S02.E01: Rise Of The Villains: Damned If You Do...

[maczero]

I don't get it.  If Penguin couldn't get anything on Loeb because he was 'too good', then why does Loeb hate Gordon?

I'm pretty sure Penguin was being sarcastic.  Loeb was blatantly corrupt.  He was on Maroni's payroll.  And Penguin himself knows that Loeb was keeping his daughter in hiding to protect her from going to jail for her mother's murder.  So unless he meant Loeb was "too good" in the sense of covering his tracks, he was just toying with Loeb.

 

But I really need Jim to stop going to Bruce to apologize for not being able to fulfill his promise. The kids an orphan, he's used to disappointment. Plus you've already told him that you couldn't do it like eighteen times. How could he possibly have faith that Jim would make good on his word.

I don't know why but I find this hilarious (particularly the eighteen times part).  I think even Bruce is tired of hearing it.  In fact, Bruce seemed to be slightly annoyed that he came in person to tell him.

 

OT:I'm pretty sure that Alfred knew about the secret cave and probably the passcode but knew that the road Bruce was going down wasn't healthy and thus would rather he not keep digging and move on so he didn't open either for him and kept trying to discourage him in every way he could think of, and Bruce was a kid too obsessively fixated on his father and what is behind that door to calm down and actually THINK rather than blindly putting in anything that came to mind

I'd like to think that Alfred didn't know the pass code, because allowing Bruce to create a bomb just because is just flat out reckless.  Speaking of reckless parenting, Alfred needs to get a handle on whether or not he wants to be Bruce's guardian or employee, because if he wants to be taken seriously as a parent then he can't let Bruce treat him like the help anymore.

 

I liked it.  Loved Babs as a villain.  I didn't see this as a rework, I saw it as a plan that came to fruition.  This is who she always was but she was trying to be normal and thus that deer in the headlights look she always had.  I like the Joker and think he's perfect.  Babs is going to end up as Harley Quinn, right?  Penguin was great as always.

I don't think Barbara will end up as Harley.  Sure the show doesn't have to stay 100% true to the comics but having Harley be 10-15 years older than Bruce and the Joker just seems wrong.

[stanleyk]

Because Jim's morals seem to be skewed lately. He didn't want to shoot the crazy guy with the sword because of paperwork but it's totally cool to pull a gun on the street youth?

 

This scene really, really bothered me, and struck me as profoundly tone-deaf to recent real-world events. To recap, the cop is faced with a disturbed white guy with two handguns and at least one sword. The guy has fired shots, taken a hostage at sword-point, thrown her violently down, and is threatening Gordon with the sword. Gordon holsters his gun, despite the guy literally swinging a sword at him, and says he doesn't want to hurt him. Ten seconds later, he pulls his gun, points it at a black boy in a hoodie (and two other people) who appear to be stealing some merchandise, and threatens them.  

 

Really, show? I was grossed out enough that I stopped watching. Beyond the politics and optics of it and the show's either ignorance of or disregard for those things, it is not possible for me to see Gordon as any kind of good guy at this point. Unless someone can tell me that this scene was meant as some kind of meta-commentary showing Gordon's total lack of a moral compass and it will be addressed later on, I just can't even with that.

[DigitalCount]

This scene really, really bothered me, and struck me as profoundly tone-deaf to recent real-world events. To recap, the cop is faced with a disturbed white guy with two handguns and at least one sword. The guy has fired shots, taken a hostage at sword-point, thrown her violently down, and is threatening Gordon with the sword. Gordon holsters his gun, despite the guy literally swinging a sword at him, and says he doesn't want to hurt him. Ten seconds later, he pulls his gun, points it at a black boy in a hoodie (and two other people) who appear to be stealing some merchandise, and threatens them.  

 

Really, show? I was grossed out enough that I stopped watching. Beyond the politics and optics of it and the show's either ignorance of or disregard for those things, it is not possible for me to see Gordon as any kind of good guy at this point. Unless someone can tell me that this scene was meant as some kind of meta-commentary showing Gordon's total lack of a moral compass and it will be addressed later on, I just can't even with that.

Well, he goes on to become a temp enforcer for Penguin and kills the guy he's supposed to shake down for money (it was a me-or-him situation, but one that Jim created through commission of a felony, thus felony murder) so...maybe? I agree though, that was bizarre and not a great reflection on the people involved.

[stanleyk]

Well, he goes on to become a temp enforcer for Penguin and kills the guy he's supposed to shake down for money (it was a me-or-him situation, but one that Jim created through commission of a felony, thus felony murder) so...maybe? I agree though, that was bizarre and not a great reflection on the people involved.

 

Right, but my issue is that while the show seems to see those later actions as, at best, morally ambiguous, I didn't get the sense that it saw the earlier scene that way. My reading of it was that it was meant to show Jim being a bad-ass and a good street cop: Jim before the Fall. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere that Gordon's actions in this scene were mentioned again as evidence of an early slide into murky actions, but I didn't watch past this scene and my interpretation could be way off. But if that's the way the show chooses to portray him being a good cop, with no apparent awareness of the optics of it, that's what I have a problem with it. 

[Camera One]

I'm pretty tired of Jim running to Penguin, doing something he regrets, and then getting back on the force.  I feel like we saw this before, complete with Loeb having to swallow his pride.  It didn't make it better with a summer break in between.

 

Plus Jim is now listening to teenagers' advice?  I'm not sure where Bruce's sudden speech about doing the ugly thing even came from.  And since when did Jim even work on trying to find Bruce's parents' killers?

 

Barbara is now a villain, and suddenly she's the best thing since sliced bread?  They didn't even bother to make the character shift at all believable.  

 

The episode was a bit too gory for me.  I guess I shouldn't be watching this show for any coherent character reactions but overall, it was just lacking in fun.  I did like Bruce and Alfred working together to bomb the door out, though having the passcode be Bruce was just stupid and not funny if that was the intention.  I suppose it's not a horrible premiere, but it was pretty much same old same old for this show.

Edited October 4, 2015 by Camera One

[Chicago Redshirt]

I'm pretty sure Penguin was being sarcastic.  Loeb was blatantly corrupt.  He was on Maroni's payroll.  

...

 

I don't think Barbara will end up as Harley.  Sure the show doesn't have to stay 100% true to the comics but having Harley be 10-15 years older than Bruce and the Joker just seems wrong.

 

Was it shown that Loeb was explicitly on Maroni's (or more likely, Falcone's, since he was the head gangster) payroll?

 

I don't think it is any more untrue to the comics than Two-Face, Riddler and Penguin all being somewhere in that 10-15 years older range.

 

Because he is a practicing ADA at this point, basically the youngest Harvey could be is 24-25 (graduating law school at 21, then 3 years of law school and then the bar), and one would presume he's a bit older since he apparently had some juice to be talking about the Wayne murders and to be targeting a fairly high-up citizen.

 

Nygma has to presumably be not just a college grad, but may have some sort of advance degree. He also seems to have been on the job for some time. So I would say he has to be in that same 24-25 range.

 

And Pengy has no credentials that basically require him to be 24-25, but just seems to be at least that old, if not older.

[maczero]

Was it shown that Loeb was explicitly on Maroni's (or more likely, Falcone's, since he was the head gangster) payroll?

 

 

Remember when Jim was protecting Falcone & Penguin from Maroni's thugs at the hospital.  Jim tells one of the thugs that Falcone is under his protection.  Said thug go gets Loeb to tell Jim to stand down. 

I don't think it is any more untrue to the comics than Two-Face, Riddler and Penguin all being somewhere in that 10-15 years older range.

I could by all those guys being to 10-15 years older than Bruce.  Depending on the artist, I've seen depictions of them being in the 40-50+ age range.  Comic Bruce is perpetually kept in his early to mid 30's so this works with the age differences seen on Gotham.  Harley's origin comes some time after the Joker and Batman appear.  She's a young doctor at Arkham prior to meeting Joker.  She's usually depicted as a woman in her 20's.  If Barbara were Harley Quinn and if the show wants to stay true to Harley's origin, then Barbara would have to fake her identity and pass herself as a doctor.  No, I say let Barbara be Barbara.

[Kel Varnsen]

Barbara herself said she wasn't a criminal mastermind. So I don't think we're supposed to see her as one. She's a crazy woman with many, many issues who seems to have embraced her crazy. I for am loving that and look forward to her storyline this season. 

 

I don't see her as a mastermind either. I do see someone who knows exactly how hot she is though and knows she can use that to manipulate people. And speaking of hot, I thought the actress was one of the hottest women on TV last season. Now that she has a bit of that crazy look going on, for some reason she seems even hotter.

 

This scene really, really bothered me, and struck me as profoundly tone-deaf to recent real-world events. To recap, the cop is faced with a disturbed white guy with two handguns and at least one sword. The guy has fired shots, taken a hostage at sword-point, thrown her violently down, and is threatening Gordon with the sword. Gordon holsters his gun, despite the guy literally swinging a sword at him, and says he doesn't want to hurt him. Ten seconds later, he pulls his gun, points it at a black boy in a hoodie (and two other people) who appear to be stealing some merchandise, and threatens them.  

 

Really, show? I was grossed out enough that I stopped watching. Beyond the politics and optics of it and the show's either ignorance of or disregard for those things, it is not possible for me to see Gordon as any kind of good guy at this point. Unless someone can tell me that this scene was meant as some kind of meta-commentary showing Gordon's total lack of a moral compass and it will be addressed later on, I just can't even with that.

The way I saw it was in the first case he saw a criminal, drew his gun, and then decided not to shoot the guy. In the second case he also saw criminals, drew his gun and didn't shoot them either. Now if he fired warning shots at the thieves or something that might have made it different but otherwise I am not sure I see the issue.

[Ailianna]

Gordon also let the teenagers run without trying to arrest them or have another officer take them in.  He basically warned them off, they accepted the warning, and recalled urgent appointments elsewhere.  Plus, as noted, 2 of the 3 did not appear (though they were only on briefly so I didn't get a good look) to be minorities.  Just because there are people of different races involved in this kind of situation shouldn't automatically be read as racism, or a statement on race relations.  If it's always about race, then we can never get to a place where we are looking and judging people for their conduct and intentions, only the color of their skin.  I prefer to see the content of their character.  And, in this case, in addition to choosing the clearly lesser of two evils to warn off, I saw no indication that there was a racial motive.  Jim's hands were full with the hostage taker; he spared a moment to protect a shopkeeper's merchandise, and was right back to the main threat. 

[Hamatron]

Ideally, yes, we would see only the content and character of people. But race and racism is something that is deeply embedded in our psyche, culture, and media, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. I know this is make-believe world, but it's not okay to warn a group of teens (?) not to commit a petty crime by pointing a gun at them. That's not a warning. That is a potentially life-threatening situation. Given our current climate in the U.S. with law enforcement, it's a really obvious parallel, whether intentional or not.

Edited October 18, 2015 by Hamatron

[Kel Varnsen]

I know this is make-believe world, but it's not okay to warn a group of teens (?) not to commit a petty crime by pointing a gun at them. That's not a warning. That is a potentially life-threatening situation. G

In our world I believe that is true, but with the insane levels of violent crime there are in Gotham, I am not sure that you can apply the same standards.

[Hamatron]

Right. But we're talking about a script and acting and directing choices made by people living in our world. So yeah, it's a show where people inhabit a universe that is clearly not ours and has its own language, but there's all kinds of things that happen on the show that speak to and overlap with reality. This isn't the only moment where people have felt that the violence on this show was a little too close to reality and was clunky/wince inducing to see, because it was there without much thought put into it.

[Kel Varnsen]

But isn't complaining about how police in Gotham City respond to crime, kind of like complaining about the quality of the mental health care system in Gotham City?

[Hamatron]

I don't think people are complaining. We're analyzing what's in the scene, and we're talking about how the writers/actors/director put together a scene that comes across as tone-def given that it echos -- whether intentional or not -- very real, current events and things people are talking about now on a national level.

And you could make all kinds of arguments about how mental health/mental health care is framed on Gotham and how that relates to the real world, too.

Again, I get that Gotham's world is not ours. But at the end of the day, Gotham is a show that exists in our world, and was created by people in our universe. So you can't divorce the show from the real world. It was created here by people here.

Edited October 19, 2015 by Hamatron

[John Potts]

I have to admit, even though Gotham is a craphole of a city, that the Rape-for-All conveyor belt of the new inmates was a little excessive even for Arkham. OK, once Zardoz blew a hole in the place, then I could see it descending into total anarchy, but before then it seemed a little TOO "Run by the Freaks". Also liked that Gordon did tell Lee that it was Barbara on the phone, in spite of his instinct to conceal it from her. Though it's nice to see that Barbara is actually getting a real part - even if it is "Psycho Ex-Girlfriend", at least it gives Erin Richards a chance to show her acting chops.

 

Bruce was rather disappointing in giving up on the combination so easily (come on, you try family names & birthdays BEFORE you try explosives!) but I guess his approach was effective. Loved Alfred's "You'll bring the bloody roof down like that - and besides, you'll need another three bags of fertilizer!" He really is torn between indulging Bruce and acting as father to him, which may explain why Bruce/Bats is such a messed up guy!

 

Milz  Loeb was able to hide his psycho daughter's murder of his wife for years until Jim and Harvey butted in.

 

But didn't Penguin learn that too? Though I guess once you get around to decapitating a guy's guards, you really need to be removed from the game rather than just susceptible to blackmail. Glad to see that Penguin really is being effective in controlling the Underworld (so far), even if Gordon seems a little TOO grey at this point,

[Chas411]

This has finally launched on Netflix and im super excited..

to echo everyone's sentiments I'm loving crazy Barbara. Total 180 from last season but after being wasted for so much of last season I say let the actress have fun. 

Is Lee going to get anything to do other then play the concerned girlfriend? 

Also what's with the constant nose flaring of Ben McKensie...