Gotham Review: The Scarecrow

It doesn’t bode well to be the random civilian seen at the beginning of an episode of Gotham, in fact it’s rather deadly. Oh and look Jonathan Crane is helping his father to murder this poor man, I swear that kid never stood a chance.

Well, we can see now that Fish’s encounter with the pirates did not end in her favor, as they have taken her prisoner. I wonder what good it does these pirates to keep all of these people? Do they harvest organs from their prisoners to sell on the black market? They can’t really be holding their prisoners for ransom since they seem to just gather up everyone on a ship that they haven’t had to kill taking it over.

First man that comes at a new girl nearly always gets jumped by the second man? Well if any man approaches Fish Mooney with that sort of intent, they will find themselves jumped by her once they beat the competition.

Gordon and Thompson still don’t make any sense to me, there’s just no reason for it, although admittedly if Jim and Barbara have their kids now it throws off the whole timeline for Batgirl, I mean, she is more than 12 years younger than Bruce, so I guess I can see why they are stalling on Jim and Barbara after all. Plus it establishes that they have a lot of problems for later, when he has an affair with Essen and eventually marries Essen.

Oh that is just horrid, it’s a good thing I’m not very squeamish or watching Dr. Crane turn his victims adrenal glands into mush for his fear formula would make me want to vomit. And I’m sure injecting yourself with a formula made from someone else’s adrenals like that can’t be sanitary.

So Gerald Crane is obsessed with fear because he was a damn coward and didn’t try to save his wife from a house fire. He failed her and now other people have to die so he can get passed his fear, how utterly and completely pathetic.

Oh Alfred, one day you will regret complying with Thomas Wayne’s wishes. One day when you are watching helplessly as Leslie Thompkins removes bullets from Bruce’s battered body and works to save his life, you will wish you had put Bruce into therapy to move passed the grief and pain of his parents deaths. But of course if you did that now there wouldn’t be a show, and there wouldn’t be a Batman in the future.

Falcone doesn’t give a damn about Penguin’s problems with Maroni, Penguin is just a peon to him, he doesn’t really take him very seriously.

Jim seems pretty awkward around Leslie, and I happen to agree with Harvey that Jim and Leslie’s ‘office romance’ will end in tears. After all, he has to get back together with Barbara at some point. If this show were planning to deviate so far from comic books as to have another woman be the mother of Jim’s kids Barbara Kean wouldn’t have been introduced at all.

This Mace guy won’t be in charge for long, not with Fish Mooney around.

Fear as an evolutionary flaw? What utter nonsense! Life on this planet evolved to feel fear to prevent senseless accidents. Wild animals fear predators and humans; by avoiding both they stand a better chance of surviving. The same principle applies to humans. We develop a fear of heights and that teaches us to avoid a bad fall; we fear dangerous animals and we avoid getting eaten. Crane really is a moron, and he passes it along to his son. War, rape, and other horrors of the like are due to greed and a lust for power, not fear.

Edward Nygma is too adorable to be real! I can’t take it, we need him on screen more often, and I think other Gotham fans will agree with me.

Poor Jonathan Crane, he doesn’t want to go through with his dad’s “protocol” but he’s still a loyal son so he can’t just run to the police to keep his father from injecting him. Jonathan is an example of just how damaged a person can become due to their parents screwing them up. Normally Dr. Jonathan Crane a.k.a. Scarecrow is not a sympathetic villain in Batman, but with this new take on his origins he certainly is becoming one on Gotham.

Is it just me or have Falcone and Maroni already done this deal, just in reverse? Penguin has got Gotham’s two biggest crime bosses trading him back and forth like he’s the most prized possession in all of Gotham. First Maroni has to pay Falcone off to keep Penguin alive and on his side, and now Falcone is doing the same. Penguin sure knows how to make himself invaluable to his bosses.

I love the little face-off between Penguin and Nygma, who I think instantly don’t like each other because they both feel that they are Jim’s special little friend (like Jimmy Olsen, not something romantic, or something weird) and of course instinctively see the other as competition. It is entirely possible that in this version of Batman’s world, Riddler will be bugging Penguin for a long time to come.

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light” what an interesting saying, I wonder if it’s true, in Gotham I’m sure it seems true, but in reality I’m not so sure.

This is Bruce’s first real chance to prove to himself that he can be independent, that he can be resourceful, it’s a really good chance to test himself. As horrible as it seems to say that, especially when talking about a 12 year old boy, it is the first time he proves his resilience to himself.

I feel sort of proud of Alfred for not outright panicking, and instead of rushing to Bruce’s aid he allows the boy to accomplish the climb back up the hill on his own.

With Fish in charge of the pirates’ prisoners, many of them might survive, she could come back to Gotham with a whole little army at her back.

Traditionally Jonathan Crane’s own fear-related experiments on himself are what screwed him up so bad, in fact many of his actions against his victims were due to the fact that he could no longer feel fear. It looks like this time it’ll be the results of his father’s actions that will screw him up that bad.

Imagine if Alfred had been Bruce’s father from the beginning, instead of just his father figure, how different would his life have been? He’d have been just as strong and determined as Batman, but hopefully he’d have led a healthier life. For one thing, if Alfred was Bruce’s father and they lost his mother, Alfred would have made sure his boy got the therapy he needed.

The woman whose eyes were taken by the pirates lends credence to the black market organ harvesting idea I had about why the pirates are keeping so many prisoners. Hopefully we’ll learn more in the next episode. Remember Gotham fans, Caped Crusades live tweets Gotham every Monday!

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