My Review of Gotham's 3x08: "Blood Rush"

Written by Tze Chun
Directed by Rob Bailey

Barnes (to Gordon): "Things are gonna change around here. You and I gonna make a difference in this city. We're gonna clean it up."

Anyone who has seen The New Batman Adventures episode Judgement Day might be somewhat familiar with what this show seems to be doing with Barnes these days. This storyline isn't entirely riffing it but it certainly seems to be influenced by it as Barnes has begun a one man campaign to clean up the city, one scumbag at a time.

Or in this episode's case, one nasty plastic surgeon who has taken to kidnapping people, removing their faces and then getting some hapless henchmen to dispose of the bodies in acid. Thanks to Tetch (who made a brief appearance here), we really do know that Barnes is completely infected with Alice's blood and by the end of this one, he was certainly embracing that fact.

Barnes's transformation hasn't automatically made him into a more interesting character but there was certainly something sinister in the way he told Gordon that he intended to clean the city up and the death of the surgeon while not really gruesome (and that character deserved a gruesome demise) did manage to pack a punch though.

Speaking of Gordon, this week he managed to mostly annoy Mario Falcone, whose genteel persona somewhat slipped this week. Mario wasn't shy in admitting to Leslie that he wasn't happy about Gordon rejoining the GCPD and at their engagement party, he even managed to vent his annoyance out at Gordon by punching him in private.

If anything this episode really reinforced and not in a subtle way that Leslie really isn't that into Mario as much as she claims to be. Even though she's marrying him, you get the feeling this won't end well and that's without Barbara popping up to taunt Leslie about losing Jim as well.

Keeping with the relationship theme this week, Edward's one with Isabella managed to get even weirder than before. This week, Nygma tried to break up with her (with Oswald's help) when she started reminding him of Kringle and instead of taking the hint, Isabella actually began to dress like Kristin in order to help Nygma out. Her plan kind of succeeded but it seemed like Oswald might have killed her going by the end of this one. Nygma's not going to please with that, Oswald.

- No Bruce, Selina, Alfred, Butch or Tabitha this week? Also, going by next week's trailer, at least we have Ivy again.
- At some point this season, the show is going to have Babs do more than show up and randomly antagonise someone, right?
- Toad? That's another recent villain in the rogues gallery.
- Chronology: Not long from Red Queen left off.

Blood Rush certainly added more to Barnes's storyline than we've had. It also seems that it could be coming to a fairly interesting conclusion as well, which means the GCPD will be down a member fairly soon.

Rating: 7 out of 10