Gotham, Season 3, Episode 2: Mad City - Burn the Witch
A week late! Mostly because I wasn't very enthused with this episode when I first watched it, and I'd rather watch the pretty cool Luke Cage series and talk about the Teen Titans. That to be said, this episode isn't all bad, even if it's having way too much fun portraying Jim Gordon as a huge, unrepentant dick. I mean, yeah, it's somewhat interesting, I guess, and as long as he eventually sees the error of his ways and goes back to being 'the only decent cop in Gotham' at the end of the series, I don't really mind this slight retooling of the character.
But shit, the dude's quite cold. Not only is he not afraid of calling in favours form unethical sources like Barbara and Penguin -- gone is the season-long angsting in previous seasons -- he also finds no problem in calling up Penguin, getting his mob to attack the police forces as a distraction (possibly injuring a couple of policemen), said mob proceeds to brutally murder two of Fish's goons, and 'give' Fish for Penguin to murder in cold blood. I mean, holy shit, no one wants Fish gone from the show more than I do, but that's stone-cold, Gordon. I mean, yeah, he's doing it to save his buddy Bullock, but shit, that's actually quite villainous of him now that I think of it.
But Gordon's mostly on the backfoot this episode, with Valerie Vale outwitting him as payback for the previous episode, and the two apparently like each other with their little game of cat and mouse. And they bang. I mean, can't blame Gordon, Valerie's pretty... but of course in Gotham-land you can never fall in love without your ex coming back. So of course despite being established that she's got a new beau, at the end of the episode Leslie Thompkins returns for undoubtedly mind-numbing romantic drama.
One of the biggest problem that the show has at this point is the lack of a central villain. The first season has the triumvirate of Falcone, Maroni and Fish, with Penguin as this big wildcard at the center of it all. The two halves of the second season had Gallavan as the antagonist for the first half, and Hugo Strange for the second half, with Penguin still being a bit of a wildcard in it all. Here... Penguin is reduced to just commenting on the state of Gotham City, and inciting riots by getting people to lose confidence in the GCPD and hate on Fish. It's a cool scene where he brags that he is Gotham.
Shame he pussies out of killing Fish. He does demand to know why Fish spared him at the end of the previous season, and it's a fair question... but the answer from Fish is "I can't bear to destroy something I've created." Fish... isn't exactly the only reason that Oswald turned crazy and became Penguin. But Fish is kinda crazy and has definitely been central in Penguin's growth, so I can buy Penguin being confused with everything that's happening and allowing Fish one pass for sparing him that one time. I mean, the dude's letting Tabitha stay alive and Tabitha's the bitch that killed his beloved mother, so...
Fish is absolutely unbearable. Her logic, "I found out that if I squeezed I will get what I want from people I extort money from." Is that supposed to make her look tough? Is that supposed to make her this no-nonsense woman you argue with? No, that makes Fish look like a brainless idiot who is so bullheaded with her I-want-an-army idea that when faced with the scientist that created her condition in the first place, with the army she actually had being taken away bit by bit throughout this episode, she's just acting like a little kid you won't buy a toy for. She was generic and an irritating distraction as a crime boss, but now she's just dumb. Hugo Strange's return is also unimpressive, with barely any memorable lines.
The army of metahumans ended up short-lived, too, with nearly everyone in Fish's group either arrested during the first assault, or killed by the mob. The fact that none of them have names also makes it really hard to care. And naming characters, even ones that will die in an episode or two, goes a long, long way to giving us some modicum of giving a shit for minor characters. That's how 75% of the X-Men cast started out. There were a couple of cool powers on display, including 'make holes in your hands' dude, 'lightning kicking' lady, 'knockoff Quicksilver' lady and 'BDSM outfit with no obvious powers' lady. Those last two got killed by the mob in a rather brutal way, but I honestly don't care all that much. Marv, whose powers are established as rapid aging by Lucius Fox, is the only survivor, booking it and running away in a different direction from Fish and Hugo.
There are two B-plots this episode. Bruce's meeting with Catherine of the Court of Owls is very uneventful and unimpressive. It's clear that for his bluster and bluff, Batboy has no idea what he's doing and it's a miracle that Catherine hasn't ordered Bruce's death. No, they play promises with a clandestine group with masked assassins. "Promise you won't investigate?" "Kay." Wow. It's honestly very dumb and not what I expected this plot line to go after the cool setup in the season premiere.
Poison Ivy has been replaced with a hotter, sexier and older actress. It's a change that I don't mind. Ivy has never been relevant over the two seasons she's appeared in, a small Easter Egg and just this minor character for Selina to bounce dialogue off of, and Marv's brief touch causing her to grow (and possibly kind of lose her mind a bit) is a nice sci-fi explanation to the sudden age-up. It will be interesting and disturbing at the same time to see this hot actress who's representing like a twelve-year-old girl with a hot supermodel body seducing men. The man that took Ivy in actually isn't drawn to her charm and seems to just be a random kind dude, but of course he has to be mean to plants and throw them away, causing Ivy to kill him off-screen. She doesn't quite have plant-manipulating or man-seducing powers, but the talk-to-plants thing she has gotten pat.
We get short scenes with some members of the peripheral cast, too. Gordon and Vale ends up asking for some help from Barbara, who's entertaining as a cuckoo crazy ex. Lucius Fox is a more stoic and less villainous version of pre-Riddler Nygma, just introdumping all sorts of stuff. Barnes is still very reasonable while still getting in the way of Gordon's cowboying around, and honestly you got to feel sorry for the dude. Not everyone has Gordon's skill at vigilantism.
Overall, though, it's a bit messy and while nowhere as bad as Gotham's worst episodes (and believe me there have been a lot of shit Gotham episodes) this one just falls short by being mostly boring. And such I think Gotham reviews will more or less be on a hiatus because the CW army has started to creep out, and I'm far more interested in talking about Luke Cage and Teen Titans anyway.
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