"Only In Gotham.."
The Hype
Gotham's last few episodes has put down a few naysayers and this week it seems to be getting a lot of praise, the latest Entertainment Weekly has declared it winner against Marvel's Agents of Shield in their "Fall TV Face Off", and today it was announce that Fox has made a full season order for the series. Last weeks episode ended on a pretty exiting cliff hanger with Oswald Cobblepot showing up on the door step of Det. Gordon. So for once i was actually kind of interested in seeing the conclusion.
The Review
*sigh* This week Gotham delivers it's first truly bad episode. We open with our strange villain of the week with a cheesy gimmick, I guess instead of a gun he has a stick, knife, uh...thing, and this would work a lot better if the show didn't present it like it was the coolest edgiest thing to hit your living room screen. Anyone following the internet news or seeing the episode guide would assume that "Arkham" would be the episode to be looking forward to, but the delivery was a mess.
At first I was happy to see the development of Arkham Asylum, because like a young penguin this is something that could and should happen before Batman. The episode was slow and the first half was just plain boring. The episode spends 40 minutes accomplishing about 5 mins of actual important events that add to the overarching conflict. We get a long scene with the big "reveal" that Barbara Gordon had a same sex relationship with Captain Sarah Essen (Zabryna Guevara) In case it wasn't obvious enough.
A lot of the run time is also wasted on more useless Bruce Wayne scenes (in the same room..). If we wanted to see Bruce Wayne, which I don't, i'd rather him be absent then sitting around this inescapable room talking to is butler about nonsense. The performance were stale all around, save for Robin Lord Taylor (Cobblepot). The penguin subplot seems to get better every week and was really the only redeeming segment of the episode. Unfortunately last weeks cliffhanger was bigger than it's payoff.
The Verdict
Every series has bad episodes, hopefully we can start fresh next week
5.9/10