Gordon races against the clock to save the city from the Alice Tetch virus; Alfred sees a big change in Bruce Wayne after his work with The Shaman; Gotham’s most deranged villains band together.

Gotham takes even more steps back as it begins to wrap up its third season with just a few episodes left. Every storyline you can think is touched upon as the episode bounces around like it can’t keep focus and  changes tone and look at a drop of a hat.

That’s been my biggest issue with the season as it can’t quite figure out what it wants to be, the show with lots of crazy villains, the detective series focused on Gordon and Bullock as cops, Bruce growing into Batman, or all of the above. This episode is an all of the above as the war brews between Penguin’s crew and the Riddler’s. The Shaman confronts the Court of Owls before releasing the virus, and then we get Lee going all crazy and how that plays out with Gordon.

Every plotline feels worse than the last with Lee taking the Tetch virus and enacting her vengeance against Gordon being the worst of them. The resolution had me shaking my head as to where it all goes and what happens. That plotline is the worst of the bunch and that’s saying something as the plot with the Court of Owls is as uninspired as they come being a riff on Batman Begins (though that took inspiration from the comics) and even Ra’s Al Ghul is hinted at.

Then there’s Penguin and his battle with the Riddler with the actual plot feeling like it doesn’t really go anywhere, just the usual fake outs and confrontations that don’t result in anything really. It’s also so different in tone from the rest of the episode it’s almost as if there’s two different shows here.

And that’s the biggest issue of this season. Part of it wants to be the more serious Batman films and part of it wants to be the campier films. And those two things don’t work very well together, at least this show hasn’t successfully made it work.

With just two more episodes left in the season, what looked like a season that was going to end on a high note, actually feels like it’s giving us a finale that’s as much of a mess as the rest of the season.

 

 

Overall Rating: 6.15