Gotham S1:E7 – Penguin’s Umbrella (held in Gotham against my will…)

Open on Oswald walking down the street with a couple of large thug bodyguards. Cut immediately to a LOL-worthy Fish Mooney temper tantrum, bitching about Oswald being alive and demanding his head. Throw it to Jim who is telling Barb over the phone from the GCPD locker room to get out now. Once he hangs up, Harvey is there to punch him directly in the jaw and hold him at gunpoint, stating that he’ll have to “take (Jim’s) body back to Falcone and beg – BEG – for mercy.”

Oh no. I am so very afraid for Jim Gordon’s life. Y’know, not knowing any of his future story.

Bullock gets distracted, Jim gets his gun, tells Harvey he has a plan. Harvey tells him that he hopes he doesn’t see him again. Jim storms out.

Barb’s phone vibrates on the dining room table as a Falcone thug (with partner) tells her she has a very nice place (still too nice for a police detective, if you ask me). They’re holding her until her fiance comes home. Just as the thug starts talking all rapey (we get it, they’re bad guys) Jim rounds the corner, gun drawn. A Mexican standoff turns into Jim getting the upper hand (knocking out the talky-rapey one and shooting the gun-haver). Jim and Barb make it to the bus station and Jim sends Barb away telling her to never come back to Gotham, since we’ve seen how well that line has worked in the past. She tearfully boards the bus like a good Stepford woman and the title card hits.

Gordon returns to the noisy police station and silences the place with his very presence, asking for “blank warrants that Judge Bam Bam (?) signed. He gets them and walks out.

Falcone is tending to chickens (WTF?!?) while Fish and her Nico Bellic clone (fellow crime boss) bitch that Gordon and Oswald should both be taken out immediately. He tells them that he knows what he’s doing and brushes off their request. We find out from Fish that the Lorde Girl she hired to seduce Falcone is holed up in Falcone’s house cooking and cleaning. He, according to Fish, likes to watch her do chores which, as stated, is weird but seems to be a lightly misogynistic and pretty much harmless fetish if true.

Back at the GCPD, Gordon is typing up those pre-signed warrants when Capt (not) Sarah shows up and asks what he’s doing. He reveals to her that he’s written up arrest warrants for the Mayor, Carmine Falcone, and his close associates on the charge of perversion of justice in the Wayne murders. Kinda out of left field, but whatever. The Captain predictably tells him he’s completely effing crazy and makes him realize that the city is too corrupt to prosecute and imprison their major figures. The Captain tells him to get out of town but Jim, staunchly and in the most noble fashion, Jim says, “No, this is my town, blah blah justice blah.”

At the same time, in the bullpen of the GCPD, a bald Billy Corgan looking dude and a couple of dominatrixes (dominatricees? dominatrixis?) walk in and start acting like they’re in charge. None of the cops seem to want to lift a finger to this as Billy Corgan climbs onto a desk and announces himself as Victor Zsasz (pretty awesome, honestly) and tells the congregation of blue shirts that he was sent by Carmine Falcone personally and is looking for one Jim Gordon. Predictably, everyone points out exactly where Gordon is because he has made absolutely no friends here. Zsasz was apparently told to bring Gordon in alive. Jim tells him, “There are fifty cops in here. Try something.” Zsasz tells all the cops to go away and they do without a second thought. Things devolve into a gunfight between Jim, Zsasz, and his fetish models. Jim quickly runs out of ammo and, while attempting the old throw-the-garbage-can-at-the-gunman trick, catches a bullet to the lower abdomen while making good his escape through the back door and into the motor pool. The bad guys give chase and there’s the typical tense “hide and seek” moment as the injured Jim is taunted by Zsasz.

They use every trope in the book for the last moments of the standoff as, Just when Zsasz is about to find Jim, a rookie looking officer strolls in (apparently having missed the memo from upstairs) and tells Zsasz to freeze or hold it or some other thing. While Zsasz is busy shooting that woman in the kneecaps, Jim tries to sprint away and catches another bullet in his back for the trouble. As Zsasz closes in for the coup de grace, Montoya and Allen, our favorite MCU detectives, ride to Gordon’s rescue! Oh, wow! They’re able to fend of Zsasz and the Leather Girls long enough for Jim to get in the car and escape! Miracle of miracles! Sigh.

Best part about this scene: Zsasz finishes off the poor young female officer with a shot to the heart (and he’s to blame), promptly produces a box cutter, and slashes another hash mark into his arm, proclaiming her “twenty-eight”. Ok, that was pretty cool.

After commercial, Jim wakes up in a university dissection lab. The doctor says she’s a friend of Montoya and Allen. She pulled out the bullets and, amazingly, none of his organs were damaged. She calls out to detective Allen by his first name, Crispus, when Gordon gets out of bed.

It’s here I pause the show. Renee Montoya’s partner is Crispus F***ING Allen?!? How did I not make this connection? It’s right there in the comics. I feel shame. More on this later in the post.

Fish is taking a meeting with Maroni over Oswald. Blah blah threats blah. Maroni calls out Penguin and there’s a pretty funny scene in which Maroni makes Penguin apologize to Fish who then calls Oswald a scaly-faced bitch before slapping him and leaving. Really, the whole exchange plays off as a comedy.

Meanwhile, Falcone’s rapey thug from earlier rolls up on a group of nuns while in the back of a molester van. He kidnaps them, chains them together, and puts them in the middle of the street in front of a Maroni Moving and Storage truck. The truck stops (lucky day to be a nun) and rapey thug tells the drivers that Falcone won’t let any Maroni trucks through until they get Penguin. He kindly offers the men a choice between a beating and a bullet because a serious message must be sent. The scene is actually pretty darkly funny including the part where he puts holes in both of their shins.

Maroni won’t give up Penguin, vows revenge, Penguin tells him that he knows exactly where to hit them, blah blah gangster blah.

Montoya apologizes to Jim for being a dick while they sit outside Wayne Manor. Alfred catches Allen around the perimeter and holds him at knife point until realizing he’s with Gordon. We go to stately Wayne Study (still the only room in the biggest house in Gotham), Bruce does his whole “one day I’ll be Batman” schtick while Gordon tells him that everything is connected to his parents’ murder. Jim vows to Bruce that, should he die, Montoya and Allen will take over the investigation in his place. Gordon does the whole “now I have to go it alone” bit and offers a handshake to Bruce who hugs him instead. How unexpected and heartwarming.

Penguin leads a group of Maroni thugs to destroy a Falcone drug lab. They kill everyone inside including Nico. Maroni’s main thug, after all the murderation, punches Penguin and calls him out on being nothing more than a snitch. He threatens to kill Oswald and blame it on one of Nico’s men just to get Penguin out of his boss’ hair. Oswald calls the thug a cheapskate and it’s revealed that Penguin has bought off the other thugs who hold the guy down while Penguin knifes him in the stomach. His psychopathic and eloquent monologue proves that Oswald is the best thing on this show.

Maroni and Falcone meet (Penguin and Fish on their respective sides). Maroni bargains a piece of land (according to Fish, a “toxic waste dump on an Indian burial ground) in Arkham for Penguin’s life. Everyone walks away happy.

Jim is back at his apartment and looks to be gearing up for war when Bullock happens to show up, drunk with a prostitute on his arm. Bullock says he’s “doomed anyhow, so he’s going to join the good guys”. Jim tells Bullock his plan about arresting everyone everywhere in the city in any way involved with the framing of Mario Pepper and the Wayne murders. Bullock proceeds to bang a prostitute in Jim’s bed without much real objection from Jim. Gross.

They pin the mayor down in his limo in a funny-yet-stereotypical buddy cop maneuver and arrest him. They kidnap him to the Falcone estate and use the mayor to get inside. Without any effort whatsoever, they make it into Falcone’s inner sanctum with rifles and shotguns because when you’re dealing with a mob boss, there’s never any real security right? They serve a warrant, Falcone says Zsasz has Barb and pretty much LOLs in Gordon’s face. Falcone won’t prove this but dares Jim to bring him in if he thinks Falcone is lying.

We’re treated to Lorde girl in the kitchen making muffins with Zsasz as we see Barb sitting at the kitchen counter, hostage. Zsasz gets a phone call, looks at Barb and says, “What a shame…” Of course, it’s because Barb isn’t going to die. They release Barb to Jim. Falcone lets them go citing that there might still be hope for Jim. Zsasz is disappoint because he doesn’t get another hash-mark. Falcone does a lot of lecturing before they leave, blah blah foreshadowing.

Barb and Jim go home and kiss. Yay.

Lorde-girl is happy as Falcone is pleased with her muffins (and apparently not with her muffin itself) and goes to tend his chickens (again, WTF). Oswald appears, looking like he’s got a murder on, and calls Don Falcone by name. Falcone embraces Oswald and we get a flashback to the night before Gordon “killed” him.

All of a sudden, in a huge holy shit twist moment, we find out that Penguin and Falcone engineered EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED IN THE MAFIA PART OF THE SHOW SO FAR. Penguin made a death-row deal with Falcone to have Gordon be the one to kill him, knowing Jim wouldn’t do it. He promised to come back to Gotham, embed himself with Maroni, and then snitch to Falcone about everything Maroni was up to. This before Oswald dropped the big bomb that Fish and Nico were out to off Falcone himself. We also find out that Jim only lives because Oswald asked Falcone not to kill him as a favor.

Wow, that twist actually made this show a lot better. I have to admit, while it is still very cheesy in parts and some of the bits are grossly inaccurate, this show is growing on me.

About Crispus Allen… yeah, totally forgot that he was Renee’s partner in the comics. In the books, he is unjustly murdered by another colleague and winds up becoming the third incarnation of The Spectre – God’s own holy vengeful wrath. We probably won’t see that on this show but it’s nice to know they at least got Montoya’s partner right. We also probably won’t see Vic Sage and Montoya’s progression into becoming The Question but that’s ok too.

No real complaints again this week. All the stupid Fish Mooney crap almost feels vindicated knowing that Oswald has the upper hand in this whole scenario. We’ll see what happens next. This show is officially coming into its own. I might not have to write any more of these unless some larger inconsistencies crop up.

Bidula’s Last Word – 6/10, if only for the twist.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Oh, and, I’m running a Gofundme to help take Unlucky Seven to Con. You should check it out. There’s rewards and stuff.

—end transmission—

Gotham S1:E5 – Viper (another f***ing night in Gotham…)

The main problem of the week is the titular Viper; a drug which gives the user super strength and “delusions of ultimate power” with the sad side-effect of rapidly depleting the body’s calcium resulting in not-so-subtle fast-acting brittle bone disease. When it wears off, the user goes all Stretch Armstrong in the most ridiculous way before collapsing into a heap of human jello and suffocating.

The creator of the drug passes out tons of free samples to Gotham’s lower class (read: MOST of Gotham) and chaos ensues. Most notable uses are a drug-addled guitarist who uses it to single-handedly rip an ATM out of a wall and an old walker-using philosophy professor, a good friend of the drug’s creator who while being questioned by our favorite pair of dicks, inhales a vial of Viper and bends his walker into a mess before throwing Jim into the hallway through a wooden door and nearly choking him out.

We find out during the pre-old-man-Bane sequence that Viper was the first version of Venom – the drug used by Bane (that is, the REAL COMIC BOOK Bane, not the Tom Hardy born-in-the-darkness Bane) to give him the backbreaking strength he uses to take Bruce Wayne out of commission in the comics. I have to admit, I called the Venom thing at the beginning of the episode. I was pleasantly surprised to know they didn’t rename the actual drug for the sake of a television audience.

Needless to say, this was a horribly acted interrogation scene. I really want to blame the directors of these episodes for the horror. I feel I need to start blaming the actors just as much.

We also glean from the philosophy professor (again, in the most poorly acted way possible) that the creator of the drug, working for a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises, blames his employers for the lives he took and is using the exposure of the drug to gain what he thinks is justice. He infiltrates a Wayne charity function (attended by Bruce and Alfred just for that extra “oh shit” angle that NONE OF US COULD EVER SEE COMING, AMIRITE?) and pulls a “somebody poisoned the waterhole” by letting his inhalant into the ventilation system.

This plan fails miserably after he delivers his missive to the assembled “middle management” and child-billionaire-in-chief. Bullock clears the ballroom quickly and Jim corners the perp on the roof, shooting the gas canister and giving him a huge dose of his own medicine before the perp turns and leaps to his death (body not seen, but the detectives don’t seem to care to investigate any further or clear that one up themselves). Just before he jumps, he tells our dicks to check out warehouse 39. Again, all of this using the poorest acting skills available.

They check this warehouse and find it empty. A Wayne rep (seen in a scene with Bruce, which we’ll get to) ominously warns a person on the opposite end of a cell phone that “we’ll deal with them if they get close”. End to the main story.

This week in subplots:

OMG SELENA KYLE SHOWS UP FOR LIKE A SPLIT SECOND I ALMOST FORGOT SHE WAS THERE THANKS FOR REMINDING ME!

Fish, now the proud owner of some pouty-lipped Lorde wannabe, is “training” her girl to become the weapon she is supposed to be by forcing her to learn to sing and appreciate opera. This, after a few more scenes foreshadowing the rather transparent plans she has in store for Don Falcone, culminates in the last 30 seconds of the episode where Lorde-girl shows up in a white dress with a new blonde doo humming an aria while Falcone sits on some park steps feeding the pigeons.

He goes to her in such a magnetic and insincere fashion that it almost looks like he’s faking it, like he knows what’s up. I kept waiting for him to shoot her while referencing Fish’s now-discovered and possibly thwarted takeover plans. Instead, fade to black. The acting was SO BAD by Falcone that for a minute I thought it was done on purpose!

Oswald comes clean with Maroni about his history. Jim gets called in to verify to Maroni that he, indeed, was told to kill Oswald for ratting but didn’t. Oswald helps Maroni rob Falcone’s casino. Boom done.

Bruce, from his one-room Wayne Manor, decides to continue investigating improprieties in the Arkham deal, wanting to talk to the board of directors regarding why the biggest crime families in Gotham got the biggest pieces of the deal. This leads to the aforementioned discussion with the Wayne rep who claims to be “just middle management”. Bruce, continuing to be made out as a child WELL beyond his years, gets continuously patronized by everyone including his own trusty butler because he’s just a kid. He freaks when the perp delivers his missive about the misdoings of Wayne Enterprises and is about to ask a few shocked questions aloud before Alfred covers his face with a suit jacket and ushers him out of the room to avoid the green smoke of Viper that infected no one.

This week in problems:

Stereotypical characters are stereotypical. This show leans heavily on this. Italian mobsters are overly Italian. Russian/Balkan mobsters are overly Eastern European. Old people are old people and like to feed pigeons. Young aspiring singers are really just sluts that will do whatever it takes to better themselves including luring known mafiosi into their ultimate demise with a display of tits and ass. Above all, EVERYONE IN GOTHAM IS BAD!!!

Stereotypes make this show horrible. They make it predictable. They make it look poorly acted. Wise up and throw us a curveball. I know the writers tried (TRIED) to do this with Fish, by making a “strong” black woman a capo of a major Italian crime family, but they just wound up giving us Eartha Kitt minus the purple spandex.

I continue to be disappointed.

OH! And, news out of the Gotham camp is that they have cast an actress as Dr. Leslie Thompson – one of the most trusted friends of the Wayne family and one of the few who knows Bruce is Batman – for a recurring role starting in early 2015. I would say this is cool but it only means that Gotham will be around UNTIL EARLY 2015. This may become a shame.

Bidula’s Last Word – 3.5/10

Keep fighting the good fight.

—end transmission—

One Night in Gotham (Bidula’s Last Word Review)

A few months ago when I heard about Gotham, I was both intrigued and sort of nauseous.

Though I’m not a Superman fan, I remember having the same sort of reaction when Smallville first aired. I remember watching that pilot (and maybe the second or third episode) and giving up. I realize that it blossomed into a culty fan favorite but something about another reboot of a famous origin story, concentrating only on the origin years, didn’t appeal to me.

A big part of this was probably because it was a Superman show, I won’t lie.

So, now they come to give Batman the same sort of treatment with Gotham. I know, it’s not supposed to be about Batman per-se but, as of the pilot anyway, it’s more about the origin of Batman’s amazing cast of supporting characters as well as his rogues gallery. Face it, he’s got some of the best in all of comics to the point where they spin-off into their own books and even their own TV shows (hands up if you remember Birds of Prey).

The story opens with the Wayne murders. (note – No, I’m not posting spoiler alert. If you’ve got a heartbeat, you know that Thomas and Martha Wayne were shot in a mugging that left Bruce Wayne a screaming orphan in the street.) This is lead into after a sequence in which we see a young Selina Kyle, somehow already a parkour-expert pickpocket, steal a half-gallon of milk from a poor old lady and pulling a businessman’s wallet but nearly getting caught. Of course, she winds up with a prime viewing angle on the infamous superhero-creating double homicide.

After the Waynes are shot, we see what, in my opinion, might be the only actor worse than George Clooney (or Val Kilmer) to play Bruce Wayne – a child with enough smarts in his head to know what just happened – try in vain to rouse his parents who he apparently thinks are sleeping… with inch-wide bleeding holes in the center of their chest. Once it’s through his thick skull what happened, he drops to his knees and lets out the worst sort of pre-pubescent scream imaginable – like a fake temper tantrum scream – before we cut to the main titles.

We get quickly introduced to Jim Gordon in an expository sequence involving a crazy man wanting his pills and taking another cop hostage INSIDE THE POLICE STATION (just in case you thought pre-Batman Gotham was some kind of crime-free utopia). We’re left to know that Jim is a rookie detective in homicide and is partnered with an older and more seasoned Harvey Bullock who is immediately forced on the audience as a cynical man who has a borderline hatred for his job (or at least the action surrounding it). I can’t complain too much about Bullock, they seem to be doing him right and the actor playing him was the funny bearded ginger who got his arm cut off twice by Blade. He is troped as the “walk the line and sometimes step over it” character, though. A bit too much at times.

Gordon and Bullock, naturally, get put on the Wayne murder investigation. They show up in crime alley, blah blah blah, Jim endears himself to Bruce somewhat, enter Alfred (who seems to be going the “Beware the Batman” route with a much rougher London-street accent and attitude), rain rain rain, sad sad sad, Selina Kyle is still watching from the shadows for whatever reason, moving on.

Through the investigation we get introduced to a myriad of Mafiosi including Fish Mooney, the woman who “runs the theater district” for the Falcone mob. The murders took place on her turf and we’re shown that Bullock has a very close personal relationship with her. She’s played by Jada Pinkett Smith who seems to be doing a pretty good job of it though she channels a bit of Eartha Kitt style cheese with a fancy for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

Fish’s right-hand (more like slave), one Oswald Cobblepot, is introduced. A pale fellow with piercing blue eyes and a rather beaky nose (to no one’s surprise). Seriously, before you even knew the guy’s name, he’s standing there with an umbrella practically screaming “I’M THE PENGUIN! WATCH ME BECAUSE I’M GOING TO EVOLVE HEAVILY OVER THE COURSE OF T HIS SHOW!!!”

Oh, and it should be known here that there is much reference to the Falcone crime family, prounounced fal-KOHN, when in every other spoken Batman story, it is pronounced fal-KOHN-e. This bothered me to the point where every time a character said “fal-KOHN” I was correcting them out loud by shouting “fal-KOHN-e!” at the screen. Even when Carmine Falcone introduced himself as Carmine fal-KOHN. Drives me nuts. Anyway…

Eventually, we get introduced to Barbara Kean, Jim’s fiancée, and her ridiculously lavish yet appropriately gothy apartment in which they will eventually (sez her) co-habitate once they get married. They never let on what she does for a living in this version, but there’s no way she’s not in the upper-set with an apartment (and clothing, and fashion sense) like that. Probably another good plot in to the “Jim runs into Bruce” stuff.

Bullock being a dirty cop runs him into a lead on the Wayne killer which brings them to the house of one Mario Pepper whose daughter, Ivy, answers the door when Jim and Harvey arrive. I have to take a bit of an aside here because in the promo workup for Gotham they were promoting this little Ivy Pepper as Poison Ivy which absolutely kills me more than anything else so far. They’re leaving every name intact and they couldn’t have made the pre-pubescent Poison Ivy have her real name? Pamela Isley is Poison Ivy, promo art be damned. If they wind up really turning this little ginger nut into Poison Ivy without at least first changing her name to what it properly should be… well… it won’t matter, I guess, but at least get the damn name right.

The pair of dicks (meaning detectives, come on you pervs) wind up shooting Mario Pepper down at the end of a chase. They find Martha Wayne’s string of pearls among his loot stash, and it’s case closed. That is, until Oswald informs two competing detectives from the Major Crimes Unit (including Renee Montoya, one of my favorite characters from the DCU) that Pepper was framed by Fish Mooney to cover up for the real killer of the Waynes, likely a hired hitter.

This, interestingly, leads Montoya to the door of Barbara Kean. Montoya hints at a past with Barbara (likely a romantic relationship considering Montoya’s orientation in the comic books) and tells her that her husband-to-be must be on the take because he participated in the frame-up of Mario Pepper. This meeting had no real purpose other than to give Barb a reason to doubt Jim’s super-honest-good-guyness (as contrasted by Bullock’s overly-dickish and, to use the show’s term, lackadaisical attitude) and hint at a rather interesting history between her and Renee. I actually kinda like this twist. Barb Kean-Gordon wasn’t ever really expanded on in the DCU and this might be her chance to get a bit of semi-important story time other than being Batgirl’s mom/namesake (depending on which continuity you’re talking about). Ten bucks says we’ll see Batgirl born before this series is over.

Jim finds out about the frame-up after Barb predictably questions his honesty and goes to Fish Mooney without saying a word to anyone at which point she also predictably bashes him over the head and has him taken to “Butch” who, as it turns out, is a butcher who will likely mutilate Jim’s carcass in a number of unrecoverable ways.

Bullock finds out that Jim is missing and immediately calls to question Fish. Fish lets it slip that Jim has gone to Butch, Bullock tries to talk Fish down from killing him, makes the typical cop threats to his long-time friend, and she makes the decision to string Bullock up along with Jim because her good friend – an inside source in the POLICE DEPARTMENT – made an idle threat against her that he would never back up due to his mostly cowardly character flaws. The writers really just wanted Fish to look intimidating and they really made her look crazy.

Oh, AND, Bullock inadvertently tipped off Fish to Oswald’s betrayal so, of course, she uses a chair leg to brutally bash Oswald’s lower extremities until he can’t walk properly anymore (he sorta limp-waddles now… big surprise).

The pair of dicks (pervs…) wind up getting saved by direct intervention from Deus Ex Carmine Falcone (it’s fal-KOHN-e, dammit…) who happens to arrive at the butcher shop just as Butch himself (a mask-wearing, cleaver-wielding, super-minion in training) is about to do the deed. Falcone then reveals in a private discussion that he knew Jim’s father well. “The best DA this city ever had,” said Falcone. He wants Jim to realize the balance of power in the city blah blah blah, the mob controls Gotham and Jim needs to get with the program instead of being a mega-Boy Scout.

To prove this, Falcone sends Bullock and Jim home with a little Penguin in their trunk and gives Bullock instructions to have Jim off Bird-Boy by shooting him at the end of a pier and dropping him into Gotham harbor. After the requisite mafia-style threats to Jim’s fiancée, Jim takes Oswald to the end of the pier and, predictably, does not shoot him (because you can’t kill the Penguin before he’s the Penguin) but makes it look like he does, pushing Oswald into the water after whispering, “Never come back to Gotham” in his best Batman voice.

Jim goes to Wayne Manor (where Bruce is seen balancing on the rooftop in some extremely un-subtle foreshadowing) to tell Bruce that the case really isn’t closed. They have a moment where the worst actor to play Bruce Wayne ever agrees that Jim Gordon should go out there and keep fighting crime, blah blah, Jim’s faith in the system is renewed. As he leaves, Selina Kyle (the ever silent teenaged thief) watches, perched atop the gates of Wayne Manor, probably casing the joint.

Oh, and Penguin pops out of the water and murders an innocent fisherman for his sandwich.

End of episode.

I can’t say I’m sure what to make of this from the first episode. It included a few good references, a few bad references (Ivy Pepper?! I’m still mad about that…), some very predictable circumstances, and enough little bits of cheese to remind you that DC still doesn’t know how to properly transmute things to screen. Gotham was supposed to be this gritty new show, a la Chris Nolan, but winds up looking like a run-of-the-mill crime drama with a very familiar over-plot. If you removed the Batman element from it, it would probably be replaced mid-season.

I’ll keep watching it if only because I’m a huge Batman fan and I want to nitpick the details.

Oh, bonus round, they also introduced Ed Nygma as a slightly-too-crazy police analyst (a tactic used in the Arkham video games) as well as an overly nervous stand-up comic being auditioned by Fish Mooney in this week’s Joker possibility. The producers of the show mentioned that every episode will have at least one suspect who could wind up being the Clown Prince of Crime, presumably in season two if this show makes it that far.

Bidula’s Last Word – 5/10. I will continue watching for novelty and novelty alone, (very) cautiously optimistic that this show will improve with time.

Keep fighting the good fight.

—end transmission—