Let's All Join The Circus: Gotham Season 2, Episode 3 Review
"There's going to be a magician!" says Alfred to Bruce. And Leslie to Jim. And Alfred to Leslie.
And Bruce to Selina.
So a seemingly innocuous magic show is what draws Gotham's wealthy to the Children's Hospital fundraiser, and to the city's second televised bloodbath in 2 weeks.
Starring Jerome as the Great Rodolfo (in an astonishing performance by Cameron Monaghan) and Barbara as the Playboy Bunny, Arkham's murderous tag team, with Bruce in a supporting role, which he fortunately survives.
Jerome once again committed mass murder on live TV - different demographic, same agenda - although he didn't realize this week was his series finale. Theo Galavan put the episode ratings through the roof in a double cross with Barbara the magic show assistant, who just can't resist drawing focus and let her Mardi Gras mask slip on purpose.
Galavan's killing it - sorry - in the role of billionaire savior of Gotham. "Enter the hero," he says to Jerome, who he's seen knifing on the evening news, although it's Jerome's laugh that viewers are imitating.
To a sociopath like Galavan, that's a diss for which somebody's going to pay. Unless Barbara, who seems to be a serious contender for the new Joker, doesn't double-cross him first.
With his sister Tabitha.
The dearly departed Captain Sarah Essen wasn't wrong. It is a new day in Gotham...when the good guys (Detectives Gordon and Bullock) are torturing suspects and telling them to "spread the word" by throwing them out of precinct windows.
The detectives' anger is very real. We learn the body count from episode 2: 10. Captain Essen and 9 police officers. Jim Gordon, the de facto new police commissioner, is out for revenge.
Harvey Bullock actually isn't done with the first round of Gotham revenge yet. "I still owe you for Fish (Mooney)," he says to Umbrella Boy Penguin, in a double-down on friends in low places.
Revenge is on everybody's mind in episode 3.
Color me surprised that Jerome comes from a circus family and his blind fortune-teller father is a character actor we've seen in any number of TV crime dramas. Jerome lethally frames his father for his Arkham escape while Tabitha raids the fridge.
A little something for the road?
Back to the fundraiser, where Bruce Wayne is playing Alfred's wing man.
We've seen Bruce play young orphan, Hardy Boys wannabe, and whip-smart, sassy teenager. This is his best role on Gotham yet.
Alfred is flirting with Leslie (Dr. Thompkins) and he's got game. He's wisely leading with his British Special Forces stories because everybody knows women have a thing for men in uniform.
Men in uniform with restaurant reservations? Sold.
Lee, as Jim Gordon calls her, is a girl after my own heart. She actually looked a little bit tempted when Alfred said he could get a table at a French restaurant she'd been dying - sorry again - to try. (Actually, just come over to my house for dinner. I graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.)
Nothing you can say will convince me that Bruce didn't know Lee was Jim Gordon's girlfriend. He seems to know everything about Jim Gordon, sometimes before even Jim knows it himself.
I think Bruce wanted Alfred to twist in the wind a little, after exacting so many painful concessions last week. In addition to going back to school and doing everything Alfred asked without question, off-camera Bruce apparently also agreed to attend black tie charitable events for worthy causes his parents had supported.
Just the kind of night on the town every teenage boy dreams about, where his date is this jerk of a father figure with a one-word vocabulary: no.
But the evening wasn't a complete disaster, despite all the shooting, because Bruce ran into Selina Kaye. I'm sticking with my initial season 2 assessment: Selina has an angle. We just don't know what it is yet.
Had she been at the fundraiser just to steal valuables from rich people who seemed so willing to part with their money anyway, she would've hit the coat check and been out the door.
But Selina stayed. She seemed to know Bruce would be there. She pulled him to safety.
Had she known all along the circus was in town?
