Review: Gotham – The Scarecrow

 

This week’s episode more or less picks up where last week’s episode left off. Gordon and Bullock are still hot on the heels of a man murdering phobics and stealing their adrenal glands for reasons unknown (and in ways I can only imagine totally hold up to real-world science).

Gotham‘s strong suit has not always been its villains of the week, but for a second time, it decided to stretch out a villain, Gerald Crane, for a second episode, and as a whole, was stronger for it.

Review – Arrow: Midnight City

In a Laurel-centric episode, we get to see her expand her outings as the new Canary and learn an important lesson in regards to vigilantism: It ain’t easy.

Review – Gotham: Welcome Back, Jim Gordon

When Gotham went on mid-season break, we were teased with the idea of Gordon being a prison guard at Arkham as the new status quo of the series. Instead, it turned out to really only last for about an episode an a half.

This week was all about reintroducing Gordon back into the GCPD, as the title suggests. I don’t know if we needed an entire episode to reinforce the idea that Gordon is the straight arrow in the department, what with that sort of being the entire premise of the show, but that’s what we got.

A Batman Show to Dream Of

On yesterday’s news that Donal Logue is playing Harvey Bullock in FOX’s Gotham TV show, I found myself revisiting an old idea of mine.

A live-action Batman show.

Now, this was some time last year, way before FOX announced that they were doing an early-career Commissioner Gordon TV show that has now morphed into something that sounds much more akin to Smallville for Batman. My idea also came before I heard the wonderful podcast between Kevin Smith and Paul Dini talk about their so-wonderful-it-hurts Shadow of the Bat idea, about Bruce Wayne in boarding school.

Back in the ’90s, when I was much younger, I loved Lois and Clark. And that, for all its now-apparent flaws, was a great Superman show, a great take on Superman, that suffered only from a tiny budget and some campy writing. But for me, that was Superman. To this day, Dean Cain is my favorite Superman, and I’m even unable to separate in my mind Dean Cain’s looks from Dan Jurgens’ version of Superman, even though to an outside party, they probably look nothing alike.

But we’ve never had a live-action, true BATMAN show. So I made one up.

Young Justice Review: Downtime

-Comic Vine

A homesick Aqualad ventures back to Atlantis to reconnect with his people and his girl in order to definitively decide whether he wants to stay with the group on land or return to the ocean. The premise of the episode is on shaky ground:  Are we, as viewers, supposed to empathize with Aqualad (whose Atlantean name I absolutely will not Google to learn to spell; it’s Aqualad, and that’s how it is) as he reconnects with home? Or are we, as viewers, supposed to seriously wonder if a new show is going to get rid of its leader in the first view episodes of the season?

REVIEW: Young Justice – Schooled

- MTV Geek!

A few episodes in now, the show has developed a pattern for its episodes. If I wanted to be cynical, I could say formula, but the show’s pretty good, so I’m not going to be cynical about it.

The formula goes something like this: The team is given a mission; via some inner-team conflict, the mission goes FUBAR; the team comes together; beats the bad guy; lesson learned; Batman delivers unexpected “attaboy(s)”.

Add that with some genuinely snappy humor, say what you will, I like it.