Fox’s “Batman-without-Batman” soap opera is the most amazingly weird show on television. For every episode this season, Deadshirt’s own Sarah Register, Kayleigh Hearn and Max Robinson discuss the good, the bad…the beginning? of little Bruce Wayne, skinny Oswald Cobblepot, and Jim Gordon sans ‘stache as they try to find their way in the misery-soaked, work-a-day world of…GOTHAM.
Max: Jim Gordon: Exonerated! The Penguin: Triumphant! Bruce Wayne: Still a little guy! WE COVERED A LOT OF GROUND THIS WEEK.
IT’S A CHILD CRIME WAVE
Max: WE OPEN on Bruce and Cat parkour-jumping across rooftops while a winded mobster futilely chases them. This is good.
Sarah: Bruce’s goofy smile while letting all of Cat’s livelihood blow away in the wind made him seem more like a kid, which was a nice change.
Max: Bruce doesn’t understand poverty so he’s all “HEY I KEPT ENOUGH FOR BURGERS! :D”
Kayleigh: What kind of burger places do they have in Gotham City anyway, Harley Quinn-N-Out?
Max: Boooooo
TIME FOR BULLOCK TO FUCK HIS WAY OUT OF YET ANOTHER OF JIM’S PROBLEMS
Sarah: Uncle Harvey is gonna take care of everything.
Max: Oh man Bullock’s “sexy time” voice with that one lady cop he’s distracting so Jim can steal the 911 recording he needs to exonerate himself.
Kayleigh: I love that no one gets laid on this show more than Harvey Bullock. Donal Logue: God’s most sexual creature.
Sarah: His post-coital cigarette is a soggy meatball sub from his pocket.
Max: Harvey is Beautiful.
YOU CANNOT GO TO THE BALL, CINDEROSWALD
Sarah: Robin Lord Taylor’s ability to seem both completely genuine and also blubberingly cartoonish while weeping over his father’s coffin was very good television.
Max: Penguin agreeing to be his evil step-family’s maid, forced to serve his stepmother mysterious green ichor. How is this show real?
Kayleigh: Mrs. Van Dahl and her children quickly prove themselves to be the stupidest people in Gotham City, demeaning and verbally abusing the KNOWN MURDERER they’ve let into their home, and doing a piss-poor job of hiding the fact that they poisoned his father. Good thing this isn’t the kind of show where cartoonishly evil villains get a grotesque comeuppance.
Max: I like that this is the kind of show where people just find huge carafes of poison around the house.
*DISTORTED ROBOT VOICE* HELLO I’D LIKE TO REPORT A CRIME
Sarah: “Don’t worry, Harvey, there are still people I can trust.” [cut to Jim flipping through this “I’m too pretty and dumb to realize this person is framing me for murder” Rolodex]
Max: Gordon goes to Nygma to figure out whose voice is on the tape. LITTLE DOES HE KNOW NYGMA FRAMED HIM. Nygma’s slightly less distorted tape voice sounds like Adam Driver.
Kayleigh: Nygma’s house has a cuckoo clock and a chair wired to give electric shocks. This is the bonkers Batman set design I live for.
Max: Nygma all freaking out like “WELL YOU OWN A CROWBAR AREN’T YOU COMPLICIT IN CAPITALISM!!!”.
“GREAT. A DEAD COP IN MY CRIB NOW!”
Max: How much of this show is just characters with gunshot wounds crawling into other characters’ homes?
Kayleigh: Gotham has only twelve people in it at any given time. But Bruce cooking and sewing for Selina is very sweet! Gotham is never a boring show because it never slows down–sometimes I wish it would, though, because I could have used half a season more of these two on the streets together before bundling up Bruce back to Wayne Manor.
Sarah: Also, Selina’s stitched up leather jacket was very Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman. I audibly gasped when Cat threw it away.
THIS JUST TURNED INTO AN EPISODE OF FARGO
Max: Loved Nygma calling Cat “that little miiiiscreant” before running away into the snow and falling over like a toddler. I can’t believe the “Nygma is killing people and nobody’s noticed” plotline is finally over.
Sarah: I love how Nygma did some mind palace style math to determine how and when Gordon would find him, and then all Jim had to do was blatantly follow him.
Max: Yo, Ed, people are only going to find a body in all that snow if you dig it up, you messed up!
Kayleigh: They’re really digging deep into the question of whether the increasingly dark, murderous Jim Gordon is any better than people like Nygma, but I still worry they’re going to brush away the consequences of his actions when Hugo Strange plays his “get Galavan out of death free” card.
Max: Yeah Gordon still shot Galavan in the head, he wasn’t framed for *that*.
OH MY GOD PENGUIN FED THAT LADY HER OWN KIDS
Max: THEY FAKED US OUT WITH THE DOG GETTING POISONED. IT WASN’T THE DOG. IT WASN’T THE DOG AT ALL.
Sarah: Our beautiful, stabby psychopath is back, guys! Pengiun’s literal Cinderella story deteriorating into a Sweeney Todd-esque ending is soooo Gotham.
Kayleigh: We joked about Penguin being trapped in a Gothic romance novel, but we were wrong–it’s actually Titus Andronicus. I can’t wait for the new bus ads: “Gotham: We’ve Had Two Episodes About Cannibalism This Season.”
Sarah: “Gotham: we won’t show you a dog dying on screen, but here’s the slashed throat of a woman who just ate her own children.”
YO BARBARA’S BACK REMEMBER?
Sarah: Don’t worry, guys, she “doesn’t feel insane…..[too many beats later]…now”.
Max: Hugo Strange’s plan to catch and release the criminally insane to cause maximum drama is going along well, I see.
Kayleigh: Countless comic books about Batman’s rogues escaping Arkham Asylum and Hugo Strange just willingly releases his most dangerous prisoners for the lulz. (I believe that’s a medical term?) Gotham does not give a fuck.
Gotham airs Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern on FOX.
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