Making it better for our kids; it’s one of our most basic driving instincts as parents. Whatever our place in life we’ll constantly look down at ourselves and the many mistakes our wonderful subconscious minds never let us forget and live in the paranoid denial that making things better for our next generation will make it go away. Of course it won’t. We’d have more chance of getting Spiderman into the MCU (..... no hang on! Seeing Joss Whedon directing the 50 Shades sequels!). We try our hardest and even if we succeed making mini-us dodge the bullets that crippled our young selfs, they’ll still walk smack into any of the countless others life will keep firing at them (yes I know this imagery involves kids taking gun shots, but this is Gotham..... we can get a bit dark here). No parent should ever forget that no child will ever live a perfect and pain free life. If anything, going to relentless extremes to save them from harm can lead to some disastrous consequences as one Gotham parent is learning this week with an ill advised self prescription.
The Scarecrow – The fearsome Dr Crane continues to petrify his victims to extract their terrified adrenal glands and synthesise an anti-fear serum to be free of his own demons. When he tries to offer his son Jonathan Crane the same gift things take a turn for the unfortunate. Meanwhile Jim tries to maintain his professional tough guy persona when Leslie starts working alongside him and Penguin re-opens Fish Mooney’s old club despite fears of Maroni’s retaliation for his snitching.
Last week’s first half of this scarecrow origins story was all about shoving the f-word into our faces. Succumbing to fear was on many minds, not just Crane’s victims but the focus shifts to overcoming it as fear itself becomes the enemy. This sadly can’t recapture the wonderfully creepiness of Crane stalking his phobic victims but it becomes interesting in an altogether different manor as daddy crow’s agenda is delved into. It swaps the frights for the trippy as we witness Crane’s fear hallucinations while acting as his own test subject in his old house and the scene of his wife’s death. The setting is fantastic as the AWOL biology teacher gets his “Breaking Mad” on. Despite all he becomes you can never full hate him out of respect for his guilt misdirected genius. Young Jonathan was always going to factor in somewhere but it’s great to see Gotham having much fun with creating his deranged mental trauma when the fear is quite literally put in him. As soon as we first see that haunting scarecrow figure in the background we know something’s going down there yet it’s still very effectively done as the man trying to rid the world of fear accidentally creates the most fear inducing of villains. Young Charlie Tahan (I Am Legend, Frankenweenie) does some great work here as he writhes in mental torment. Despite the imperfect CGI his final moments strapped to the bed are incredible. Also in terms of time frame this is actually an ideal creation point for Gotham. While some are fairly concerned the show is rushing too many villains into maturity before Batman’s even out of puberty; here we leave Jonathan Crane perfectly positioned. We get to enjoy his traumatic creation but clearly understand he’ll be out of commission for some time while it’s all baking in his head and he develops enough deranged control over it to become a threat. Hopefully we’ll get to see more of him in an Arkham setting later the season. One minor crime about this main story though is a recurring problem that’s starting to creep into some Gotham episodes and that’s Jim and Harvey doing increasingly less actual detective work due to run time constraints. This results in all to convenient case breaks; the year book discovery in particular felt like a police work cop out.
Some of the smaller story elements however don’t feel as well formulated. Jim and Leslie’s domestic awkwardness may raise a few smiles and giggles thanks to the ever delightful Morena Baccarin doing her thing (the “Bring back Barbara” society lose more members every week) but it feels quite a generic character trait insertion that we really don’t need from the pair of them. They’re incredibly unsubtle when dropping in the 3rd date time frame that we almost expect Jim to throw down a “suck me beautiful”. These are great, likeable characters that we want to see together but with much more skill than we’re being given. We’d much rather see Leslie learning and working through some of Jim’s past. The Penguin club ticket delivery even provided the perfect setup for it; Jim awkwardly explaining his reluctant association to the criminal and new club owner. Speaking of which, said arrival and Penguin coming face to face with one Edward Nigma was both brilliant and a perfect example of how this pre-Riddler should be used.... sparingly. Unless he’s plot crucial get him in, give him a few funny moments then yank him the hell off before it gets trampled all over. The Bruce and Alfred scenes also feel quite throwaway this week. Yes the moments of Bruce losing it frustration having to pick himself up again are nice but they feel just that, moments. There’s no sense of character progression of Bruce learning from the events, just being caught up in them; which of course we very obviously know he’ll come through ok. Just like Ken Woodruff’s previously scripted Arkham and Harvey Dent episodes he shows some good writing promise in his central direction but lacks the perspective to incorporate his extended cast effectively. Yes, that’s never simple but it’s always what we should be expecting an episode to deliver.
The surprising saviors of the week are the crime bosses both in and outside Gotham. The brief and hospitable exchange between Falcone and Maroni during Penguins Umbrella was an utter gem as the pair conversed with full mutual respect and even a small degree of friendship. This week that idea is stretched out into a minor episode arc as the pair meet over Penguin’s fate. Again the mutual and unemotional understanding between the pair is just fantastic. Despite Falcone planting Penguin as a spy Maroni bares him no ill will seeing it as all part of the game and even openly acknowledging Penguin’s value as a money maker. You have to love the idea of the pair scheming and killing to outdo each other but taking none of it personally. Then there’s the incredibly fun prepared peace offering blackmailing of an infamous and hated city judge in a sex scandal; like two brothers eying up their new toy. Hopefully we’ll get to see this two talking friendly business again before the end of the season. Then finally there’s Fish’s completely unexpected new story arc. While we really wanted to see the rest of hilarious double charge in fight with the big chap on the boat; what we get is far more intriguing. Two episodes ago it genuinely felt like she was written onto the subs bench for a good while. Instead she’s going full Daenerys with her own overseas story arc that we really didn’t expect from Gotham in the slightest. The musty acclimatisation into this new eye opening environment turns into a hardening of Fish’s character. We see her with all lackeys and reputation stripped away yet still managing to be a badass and quickly asserting her own authority with the one blade to rule them all. There’s a great feeling mystery as to what’s really going on here and how it will all feed back into the main Gotham City story that’s worth waiting for the answers.
This is episode is bold in the way isn’t repeat itself with what was felt presumed as the second half of a two part story; giving a very different tone to its prior. It’s just the underwhelming smaller elements that drag this scarecrow a few notches lower on the post. It delivers a fantastic origin to a classic villain character and deserves full credit for that but needs to invest more in its present day characters rather than just Batman’s future foes. From a series perspective we could also still do with circling back to something new on the Wayne murders and its surrounding conspiracy. The episode certainly will take you places, just not necessarily places you’d like to go.