to be one of this year’s biggest blockbuster hits whilst also boasting a brilliantly crafted tale that draws from the best of Batman’s extensive back catalogue to create an instant classic. The combat and stealth gameplay is refined almost to the point of perfection and the final hours of the game pack an emotional punch like no other superhero game has before. It’s clear there has never been a better time to don the cape and cowl and take to the streets.

Batman: Arkham Knight is available now for PS4 and Xbox One, with a fixed PC version on the way.