Gotham, Season 1, Episode 16: The Blind Fortune Teller
This episode had a couple of astounding moments, and I’ll
just cut to the chase and acknowledge the most spectacular being Jerome, who is
an absolutely horrifyingly yet appropriately creepy little crazy bastard. Kid’s
definitely channeling Heath Ledger’s iconic performance in many of his lines, while
his laughs and more sneering dialogue is definitely influenced by Mark Hamill. That
scene lasted, what, a minute? Two? But it was an absolutely awesome scene and I
absolutely loved how Jerome seemed like some random generic little kid who
happened to have his mother murdered. I was skeptical of them actually touching
Joker, but this little kid actor definitely has my thumb of approval for being
the likeliest candidate to be the Joker. (Of course, with the next episode
being titled ‘Red Hood’…)
Jerome is definitely a lot more suitable a Joker
candidate than the random comedian from episode one who we never see again –
Jerome is a lot closer to Bruce’s age than he is, and good god his voice and
his mannerisms and his psychopathy! I’m not quite a big fan of having his
backstory so laid out, but I do love the little stroke of brilliance of welding
together Joker’s clown-ness and having originated from a circus… which in this
case is the iconic one that starred the Flying Graysons, parents of Dick
Grayson, the first Robin.
It’s one of the show’s better attempts at Easter Eggs or
Continuity Nods or whatever you want to call it, including John Grayson and
Mary Lloyd-soon-to-be-Grayson as random minor characters and having the Flying
Graysons (which is a family act in the comics) already established but without
throwing Dick in that. Sadly, the rest of the episode was kind of dull. The big
murder mystery felt a little generic, and I find it rather ridiculous that two
acting families that clearly had such a gigantic enmity against each other
would perform in the same troupe for three freaking generations.
The other excellent scene in this episode was Mr. Zsasz’s
surprise appearance at the end. This episode is entirely devoid of mob scenes
beyond Penguin just trying to run the Iceberg Lounge (well I’m calling it that for lack of a better name) and apparently
failing, as Zsasz notes. And Zsasz has apparently done his creepy torture magic
on Butch Gilzean, who returns not to exact revenge or whatever, but as a
brainwashed, broken-down doll thanks to Zsasz’s machinations that he literally
dances upon Penguin’s orders. That chilling standoff between Zsasz and Penguin,
and the revelation that Butch was brainwashed? That was awesome. Penguin just…
kind of wasting screentime watching his mother singing and stabbing some drunk
who booed his mum and playing the piano alone? Not so much, especially in an
otherwise uneventful episode like this. There’s nothing abjectly bad with his scenes, it’s just that
usually Penguin is a nice distraction to the more tense plots running alongside
it if he’s not being the focus, but not in this episode.
Bruce also steps up to the table, with a fair amount of…
relatively boring scenes, to be honest. I get that there’s only so much a young
Bruce Wayne can do, and I get that he’s mini-Batman, and I get that this plot
regarding the Wayne Enterprises being corrupted and shit needs to be addressed,
but at the same time it’s also kind of blah and extremely dry. Unless this show
brings in a Lucius Fox, I doubt I can suspend my disbelief enough to see a
little kid bring down a board of directors of a multi-millionaire company who
secretly runs the city. Even if he’s Batman.
The main plot with Gordon and Leslie investigating a
random circus family feud between the Grayson and Lloyd clans who can somehow
tolerate each other enough to act for three generations? Nevermind the fact
that other than the little tense walk through the dark park, there isn’t any
actual tension beyond whether the murder is resolved or not, the murder is just
kind of ridiculous. There isn’t any serial killer, the circus people are a
bunch of doucheholes, Cicero the psychic is rather obviously evil and other
than the surprise Joker twist at the end it really amounts to Gotham’s most
filler-y plot so far. There’s also the rather eyeball-rolling little lovers’
spat between Gordon and Leslie about how Gordon needs to respect women as
equals and whatnot… which kind of came out of nowhere and was resolved rather
abruptly. Especially since Leslie’s random naggingness and random insistence
that the paranormal is real came out of nowhere and seems to be tacked on so
Gordon has to deal with gender equality… which isn’t a bad topic to tackle,
really, but the way they executed it was kind of poor.
Poor Bullock got like five lines in the entire episode. I
am sad.
Fish had the biggest brunt for wasted time in this
episode, however. None of Fish’s plot thread really needed to happen. So apparently
the weird illegal prison thing that kidnapped her is basically Michael Bay’s
the Island, except instead of clones, these are random people apparently
kidnapped off boats to have their organs harvested? And they are randomly a
family now? And somehow Fish’s swaggering around managed to get the five armed
guards to pussy out? Even if Fish’s men did kill Prisoner 57A that they need
alive, they could’ve just shot Fish in the head or moved her to solitary. Kill
a leader, break the riot. Something like that. Fish’s little heartless method
to take advantage of the fact that the people in charge need them alive is kind
of awesome and somewhat clever, I guess, but I really feel her scenes ate up
way too much time for absolutely no good reason.
Barbara returns to serve, really, to show off her stuff
as admittedly nice eye-candy. Also to be… actually rather funny to laugh at. The
first scene in this episode has her strut in a very revealing dress, and
instead of freaking out that Selina and Ivy, two hobo kids she’s never seen
before in her life, are shacking it up in her apartment, she simply goes ‘where
is Jim?’ Yeah, she’s not only a hypocritical self-centered destructive bitch,
she’s also an idiot. She basically sits down and like ten minutes later is
taking fashion and dating tips from two random ten year old girls. Also, she’s
all like in outrage when she plops into the GCPD complex to make up with Jim
and finds him making out with Leslie, even though she was the one who left Jim
for no real good reason and she fucked Montoya the night she broke up with Jim. So Jim moved on after a couple of
months and found a new girlfriend. Well, that a lot more decent than leaving
without so much of a notice and then fucking your old girlfriend the very
night, and then returning after a few months when your old girlfriend wants you
to stop drinking and your parents throw you out, and then throwing a temper
tantrum when you find that your boyfriend isn’t pining for the absolutely
perfect partner that you are. Yeah, that’ll work out. Bitch. Fortunately, the
show kind of plays Barbara’s ridiculousness up somewhat, and I do like this
because I actually laughed at her antics this time around.
Overall there’s a couple of great scenes, a couple of
great concepts, but it’s definitely a weaker episode compared to some of the
better works that Gotham did before.
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