1.06.2015

Television: Gotham, "Rouges' Gallery"

Possibly the best episode thus far.

If you recall, Gordon got booted into a job as a security guard for Arkham Asylum. Unfortunately, he's not doing any better there than at the police department. A fight breaks out during an inmates' staging of The Tempest, and of course Gordon is blamed for not keeping things under control. Then inmates begin turning up with impromptu electroshock therapy-induced labotomies. The working theory is that someone stole a guard's keys during the bad musical Shakespeare.

Now, here's what I don't get: Gordon then goes through the process of questioning each inmate. That's ridiculous to me. You can't trust them to tell you the truth. In a situation like this, you pull them all out of their cells, search each of them individually and search the cells. Thoroughly.

Of course, that wouldn't satisfy the plot, so that's not how they did it.

And still, despite this glaring loophole, it really was one of the best episodes. Gordon calls Bullock to help investigate, and the scene of Bullock sweeping in is priceless.

The solution to the mystery was pretty obvious from the start, but that also did not detract from my enjoyment of the episode.

Other plot lines included The Penguin getting a set-down for reaching beyond his station, Fish Mooney questioning Butch's loyalty, and Barbara falling further when Renee breaks up with her. Oh, and Cat taking a sick Ivy to Gordon's old apartment, so that when Barbara calls, Ivy answers the phone and Barbara jumps to conclusions. Really kind of stupid and cliché but whatever.

There was also the introduction of Dr. Leslie Thompkins (Morena Baccarin). She's definitely more likable than Barbara anyway.

I'll admit I wasn't 100% in love with Gotham in the first half of the season; it felt uneven, and (as I've mentioned many a time) I'm not into mob machinations, so when they focus on that stuff, they lose my interest. But if the rest of the season lives up to this episode, I'm all in.

2 comments:

Christine Rains said...

I missed the episode on Monday, but I didn't care at that point. Now I'm a little disappointed that I did after reading this!

M said...

Yeah, I'd been feeling pretty meh about the show, but this was definitely a better episode.