Gotham is back and continuing the trend of being absolutely insane. Last season ended with the monsters of Indian Hill breaking out, and that is clearly going to be the lead-in to seeing more baddies from Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery.
Aside from seeing more villains, Jim is taking quite the turn this season. Now, he is a bounty hunter chasing down the lab test experiments of Indian Hill, all for a smooth five grand. It’s interesting, this new brooding take on Jim, and it actually does fit in with the Gotham Universe. We really get to see this when he appears to be in a dreamlike state, which apparently is reality just brightly lit compared to Gotham, and he sees a happy Leslie Thompkins with another man. This is a very quick scene that kicks off the season, one of which I hoped would have permeated throughout the episode. There’s certainly a strong plotline that would allow us to take a dive through Jim’s current mental state as he slowly realizes that the odds of being able to be with Lee ever again are dwindling by the day. This is supposed to be a Jim-centric series after all.
To counteract Jim’s broodiness, we get bubbly reporter Valerie Vale (Jamie Chung). Vale, you say? Yes! She is, as most characters in the show are, related to a character from DC Comics lore, specifically, as reported in an interview by TVLine, the aunt of Vicki Vale. While it is safe to assume that we won’t actually see Vicki anytime soon (if ever), I enjoy her aunt Valerie’s spirited persona in the oft-dark Gotham City. While it wasn’t talked about, it does seem that she is a bit green at her job. In a set of scenes, Jim is after Fish Mooney, (yes she is back) and he knows that it was Fish who was leading Valerie on to get to Mrs. Peabody.
Fish is now the big plotline in this season, which leave things a bit on a sour note for me since I feel everything around Fish is a lot better than Fish herself. Having said that, she is dying and must track down the only man who can save her, Hugo Strange. With the lackluster Fish returning, at least we have the stellar Oswald Cobblepot and the maniac that is Barbara Kean.
Barbara has teamed up with Tabitha, and now they own a club. It just so happens they built it up on another owner’s land, and he tries to make her pay. She laughs as he is about to hit her again, and Tabatha slits his guards’ throats. Then Barbara repeatedly hits the guy with the butt of his gun, with a very joker-like laugh. Barbara has become one of my favorites, along with Oswald of course because she goes from completely normal to just as crazy in the blink of an eye. Erin Richards does an outstanding job portraying an interestingly deep character.
Bruce also had some nice story beats here as he furiously attempts to track down those who wronged Wayne Enterprises and took it down the Indian Hill path. Bruce, while still weird since we never really see him in his younger years in any other form of media, is actually being proactive in his pursuit, that is until he gets chloroformed and kidnapped by a Nightwing lookalike.
The other characters simply fall into the roles into which they have been placed the prior season. Butch is simply a heart-bleeding sidekick; Bullock had little screen-time and added in his usual jokes, and so on.
