Gotham “Ace Chemicals”

So, after the previous episode’s reveal that Dorrance was this show’s version of Bane and that this Walker character was behind a lot of what was going on…naturally, this episode does absolutely nothing to advance that plotline as the series heads into the home stretch.

I mean, there are clearly more important fish to fry.

Fish?  Hey, will Fish Mooney be back before the shows ends?

So, if there’s no Dorrance/Walker going on, what is happening?  Simple!  Gordon finally gets ahold of an actual helpful person on the mainland who says reunification is possible as long as nothing really weird happens anytime soon.

Seeing as how there are five more episodes after this one and this show specializes in weird, I am guessing that no one will be reunifying with anyone anytime soon.

Well, unless we’re supposed to count Lee and Gordon reuniting and maybe Bruce and Selina.  Oh, and Thomas and Martha.  Sort of.  Jeremiah had this brilliant plan to make a bond between himself and Bruce by restaging the death of Bruce’s parents with a couple of surgically-altered people to play the parents, and when he got bored and killed them early, he used Lee and Gordon and a series of toxic bombs that will probably take the whole city with them.  And this comes in an episode where Stately Wayne Manor goes ka-boom.

Oh, and since this is a lot to ask people like Lee and Gordon to do, naturally it’s because Tetch came back and used his hypnotic skills to make everyone do what Jeremiah wanted.  Essentially, not only did I get an episode that decided not to advance the plot of the previous episode, but it likewise decided to bring in two of my least favorite reoccurring villains.

Granted, it’s not like the better villains weren’t doing anything.  Penguin was looking to get off Gotham, and when Selina opts to save Bruce instead (and she was going to kill Oswald anyway because of what happened to Tabitha), Penguin instead grabs Ed and Barbara because Barbara is somehow still treated as someone with a lot of what people want despite the fact she is not a criminal mastermind.  Oh, and special shout-out to Ed Nygma who realizes Barbara is pregnant just by looking at her.

Regardless, I got Jeremiah and Tetch.  To be honest, Tetch bothers me less since the whole “Tetch Virus” plot is long over.  His creepy obsession with his sister is long over.  No more mystery viruses.  And Bullock proved you can scare Tetch off if you shout too loudly to hear his hypnotic commands.  As an occasional supporting bad guy, he isn’t too bad.  Yeah, I don’t quite get how the hypnosis works, and it’s overdone at this point, but he doesn’t irritate me as much, plus Gordon almost gets to him by appealing to his ego.

But then there’s Jeremiah, and he’s the opposite of Jerome in every way possible.  Nearly emotionless to Jerome’s manic, he’s…dull.  Like, he’s just there.  He has these schemes, but they feel flat and dull.  That’s really odd since he’s played by the same actor as Jerome, and Cameron Monaghan was a real hoot as him.  I get that he’s a different character and shouldn’t behave like his twin, but c’mon.  He’s restrained on a show where restraint never really works.

Oh, and since he’s not quite Joker enough, Bruce will smack him around inside Axis Chemicals until the dullard falls into a vat.  And no, he’s not dead afterwards.  I’m not that lucky.

Then again, dumping chemicals in the river means no reunification.

But why is the river mined?  That seems a bit much.