Gotham, Season 3, Episode 19: All Will Be Judged
By rights, this should be a boring episode. Oswald and Edward do a team-up to reverse the developments from last episode. Jim Gordon gets his ass kidnapped by Barnes and is subjected to the same thing that Mad Hatter subjected him to a while back. There were some internal reveals about Alfred and Clone Bruce. Leslie goes insane. But at the same time, the cast is just so much fun to watch that I honestly didn't really mind. Yeah, the episode wasn't as solidly done as the Riddler episodes, but it's still very entertaining to watch.
The main Jim Gordon plotline shows a rematch with Barnes, who has embraced his supervillain persona with an insane axe-hand and some mascara, and I guess we can call him the Executioner now? And yes, Barnes is the worst type of villain with an insanely long monologue that allows for reinforcements to arrive, but at the same time the actor is just so insanely hammy that I don't care, it's just so fun to watch him rant about justice and all that jazz. Yes, the plotline is a rehash of something that Gotham has done so many times before: 'Jim Gordon gets kidnapped by evil villain' and 'the GCPD precinct gets fucked up by a villain', but at the same time Barnes's scenery chewing makes it absolutely work.
Kathryn sics Barnes on Gordon, and things backfire and she finds herself arrested. Meanwhile, thanks to Selina, Alfred finds out about Clone Bruce's real identity, and Clone Bruce gives some cryptic warning before buggering off. It's a bit weird and rushed, but okay, because we get the very awesome scene of Kathryn not flinching at the good cop bad cop treatment, only to have Alfred go for the 'I'm a fucking butler' route and stabbing Kathryn in the hand.
Then Barnes arrives to fuck things up and throws cops around like ragdolls, while Kathryn thinks that Barnes is just a brainwashed pawn like Talon, demanding that he get her out of here RIGHT THIS INSTANT, leading to the absolutely hilarious bit with Barnes slicing off Kathryn's head off with his axe-hand. It's sudden, it's a rather poor exit and a poor final showing for Kathryn and the Court in general (since, shit, that means all the other members of the Court that mattered other than Bruce's mysterious kung fu master is dead). But it's still all in good fun, mostly because the Court plotline has definitely run its course, and it's clear that the main threat for the final three episodes is going to be Bruce's Master, Mr's Ra's Al Ghul In All But Name.
Yeah, I really kind of wished the Court of Owls storyline could've been wrapped up a little neater. Maybe have Gordon, Ed and Oswald expose the whole secret society thing from the inside? But at the same time, I honestly didn't quite mind what we got. They even tried to justify having the silly crystal owl stuff from earlier this season to matter again, which isn't super necessary but it didn't take much screentime so I didn't mind.
The revelation that Barnes escaped again after his capture "we just captured the guy five minutes ago!" was a bit odd, and I'm not sure if I want Barnes running amuck as a wild card for the finale (because Selina, Penguin, Riddler and Barbara aren't enough wild cards?), but hey.
Speaking of Maybe-Ra's, he's a curious bit. Sure, he's helping to break Bruce out of his trauma, seemingly turning him into an emotionless version of the Dark Knight he will become into the future, but what his endgame is, and just how tied he is with the Court (he seems to have alternate plans for the Court than being a loyal member as previously implied) is ambiguous. And, yeah, just how Bruce Wayne plays into the Court's master plans when they literally have a spare loyal to them is a bit dodgy, but hopefully we'll get some answers by the end of the season.
Leslie has been inconsistently written all throughout this half-season, especially after Mario's death, but his talk with Mad Hatter was unexpected and a welcome bit of great acting from both characters, really showing Hatter's insane penchant for fucking with people's heads and his own warped view on the world, and Lee's own now-warped view on her relationship with Jim and Mario. And can you blame Lee for giving in to the madness, stealing the virus and injecting herself with it? Gordon and Bullock basically brought everyone from Lucius, Barbara and Alfred into their small ring of conspirators about the Court, but not Lee, who's actively digging up dirt about Gordon's activities. And in the fucked-up city of Gotham, well, even someone like Lee's got to succumb sometime, yeah? Add insane Leslie to the number of wild cards running around for the finale.
But easily the best part of the episode is the Penguin/Riddler truce and team-up. Robin Lord Taylor and Cory Michael Smith are easily two of the best acting talents that Gotham has, and constantly pairing them up is amazingly done. I still loathe the stupid librarian storyline they did earlier in the season, but if the pay-off is this hilarious bit of attempting to murder each other and teeth-clenched teamwork as they try to one-up each other "I have an army of gangsters!" "Well, I have an army of Indian Hill monsters!" and the sheer hilariousness of Oswald using Jell-O to escape from prison is amazingly done.
(And the fact that the Court, for all its fabled scariness, was unable to keep two unhinged lunatics equipped with nothing but Jell-O and a butter knife from escaping is testament to their utter incompetence)
Where we go from here I'm not sure. Presumably Penguin has to track down Ivy, Freeze and Firefly (the latter two haven't been doing much at all, yeah?) while Riddler has to deal with the fact that Butch and Tabitha are starting to chafe under Barbara's increasingly insane priorities, maybe leading to a falling out between the four of them. It's amazing how much Barbara, Butch and Tabitha have improved since their respective debuts, haven't they?
But, well, despite the rather choppy episode, it's still pretty entertaining to watch and that's been a recurring theme for Gotham this half-season. It's just so fun to watch that I can't help but smile while watching an episode that should, by rights, be a bad one.
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