Gotham “Damned If You Do…”

Well, it’s time for a new season of Gotham…says the guy who came in a couple years after the show aired its final fifth and final season and is definitely late to the party.

But hey, better late than…well, I haven’t decided yet how seriously I should even take Gotham in the grand scheme of things.  My general consensus is “not very,” but that doesn’t mean I won’t still be wondering about that sort of thing.

Besides, here we have the start of a new season, and that means this first episode is there mostly to set up whatever’s going on while allowing the audience to catch up with whoever was still standing at the end of season one.  That means Jim is a traffic cop, but Bullock owns a bar.  It’s a large bar, but it doesn’t look too crowded, so it may or may not be all that profitable.

Oh, and Penguin is running the criminal side of things while Selina and Zsasz are among his henchmen.

Now, most of this here is set-up, so while Gordon does something he absolutely shouldn’t to get his job back after Loeb fires him, there is one plot point I’ll bring up and one character moment that stood out, and not necessarily in a good way, and I don’t mean how Eddie Nygma is talking to his own reflection because clearly the people making this show got which Batman villain is he confused with a very different one.

No, the character moment comes when Bruce of all people advises Gordon to do the Penguin a favor.  I’ll buy that Bruce is single-minded enough to build a fertilizer bomb to get into his father’s secret underground room and that Alfred will ultimately help him.  What I don’t buy is that Bruce of all people, with his highly toned sense of morality, would suggest Gordon do something for a mob boss.  Yeah, he’s still a kid, but it still felt a little odd.  Plus, this was the one thing in this episode that Alfred didn’t seem to really object too hard to.

That Gordon does the favor and ends up killing a Gotham underboss is beside the point, but then again, he does get his job back with the added bonus that Loeb retired.  Penguin’s blackmail scene with Zsasz is a little weird too in that Penguin says something about how Loeb has no vices or secrets, but Penguin was there when Gordon and Bullock found the farmhouse where Loeb’s psychotic daughter was hidden away, so what do I know?

But then there’s this guy Theo Galavan.  Sure, the city thinks he’s some big philanthropist, but he’s played by James Frain, and that guy plays a lot of shifty characters, so I’m less likely to think so.  So, when he and his sister Tabitha bust a bunch of Arkham inmates out to do his bidding he…wait, Arkham inmates?  Yes, one is killed off for thinking he could walk away, but the rest include Jerome and a few others who mostly stand around giggling, plus Barbara because Arkham’s day room is apparently co-ed and someone thinks Barbara is a criminal mastermind.

I am not that person.

Well, he has something nasty in mind, that’s for certain.  The way he busted everyone out was impressive enough for a show like this since it involved getting a guy who claimed to be some kind of galactic overlord sent to Arkham only for him to suddenly shoot knock-out gas out of his mouth.

Seems like a little too much effort just to get the likes of Jerome and Barbara.