One Bad Day Plot Summary:
With Gordon (Ben McKenzie) presumed dead, Jeremiah (Cameron Monaghan) puts his final plan into action with bombs all over Gotham, giving the city only hours to evacuate. Jeremiah also plans to drive Bruce (David Mazouz) completely insane by torturing Alfred (Sean Pertwee).
Jeremiah is certainly the main talking point for this episode. We’ll get to him in a minute. We have to start with the character I’ve been saying all along is the MVP of the season: Selina Kyle. Camren Bicondova has played this role to perfection, but she went to another level here. As I’ve said many times, the Bruce/Selina relationship has been one of the best elements to this entire series. With the exception of maybe The Dark Knight Rises, I’ve never seen their dynamic done better in any other medium.
This episode was just as much about Bruce as it was Jeremiah, and Selina was a big part of that. As I’m watching this episode play out, Selina is almost too one sided. The character of Catwoman has always been her dual nature. She’s constantly switching sides. Always. Even against Batman. In this series, for the most part, she’s always on Bruce’s side, especially this episode. This was by far the episode where their bond was strongest. The last scene between them was especially powerful, which makes the ending that much more impactful. It truly brought the episode and its namesake (“One Bad Day”) full circle.
Bruce truly had a rough go of it in this one. They went full Killing Joke here. The whole intent was to drive Bruce nuts with what they were doing to Alfred. You even got a good use of Scarecrow (David W. Thompson). While the atmosphere and setting were effective, they could have utilized David Mazouz’s acting a bit more. It’s really just him shouting “Alfred!” for thirty minutes. Having said that, you get two outstanding Bruce/Alfred moments. One is vintage Bruce/Alfred. The other is depraved as hell. Let’s just say Sean Pertwee got to do some interesting acting here, but he nailed it. They are making a strong effort to connect Bruce and Jeremiah, which makes all the sense in the world if Jeremiah is in fact our Joker.
Let’s get to that. This is a completely different character than Jerome. Jeremiah himself makes that very clear. It shows just how versatile an actor Cameron Monaghan is, another MVP candidate for this season to be sure. I just don’t feel a Joker vibe here. Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of Joker-isms within Jeremiah. I could certainly see him becoming the Joker, but this almost feels like an original villain, which I’m fine with. Whoever this guy ends up being, Jeremiah is creepy, unsettling and one hell of a threat. While his overall end game is to simply blow up half of Gotham, Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) contends there’s an elegance to his plan, making his goal more personal, which is always the sign of a great villain.
Speaking of Nygma, he makes his presence known in this episode. While he serves a key plot point, his relationship with Lee (Morena Baccarin) is far more intriguing. Nygma truly believes Lee loves him. She very well could, but Gordon lays out why the odds are against Nygma. This is a great scene between these two characters. It’s pure debate. It drives Nygma crazy that he can’t convince Gordon that Lee actually loves him. Every time Nygma makes a point, Gordon shoots it down. Gordon tries to move on, but in classic Riddler fashion, he becomes obsessed. He can’t let it go. He keeps grilling Gordon.
This was the perfect penultimate episode before the finale. It puts all our major characters at the forefront against one threat, with a specific focus on Bruce Wayne. Who else? We also got some classic Batman guilt as it’s Bruce’s funding that helped build these bombs.
This was also possibly one of the best Bullock (Donal Logue) episodes ever. Bullock was flat out awesome. Awesome. The man got the ending he finally deserved. In an otherwise dark, tense episode, this was the one crowd-pleasing moment.
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Great)
