Holding Out For A Hero: Gotham Season 2, Episode 4 Review
Is Gotham season 2 supposed to be Rise of the Villains, Rise of the Heroes, or Rise of the Villains Who Want To Be Heroes?
I'm going with door number 3.
My enjoyment of Gotham directly correlates to how much screen time Robin Lord Taylor gets, so let's start at the top. Penguin makes a big entrance in episode 4, taking his shotgun to the conference room ceiling.
Penguin, who's finally decided to own his nickname, drinks Alka-Selzer from a wine glass and gives presentations to his criminal board of directors about the need to "restore confidence in our brand."
If you want to kill, blackmail, or steal, from now on you have to get CEO approval first. That's terribly civilized, but then again Penguin attended the Fish Mooney School of Crime.
Next we have Theo Galavan, who orchestrates his own assassination attempt, which would fool no self-respecting cop in the GCPD, and immediately enters Gotham's mayoral race as the anti-crime candidate. (Unfortunately, he killed off his campaign manager, Jerome, in episode 3.)
Oh, and Alfred the Defender of Bruce slaps Selina across the face. Didn't they teach you at Eton not to hit girls?
Captain Barnes in the house! Michael Chiklis is one of the best things to happen to Gotham - and to Gotham City - so far this season. He's been promoted since his days as a detective on The Shield and makes even people watching him on TV stand up straight and say "yes, sir."
Jim Gordon seems very happy to be the new captain's number 2, especially when your new boss has a zero tolerance for nonsense and spends his first hours on the job firing and arresting the bad apples on the force, something Jim and the Captain Essen had been trying to accomplish for months.
Good news: he gives Jim a 5-cop team of uncorrupted newbies to patrol Gotham's streets. Bad news: he gives Jim a 5-cop team of uncorrupted newbies to patrol Gotham's streets.
I'm with Detective Harvey Bullock: let's play wait and see on the Strike Force, Captain Barnes, all of it.
Maybe reviewing Gotham has made me automatically suspicious of everybody, but this righteous indignation seems a little much for the new guy. If it's real, fantastic. If it's not, Jim Gordon has the worst career luck in the history of GCPD.
(If Captain Barnes has been with the GCPD all this time, where was he when Theo Galavan's shill Jerome shot up the entire precinct? On vacation?)
It wouldn't be an episode of Gotham without a visit to Penguin from Jim Gordon, one of the reasons this episode feels like a re-tread. This time, it's to put Penguin on notice that the days of police favors are over. Penguin seemed tempted to drag Jim's skeletons out of the closet, but by the end of the episode, he already needs Detective Gordon's help.
Robin Lord Taylor says he has the best TV parents an actor could hope for. Or the audience could hope for. A+ and bouquets to Gotham Casting for bringing Paul Reubens and Carol Kane on board. So, the fact that Theo kidnapped Penguin's mother, thus forcing him to kill off the mayoral competition seems - well, we're taking that kind of personally.
Theo Galavan is less an evil life force than a first-class prick who feels the city owes him, for historical family reasons. He's exactly the kind of lightweight to whom Captain Barnes is going to say, "Don't make me mad." He manipulates Bruce, who's genuinely thankful to Theo for saving his life, by introducing him to his lovely niece Silver St. Cloud, who will no doubt be a better motivator than Alfred ever was to get Bruce to stay in school, but is a laughably contrived story line.
But then Theo unfairly blames the police for not taking Bruce's parents' murder investigation more seriously. Bruce might be just enough frustrated to be susceptible to that suggestion.
Theo also plans to level a large residential part of the city: "Before I can rebuild Gotham, I have to destroy it."
Boring, as is the entire Nygma/Ms. Kringle/Riddler story line. (Please move that along, preferably onto the cutting room floor.)
Gotham, please just ask the genuinely scary Malcolm Merlyn to guest star. He already tried this strategy in Arrow season 1, with his Undertaking to destroy the Glades of Starling City. Merlyn was only 50% successful, but he's got legitimate bad guy creds and the Dark Archer would wipe the floor with this Theo whoever.
Gotham season 2 needs Jerome back. Immediately. Maybe Gotham can borrow Arrow's Lazarus Pit?
