Tuesday, October 11, 2016

My Review of Gotham's 3x04: "New Day Rising"


Written by Robert Hull
Directed by Eagle Egilsson

Oswald: "How did you know I would win?"
Nygma: "I believe in you, Oswald, even when you don't believe in yourself."

And just like that, Oswald and Edward have become the new Harley and Ivy. Just think, we've gone from a brief interaction back into the first season, a briefly explored rapport within the second season and now something of a true connection has been forged between the two of them and it only intensified within this episode.

One of the reasons why Harley/Ivy has struck a chord with people was because it originated as a legitimate friendship between two villains who had each other's best interests at heart and with Oswald and Edward, it seems that the Gotham writers are perhaps drawing on that too. Last week, Oswald used his influence to get Edward out of Arkham. This week, he's getting Edward dolled up in nice suits.

Then you've got Edward himself who this week decided to repay Oswald's kindness by trying to make his friend run for Mayor more honestly. This involved pay a girl scout to make a point about buying people and undermining Butch's use of backhanders to curry Oswald's favour. Of course, Oswald wasn't initially pleased with this and Edward came close to getting his brains splattered by Butch until Oswald realised that people genuinely wanted to vote for him.

While this show is making really unsubtle parallels of sorts between Oswald's political aspirations and the current election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Oswald at least has the good fortune of being more likeable than either of them so I'm not really surprised that people chose him over the inept Aubrey James yet again.

Of course while the politics was a delight to watch, we still had to finish off the Mad Hatter plot and this week it came to something of a blood spattered ending. I really liked Alice and felt bad for her, so I was kind of miffed to see her actually be killed off in this episode while the Mad Hatter managed to slip away. I did however like the internal struggle Gordon had throughout the episode while still under Jervis's influence and the fact that Barnes got some of Alice's blood on him means they might actually do something interesting with him now.

Last but not least, Five and Selina made for a good subplot this week. Selina managed to figure out that 'Bruce' was a clone and Five himself got to needle the real Bruce and Alfred before the Court of Owls got to him. It seems a good time to maybe put that story on pause but no doubt we'll get back to it before the show breaks for Christmas.

- Jim went to Barbara for help in relation to Jervis but it was Leslie who actually helped him break Tetch's hold on him. Oh and Jervis had to dress his sister up as that character, didn't he?
- It's been two episodes since her re-introduction and Ivy has been nowhere to be seen. We're getting back to her soon, right?
- No Tabitha or Lucius this week as well as missing Ivy.
- Chronology: From where Look Into My Eyes more or less left off.

New Day Rising certainly wins points for all the election buzz and scenes with Oswald/Nygma while the Bruce and his Clone and the Mad Hatter plots moved along nicely with some stops for the time being.

Rating: 7 out of 10

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