Gotham returns for a third season. Last season had subtitles for the halves of its season. They seem to be continuing that trend as they lead off with “Mad City: Better To Reign In Hell…” As you’d expect, most of the cast is not exactly in a good place.
Gotham’s second season concludes with “Transference,” the end of the “Wrath of the Villains” arc. For a season finale, there aren’t a lot of surprises, nor is there a big cliffhanger. I almost wonder if when this was written, they weren’t sure they coming back for season three.
One thing I’ll give the writers of Gotham: they’ve taken one of Batman’s most obscure foes (I’d lay money no one that doesn’t read the comics had heard of Hugo Strange before this season, and even some that do might not have) and made him not only a menacing threat, but possibly the source of many of Batman’s later foes. The series has definitely had its problems, but I think this was one of their better episodes, and they even tried to address some of those flaws. If the rest of the series can hold at this level of quality, I’d be a lot more of a fan of the show.
Bruce Wayne finds out some more secrets in “Pinewood,” the eighteenth episode of Gotham’s second season. We see a good bit more from several other cast members, and get quite a few surprises. There are also a few things that seem out of character to me, but we’ll get there.
“Into the Woods” opens with Bruce and Selena sprinting across rooftops. Hot in pursuit is a mafia thug, yelling about his money, which would probably account for the large bag over Selena’s shoulder. They manage an improbable leap across an alley to the next building, leaving the out of shape thug behind to yell threats. Bruce demonstrates how completely differently he and Selena view the world and certain resources, which leads to some friction between them.
Gotham continues their by now alternate history version of the days of the city before Batman with “Wrath of the Villains: Prisoners.” After the trial last episode, Gordon has been sent to Blackgate Prison. In a series of montage shots, time passes, what appears to be several months of monotony.
Gotham’s Wrath of the Villains continues with “Mad Grey World.” It takes a while to come together, but the episode is actually a really brilliantly done plan. It does a great job of showing how dangerous one of Batman’s underrated villains can be, if you once again put aside the fact that most of the Bat-foes seem to be a generation older than the Dark Knight himself. I really applaud the writers on this one.
I admit that Gotham got me with this week’s title. I saw “This Ball of Mud and Meanness” was wondering which version of Clayface would be turning up. It was a decent guess, but I was wrong. Instead, we see them do another major departure from later Batman canon. At this point, the show is absolutely an alternate world from the later Batman stories, and this just nudged it along further in that direction.
The back half of Gotham’s second season appears to have been titled “Wrath of the Villains,” as opposed to the “Rise of the Villains” that was the first half. Just as Galavan was the big bad throughout the first part, I suspect they are positioning Hugo Strange to be the serious behind the scenes menace this time around. I’m amused that they are so carefully avoiding calling him Dr. Strange, no doubt due to the movie coming out later this year. For the record, Hugo showed up in Detective Comics back in 1940, Dr. Stephen Strange not making the scene until 1963, well over twenty years later, in the appropriately, but coincidentally, titled Strange Tales.
The Gotham mid-season finale is a very eventful episode. “Worse Than A Crime” is clearly taking place not long after last week’s “The Son of Gotham.” It’s a rough episode and most of the people involved don’t have a good outing.
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