Gotham “Mandatory Brunch Meeting”

OK, to be quite honest, I can actually say that the Legion of Horribles seems like a fun idea.

Whether it is one in execution or not remains to be seen.

See, Jerome Valeska is setting up a team of his own.  Jerome may or may not be the Joker, but that’s neither here nor there.  If he wants to build a team, who does he put on it?

Penguin!  Firefly!  Mr. Freeze!  Mad Hatter!  The Scarecrow!

All at a mandatory brunch meeting at Penguin’s house.

OK, let’s be frank for a minute here:  there is very little this group could agree upon that could get them to work together for, well, any reason.  Oswold for one probably wouldn’t want to be seen with most of these guys, and there are probably a few there that would just assume to see him dead if not also some of the others at the table.  Don’t Freeze and Firefly detest each other?  Or didn’t they?  This is Gotham, so I don’t expect to be able to keep track of every little thing.  But what does the guy who is sometimes the head of all organized crime, a scientist forced to stay in the cold, an arsonist with fireproof skin, a nutjob with odd feelings for his dead sister, a man who just wants to scare everybody, and a self-described artist like Jerome going to do as a group?

I don’t know.  It’s not like they really explain what’s in it for everybody.  Maybe Jerome just scares everyone and they just know how to hide it really well.

Maybe a better question might be to ask who isn’t there.  Riddler?  Doing some odd game show and losing to Lee before they start kissing.  I guess she forgot what happened to his previous girlfriend.  Ivy?  Eh, the others probably don’t know she even exists yet.  The last time any of the Legion saw her, she had a different face and everything.  There is one more who shows up later, mostly because it seems like Oswold’s big contribution is to recruit Butch in his Grundy form.  That takes some effort because while Butch might be the friendliest mobster in Gotham, Grundy sure as hell isn’t, but a promise to find Hugo Strange and reverse his condition seems to be enough for Butch.

Regardless, since Jerome seems to be the only one with an actual plan, the others follow his lead.  That means he wants to find some reclusive engineering genius named Xander Wilde.  Bruce and Alfred are looking for Jerome on one end, and Gordon and Bullock are from another.  Wilde never goes out and has an emissary named Ecco, and that young woman does the impossible:  she captured Jerome and takes him to a cell Xander built out in the woods in the underground bunker Xander calls home.

Or, more accurately, that Jeremiah Valeska calls home.

Yes, Jerome has an identical twin brother who is a lot less identical since only one of them had his face removed and then reattached.  That’s who Gordon and Bullock find, but since Jerome now has friends, that means Hatter and Scarecrow follow with Ecco under hypnosis.  But by this time, Bullock has figured out Hatter’s weakness:  yelling really loudly and shooting at him so you can’t hear him when he tries to hypnotize you.

That’s so stupid it’s almost clever.  It also works.  Wow, watching those idiot criminals run was satisfying.

But it does mean since this isn’t the season finale that Jerome and his two pals get away.  Jeremiah is put in protective custody, and Jerome invents…laughing gas.  That hapless stooge they tried it out on sure seems to have a rather rubbery face.  Was that the actor or CGI?  I don’t know.  Looked kinda cool even as Oswold and Butch look like they were having second thoughts or they crapped their pants or something.

Anyway, Jerome wants a city full of laughing crazies.  How that is profitable for organized crime, I can’t say.  Why is Penguin in the Legion again?