Gotham S01E08 "The Mask" Review

And finally we're starting to get more comic booky and this show is actually starting to pick up a bit, not much but enough for me to actually enjoy it, as much as I possibly can. While "Gotham" is still a mediocre cop drama with Batman easter eggs, it's comic book roots allow it to be much crazier than the average episode of "NYPD Blue". We'll get to all that after the break.

So this episode featured Black Mask, Ramon Sionis unfortunately NOT wearing his iconic Black Skeleton Mask and instead wearing some sort of samurai mask, even stranger still, instead of a being a ruthless power hungry mob boss, he was some sort of finance guy running a fight club for positions at his company. I liked seeing Black Mask, but damnit this is one of the major things wrong with "Gotham". Ramon Sionis could have been a HUGE problem for The Falcone & Maroni Family. This show needs a more ruthless villain than The Penguin, as much as I love him. Falcone & Maroni just aren't scary and showy enough to be main villains, and the less said about Fish Mooney the better...

Seriously, how hard would it have been to get a simple Black skeleton mask, that'd have been cool.

Victor Zsasz introduced in last week's episode isn't the kinda guy who'd work for someone like Falcone, but Black Mask on the other hand, someone with a flair for theatrics and a penchant for murder is right up Zsasz's ally. And if Black Mask was a new mob boss rolling into town and making some VERY heavy handed statements about who's in charge, that would be the kind of "Gotham" it'd watch. And I guess that's what I've been getting to all along. "Gotham" has SO much REALLY good mythos to work with that it's almost sad they're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Even sadder still is that people still think they're actually gonna see The Joker in this series, get real, that won't happen for a VERY, VERY, VERY long time, and for good reason.

Anyways, this episode continued to showcase the good and bad with this show. Ben McKenzie's Jim Gordon continues to be awesome and I haven't given much credit to Donal Logue's Harvey Bullock, he's doing a good job at slowly becoming an honest cop and they make a good team, unfortunately they aren't given much to work with as everyone else around them is rather dull, the scenes where they really fizzle and crackle are only doable when it's just the two of them and no one else. Others are able to hold their own, John Doman's Carmine Falcone does an excellent job, but everyone else...ugh. Especially Barbra, which thank God the inevitable break up between Jim and Barbra is well on it's way and I couldn't be happier although we'll have to sit through a break up episode and oh geez, just kill me now.

Meanwhile, Fish Mooney continues to be the dumbest character in the series, instead of provoking a mob war between Maroni & Falcone like Tony Soprano would or having a 3rd party hit Falcone, she's continuing on with her dumbass Oedipus Complex plan, which has so far rendered no results, except getting Falcone's ledger. Geez woman, just put a bullet it in him and blame Maroni, after the fall out of Arkham and Maroni having killed Nikos no one of The Falcone side of the fence would bat an eye, furthermore where are Nikos' men in this, shouldn't they be wondering why their boss got wacked and Falcone did nothing about it. Fish could definitely do that instead of wasting all this damn time teaching some girl some aria and HOPING that Falcone would bed her. Fish has the opportunity to not only take over The Falcone Family BUT eliminate The Maroni Family in the process by invoking a mob war. That's more than likely what The Penguin is doing.

...when he's not talking to his mom, that is.

Speaking of The Penguin, his mom RULES! I find this woman hilarious and their relationship to be pretty awesome. She's so whimsical and foreign and very reminiscent of Danny DeVito's Penguin, in terms of style of dress and such. They're great together and fun to watch, I hope we see more of her. What I hope we see less of is Bruce Wayne, MY GOODNESS could this kid be any worse?! And it's not his fault, to be honest, it's the lines they right for him. Look, we get it, he's gonna be Batman, having him in a scene or two is okay but this...no. He's not even well into his teenage years yet and he's already looking for clues and learning how to fight, NOT YET! Can he at least wait until high school. Worst yet was in introduction of another Batman villain and a very iconic one at that, Hush a.k.a Thomas Elliot.

Child actors tend to suck MASSIVE balls unless they're actually playing characters their age, but when they're playing characters who are supposed to be very smart or repressed murderers they tend to go over board and that's what both Bruce & Thomas did in their scene together, cringe-worthy does not begin to describe it. It was clear that Thomas was really into the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne, BUT in the comic books Thomas and Bruce were friends, sort of, would it have been too hard to have Thomas continuously talk about the trauma Bruce went through in a sense of a veiled condolence while harping on the graphic details and not have any clue that what he was saying was inappropriate; Like "Wow Bruce, I can't imagine what you're going though. I mean watching your parents die, must've been horrible, I mean all that blood. I feel so bad for you. I mean you didn't even get to say goodbye, how terrible." and then when Bruce rebukes him, Thomas could be genuinely shocked and just be like "Hey, I was just trying to say I'm sorry.". Everyone would be able to tell something was off about him, but in "Gotham" they made that abundantly clear and left very little to the imagination.

Voted Most Likely To Be A Serial Killer

That's the maintain problem, very little is left to the imagination, too much is spelled out and laid out and very cut and dry. This episode was a decent one but it highlighted a lot of what's wrong with this show and introduced elements that could've made it much better had this been not rushed (and you can't tell me it wasn't). For a series about "Gotham" before Batman and the HUGE inventory of Batman villains, this show has an EXTREME lack of dazzle and spectacle to it, unlike the other DC properties such as "Arrow" and "The Flash". Both "Arrow" and "Gotham" are centered around people with no superpowers, but "Arrow" has the dazzle and the spectacle that a show like this NEEDS to have...and instead of that, we get Jada Pinkett in a confession booth talking to her "secret weapon"...I rest my case. See you next week.