Starts with caps lock, ends with caps lock
Gotham 2.3 The Last Laugh
Oh, HELLER. Did you learn nothing from what I like to call the Red John debacle???
I’m miffed, because there was some good stuff about this episode, mainly Jerome’s brand of crazy and the adorkable Bruce/Selina, with some Harvey moments, so there were definitely stretches where I was thinking season 2 was trumping season 1. Now, there was also some terrible dialogue, Barbara being forced to suck it up to Theo, and although James Frain did a good job of Theo doing a bad acting job playing The Hero, Theo is a thumpingly dull villain. He wants to bring down the last of the Waynes for family reasons. Got it. His plan so far seems to be long and involved and have become a thousand times less entertaining now that he’s disbanded the Maniax/got rid of his rival for the public's attention. Why, I wonder who’ll stand for Mayor soon. And playing a sub-standard Harley Quinn/magician’s assistant is not a starring role for Barbara.
That kid playing Jerome was great. Sure, the character was a lot full-on and probably more than the slow prequel to Batman that is Gotham could handle, as I observed after, er, the last episode, but he was going to wind Penguin up! Should have seen it coming because there was no holding back in the interaction with Bruce either. But I kind of feel that in killing him off and being meta by saying ‘But he was going to become Joker’ just as the viewers were, the show’s been too clever for its own good (see the Red John comment) when most of the time, it isn’t clever at all - about as dumb as its detectives.
And, to be honest, I found the idea of Jerome’s laugh becoming catching and all these boys and young men being infected, almost, was a bit too close to the knuckle given real life events with young men who think they are the Joker. (Even if they play with the idea of Joker ‘spreading’ in the first Batman movie and this is probably based on a comics plotline.)
I think they could have done something else. I just know I'm going to be sulking with all the time we’re going to spend with Nygma and all the less interesting stuff that will unfold, is all.
Penguin unravelled nicely, though.
And Alfred making a fool of himself over Leslie was fun. I still don’t get why she puts up with Jim, but learning she’d put five years into working for the children’s hospital started to build up her feeling for Gotham.
But the main reason I am in this is because of Bruce and Selina! They made me so happy. Of course she was there honing her pickpocketing skills - I’m glad she’s not becoming over-reliant on Penguin, and will handwave the stealing as a reason to get her in a gala with Bruce, so that they could be adorably awkward. Despite the up-do, he is taller than her now, no? And she’d have been a close second to Alfred in having ‘Rodolpho’ if he had chopped Bruce in two. Just as Bruce had to make sure she was safe. And then he had to go back for Alfred.
And then she sneaked back in to keep an eye out for Bruce, because despite having tried to play it cool before he means a lot more to her than she’ll ever admit.
In the midst of grown-ups being entertainingly crazy, or dully evil or attempting to be ambiguous good guys, THESE TWO. They delight me.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/219029.html.
Oh, HELLER. Did you learn nothing from what I like to call the Red John debacle???
I’m miffed, because there was some good stuff about this episode, mainly Jerome’s brand of crazy and the adorkable Bruce/Selina, with some Harvey moments, so there were definitely stretches where I was thinking season 2 was trumping season 1. Now, there was also some terrible dialogue, Barbara being forced to suck it up to Theo, and although James Frain did a good job of Theo doing a bad acting job playing The Hero, Theo is a thumpingly dull villain. He wants to bring down the last of the Waynes for family reasons. Got it. His plan so far seems to be long and involved and have become a thousand times less entertaining now that he’s disbanded the Maniax/got rid of his rival for the public's attention. Why, I wonder who’ll stand for Mayor soon. And playing a sub-standard Harley Quinn/magician’s assistant is not a starring role for Barbara.
That kid playing Jerome was great. Sure, the character was a lot full-on and probably more than the slow prequel to Batman that is Gotham could handle, as I observed after, er, the last episode, but he was going to wind Penguin up! Should have seen it coming because there was no holding back in the interaction with Bruce either. But I kind of feel that in killing him off and being meta by saying ‘But he was going to become Joker’ just as the viewers were, the show’s been too clever for its own good (see the Red John comment) when most of the time, it isn’t clever at all - about as dumb as its detectives.
And, to be honest, I found the idea of Jerome’s laugh becoming catching and all these boys and young men being infected, almost, was a bit too close to the knuckle given real life events with young men who think they are the Joker. (Even if they play with the idea of Joker ‘spreading’ in the first Batman movie and this is probably based on a comics plotline.)
I think they could have done something else. I just know I'm going to be sulking with all the time we’re going to spend with Nygma and all the less interesting stuff that will unfold, is all.
Penguin unravelled nicely, though.
And Alfred making a fool of himself over Leslie was fun. I still don’t get why she puts up with Jim, but learning she’d put five years into working for the children’s hospital started to build up her feeling for Gotham.
But the main reason I am in this is because of Bruce and Selina! They made me so happy. Of course she was there honing her pickpocketing skills - I’m glad she’s not becoming over-reliant on Penguin, and will handwave the stealing as a reason to get her in a gala with Bruce, so that they could be adorably awkward. Despite the up-do, he is taller than her now, no? And she’d have been a close second to Alfred in having ‘Rodolpho’ if he had chopped Bruce in two. Just as Bruce had to make sure she was safe. And then he had to go back for Alfred.
And then she sneaked back in to keep an eye out for Bruce, because despite having tried to play it cool before he means a lot more to her than she’ll ever admit.
In the midst of grown-ups being entertainingly crazy, or dully evil or attempting to be ambiguous good guys, THESE TWO. They delight me.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/219029.html.