Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: bruce wayne, dc, entertainment, fox, gotham, James Gordon, Jerome Valaska, television

Face The Face – Jerome's Return To Gotham

This article contains spoilers for the Gotham episode – Smile Like You Mean It.

.

.

.

.

.

One of the slowest builds Gotham has been doing is the development of The Joker / Jerome Valaska. The introduced him as a one off killer in the first season, upped him a bit along the way and then killed him. You know, classic character building. Turns out his time in the spotlight thanks to Theo Galavan has left a growing group of followers for the deceased mad man lead by former Indian Hill employee Dwight. Now Dwight has come up with a plan to bring Jerome back to life. But like all good plans one bust me willing to adapt on the fly and when Jerome doesn't come back to life, he cuts off the corpses face and uses it as a mask to rally Jerome's followers. Like most people would do. But it turns out that Dwight's big electrical shock was more like a microwave and Jerome kept cooking over time and came back to life in the police station morgue. The faceless Jerome, holds a gun on Leslie Thompkins, and finds out what he missed over the last year in what felt like a true Joker scene. When Dwight and his crew take over a TV station, Jim Gordon, Harvey Bullock and the rest of the police raid the place and take Dwight into custody. Jerome takes him right out, staples his own face back on… like any of us would do… and proceeds to broadcast to the world to do what they want and then blows up the power plant causing a citywide black out. Not good for the police.

Cameron Monaghan's performance as Jerome was spot on and the highlight of the episode. The scene with him talking to Thompkins felt like a classic Joker dialogue from the comics. His wanting to fill in the gaps of the last year, asking about Bruce Wayne and Galavan. Prying into what happened between Thompkins and Gordon. His previous performances felt just off from Joker, like someone trying too hard. But this came across natural like both the actor and the writer got it figured out.

That's not all that happened though. In the second highlight for me was David Mazouz's performance as Bruce. When Cole Clemmons, The guy who threatened Maria Kyle last episode, shows up to get $200,000 from Bruce or he'll go to the police about Maria, Bruce is willing to pay and does so. When Maria takes the money to Cole, Selina follows and finds out her mom was in on it. She goes back to Bruce and asks if he knew. He did. When she says both he and her mom lied to her, he says it was for very different reasons. She tries to fight him, her anger making her strike out. Bruce calmly blocks or sidesteps the attacks, catching the last roundhouse kick. She ends up storming off. Bruce is complete in control in both scenes he was in. This wasn't the young child we met in an alley in the pilot. This was the intelligent and trained young man moving along the path to become Batman. He knew they were being conned but let it play out for his friend's sake. He has trained enough that where once Selina would've beat him, now he defends with little effort. And it was believable and impressive. It's starting to seem like this could be a young Batman.

The third story going on is the continued downfall of Oswald Cobblepot. The scheme being run by Edward Nygma and Barbara Kean has been working to tear down the Penguin and it continues as most of his lieutenants are gone, the underworld is falling apart, the city is turning on its mayor and Oswald is still obsessed with Nygma. But that should all come to a head next week as Penguin heads off to "rescue" Riddler from Kane Chemicals.

The whole thing of Bruce becoming a man… better hope that's true as next week, in the winter finale, it looks like he goes toe-to-toe with Jerome.

https://youtu.be/G9z7GEY1ocA

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!