Gotham triple bill
Jun. 9th, 2016 07:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI haven't posted about Gotham in a while, for similar reasons to not posting about Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I thought I'd catch up and post all the reactions together in one go, but I never caught up. At the moment, I'm still behind and it's going to be several days before I have a chance to rectify that. So, here's what I've made of what I've seen so far.
2.17 Into the Woods
Well, as Jim chose to return to the City, I wondered if the title was going to reference the musical, and it kind of did, with Bruce as Aladdin (?), Penguin as Cinderella, Barbara as a newly awoken Sleeping Beauty. Kinda. And a mechanical bird.
Bruce was getting high on the thrill of parkouring and outsmarting bad guys, while Selina was all pragmatism – at least he kept enough money for burgers! Hugely entertaining, and I wanted to see the ensuing argument about what had happened over burgers. No surprise that I want more Bruce and Selina.
But for most of this episode we had Jim trying to clear his name (of the murder his was framed for as opposed to the time(s) he murdered) with Harvey’s help.
Grace underestimated and miscalculated about Oswald. I was waiting for her or her offspring to ask him to hold an umbrella...
Meanwhile, I thought Babs was saying what she needed to say, and it’s not so much the puppet demons as puppeteers like Gallavan and Strange she needs to watch out for.
But of course Jim had to go to Ed for help. (Of course he did to hear the cuckoo clock and finally make the connection.) Ed was spot on about how they weren’t friends and had never been. (Lee and Kristen, yes.) Typical Ed gloating over his cleverness in electrocuting Jim and not killing him them and there. Inefficient is what that is.
So, Jim just happened to stumble on Bruce and Selina’s domestic bliss (he can sew! Leather!) – and the kids did the sensible thing in calling Alfred. Well, presumably Bruce was the one to check that Jim wasn’t dead and insist on calling Alfred. Selina dug into that breakfast and played her part in the station beautifully.
WHAT DID THAT DOG DO TO YOU, OSWALD? I’m not even a dog person, but come on. Or should the moral be that dogs that like a bit of a drink deserve what’s coming to them? (Granted, learning that his stepmother had poisoned the apple, er, drink, made sense as the thing that brought back Oswald’s inner Penguin, but I mourn the umbrella that could have been.)
Cue more Riddler and Nygma slinker and stinkering – it’s not that the actor is bad, especially at full-on villainy, but whither Two-Face? Ed monologued like an idiot IN THE WOODS. If he hadn’t, and, again, had just shot Jim...well, the bodies would have told against him. Ah well, no doubt he’s headed for Arkham. So Ed has definitely crossed the line and gone public now.
I thought it was the poisoned dog that Penguin was serving. Eww to all that bit,
Bruce choosing his father’s mission over Selina (although aww, Alfred has had to begrudgingly accept she has some good qualities) was the big moment for me. And no wonder she was hurt, Bruce had been slumming it and using her to some extent. What other way was she going to take it?
Unlike Strange, I fully expected Barbara, recovered or not, to track down Jim.
(I made the discovery that McKenzie and Baccarin are a real-life couple who’ve had a real-life baby! Huh.)
2.18 Pinewood
I enjoyed Jim being almost so done with Barbara (except for giving into her and letting her hear him say her name) that he chucked her out, but only after he’d let her in so she’d got a clue as to what he was up to. So, he’s not so very done with her at all. Yes, I see the parallel between his weakness for her and mine for the show.
Harvey was funny from squashing the box onwards. Was that his apartment?
Hello, bar set!
Hello, swish naughty ladies club.
Alfred did some futile flapping around the obsessed Bruce and then was very rude to Karen Jennings, who might have listened to Thomas Wayne and gone further away after he was killed. She didn’t seem to have a death wish. Couldn’t she have just described the faces in great detail to Bruce instead of agreeing to take him to the spot where she was so abused?
Yes, Barbara, a plan that was based on so many lies was surely going to convince Jim you were sane and trustworthy...although why he let her know it was Bruce calling him and didn’t walk away and lower his voice when he answered the phone...well, it’s Jim. Idiot.
Why Bruce asked Jim’s advice – not so much because Jim is an idiot and he should know it, but because up til now he’s mainly acted without much thinking – I do not know.
Strange and Peabody continue to entertain.
And then we had the whole ‘Thomas = like a father’ making Karen Bruce’s adoptive sister of sorts, despite the, you know, KILLING, to give Bruce a good reason to be very, very cross with Mr Freeze. Mazouz ramped up the intensity beautifully for most of the end of the episode, although, again, while he was all angsty about the dead end (because Jim also failed to start taking a description, because
‘short, of Asian descent and wearing coloured glasses’ might have narrowed it down) and Jim was trying to tell him to have faith, I was pre-empting Lucius...doing research based on the information they had.
Strange is delighted that Bruce and Jim are coming after him and with renamiated!Gallant. I remain to be convinced that the latter is going to be delightful.
2.19 Azrael
Strange as the main character of an episode leads to a much more entertaining version of Gotham, even if Gallavan has become a classic deranged serial killer, writing stuff out in blood. At least we got some rationale for the Dumas family and those monks.
Strange was winning the encounter with Jim so handsomely – it was fun! I loved what BD Wong was doing with his voice, surely the man’s done a lot of theatre – until Gordon had to win something.
Speaking of winners, Ed has become the Alpha crazy at Arkham.
As he was getting strangled, I wonder if Strange thought ‘Hmm, perhaps I should have listened to Peabody after all’. But no, he had a father-son relationship and identity to fashion. Clunky.
Jim had to try to persuade Bruce not to go all vigilante killer. (Mazouz is going to be looking down at McKenzie in a year or so.)
I liked how Azrael used what he got (i.e. the suitcase) as a weapon, before Strange forced the symbolic phallic weapon on him. However, one, he’s not going to kill Jim Gordon and two, Strange is really pushing this new identity by asking ‘Azrael’ to kill the man who ‘killed’ Gallavan. (But all this may make Jim feel less glum about stuff. He only thought he killed a baddie!)
Commander Barnes, meet the irresistible force known as Bruce Wayne: ‘Have you stopped listening to the truth?’ or whatever it was he said.
Meanwhile, at first Azrael made me think of proto!Bane, but the main emphasis was on how he’s proto!Batman, being all bulletproof, caped and swift in escape. (Can Selina plz have a similar awakening when she sees Tabby + whip?)
Barnes is a bit of India rubber, Bruce had to get in his face about how flippant he was.
Huh. It wasn’t so much Jim as posters of Gallavan that shook Azrael’s identity and brought back some memories.
Overweening ambition much, Strange?
Who’d be a cop in Gotham? Another killer attack on the station. I actually thought a tazer might have been a good weapon to try on Azrael, but it was time for the stand-off between two season 2 newbies (sounded like Barnes survived, anyway).
Azrael’s landing on the coroner’s van made me chortle, and then we had practically everyone’s response to his return. And then (there were two climaxes too many to this episode) Ed found Indian Hill and then Azrael was posing where nobody but the once and future Bat has a right to pose.
2.17 Into the Woods
Well, as Jim chose to return to the City, I wondered if the title was going to reference the musical, and it kind of did, with Bruce as Aladdin (?), Penguin as Cinderella, Barbara as a newly awoken Sleeping Beauty. Kinda. And a mechanical bird.
Bruce was getting high on the thrill of parkouring and outsmarting bad guys, while Selina was all pragmatism – at least he kept enough money for burgers! Hugely entertaining, and I wanted to see the ensuing argument about what had happened over burgers. No surprise that I want more Bruce and Selina.
But for most of this episode we had Jim trying to clear his name (of the murder his was framed for as opposed to the time(s) he murdered) with Harvey’s help.
Grace underestimated and miscalculated about Oswald. I was waiting for her or her offspring to ask him to hold an umbrella...
Meanwhile, I thought Babs was saying what she needed to say, and it’s not so much the puppet demons as puppeteers like Gallavan and Strange she needs to watch out for.
But of course Jim had to go to Ed for help. (Of course he did to hear the cuckoo clock and finally make the connection.) Ed was spot on about how they weren’t friends and had never been. (Lee and Kristen, yes.) Typical Ed gloating over his cleverness in electrocuting Jim and not killing him them and there. Inefficient is what that is.
So, Jim just happened to stumble on Bruce and Selina’s domestic bliss (he can sew! Leather!) – and the kids did the sensible thing in calling Alfred. Well, presumably Bruce was the one to check that Jim wasn’t dead and insist on calling Alfred. Selina dug into that breakfast and played her part in the station beautifully.
WHAT DID THAT DOG DO TO YOU, OSWALD? I’m not even a dog person, but come on. Or should the moral be that dogs that like a bit of a drink deserve what’s coming to them? (Granted, learning that his stepmother had poisoned the apple, er, drink, made sense as the thing that brought back Oswald’s inner Penguin, but I mourn the umbrella that could have been.)
Cue more Riddler and Nygma slinker and stinkering – it’s not that the actor is bad, especially at full-on villainy, but whither Two-Face? Ed monologued like an idiot IN THE WOODS. If he hadn’t, and, again, had just shot Jim...well, the bodies would have told against him. Ah well, no doubt he’s headed for Arkham. So Ed has definitely crossed the line and gone public now.
I thought it was the poisoned dog that Penguin was serving. Eww to all that bit,
Bruce choosing his father’s mission over Selina (although aww, Alfred has had to begrudgingly accept she has some good qualities) was the big moment for me. And no wonder she was hurt, Bruce had been slumming it and using her to some extent. What other way was she going to take it?
Unlike Strange, I fully expected Barbara, recovered or not, to track down Jim.
(I made the discovery that McKenzie and Baccarin are a real-life couple who’ve had a real-life baby! Huh.)
2.18 Pinewood
I enjoyed Jim being almost so done with Barbara (except for giving into her and letting her hear him say her name) that he chucked her out, but only after he’d let her in so she’d got a clue as to what he was up to. So, he’s not so very done with her at all. Yes, I see the parallel between his weakness for her and mine for the show.
Harvey was funny from squashing the box onwards. Was that his apartment?
Hello, bar set!
Hello, swish naughty ladies club.
Alfred did some futile flapping around the obsessed Bruce and then was very rude to Karen Jennings, who might have listened to Thomas Wayne and gone further away after he was killed. She didn’t seem to have a death wish. Couldn’t she have just described the faces in great detail to Bruce instead of agreeing to take him to the spot where she was so abused?
Yes, Barbara, a plan that was based on so many lies was surely going to convince Jim you were sane and trustworthy...although why he let her know it was Bruce calling him and didn’t walk away and lower his voice when he answered the phone...well, it’s Jim. Idiot.
Why Bruce asked Jim’s advice – not so much because Jim is an idiot and he should know it, but because up til now he’s mainly acted without much thinking – I do not know.
Strange and Peabody continue to entertain.
And then we had the whole ‘Thomas = like a father’ making Karen Bruce’s adoptive sister of sorts, despite the, you know, KILLING, to give Bruce a good reason to be very, very cross with Mr Freeze. Mazouz ramped up the intensity beautifully for most of the end of the episode, although, again, while he was all angsty about the dead end (because Jim also failed to start taking a description, because
‘short, of Asian descent and wearing coloured glasses’ might have narrowed it down) and Jim was trying to tell him to have faith, I was pre-empting Lucius...doing research based on the information they had.
Strange is delighted that Bruce and Jim are coming after him and with renamiated!Gallant. I remain to be convinced that the latter is going to be delightful.
2.19 Azrael
Strange as the main character of an episode leads to a much more entertaining version of Gotham, even if Gallavan has become a classic deranged serial killer, writing stuff out in blood. At least we got some rationale for the Dumas family and those monks.
Strange was winning the encounter with Jim so handsomely – it was fun! I loved what BD Wong was doing with his voice, surely the man’s done a lot of theatre – until Gordon had to win something.
Speaking of winners, Ed has become the Alpha crazy at Arkham.
As he was getting strangled, I wonder if Strange thought ‘Hmm, perhaps I should have listened to Peabody after all’. But no, he had a father-son relationship and identity to fashion. Clunky.
Jim had to try to persuade Bruce not to go all vigilante killer. (Mazouz is going to be looking down at McKenzie in a year or so.)
I liked how Azrael used what he got (i.e. the suitcase) as a weapon, before Strange forced the symbolic phallic weapon on him. However, one, he’s not going to kill Jim Gordon and two, Strange is really pushing this new identity by asking ‘Azrael’ to kill the man who ‘killed’ Gallavan. (But all this may make Jim feel less glum about stuff. He only thought he killed a baddie!)
Commander Barnes, meet the irresistible force known as Bruce Wayne: ‘Have you stopped listening to the truth?’ or whatever it was he said.
Meanwhile, at first Azrael made me think of proto!Bane, but the main emphasis was on how he’s proto!Batman, being all bulletproof, caped and swift in escape. (Can Selina plz have a similar awakening when she sees Tabby + whip?)
Barnes is a bit of India rubber, Bruce had to get in his face about how flippant he was.
Huh. It wasn’t so much Jim as posters of Gallavan that shook Azrael’s identity and brought back some memories.
Overweening ambition much, Strange?
Who’d be a cop in Gotham? Another killer attack on the station. I actually thought a tazer might have been a good weapon to try on Azrael, but it was time for the stand-off between two season 2 newbies (sounded like Barnes survived, anyway).
Azrael’s landing on the coroner’s van made me chortle, and then we had practically everyone’s response to his return. And then (there were two climaxes too many to this episode) Ed found Indian Hill and then Azrael was posing where nobody but the once and future Bat has a right to pose.
