The Season 3 premiere of Gotham , titled ‘Better Reign In Hell,’ sees James Gordon square off against super villains, lil’ Bruce Wayne attempting to take back his company and enough subplots to keep you wanting more. Overall, the episode was really enjoyable, fun and craziness.
Gotham isn’t taking itself too seriously, but isn’t falling victim to some of the ridiculous gags that riddled the show during the first two seasons. I’m looking at you Mr. Freeze , even Arnold Schwarzenegger would laugh at how goofy you were.
I stopped watching Gotham somewhere in the middle of Season 2 . The show had gone off the rails, with the characters making stupid decisions I couldn’t possibly see them making with logic. When lil’ Bruce Wayne decided it was a smart idea to live on the street for no actual reason, I thought I was done with Fox’s Batman show.
On Monday night, Gotham started Season 3 and I decided to give James Gordon and the bunch one more chance at redemption. The episode takes place six months after last season’s finale. It’s not perfect, but it was far from the jumbled mess I gave up on months ago.
The episode starts off with the pharmacy that Mr. Freeze ransacked last season getting robbed again, because it wouldn’t be a show on Fox if they didn’t reuse sets. We see a Killer Croc ripoff (because the real one’s stuck in Suicide Squad) fumbling through some pills, only to be stopped by James Gordon wearing full black. Gordon is now a bounty hunter, taking down the super powered inmates that escaped from Indian Hill last season.
Gotham works best when it embraces it’s campiness, blending Nolan’s Dark Knight Universe with Adam West’s Batman ‘66. This episode did not disappoint; Gordon takes down not-Croc by having him get hit by an oncoming truck. The director must have taken that scene from a Looney Tunes cartoon .
There’s a press conference at the GCPD to explain to the people of Gotham that these escaped inmates pose no threat. We get our first look at Vicky Vale, I’m sorry, Valerie Vale, in the Gotham universe, who is sure to be Gordon’s next love interest. It seems that each season Gordon gets a brand new girl to fawn over.
The Penguin shows up and starts yelling to the room full of reporters that nobody is safe because Fish Mooney is back. She’s gathered up all the Indian Hill inmates and is having them fight on her behalf. Robin Lord Taylor as Penguin is still the best character on the show, he’s perfected Penguin’s wobbly walk and wicked tongue. Now he’s a crime boss, but is still terrified now that Mooney is back, so he’s put a million-dollar bounty on her head.
Mooney and her superpowered henchmen are losing control of their powers, which is why they are breaking into pharmacies to get special pills. After they realize the pills just won’t work, they go after Ethel Peabody, who was Hugo Strange’s partner for the experiments on Indian Hell. She gets kidnapped because James Gordon (who wants that million-dollar bounty bad) tricks the police escorts that are watching her into leaving. Gordon then loses Peabody in a fight with that Manbat knockoff and his super friends.
It wouldn’t be Gotham if Jim Gordon made rational decisions.
Barbara, Jim’s first crazy girlfriend, now owns a bar with Tabatha Galavan. Together they have this weird lesbian / not-lesbian thing going where they murder people and laugh. Butch still has a thing for Galavan, and hires some goons to scare the girls into working with the Penguin. The whole thing backfires and the goons get shot, which is the pretty standard Gotham formula. The plot pretty much goes nowhere, but Gotham has to kill time somehow.
While all this is going on, lil’ Bruce Wayne is trying to find the secret organization that’s been running Wayne Enterprises, also known as the Court Of Owls. The Owls don’t like the idea of them being found out, so they send an assassin after him. The assassin is wearing a mask so terrible, Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern wouldn’t wear it. It’s like the prop director got hold of the Robin mask from Schumacher's Batman and Robin and thought it was a good idea to reuse.
The episode ends with Lil’ Bruce and Alfred being knocked out and kidnapped by the guy in the bad mask.
There are a ton of other little subplots, including Poison Ivy falling down a storm drain and a clone of Bruce Wayne stalking Catwoman, but they are pretty inconsequential.
I have high hopes for Season 3 of Gotham . The crazy supervillain knockoffs are fun to watch and I can’t wait to see who we get next, not-Killer Moth or not-Clayface?
