Pieces of a Broken Mirror Plot Summary:
When an assassin who makes his weapons out of old toys tries to take down Lee (Morena Baccarin), Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is assigned to the case, while he also keeps an eye out for Bullock (Donal Logue) after he quit the force. Alfred (Sean Pertwee) gets into trouble while living at the Narrows, and Ivy (Peyton List) is reborn.
After a near three-month absence, Gotham returns with an odd choice for an episode. There wasn’t a lot of firepower here. Not that the episode was bad, but it felt tame for a mid-season return. Also, no Penguin? Come on. It’s a little irritating when you tease the epic meeting of Oswald and Jerome, but don’t have them in the big return episode. Lame. That’s clearly next week though. Speaking of villains, let’s start there, and get the negative out of the way first.
Cory Michael Smith is by far the best live action Riddler we’ve probably ever seen. I respect Frank Gorshin for what he did back in the sixties show, and while Jim Carrey’s energy was admirable in Batman Forever, it’s not the Riddler we want to see. With the big screen failing to give us a truly great Riddler take, I’m thankful for this version. Having said that, would you just bring the character back, already! Enough is enough!
I get it. We got a lot of Riddler last season, so they needed a break with the whole brain freeze shenanigans. We’re into mid-season now, and it’s still just split personality teases. As much as I love this Riddler, the whole split personality/talking to the mirror garbage never appealed to me. He’s not Two-Face. While Nygma’s storyline offered a nice twist, just let him be the Riddler again. For crying out loud, let’s go!
Speaking of swing and a miss villains, let’s talk about Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy is a tough Batman villain to pull off. The best iteration is probably the Arkham video games. Out of all the villains on this show, Gotham has blundered the most with Poison Ivy. She gets reborn. Again. Hasn’t Ivy become Poison Ivy eight times by now? Also, we get a third actress playing the character in four seasons? She also randomly just decides to care about plants and mother nature. Yeah, sure. Whatever. There’s some potential here, and to Peyton List’s credit, she gives a good performance, but they need to start blowing the plants off the compost heap soon with this villain.
We also got a new one off villain this week, Griffin Krank (Thomas Lyons), aka, the Toymaker. I always thought the Toymaker was a Superman villain? He was okay. Some nice gimmicks, but nothing special. There’s no doubt Professor Pyg is still the highlight of the season.
While a lot of villains were a miss, we got a lot of strong moments from the core cast that really saved this episode. Alfred didn’t waste any time causing trouble post Wayne Manor life. Alfred was definitely MVP this week. You already feel bad after Bruce (David Mazouz) fired him, but then he gains the respect of the Narrows, which was a great scene. Not only was this a cool moment for Alfred, but you sympathize with how desperate everyone is in the Narrows. Alfred’s arc took a sad turn, but it also led to bad ass Alfred, which is never a bad idea.
Ben McKenzie carried the episode well, as he always does. You can feel Harvey weigh on him throughout the whole hour, although the wrap up felt a little rushed. Gordon worked a lot with Lucius (Chris Chalk) in this one, which is always superb, but is Lucius like a defacto detective now or something? Why does he go along with Gordon to question suspects? He’s a scientist. Am I missing something?
The big three of Barbara (Erin Richards), Tabitha (Jessica Lucas) and Selina (Camren Bicondova) are back, and better than ever, including a new commercial for the reopening of their club, with an especially funny performance from Bicondova. This is completely random, but all the bars and clubs in Gotham seem to function in a different decade. There’s one club at the beginning that felt like the forties, but Barbara’s club was more seventies. Only in Gotham, I guess.
This episode was a little rough around the edges, especially in the beginning, in which the edits felt like they kept getting cut off before the scene ended. While not one of their best, there was still plenty of Gotham in there, including a scene chewing performance from Baccarin, who’s taken to her leadership role quite well.
I’ll let this one slide, as next week looks to be epic as hell.
Rating: 6 out of 10 (“Meh”)
