Bleh, I was hoping they’d set up Thompkins and Alfred, not her and Gordon. Maybe down the line.
OK, that was my complaint. Loved the rest of the episode, especially the resolution of the Falcone/Fish intrigue. Thought the Electrocutioner was pretty well handled, too, much more interesting than the cheesy “I electrify stuff with my hands” supervillain ever was in the comics. The look on his face after Gordon short-circuits him was hilarious.
Was that Discount Double Check Guy??? LOL.
Wow, I hardly recognized Peter Scolari now that he’s aged a bit. He used to have such a baby face.
I saw him in the credits and then did not recognize him at all. Who did he play?
The police commissioner.
ok, he did look familiar. Looked like bad plastic surgery too…
The Scarecrow stuff in the last couple of episodes has been interesting. A nice alternate origin story for Jonathan Crane becoming the Scarecrow later on.
Looking forward to next week, because I’m getting tired of Fish and Penguin, to be honest.
Man, that Scarecrow shit is dark.
I knew they wouldn’t be able to stay away from having the Joker show up.
Yeah, it was in the “next week on Gotham” scenes at the end of the last episode.
…and he wasn’t bad. I got some flashes of Heath Ledger in his performance, but some original touches, too, and he seemed genuinely menacing once he dropped the act.
Yeah, that kid is great on Shameless, and was a good fit here.
The sad bit about this show is anything interesting like this that you see, you know will never pan out - you will never see batman or a proper joker.
In a comic one off, it is fine, because you do not get attached, but I really like this gordon, and alfred, and plenty of other stuff and am getting attached to this version of this universe. I’d like to see it go somewhere, but they can’t allow that.
I’m not sure how they do a season 2 - they have used all the main characters.
I can see them stretching it out for quite a bit - after all it’s a HUGE roster of classy villains, they can juggle them around for ages. Penguin took up most of this season, it’s easy to see they could focus on another one next season, and so on.
Great chemistry between McKenzie and Baccarin. Loved the teasing of Dick Grayson as a twinkle in the eye of the carny couple. And the Joker teaser was really well done, I thought, allowing the actor to give his own little spin to the character (quick shifting between serious and amused). Just all-round good fun.
I wonder though - they might just be able to pull it off. David Mazouz is 14 now, and he’s a great young actor. If they manage to stretch Gotham out to 4-5 seasons, he could be 18-19 by that time, feasibly old enough to don the cowl for the first time, at least as the original detective style Batman, starting small, and the show could morph into Batman.
The big question is whether or not he’ll develop physically enough to be a convincing Batman. How tall will he get? What size frame will his adult body have? With a rigorous workout program, they could muscle him up, but if he’s too short, that’s hard to shoot around. I agree that he’s very good as young Bruce, though. There’s Bat potential there.
As for drawing it out, I don’t see issues there either. Pages back I said that they can deal the villains temporary setbacks, imprison them, give them occasional triumphs, and so on. They just can’t kill them, but then again, the comics don’t do that either.
What with Better Call Saul and the second half-season of The Walking Dead coming online, I’ve fallen 3 episodes behind on Gotham. The last one I watched was where the stout henchman rescued Fish Mooney from the torturer, I guess. Worth continuing? I do really like the kid actors, the guys who play Gordon, Bullock, Alfred and Penguin, but Fish Mooney just makes me tired. Someone needs to put that character out of our misery, IMHO.
I’m still enjoying Gotham, but I’ve had to reset my expectations from “history that leads up to Batman” to “stories that happen to have familiar Batman-related characters”. Once I made that adjustment, it’s fun to see what interesting things they do with the characters, without having to worry about how they’re going to make things fit into what’s “supposed to happen”. There’s nothing that’s “supposed to happen”, this is a different world.
I’d say so, but then, I just got done saying how I still like the show, so take that with a grain of salt. Fish is still there but things have completely changed for her. And for Penguin, for that matter. They seem to have mostly wrapped up the “mob boss power struggle” story arc for now, but left plenty of hooks to reopen it later.
Class episode, beautifully balanced between the 60s Batman style comedy villainy of the Red Hood gang, the gothic horror of the Dollmaker shenanigans, and an emotional glimpse into Alfred’s past (plus the cool tweak of young Bruce learning a bit of dirty fighting from Alfred’s old SAS comrade, as well as the discipline and technique Alfred’s teaching him!).
Notably splendid bunch of character actors this week - the perfectly-pitched old Scottish warrior, the Red Hood boss, the Chinese-American witness guy, the Dollmaker guy.
Agreed. I really enjoyed this episode. It gave me a “when Gotham is good it’s truly great” vibe. All this time we knew Alfred was a secret badass, now we know why. Very cool.
Child actors are often short for their age, so they can play roles younger than they are (while being more experienced i.e. usually a better actor for it at least in theory). They end up playing teen-ager roles through their twenties, then either make the transition to older parts or disappear. I don’t see this kid transitioning to a large and powerful adult. Not that you seem to have to be all that tall and powerful to play Batman…