Gotham, “Look Into My Eyes”, Review!

More major players are coming to ‘Gotham’ as Jervis Tetch aka The Mad Hatter (Benedict Samuel) makes is debut. Tetch is introduced as a hypnotist act at Barbara Kean’s club. It is revealed that he uses his hypnotics to steal from people and eventually kill them. Tetch approaches Jim Gordon about finding his sister, Alice Tetch (Naian González Norvind), who had escaped Indian Hill and has a rare blood disease. Gordon eventually finds her, only to realize that her blood can quite literally poison people, and she will do anything to prevent its spread. When Gordon attempts to confront Jervis about it, Jervis tries to hypnotize Gordon into killing himself. Alice shows up in the nick of time to scare Jervis off with a gun and save Gordon. Meanwhile with Bruce, his clone shows up at Wayne Manor, we find out that clone is known as ‘Five’. He stays long enough to observe Bruce and learn his mannerisms, and then goes impersonating Bruce to help Selena find Ivy. Lee has returned to Gotham to work with the GCPD along with her fiance. Her fiance meets Gordon at the hospital giving Gordon stitches after a not so friendly encounter while looking for Alice. Lee’s fiance and Gordon don’t appear to be on all that good of terms. We find out that Lee’s fiance is actually Falcone’s son, which is sure to cause some drama. Finally, Penguin’s political ambitions show as he challenges Gotham’s acting mayor and calls for an election. He uses his newfound political power to spring Nigma from Arkham, leaving us to wonder what the two are up to.

Overall, this episode is a vast improvement over last weeks. The theme of the season is becoming very apparent and I’m excited to see what they do with The Mad Hatter, one of Batman’s most underrated rogues. It’s nice to see some of Gotham’s original players come back into play without it feeling like the show is repeating old storylines. If anything, the stark contrast between Gotham’s criminal underworld of organised gangs to insane supercriminals will be an interesting contrast. If nothing else, I’m happy to see Lee back as she is one of my favorites on the show. Penguin and Riddler make an entertaining team, and I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of mess they are going to make. I also like that Selena is getting more screentime, as Catwoman is easily one of Batman’s most intriguing rogues. We’ll see how Lee’s return to the GCPD might either impede or persuade Gordon to come back to the force. It should be an interesting season. If I were to complain about anything, it would be that the clone storyline for Bruce feels very predictable. We all know there can only be one and it’s going to be the original Bruce. However, if the writers of Gotham can at least make the story arc for that shocking in some way, I thin it will be fine. I give it four out of five batarangs.