Jim and Leslie’s date at the circus
is interrupted when the two rival families of the circus break into a
fight during the show. It turns out that Lila, a snake dancer at the
circus, has been murdered and the Lloyds and the Graysons each blame
the other for her death. Will the mysterious circus psychic be able
to help the GCPD solve the case? Meanwhile, Fish Mooney has devised a
scheme to find out who is running the prison that she is trapped in
and Bruce Wayne has decided to confront the Wayne Enterprises board
of directors.
So Gotham has realised that to have a
city that feels truly entrenched in corruption you need to show that
it has a dark past. Tim Burton, with both ‘Batman’ and ‘Batman
Returns’ captured the feeling of a city that has an ancient, by
American standards at least, history of corruption and crime. This
episode feels very heavily influenced by those films. Where
previously Gotham felt very modern and the crimes felt like a topping
on an otherwise normal city, we now have a city which has had a long
history of warring clown families and satanic cults.
We have had a look into the past of the
city before, such as in ‘Spirit of the Goat’ and these glances
into the history of the city really add another dimension to the
show. The original premise of the show promised that it would follow
the crime families of Gotham, crime families that had long and
interesting dynasties that influenced them. It is nice to see some of
this aspect make its way into the current, slightly bland, iteration
of the show.
This episode has a lot of really nice
character moments, some of which might have been better to have
earlier in the run. For example we see a different side of Barbara,
who has returned to her apartment to discover Selina and Ivy living
in it. Far from being horrified she seems to see something of herself
in the two girls and befriends them. It’s as if Sex and the City
were set in Gotham…and I’m ok with that. It would have been nice
to see some of these moments with Barbara earlier. ‘Gotham’ up to
this point made a terrible job of making the character of Barbara
Kean likable. We were expected to like her because Jim did, we were
expected to feel sorry for her because she was damaged goods. The
damaged goods element was awful also, with the only elements of her
dark past being her occasional weakness to cannabis and lesbianism…
How ‘Gotham’ messed up was to
forget that a character with a dark past is an interesting character
study and not a way to get cheap shocks. It also seemed to forget
that weed and lady-on-lady action isn’t very shocking in 2015, not
unless you’re an aging network executive. This new Barbara seems
stronger, darker in some ways and we are getting subtle hints of the
person she truly is. We feel sorry for her because she is trying to
be normal when she isn’t. This is something that she shares with
her two new friends and more importantly something tangible we can
empathise with.
In addition to these character moments
that pretty much redefine Barbara we get some nice moments which play
off the relationships we have formed with the cast. Oswald for
example is having trouble running his club, we see that at his first
actual opportunity of true power he can’t cope and fails. The
Penguin is a villain who should always be the second in command but
his wish to be the King, or Emperor if you will, leads to his
downfall. We have spent weeks watching Oswald survive by the skin of
his teeth, barely making it through alive. We know that he isn’t
quite good enough, even if he won’t accept it and these moments
that prove us right are really rewarding to the audience.
We also see Fish’s coup at the organ
factory begin to play out. Fish takes over the situation in only the
way she would, brutally. These scenes are effective but the character
of Fish still feels like a fish out of water since she left Gotham
City. I would say no amount of smart writing will make her relevant
again but I had also written off Barbara Kean, so we shall see.
So this is a pretty good episode of
‘Gotham’, not earth shattering but pretty good. I’d like to
say, love to say actually, that the improvements shown in this
episode towards the history of the city and its inhabitants would
continue in future episodes but I can’t. ‘Gotham’ can go from
being amazing television one week to being borderline unwatchable the
next, it’s incredibly inconsistent. That being said the rebooting
of Barbara feels like a very deliberate attempt to fix her character.
If the creators of the show have started listening to criticisms
maybe they have made a list of things to fix and intend to rectify
them. I can’t tell for sure, I’m no psychic.
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