GOTHAM: SEASON THREE (2016-17)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

In my review of Season 2, I wrote that "the injection of super-villains forced the writers to use the violence more carefully." However, Season Three shows a marked tendency to revert to the extremes of Season One, in which Gotham becomes a danse macabre, and citizens start dropping like flies in response to the new Big Bad-- or at least, the villain who dominates the first half of the third season.

Despite the unleashing of various "monsters" from Arkham Asylum, there wasn't nearly as much incidental death as in Season One's gangland wars. As if to make up for the underwhelming menace of  the Arkham monsters, the first half of Three introduces GOTHAM's version of the Mad Hatter (Benedict Samuel). Like the eighties comics-version, this one trades more in mind-games. However, in keeping with his connection to Lewis Carroll's motifs of madness, this Hatter's weapon of choice is an insidious virus that unleashes the Hyde in every workaday Jekyll. He reaches out to Jim Gordon-- who at season's opening has resigned from the GCPD to become a bounty hunter. The Hatter wants Gordon to find his sister, predictably named Alice, but soon Gordon finds that the demented fellow is filled with a love not quite brotherly. Alice dies, Hatter blames Gordon, Hatter unleashes the virus-- in small increments at first, affecting only particular individuals. One of those so affected is Gordon's former GCPD boss Captain Barnes, who eventually becomes a full-fledged original-to-TV super-foe, The Executioner.

Though Samuel provides a flamboyant madman, good in small doses, he ends up seeming like an objective correlate for the producers' desire to ratchet up multiple deaths and traumas. Parallel to this development, Bruce discovers that Hugo Strange created a clone of him, sometimes known as "Five," and he's a good enough doppelganger to fool both Bruce's butler and his sorta-kinda girlfriend Selina. Gordon's former flame Lee becomes engaged to another man, who just happens to be related to gang-boss Carmine Falcone. With the help of Riddler, Penguin successfully runs for mayor of Gotham, a promising idea that never really gels. But that development leads to a new plotline, in which Penguin forms a man-crush on Riddler. This results in a protracted feud between the two villains, making for some of the season's best acting as Robin Lord Taylor and Cory Michael Smith exchange verbal barbs and insidious death-plots.

The most interesting Bat-myth to be articulated in Season Three is somewhat derived from Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS. Nolan, no respecter of the Batmythos, decided that he would attribute the hero's rise to an improbable association with a band of vigilantes, "the League of Shadows," led by the mysterious Ra's Al Ghul. The second half of GOTHAM THREE is fittingly entitled "Hero's Rise," and stems from the attempt of the Court of Owls to suborn young Bruce Wayne. The gambit fails but the Court puts Bruce in the hands of the League. The logic that Nolan bollixed is better executed here; Young Bruce as yet has no clear idea as to what he wants to do to make his parents' deaths meaningful. But the League, commanded by a briefly seen Ra's Al Ghul, utilize brainwashing techniques with an aim toward making Young Bruce become an avatar of their lust for destruction. Toward the close of the season the writers even manage to take the League's desire to annihilate Gotham-- also seen in BEGINS-- and dovetail it with the Mad Hatter's viral menace.

There are a lot of minor plot-threads too, of course. The worst is probably one in which Lee Tompkins, tormented by her desire for loose cannon Gordon, willingly exposes herself to the virus so that she can, like her old rival Barbara Kean, take a walk on the Hyde Side. The Court of Owls story is wrapped up too quickly, and even though Michael Chiklis is entertaining, his character of Barnes is a dead weight. Selina connects with two aspects of her Cat-persona, taking a big fall like the BATMAN RETURNS version and getting hold of her signature weapon, a whip (though NOT a cat-o-nine-tails). The murders of Gotham citizens gets wearying after a while, but it's still fun to see the show's versions of Firefly, Mister Freeze, Poison Ivy (who has some fun scenes vexing Penguin), and the always insidious Hugo Strange. The psuedo-Joker returns, but only for a few episodes, though he does have the honor of being the first Bat-villain to get beat up by Bruce Wayne. Oh, and Alfred almost dies, but he gets better.

My recollection is that the next two seasons maintain this same overheated level of storytelling. The arc with the most mythic resonance is surely the one involving Young Bruce's brainwashing, but the actual episodes don't sustain mythic concrescence. Still, it's a good step, since the brainwashing fails in its original purpose, but still serves to set the hero on his pre-destined path.