#gotham s5e09

[sunlitroom]

Gotham s5e09 - The Trial of Jim Gordon

As I watched it, and some random observations here and there.

Previously on Gotham:

The river is full of chemicals.  Reunification likely isn’t happening now.  Jim rescued Victor.  Jim made impossible promises to a winsome orphan.  Ivy’s feeding the earth with corpses.  Jim insists he’s going to be part of his and Barbara’s child’s life.  Barbara wants in on Oswald and Ed’s submarine plot.  Lee needs to read a season 4 synopsis, because she’s appalled that Jim is having a baby with Barbara.

So…

This is a summary as opposed to a recap.  

This is one of the hard-fought for – thanks for locking me out of my account twice, Twitter! :) – extra episodes that fans won.  It was filmed last, so while it exists within the context of season 5, I don’t think anything that comes after this episode is dependent on it story-wise – if that makes sense?  

As such – it’s sort of an easter egg.

The recaps I do are pretty much old TWoP-style recaps, if anyone here remembers what TWoP was. They cover what happened in the episode, but there’s also an element of critique throughout.  This is not a ‘hate’ thing.  This is simply what meta used to be: critical analysis.

The thing is, I didn’t think this was a strong episode.  I feel that if I do a full recap of this episode, it’s going to look like I’m meanly picking holes in it every second sentence, and given that this was an ‘extra’ episode hard-fought for by fans (Twitter locked me out of my account during the campaign :D), with cast involvement in the writing side, it would make me feel churlish to spend 7000 words picking it to bits.

On top of that – recaps are a bit of a labour of love.  They usually take a few hours of my weekend and wreck my wrists.  The nature and standard of this episode is such that I’m going to regard it as a sort of fun optional easter egg, as opposed to canon.  It’s sweet that there are so many personal associations in it for the cast (there were lots of genuine smiles in the wedding scene) – but it doesn’t really hold up in comparison with a regular episode.  

As such, I’ll still do meta, because I love a bit of meta - but not as much as usual.  My wrists are so happy.

When I saw The Trial of Jim Gordon as a title, I was excited. Jim’s always had a tricky relationship with guilt and shame and the whole notion of the hero.  He’s also got a tendency to wallow when he’s hit rock-bottom, but never actually goes so far as to apologise and make amends.  He feels bad about himself for a while, turns over a new leaf, and then carries on until the next moral lapse.

This title sounded like we’d get a sustained look at that habit.  Great – fascinating.  And it would be a nod to viewers who have been there since the first episode, because Jim’s sins stretch back as far as season one.  For example, he took Loeb’s one good and pure quality – his love for his daughter – and used it to blackmail him: an incredibly morally murky moment for him.  

And there’s been so many more moments like that over the years.  He went to Carmine Falcone because his ego couldn’t take losing a pissing contest with Oswald.  His actions led to the deaths of cops during the Pyg fiasco.  He let Oswald take the fall for Theo Galavan’s murder.  He allowed Sofia Falcone to propel him to the Captain’s job and screwed over his best friend in the process.  He betrayed Alice Tetch’s trust.  And that’s only naming a few.  

However, it was quickly apparent that his trial would only focus on one thing: his treatment of Lee.  And don’t get me wrong – Jim has done Lee wrong at points. I would say the worst moment was when he didn’t contact her immediately after his escape, despite knowing that she had suffered a miscarriage.  His rationale for that was weak, and I could see how she would be badly hurt by it and feel betrayed.

But.  There’s a couple of big issues created by focusing on Lee alone.

First up - it diminishes her as a character.  It removes Lee’s intelligence and strength and agency and interests and makes her one thing: the victim.  Was Jim the perfect man?  Nope. Did Lee have the ability to call it a day?  Yes, repeatedly. She could have checked out when she didn’t feel he was open enough about their relationship at work, or when he was weirdly slow to commit, or when he went off and murdered Galavan against her express wishes, or when he killed Ogden Barker, or when he lied about killing Galavan…. the list goes on.

Which is not to condemn her for wanting to stay in the relationship, that’s her call and that’s fine. But what you can’t really then do – in telling a story – is to paint her as a passive victim.  Lee had choices.  Which leads to the next problem in focusing on her alone.

In the context of Jim’s sins – the fact that Lee at every point had other options means that she’s probably one of his less hard-done-to victims.  Alice Tetch was terrified and without any other help when he betrayed her. Harvey has repeatedly said that working with Jim is essentially what keeps him going day to day – but Jim took his captaincy and left him feeling judged and alone and obsolete in a hospital bed.  Oswald was powerless when he abandoned him in Arkham.  Barbara only asked to be recognised as a human being when she was released from hospital.  It’s these kinds of people he has to answer to: the people who were vulnerable and powerless and desperately in need of help when they came to him.

And when the story just chooses to ignore them – then what we’re left with is the underlying message that those kinds of people, the freaks, the outsiders, the ones on the edge, well - they just don’t count.  Not to Jim Gordon, and thus, tacitly, not in the moral system of this universe.  They’re somehow not valid – their suffering matters less, and Jim doesn’t have to answer for how he’s wronged them.

For the narrative here to send and endorse that message is so difficult to reconcile to the show’s narrative as a whole that – for me – it simply can’t be accepted without major problems.

On practical level, too – the trial premise doesn’t really make sense.  Lee’s willingness to still have Jim in her life doesn’t exonerate him from past wrongs. The trial is an interesting idea.  Examining whether Lee wants to rebuild a relationship with Jim is an interesting idea. The two don’t really mesh well, though.

Overall, as a concept – it just didn’t really come off successfully, which is unfortunate, because the kernel of the idea had promise.    

Most of that main plotline is also plagued with inconsistencies, which didn’t help. Last week – Jim told Barbara that he didn’t want to see her in jail and take their baby away from her.  This week? That doesn’t hold water.  She’s excised from her own child’s life all over the place.  Alfred tells Lee she’ll make an exquisite mother.  Jim’s hallucination has Lee offering him the baby.  You can easily acknowledge that Lee will be the baby’s stepmother without erasing Barbara – but the story doesn’t seem to know how to do that. Fumbling it like this makes characters look callous.  Another odd moment was Ivy’s sudden willingness to see Selina dead.  That doesn’t follow on at all from the last time we saw her. On top of that, it felt a bit wearying for the women to all be at odds in this episode - and in such a simplistic good vs bad way.

Thinking a bit more about inconsistencies, the story seems not to acknowledge that season 4 happened.  It’s pretty glaring that season 5 hasn’t touched on Ed/Lee at all.  Whether or not you personally liked it, it was a big relationship that seemingly revealed a lot about Lee, and what’s seemed apparent this season is that they simply don’t know how to write their way back from something as big as the climactic ‘I do see you’ moment.  

This episode continues to ignore the repercussions of that relationship, which is fair enough, since the rest of the season has too – but it also ignores just about all of the rest of season 4.  You can’t really have Lee calling Barbara a psychopath when we saw her shoot Sofia in the head and knife Ed in the gut.  If you do, then you’re going to make her look like a moral hypocrite.

Last up, you have Oswald and Barbara in Sirens.  It’s maybe a very concentrated example of a problem the show has had over the years in handling shifts of tone.  If the story were consistently light and camp, and never touched on deeper themes, and the characters were purely comedy villains – then the notion of Oswald and Barbara not being invited to the wedding is a sly nudge in the ribs joke. But because it does frequently examine darker territory, and because it has showed us that they’ve both saved Jim’s neck repeatedly, and because it did show us their trauma, and did made us engage with them emotionally – excluding them causes problems.  It creates an ’us vs them’ when the show has been at pains over the years to stress the idea of nuance and shades of grey.  Much like the Madonna/Whore thing it creates with Lee and Barbara – think hard.  Is this honestly what you want your story to say?

And…it’s not.  Not really.  Which is fundamentally the issue.  The story just doesn’t really feel like it was constructed with attention to the narrative first and foremost.  And there are reasons for that, and as a sentimental nod – I’m sure it’s very sweet, but as a story it’s ultimately much too self-indulgent and, as a result, not really up to par.  

General Observations

Things that I’m unclear on going forward

Will we have a vengeful Ivy running about - seeking revenge for the failure of her plan?  I’m assuming not?

Will Jim and Lee be described as married by other characters – or just ‘together’?

Are the gangs settled now?  This one seems a big deal in terms of the city’s stability

  To finish on a positive note:

Bruce and Selina were sweet.

Victor was a joy throughout. As well as quoting Dickens a few episodes ago, he gave us some Shakespeare this week.  Also, he’s a vegan now.  Victor: officially more well-rounded than several main characters. I think that the last time we’re going to see Victor (on Fox, anyway) – so catch you later, Mr Zsasz.

Lee should get to wear 40s-inspired stuff every week - she really suited that shape of wedding dress.  That’s been a real missed trick in her costuming.  

Lucius and Ed are a match made in heaven.  Not only did we get Lucius’ ‘we’re perfectly bonded – like carbon and oxygen’ line, but he also seems to get walloped round the head as often as Ed.

Normal service will be resumed in a fortnight :)

[lands-of-fantasy]

Alfred tells Lee about his experience on unexpectedely getting to raise Bruce (Gotham S5E09)

[amandajoyce118]

Gotham S5E09 “The Trial Of Jim Gordon” stills, set two

Plus bonus images from the Episode 100 party

[ramajmedia]

Gotham: 10 Worst Episodes According To IMDb | ScreenRant

That’s why, after 100 episodes, not every hour ranks near a perfect 10. In fact, the lowest ranked episodes on the Internet Movie Database come in at eight stars or below. They’re not examples of horrible episodes of television, but they’re certainly not favorites of the Gotham fandom.

RELATED: 10 Changes Gotham Made To Batman That We Really Liked

10 Mad City: Burn The Witch S3E02 (8.0)

Season three must not have sat well with Gotham fans. There are quite a few episodes from the season amongst IMDb’s lowest rated. In fact, all three receiving a solid. 8.0 out of 10 are from season three.

This episode marked the beginning of the writers not knowing what to do with Ivy Pepper. She emerged in this episode, aged up to her late teens from another person’s power. Though she only appeared briefly, it was clear she was on her way to becoming Poison Ivy, or so viewers hoped.

Likewise, this episode brought Lee Thompkins back to Gotham just in time for Jim to begin a romance with Valerie Vale, though Barbara Kean was still hitting on him. Viewers were likely over his romantic entanglements by then.

9 Mad City: Red Queen S3E07 (8.0)

Five episodes after Valerie and Jim started dating, they broke up as a result of a “game” with Jarvis Tetch. This episode continued Tetch’s storyline, keeping him a little longer than necessary and making him a major villain for the series instead of a monster of the week.

Here, Tetch was a carrier for his sister’s virus, and that detail set up even more events for later in the series. That payoff wasn’t enough for some audience members who spent this episode waiting for Jim Gordon to get out of his own head. Thanks to being dosed with a chemical called “Red Queen” by Tetch, Gordon spent the hour hallucinating and trying to chase his own demons. 

That’s not a particular style of episodes fans loved since an episode with a similar format also ranks later in the list.

8 Heroes Rise: Light The Wick S3E18 (8.0)

Though this episode nears the end of season three, it continued the Court of Owls and Jarvis Tetch storylines set up at the start of the season. In fact, this episode is where they began to intersect.

The Court of Owls was going to use the Tetch virus to reveal the darker sides of the Gotham elite, and Jim was stuck in the middle of the plot. It’s clear that season three spent way too long keeping the Court of Owls a mystery, and the Tetch virus as a major plot point. Many of the season three episodes that relied heavily on both ended up amongst the lowest rated episodes.

RELATED: Gotham Characters Sorted Into Hogwarts Houses

7 Legend Of The Dark Knight: The Trial Of Jim Gordon S5E09 (7.9)

The only episode from the final season to rank amongst the worst, this episode actually worked in a similar vein to season three’s “Red Queen.” Much of the episode was spent inside Jim Gordon’s head.

After being shot while trying to organize a cease-fire, Jim spent the hour on “trial” for his life. He hallucinated major figures from his past during the trial, and watched as they attended his funeral.

Less time was spent on the confrontation between Ivy Pepper and Selina Kyle, which was actually the more compelling aspect of the hour. The two former best friends were at odds over Ivy’s latest transformation sending her down a different path than Selina.

6 Mad City: Better To Reign In Hell S3E01 (7.9)

When season three opened, there were a lot of positive aspects. Selina and Bruce were closer, for one thing, setting up the Catwoman-Batman dynamic. For another, Barbara and Tabitha opened their club. Sirens acted as a staging ground to expand storylines for Barbara, Tabitha, Butch, and Selina as the series continued. 

Unfortunately, this is also the episode that kicked off the Court of Owls storyline for the season, which the audience just couldn’t get into. Jim Gordon was also working as a bounty hunter, which definitely didn’t suit him. 

5 Welcome Back, Jim Gordon S1E13 (7.9)

It’s clear early on in the series that Jim Gordon would become the moral center of the Gotham Police Department. This episode began that path.

In it, he personally investigated the death of a witness as he believed corrupt cops were responsible. If that was all the episode involved, perhaps it would have ranked higher amongst fans. Instead, the episode had a lot going on. Bruce and Selina came into conflict about what she remembered about the night his parents were killed, Oswald fought about gang territory with Fish’s henchmen, Fish left Gotham to plot her revenge. There were a lot of separate stories to keep track of before the show even really started introducing its “monsters.”

4 Viper S1E05 (7.9)

Gotham fans were definitely not happy with substances altering the perception or abilities of characters in the series. Just like the Tetch storylines did, the season one episode “Viper” featured a mysterious substance that made people act out of character.

In this case, scientists created it to increase strength in soldiers. Viper did that, but only temporarily, by using the body’s calcium as fuel. Throughout the episode, Jim and Harvey Bullock tracked down its source. The more interesting storyline of Bruce and Alfred investigating corruption within Wayne Enterprises took a backseat.

RELATED: Gotham: 5 Best Relationships (& 5 Worst)

3 Rogues Gallery S1E11 (7.8)

Including “Rogues Gallery,” the remaining three episodes all tie for the lowest rated of the series. All three are episodes from season one, when the series was still finding its footing.

When an episode gets a title like “Rogues Gallery,” it’s likely the audience will suspect a team up of iconic villains from the past. Unfortunately, with this one so early in the series run, that wasn’t the case. Instead, Jim Gordon worked security at Arkham Asylum with a lot of characters who would never appear again. 

The only bright spots in the episode were Selina and Ivy taking up residence in Barbara’s empty penthouse, and Jim meeting Lee for the first time.

2 Harvey Dent S1E09 (7.8)

Harvey Dent is one iconic Batman villain. He appeared in multiple movies and animated projects inspired by the comics. There was a lot of pressure on introducing him into Gotham as the first big villain to join the show that wasn’t a main cast member.

Fans were content to watch Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Penguin, and Riddler slowly evolve over the course of the series. That wasn’t the case with Two-Face. When Harvey joined the show for an arc in the first season, the audience kept waiting for a big villain moment to drop. They never really got it. Even his first appearance hinted at anger hidden just below the surface, but nothing ever really came of it.

1 The Balloonman S1E03 (7.8)

Because “The Balloonman” was only the third episode of the series, viewers will probably cut it a little slack eventually. A lot of shows struggle to find their true voice in the first season. 

This episode, however, featured a lot of items that would become common amongst Gotham’s stories. There was the corruption of high ranking officials, Selina Kyle proving she’ll always land on her feet, Bruce and Alfred training for the future, and Oswald finding a way to stay alive. 

Perhaps it’s the odd crime that turned the audience off: one man using weather balloons to take lives. It was weird, even for Gotham.

NEXT: Gotham: 10 Best Episodes According To IMDb

source https://screenrant.com/gotham-10-worst-episodes-according-imdb/

[lands-of-fantasy]

The “hows” and the “whats”...you’ll figure that stuff out.

Gotham S5E09

[amandajoyce118]

Gotham S5E09 “The Trial Of Jim Gordon” stills, set one