Last night Gotham continued its two-part Scarecrow story with Gerald Crane (Julian Sands) continuing his quest on removing his fear as we learned more about origin of the Crane family, including a child who is destined to become a certain villain.
I’m not going to say that the way the last couple of episodes have been done is the way that I had always envisioned Gotham to be like, because at the beginning when the show was announced, I wasn’t sure of how it would work. Truthfully, I’m still not sure, but the thing that can be said here is that it’s a much enjoyable show than it was in its first half of the season. The story of Gerald was both tragic but also creepily exciting to follow as it was an interesting take on where Jonathan Crane came from and what his family life was like before he sort of snapped.
While I’m not 100% sure if they are sticking that closely to the canon with Jonathan’s background, I do believe the aspect of his father using him as an experiment in the comic books was loosely adapted in a way here. They wrapped up the story with a nice bow by killing off Gerald after he injects Jonathan with a heavy dose of the fear serum, which we see has changed him forever. I’m hoping that young Jonathan will, despite his new condition, interact with Bruce at some point, just to see what that would be like.
Bruce had one of his best episodes yet as he continued to try to conquer his fear by taking a trip to the woods to just…walk? Maybe I missed something, but all we saw before he started throwing rocks all over the place while breaking down (which was heartbreaking) was him just walking and looking. It could just be part of his way of learning how to not be ruled by fear, which I will give points to because at least it’s a little different from other takes on Bruce’s origin. But still, was there more to it or not? I will give this note to Alfred (who is always awesome): never call him “Master B” again, even if it was an attempt to be hip.
Penguin’s story in this episode was, as always, difficult for him because why not? As he pleaded to Falcone to get him some protection with Maroni still being after him, he got to take over Fish’s club. However, even though Maroni and Falcone made a deal for Maroni to not come after Penguin, he still had no problem giving him a threat or two at his party, so, as always, just a typical Monday for Oswald. Speaking of Oswald’s Mondays, last night had a very prominent scene as Edward, the future Riddler, and Penguin met each other for the first time. As the big geek that I’m, I couldn’t help but get overly excited about it, and it was just pure fun how Eddie had no problem trying to mess with Oswald.
Last, but not least, our dear Ms. Fish Mooney was taken to some prison-like area and quickly took over that environment by getting closer to the leader and then killing him. Even though it all seemed too easy, this is another episode that I’m enjoying Fish in as she is slowly becoming a better character, although maybe a bit too late because of the possibility that she will be killed off in the finale. Nevertheless, it will interesting to see where she goes next and what she will unleash when she (probably) returns to Gotham City.
Overall, “The Scarecrow” was one of the most enjoyable episodes of Gotham yet, as we got a neat beginning to the Scarecrow legacy that is now living on through Jonathan, as it was meant to. While not going too much into the promo for next week’s episode, something tells me that a lot of people will be smiling big time when they watch it.
Gotham airs on Monday nights, 8/7c on FOX.
[Photo via FOX]
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