Gotham S03E01 Review: Bounty Hunters

Gotham, Season 3, Episode 1: Mad City - Better to Reign in Hell

Sometimes I wonder how Gotham has managed to survived all the way to a third season. But the little retooling that the show got halfway through the second season has caused the show to utterly embrace its madness and go full-on with the insanity that surrounds making an adaptation of Gotham City, and absolutely running with it. Gone was the more pulpy, planned-out gangster-cop show that it was in its first season. Nah, it's just gone full-on batshit crazy with both adapting and subverting classic facets of Batman lore, sense be damned. There's a combination of a surreal, 'who wrote this' head-shaking in regards with the plot directions, and a little child within me squeeing as Jim Gordon does battle with a stegosaur mutant man.

I'm not sure how regularly I'll be watching Gotham, not when other shows with a more guaranteed quality like the CW shows (Arrow's underwhelming season finale notwithstanding) or Marvel's Netflix bomb drops, but it sates my need for superhero stuff at the moment. A good chunk of this season premiere is just setup, and honestly compared to the bomb that was Agents of SHIELD's season premiere that I reviewed a while back it's kind of weak, other than the metahumans terrorizing Gotham City. Jim Gordon is a bounty hunter not affiliated with the GCPD... but he still acts like season two Gordon, broody and being action man, acting behind his higher-ups to apprehend criminals and being chewed out by Barnes (who's alive, yay!). Fish is still a boring generic villain. Penguin (why did Fish leave him alive again?) is still entertaining as all hell, trying to put his house in order with the lovesick Butch and the psychotic Barbara Kean kind of pissing him off. Bruce and Alfred are still taking baby steps to get through the Wayne Enterprises conspiracy plot and getting over in their heads. In a sense it really feels identical to the second season, only swapping out Gallavan/Hugo Strange for Fish's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants Arkham metahuman escapees.

We spend no time establishing that Leslie Thompkins has apparently found a man in the long, long absence when Gordon told her to fuck off, and honestly can you blame her? We get a short scene of Gordon trying to talk to Leslie but seeing that she's already happy with someone else and leaves. We then cut to Gordon and Bullock fighting against a stegosaurus metahuman... is he supposed to be someone from the comics? The obvious is Killer Croc, but he looks more dinosaurian than crocodilian. I dunno, though.

We then get introduced to Vicki Valerie Vale, who's this cute reporter lady that tries to get to the bottom of things while Barnes is all like 'we got things under control!' while Oswald shows up and goes 'Imma tell everone that Fish Mooney is leading an army of evil mutants! It's kind of ridiculous that Penguin wasn't arrested on the spot, but hey. After the establishment that GCPD continues to be incompetent and independent bounty hunters (read: Jim Gordon) is the one catching all the Indian Hill escapees, Valerie then proceeds to hound Gordon in ways that would make Lois Lane proud, and acts as Gordon's "partner" for a majority of the episode as we go through the procedural to try and flush out Fish. Meanwhile Gordon is all mopey for losing Leslie and blames the job for it, I guess?

Valerie's cute, I admit, but I'm not sure if she adds anything really new to the show other than a pretty civilian for Gordon to protect.

We then proceed to do a little jumping scenes session. Lucius Fox is apparently Riddler's replacement in the GCPD, having quit the corrupt Wayne Enterprises. Riddler's still in prison and is buddies with Oswald, who visits sometimes. Barbara and Tabitha are this psychotic lesbian duo running a nightclub, working under Penguin and Butch. And there's this nonsense plot regarding Tabitha -- Oswald and Tabitha seem to be working on a tight 'we hate each other but for Butch's sake you're alive' which felt hackneyed but okay. Apparently Butch sent a bunch of hitmen to 'scare' Tabitha and Barbara to asking the big strong men for help, but, y'know, Barbara is crazy and Tabitha is kind of the Tigress (as much as she has absolutely nothing in common with the DC character anymore) so the mooks get killed and Oswald just gets so exasperated with it all.

Bruce and Alfred apparently left for Switzerland for a while, and after a bit of a Bruce/Selina moment that felt rather unnecessary, Bruce confronts the board of directors in a pretty cool scene -- both Alfred's gravitas when he confronts the chuckling board member and Bruce's delivery makes me truly believe that, yeah, this kid is going to be Batman some time in the future, which is a far cry from Season 1 Bruce. He dangles the fact that he 'knows' about the conspiracy in front of the board, before swaggering out and going to eat pancakes. That was a brilliant moment with the pancakes right there. It's a shame that despite seeming so cocksure in the meeting, their big plan to draw out the conspiracy ended up falling on its head when the Court of Owls sends an assassin that makes short work of Alfred and Bruce, and for like the tenth time in this series, Bruce Wayne gets kidnapped by the evil organization. Again. Oh well.

Nemesis Bruce Wayne is living in the streets, apparently not hanging out with Fish like all the cool mutants and sees Selina and Bruce do their tsundere flirting thing, and demands little Ivy tell him who Bruce Wayne is.

Fish, meanwhile, has a small mutant army, including this snake-esque dude that fights Gordon in the midpoint moment, and Marv the dude that kills with a touch. Also Selina who for some unexplained reason sticks around with her. She's dressing like some Kryptonian overlord, and tries to ham it up but I honestly just don't care about Fish at all, really. Her cuttlefish powers have limits, and she falls to her knees after using it too much, and she just acts like a petulant five-year old when she kidnaps and confronts Mrs. Peabody about it. "This powers will kill you, Fish." "I don't care MAKE IT NOT KILL ME!" "But your cells are degenerating-" "ALSO I WANT AN ARMY NA NA NA CAN'T HEAR YOU!" It probably is supposed to be this big in-charge moment for Fish when she refuses to take no for an answer, but really she just looks like a total idiot there.

Side-note... how cold was the scene when Gordon confronts Peabody and tells her that, yeah, she's being used as bait to draw out Fish? Poor Peabody. She didn't deserve such a horrific death, or be kidnapped like that. The least Gordon could do was have like a small contingent of GCPD dudes to anticipate Fish's mutant army.

In addition to hanging out as Fish's little sidekick and being passive-aggressive "we're cool" with Bruce, Selina is also feeding information to Vale for some reason. Ivy tries to sneak around and find out what Selina's up to, but all that got her was Fish ordering her death, and poor Ivy fell into some raging sludge rapids after a fight with some of the mutants. I bet this will be the catalyst for her transformation into Poison Ivy (replaced by a new older and hotter actress, if pictures are to be believed) and Selina betraying Fish? I mean, it doesn't make sense for Selina to stick around with Fish but hey this show isn't built on making sense.

So yeah. It's not un-entertaining, but the logic leaps and inane plot reusals and very bland villain in Fish Mooney doesn't really fill me with enthusiasm for this 'Mad City' arc.