Review: Gotham – The Blind Fortune Teller

 

Jim and Leslie explore the dynamics of their relationship this week while investigating a murder at Haly’s Circus. Meanwhile, Fish Mooney cements her place as a leader in the underground prison and hijinks ensue.

Also, you know, Barbara is back.

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 – The Flash: The Sound and the Fury

The fun thing about watching The Flash is that whenever they introduce a new rogue, I know pretty much nothing about them. Unlike the rogues galleries of, say, Superman or Batman, I’m aware of some of the names of Flash’s villains, but aside from that, who they are, their motivations, I don’t know anything aside from the Rogues’ code they have in the comics (no drugs, no killing women and children).

And that’s what makes each new episode of this series different from Smallville or even some episodes of Arrow. I don’t take any knowledge into the episode, so I just get to judge whether or not the rogue works. While some have been pretty “meh,” like Multiplex or that gas-cloud guy, others, like Captain Cold and even Girder in his final moments, have shown that they can be fun, interesting characters to watch. Thankfully, Pied Piper falls into the latter category.

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.