Gotham, Season 4, Episode 17: Mandatory Brunch Meeting
The titular 'mandatory brunch meeting' brings the trio of Joker, Mad Hatter and Scarecrow into the bubble of the show's other costumed villains. They show up in the Penguin's manor, ready to make a deal with a bunch of other costumed villains -- Mr. Freeze and Firefly. And while the Penguin's mostly just irritated at all of this, he's humouring Jerome enough to make him sort of the 'devil you know'.Meanwhile, Bruce tracks down Jerome to St. Ignatius, only to find that he's already been there and left, leaving behind a principal that blows himself up. Gordon and Bullock give Bruce and Alfred a mouthful, but clearly the future Batman's not going to listen. The rest of the episode centers around the search for one Xander Wilde, an eccentric, enigmatic super-smart businessman who no one has ever met. Not even Jerome has any luck finding Xander Wilde, ending up just shooting up the company where he's supposed to work for. Bruce ends up being the key to all this, because his father has had dealings with Xander Wilde in the past, and he leads Gordon and Bullock to Xander's address. Meanwhile, Team Jerome tracks down Xander Wilde's proxy, a Ms. Ecco (sic) who... proceeds to whack Jerome and put him in a cell. That was actually hilarious.
Clearly Jerome knows who this enigmatic Xander Wilde is, and when Gordon and Bullock arrives in the very strange super-mysterious bunker, they find out that Xander is actually Jeremiah Valeska, Jerome's twin brother, separated during their childhood... which, if you don't already think Cameron Monaghan is one of the show's best actors, this will probably sell you on it. Jeremiah tells Gordon and Bullock (and us) that he was separated from birth from his family because Jerome tried to murder him as a kid... but later, when Jerome confronts Jeremiah himself, Jerome notes how all of the accusations were actually baseless -- not that Jerome minded actually doing all of those things, now..
The actual confrontation is mostly helped by the insanely claustrophobic nature of Jeremiah's base, which includes a maze. In this episode, we get Mad Hatter and Scarecrow ready to confront the two policemen... to which Bullock just charges in like a mad bull and screams really loudly and chases Scarecrow and Hatter off. That was insanely hilarious.
The episode ends with Jeremiah coming home with the GCPD, playing the 'meek, abused brother' card while he might potentially actually be as bad as Jerome (just sociopath versus psychopath), while Mr. Freeze and Scarecrow has developed the Joker's trademark laughing gas, making Jerome's master plan actually the debut of one of Joker's most iconic aspects. That's neat, and it's nice to tell us Jerome's master plan and not keep it that much of a suspense for too long.
The B-plots of this episode is a bit more... up and down. Penguin wants his own 'crazy', and ends up meeting Grundy-Butch in a bar, and ends up promising to cure him. He shows up with a barrel of toxic waste and promises that as long as they can find Hugo Strange (yay B.D. Wong!) they can try and fix Butch. The Lee/Riddler stuff is... is neat, but at the same time I do find it rather ridiculously dumb that after freeing himself from their shared psyche, the Riddler apparently spends all his free time running a deadly game show in the Narrows. Lee manages to trick them into having to say 'I love you', but the act of admitting that would free Ed. Lee essentially just wants to bring Ed back, and that plan involves a long, long kissing scene. Not a big fan of this storyline, to be honest.
Overall, though, an extremely fun episode, especially for the Jerome storyline. Good stuff!
No comments:
Post a Comment