Gotham S05E01 Review: The Last Hope

Gotham, Season 5, Episode 1: Year Zero

I've been trying to catch up to some of the other non-CW shows every now and then. Things have been really hectic on my end for the past couple of days, which is why I resorted to some prepared reviews for a while. I'm back with regular access to my laptop and fast internet now, so let's talk about some of the shows I'm going to catch up to. Starting with the first episode of Gotham's fifth and final season! It's very interesting to know that this season is already planned to be the final one, because unlike the other TV series I regularly follow, Gotham was always one that needed an expiry date. That's sort of a caveat when you do a prequel series. A story about 'Batman before he became Batman' needed to, at some point, lead to little Bruce Wayne actually becoming Batman, or be put on the journey to finally doing so in a more permanent basis.

And while I've seen a lot of other speculations on how to 'end' other shows like Arrow or Flash or whatever, most of the time these superhero shows meet their end thanks to studio mandates, so it's definitely going to be interesting to see how Gotham is going to wrap up its many different plot threads. I'll probably talk a little about Gotham as a whole when the show ends sometime this year (or next year?) but for now, let's talk about "Year Zero", the first episode of this fifth season.

And it's... well, it's basically a setup of the No Man's Land concept, with Gotham City basically left on its own, and a resource war is brewing between the various big groups in the city. We've got Penguin, Barbara and Scarecrow's respective groups being the three big players, although we do get mentions of other players like Firefly and Mr. Freeze running around off-screen. We still follow the GCPD for the majority of this episode's A-plot, which involves mostly pretty well-done set-up as the GCPD, Penguin and Team Barbara all come to blows over an air-drop of resources that Bruce Wayne calls to drop into Gotham -- partly because he wants to help Selina get that surgery, a plot point I'll talk about later.

There are some additional details to how this happens, but we end up in a huge shootout between Penguin's gangs, Barbara's Sirens and the combined forces of GCPD and Bruce (who Gordon has basically accepted as a totally capable kid sidekick) over the airdropped resources. And the big takeaway from this? Penguin totally murders Tabitha, who... who's a character I never disliked, but has been such a satellite character and sort of just-there-because-she's-cool character throughout the past couple of seasons. I mean, Penguin's vengeance over Tabitha killing his mother has been a long time in the past, and while it has sort of been numbed over time, between Penguin's murder of Butch and Tabitha's murder of Mama Cobblepot, it has been a matter of who gets to kill who. And it seems that Tabitha's luck has ran out as she gets stabbed straight through the heart. I really wished I wasn't so apathetic about this, but Tabitha has sort of been a hanger-on for the most part of the previous season, and the death happened so suddenly that it was more of a 'oh shit, they actually killed someone' more than 'noooo Tabitha'. Also, that bit with the misfiring bullet was just genuinely too funny that I didn't think it would whiplash to a death.

Still, it is a death that ends up causing Barbara to swear vengeance towards Penguin, who, in turn, makes it clear that he wants nothing pleasant to do with his old frenemy Gordon after the stunt Gordon pulled this episode to get the resources and weaponry from the conflict.

Meanwhile, Bruce's story gets to be the unquestioned B-plot of this episode, taking the biggest precedence. His goal at this point is to get the crippled Selina cured, and, in this episode, to get medication to help facilitate an operation. It's a bit of a handwave to say that Selina gets stuck during the evacuation, and why Bruce's priority with that helicopter isn't to get Selina out of the city is something that's left to a huge, collective shrug, but hey. When Scarecrow's goons attack the GCPD base, Bruce ends up actually pulling off some genuinely badass Batman-esque moves as he zips around in the dark and predators his way through a bunch of Scarecrow goons. That's badass. He also contributes a fair bit during the GCPD/Barbara/Penguin standoff, allowing the GCPD to rearm themselves during the battle with stolen bullets.

(Also, while Scarecrow definitely takes third fiddle in this episode to Penguin and Barbara, his costume, and that of his little minions, is amazing. And after a while of watching so many concessions being taken to make superhero costumes more 'realistic', it is so refreshing to see one that's pretty accurate to the comics, something that Gotham has, if we're being honest, been pretty good about. )

Unfortunately for Bruce, though, Selina isn't particularly happy with her condition, and while being bedridden throughout the episode, keeps telling Bruce that it's a mistake to save her only to leave her broken like this, and she straight-up tries to kill herself at one point in the episode, something that's honestly pretty dark even for this show. We get cryptic warnings of a 'Witch' that Bruce needs to visit to help Selina out, and what that means is honestly a pretty fun buildup.

There are a whole lot of other stuff I didn't talk about. The episode opens with a weird flash-forward of a big, badass battle where Gordon, Bullock, Penguin and Riddler against... invading hordes? That was weird. There's the continuing subplot of Riddler basically going through a weird Jekyll-and-Hyde situation (he's basically doubling as the show's Two-Face at this point, huh?) where he keeps waking up at weird spots in the city when Edward runs around in his body while he's asleep. And there's the mysterious faction that's neither Penguin nor Barbara who shot down Bruce's helicopter with a bazooka in the first place, who may or may not be a party we've already met.

Overall, a pretty fun opening episode for this final season of a madcap series!


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• If it's not obvious enough already, the entire concept of at least this entire arc -- Gotham City cut off from the rest of America and basically left to the wolves, with the GCPD and vigilantes protecting the civilians trapped within from gang wars, and fights over essential resources being a major thing, is wholly based on the No Man's Land maxi-arc that ran in the late 90's for all Batman-related characters. 
• The opening title of 'Day [insert number]' is a format that's a running theme in some No Man's Land comics back in the day. Penguin being the only crime boss that spends most of his time indulging in high-class food and drinks when others are desperate for even eating is also something that came from the comics.