Tuesday, October 25, 2016

My Review of Gotham's 3x06: "Follow The White Rabbit"


Written by Steven Lilien & Bryan Wynbrandt
Directed by Nathan Hope

Jervis: "Welcome to our tea party, James. We've been expecting you."

And this week, it's a case of dull, cliched A-plot versus somewhat engaging but also frustrating and inconvenient B-plot but seeing as the former actually made my teeth gnash a bit more, let's delve into that one first, shall we?

Tetch reappeared in this episode and started proceedings off by kidnapping a married couple and forcing Gordon to choose between saving them or a little boy. Needless to say, James chose the latter after a cryptic man in white relayed the message to him but also showed the right amount of scorn when the couple subsequently plummeted to their deaths.

The vendetta that Jervis seems to have for Jim has already lost it's momentum and we're about four or five episodes away from this half season arc ending. This episode took an offensively predictable route when Jervis decided to kidnap both Valerie and Leslie in order to force Gordon's hand into choosing the woman he really loves and so on.

Of course, even when Gordon thought he was being clever, one of the ladies still got and the other one wasn't best pleased with Jim's actions. I'm actually a little surprised in the midst of all this, that Tetch didn't add Barbara into the kidnapping mix but on the other hand, that was definitely for the best even if she has done nothing this season but just snark and so on.

It's disappointing that after four episodes since his debut that I'm actually eager for Tetch to exit stage right. Benedict Samuel is good in the role but already the writing for him is feeling too repetitive and there's only so many scenes I can tolerate with him taking no responsibility for terrorising his sister and I'm rapidly losing patience with him. Once again, it didn't help that Gordon also let him slip away as well.

Onto the B-plot, I can't believe the show is actually going there with Oswald and Edward. Even if the latter doesn't feel the same way (and it's very likely he doesn't), the fact that in another frustrating episode, Gotham effectively outed Oswald is kind of cute. And we're talking about a man here whose literally killed for a sandwich in the past.

Of course Oswald's hopes of confessing his feelings to Edward over a romantic dinner more or less went down the pan when Nygma encountered a woman who looked a lot his dead ex. Isabella, looking like she's stepped out of a Hitchcock movie even charmed Nygma with a riddle, so it's pretty obvious that she's a trap of some kind and that Edward is in for a rotten time ahead. As for whether or not the show will properly go there with him and Oswald, I guess we'll have to wait and see, huh?

- Barnes is hulking out a little with Alice's blood taking effect on him. Bullock picked up on him being off.
- No Bruce, Selina, Alfred, Lucius or Ivy this week. Butch was mentioned and it was implied that Tabitha might be sleeping with him again.
- I think Oswald just triggered a future sociopath with the advice he gave to Luke during his school trip with Edward there.
- Chronology: Not long from where Anything For You left off.

Follow The White Rabbit was one of the weakest episodes we've had in a while with a main plot that this show has done to death so many times that even the writers must realise they're taking the piss. On the other hand, at least the Oswald/Edward stuff was better viewing.

Rating: 6 out of 10

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