#watching the gentle art of making enemies + how the riddler got his name is a BAD WAY TO START YOUR DAY. if you were wondering

[helianthologies]

season 3 episode 15 of gotham you will always be famous

[inappropriatefangirlneeds]

Navi (4/x)  GOTHAM  & MINE TAGS (some of them)

For now I´ll just establish a tag for my Gotham reviews, I got encouraged at the beginning of S2 to write episode reviews and you´ll find the collected posts now under a new tag “My Gotham full episode reviews” mine gotham   mostly my Gotham Gifs gotham almost meta with mine text mine textpost mine art    mine fanfiction   mine personal    mine text ifn watching various things other thoughts, meta and headcanons are still scattered round here

CelestineAnon

#damn I need a better tag thing for headcanon stuff

I want to refind this and maybe tag properly once I found a system

                                               GOTHAM 

gotham meta        gotham language           gotham parallels gotham music       gotham places              gotham fashion gotham food umbrella cuffs gotham men          gotham aesthetic          gotham predictions gotham behind the scenes       gotham gag reel       gotham cast gotham fanart     gotham fanfiction     gotham imagine       gotham fandom Custom Tailored Gotham Revamp FLAVOUR TAGS Mr. Penn & Victor Zsasz  the accountant and the assassin   Oswald Cobblpeot & Victor Zsasz  The Hitman and the Penguin /  dream team  peanut butter beaten bird jim´s learning curve         everybody loves Jim vampire!penguin             vampire punk!penguin          

#gotham season 1         01ep21

GOTHAM SEASON 2 gotham s2ep4       gotham s2ep5 Scarification    gotham s2ep6 By Fire   gotham s2ep7 Mommy's Little Monster      gotham s2ep8 Tonight's the Night    gotham s2ep9 A Bitter Pill to Swallow       gotham s2ep10 The Son of Gotham    gotham s2ep11 Worse Than a Crime         gotham s2ep12 Mr. Freeze     gotham s2ep13 A Dead Man Feels No Cold       gotham s2ep14 This Ball of Mud and Meanness              gotham s2ep15 Mad Grey Dawn       gotham s2ep16 Prisoners          gotham s2ep17 Into the Woods         gotham s2ep18 Pinewood         gotham s2ep19 Azrael     gotham s2ep20 Unleashed       gotham s2ep21 A Legion of Horribles          gotham s2ep22 All Happy Families Are Alike       gotham s2ep22 Transference

GOTHAM SEASON 3 gotham s3ep1 Better to Reign in Hell      gotham s3ep2 Burn the Witch gotham s3ep3 Look Into My Eyes           gotham s3ep4 New Day Rising gotham s3ep5 Anything for You              gotham s3ep6 Follow the White Rabbit   gotham s3ep7 Red Queen                      gotham s3ep8 Blood Rush gotham s3ep9 The Executioner              gotham s3ep10 Time Bomb gotham s3ep11 Beware the Green-Eyed Monster     gotham s3ep12 Ghosts                         gotham s3ep13 Smile Like You Mean It gotham s3ep14 The Gentle Art of Making Enemies   gotham s3ep15 How the Riddler Got His Name gotham s3ep16 These Delicate and Dark Obsessions gotham s3ep17 The Primal Riddle           gotham s3ep18 Light the Wick gotham s3ep19 All Will Be Judged           gotham s3ep20 Pretty Hate Machine gotham s3ep21ep22 Destiny Calling HeavyDirtySoul

GOTHAM SEASON 4 gotham s4ep1 Pax Penguina              gotham s4ep2 The Fear Reaper gotham s4ep3 They Who Hide Behind Masks     gotham s4ep4 The Demon´s Head     gotham s4ep5 The Blade's Path gotham s4ep6 Hog Day Afternoon      gotham s4ep7 A Day in the Narrows gotham s4ep8 Stop Hitting Yourself        gotham s4ep9 Let Them Eat Pie gotham s4ep10 Things That Go Boom   gotham s4ep11 Queen Takes Knight gotham s4ep12 Pieces of a Broken Mirror   gotham s4ep13 A Beautiful Darkness       gotham s4ep14 Reunion gotham s4ep15 The Sinking Ship The Grand Applause gotham s4ep16 One of My Three Soups gotham s4ep17 Mandatory Brunch Meeting gotham s4ep18 That’s Entertainment gotham s4ep19 To Our Deaths and Beyond gotham s4ep20 That Old Corpse         gotham s4ep21 One Bad Day gotham s4ep22 No Man's Land   GOTHAM SEASON 5 gotham s5ep1 Year Zero                          gotham s5ep2 Trespassers gotham s5ep3 Penguin Our Hero             gotham s5ep4 Ruin gotham s5ep5 Pena Dura                         gotham s5ep6 13 Stitches gotham s5ep7 Ace Chemicals                  gotham s5ep8 Nothing's Shocking gotham s5ep9 The Trial of Jim Gordon    gotham s5ep10 I Am Bane gotham s5ep11 They Did What?            gotham s5ep12 The Beginning...

SHIP TAGS (rpf & show) * Jim Gordon x Harvey Bullock  is there a ship name .. gordock bullon ? * Jim Gordon x Oswald Cobblepot       gobblepot         benbin * Oswald Cobblepot x Edward Nygma   nygmobblepot    nygmobble pictures (mine)   * Oswald Cobblepot x Victor Zsasz * Jim Gordon x Victor Zsasz  gorzsasz (only Fanart after May2020) * Oswald Cobblepot x Hannibal  Hanniwald 

CHARACTERS Tank Street Demonz liza                    Kristen Kringle   Miriam Loeb     loeb      Ethel Peabody      Hugo Strange alfred pennyworth   fish mooney          butch gilzean                 sal maroni tabitha galavan   Barbara Kean          Leslie Thompkins jim gordon               harvey bullock              Sarah Essen nathaniel barnes      Captain Nathaniel Barnes       Kathryn Monroe harvey dent             mayor aubrey james Bridgit Pike firefly    Mr. Freeze Sean Pertwee         mine Sean Pertwee     Dog Soldiers           Captain Heinz Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire     Gaius Julius Caesar noho hank (Barry) andrew sellon Perfume     hygiene      smell      scent 

[douxreviews]

Gotham - ‘The Beginning’ Review

Penguin: "I did not spend ten years in Blackgate to give my city to a man dressed like a bat!"

Me, watching the Gotham series finale and being confused that Gordon still doesn't have the iconic stache? It's more likely than you think.

If we're being honest, I could have watched a series finale that consisted of forty minutes featuring only Batman repeatedly foiling foolish and bumbling plots orchestrated by Penguin and Riddler, and walked away with zero complaints. Instead what we have is a suitcase-overstuffed-with-too-many-Tommy-Bahama-shirts of a plot that should have ran ninety minutes condensed into forty minutes. And yet, dare I say, I actually enjoyed this finale for what it was. It's flawed, contrived in some areas, and possesses a plot so convoluted, Donnie Darko is jealous, but I didn't walk away from the conclusion to Gotham feeling I had been cheated of something. But maybe that's just me coming to terms with the fact that no amount of time-jumps or finality are going to salvage the aspects of Gotham that are poor in quality.

The time-jump takes us ten years into the future, long after Gordon has been promoted and Bruce has left Gotham City. It's beyond me why this series chose to make such a drastic time-jump though, yet keep most of their cast members looking like they haven't aged a day. What's that? Oh right, how could I forget: they threw some purple hair dye in Lee's locks, now I can rest easy with that gripe.

Why Bruce went to a Tibetan-looking village specifically, we don't know, but something-something-bats happens, and he returns to his home city with a mission to drive out any trace of criminal activity he comes across, putting him on the radar of the mayor and the GCPD. At the same time, Jeremiah puts into motion a plot that for some reason needs to involve his escape from Arkham, Penguin, Riddler, the framing of Bullock for murder (I guess nobody bothered to dust the handgun that the victim – not Bullock – shot himself with for fingerprints?), and an immense collection of explosives to topple the new Wayne Tower. While Gotham has always had difficulties finding a consistent identity, it has mostly always walked a fine line between 'gritty' and 'campy,' and this is especially evident and welcomed in this finale, with certain sequences paying homage to the Year One comic, and others feeling like they were pulled right off of a Adam West Batman reel. I will also point out how the cinematography in this finale nicely contrasts the dark, dulled colors of everything before in Season 5, by giving us many vibrant, energetic scenes instead.

Another nice advantage a finale like this has compared to literally the entire series before it is that Gotham no longer needs to feel obligated to insert various easter eggs and set-ups for future characters; rather, it's allowed to take the cast it's been guiding towards their fated roles, and just allow them to be that. In other words, Gotham had freedom in this episode to do really whatever it wanted with the story now that there was no need for any further world-building, even if that story is borderline nonsensical at times.

I'm not sure yet even as I write this how I feel about David Mazouz and Camren Bicondova not returning to reprise their respective roles. Lili Simmons is fine as an older Selina and the resemblance between her and Camren is actually a little uncanny, but I can't imagine how much of a sucker punch it must feel to play so brilliantly the part of Bruce Wayne or Selina Kyle for five years and then learn that you won't even get a chance to put on the Batman-suit (which has this aesthetic to it that summoned some unpleasant memories of Batman and Robin) or Catwoman-costume when the finale is all said and done.

While we're on the subject of costumes, I have to give praise for Cory and Robin, and their input into the final designs for Riddler and Penguin; Riddler's outfit feels like a nice fusion of the spandex suit from Batman Forever, and the more formal wear from the Arkhamverse games, while Penguin's feels like it was inspired directly by the Burgess Meredith outfit. Perhaps issue may be taken with the fact that they may not seem as intellectually apt as before, or that Batsy got the best of them so quickly, but isn't that the whole point? From here on out, the feeling of being curbed by Batman's grappling hook is going to become practically routine for them. A service is done to the term 'callback' as well with Penguin and Gordon's scene on the docks, one I just wished hadn't been spelled out previously in the trailers, and Penguin's decision to taunt Gordon before pulling his trigger, evoking Riddler's words to him back in 'Heavydirtysoul': "Instead of killing me when you had the chance, you've decided to feed your ego."

I wasn't sold immediately on Jeremiah's final look as Joker from the promotional material. If I may be blunt, I miss the green curls, and scrutinized for days leading up to this finale over why the costume designers found inspiration for this look in The Walking Dead's whisperers. Cameron Monaghan though, in the precious five minutes of screen time he's given, succeeds in making Joker (or 'J' as he's now referring to himself as) once again feel like a distinct entity separate from Jerome or Jeremiah, as well as from previous live-action interpretations of the source material. It almost sounded as though he was channeling a Christopher Walken caricature, and the indication that he may find Batman just as, or even more, fascinating to obsess over as Bruce is pretty amusing to me. I'm not sure I understand even in reflection why he needed to frame Bullock as part of his whole operation though. It's in Bullock too where one of my major gripes with this episode lies, and it is how Bullock just feels more now as a plot point used to move other components of the story along. For example, why on Earth would an experienced detective like Bullock go alone to investigate a lead, how on Earth could an experienced detective like Bullock single-handily be bested by a single uppercut from around a corner, and I don't believe that an experienced detective like Bullock would keep the fact that someone set him up from Gordon of all people.

The actual execution of how to sell Batman in a finale like this is a tricky thing. On the one hand, I initially entertained this notion that Batman is never completely seen, but still his presence is felt. By the end though, what was also felt was that this episode seemed to be going out of its way to not show you the dark knight. Take for instance the final scene between him and Selina where Selina has her outburst, denouncing Bruce for walking out on her ten years ago. In most cases, I would think this is the type of conversation that warrants a face-to-face interaction. Instead, Selina chooses to keep her back to Batman in a rather impractical manner so that we as the audience are forced to stay focused on her for the entire exchange.

At the end of it all, Season 5 of Gotham is quite frankly, all over the place, and for me, its entertainment value and quality never ended up topping 'Ruin' or '13 Stitches.' Too many subplots that ended up receiving no payoff in the end each scrambled for control anyway over the season's narrative, costing the audience opportunities to see further developments of Bruce's transition into Batman, why Selina ended up choosing to not leave the city with Oswald, the strange attachment Nygma had with his question mark playing card, and a supposed allusion to a comic the showrunners couldn't reveal the title of at the time because it would be considered too much a 'spoiler.' It is dispiriting that this is the note Gotham goes out on for me because I will in fact miss many of these characters and all of this cast as it's been clear for a while that each of the actors have been making the effort to go 110% with what they're given to work with. My final thoughts shouldn't suggest either that this is the verdict by which I'm forced to remember this series by, au contraire, I'd instead prefer to look back on Gotham and judge it by the chapters it was able to execute wonderfully, among which include 'Penguin's Umbrella,' 'Welcome Back, Jim Gordon,' 'This Ball of Mud and Meanness,' 'Mad Grey Dawn,' 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies,' 'How the Riddler Got His Name,' 'The Primal Riddle,' 'Pax Penguina,' 'That Old Corpse,' and 'Ruin.'

When I get right down to it in its entirety, the closing words to Grand Canyon just about sum it up; "I think it's not all bad."

Aaron Studer loves spending his time reading, writing and defending the existence of cryptids because they can’t do it themselves.

[thedeevirus]

What I Would Change in Gotham: Season 3

Here it is: the first draft of things I would change about ‘Gotham Season 3’. I will probably add to it, these are just some of the more obvious plot points I thought could be resolved. Let me know what you all think. Obviously this is just my personal opinion. Fair warning: this is a looong post and not definitive (yet LOL)

Episode 11: ‘Beware the Green Eyed Monster’

When Barbara tells Ed Oswald killed Isabella, he DOES NOT believe her. Babs has no proof of this and Ed has just chopped off Tabby’s hand which gives her every reason to lie. Ed does, however, still manipulate Oswald into revealing his feelings for him. Ed is stunned by Oswald’s confession and leaves to get things right in his head: he is still grieving for Isabella and doesn’t know how he feels about romance right now. One thing he does know for sure though is that he is angry at Barbara for trying to ruin his and Oswald’s friendship. As such he pretends to team up with the trio to sow discord amongst them and protect Oswald from any real harm. He is also convinced that the trio still had something to do with Isabella’s death, especially now having seen Barbara’s hunger for power. This also explains the odd line of ‘You’re my best friend too Oswald, remember that’.

Episode 12: ‘Ghosts’

Ed still sacrifices the deputy chief of staff as in his view this is the function of pawns: to protect a king you have to sacrifice them. Ed also returns Elijah safely to his grave and not to the dumpster of a Chinese restaurant. Ed is also confident that Oswald can bounce back from one bad TV interview, after all it’ll take more than that to topple him from such a high position of popularity.

Episode 14: ‘The Gentle Art of Making Enemies’

The trio are watching the confrontation at the warehouse between Ed and Oswald via security cameras. As such Ed keeps up the charade when Oswald arrives to ‘rescue him’. However, Oswald angrily confesses he DID kill Isabella to Ed’s shock and grief. Heartbroken at this betrayal, Ed walks away without untying Oswald from the car. The barrel eventually tips and it turns out the barrel is full of nothing but water. The sizzling was caused by Ed placing a dollop of a chemical on the car hood that reacts that way when the water hits it. The security guard then arrives and unties Oswald. Ed has arranged this, deciding to team up with the trio for real, now knowing that Oswald really did betray him.

Episode 15: ‘How the Riddler Got His Name’

Kathryn recruits Jim Gordon personally into the Court of Owls, introducing herself as a friend of his father’s by meeting him at the graveyard. We cut Uncle Frank completely. She says her group was impressed by how Gordon restored order to Gotham following the blackout and want him as an ally.

Episode 16: ‘These Delicate and Dark Obsessions’

Oswald says he can’t take Nygma and the others on all by himself. Ivy says he doesn’t have to: he has her. Oswald thanks her but doesn’t see how a pair of freaks are going to take on a city full of mobsters without any weapons. Ivy says they also have this and holds up her perfume bottle. Oswald smiles, realising the possibilities.

Bruce is not taken outside Gotham for his indoctrination: the mountains, etc are all revealed to be an intricate illusion and he has actually been underground in Gotham the whole time.

Episode 17: ‘The Primal Riddle’

Oswald does not recruit Firefly and Fries. The reason for this is that they don’t actually do anything much until they show up with Fish and the ‘recruitment’ episode was very unclear about where exactly Fries was and how they found him and Firefly, got Fries’ gun, etc. So let’s just cut all those plotholes and just introduce them both already working with Fish when she shows up later.

Babs is starting to feel the pressure of running Gotham: by removing Penguin, she has inadvertently created a power vacuum with many different gangs jostling for control. This has been made worse by her and Tabitha killing the heads of the families in Episode 13 as well as Barbara’s itchy trigger finger and lack of experience/unwillingness to compromise. Butch says Nygma engineered the situation that way on purpose to keep the trio distracted from killing him: ‘Plan B’ should never have been a plan in the first place but Nygma knew Babs and Tabs would go for it due to their love of bloodshed. Tabitha thinks he has a point but Barbara won’t listen: she’s too busy wondering about the court of owls and needs Nygma’s help to figure them out.

Episode 18: ‘Light the Wick’

Since we cut Uncle Frank we don’t have the issue of Lee thinking Gordon is up to something and as such we don’t need to worry about why the GCPD don’t tell her (a trusted ally despite her problems with Jim) anything about their plan to infiltrate the court creating further plot problems that could’ve been resolved with a simple conversation.

Instead of using Firefly as an arbitrary threat, Oswald threatens Gordon with Ivy’s perfume but says he doesn’t want to be forced to use it as ‘they’re friends’. He convinces Gordon the perfume’s real by making him stand on one leg or something equally petty but uses a miniscule dose that wears off almost immediately.

Episode 19: ‘All Will Be Judged’

While Ed and Oz escape the court, the truth about Isabella is revealed when they enter a research lab and discover a series of audio recordings and notes in Isabella’s handwriting.

Isabella was created by Strange a ‘therapy’ for Edward while in Arkham. She was one of the Court’s first cloning attempts as well as a method to test their indoctrination methods. The idea was that she would be introduced to a ‘low level’ prisoner (Ed) in a controlled environment to test his reaction. If successful, he would fall in love with her then lose her again, this time to a mysterious illness (her own short engineered lifespan) rather than as the result of a vicious murder. To compensate for the violent history between Ed and Isabella’s original tissue donor, Strange deliberately used doomed love stories as the basis for her personality as well as investing her with a vast array of esoteric knowledge and trivia as well as a penchant for riddles. This was prep work for what the Court will eventually try with Bruce. However, this plan was foiled when Fish hijacked the bus. Isabella escaped with one goal in mind: find Edward and be with him. She saw him on TV with the mayor and soon engineered a one on one meeting with him while buying wine. The Court decided to leave her where she was believing she could prove useful should Oswald step out of line.

Oswald sees this find as validation that his instincts about Isabella were true but Ed, feeling humiliated and angry, snaps that this changes nothing. Oswald didn’t know Isabella had been sent by the court when he killed her and he still lied to Ed’s face for his own selfish interest. He threw away their friendship like it meant nothing! Oswald is startled by the sadness in Ed’s voice but both of them are still too angry at each other to extend an olive branch.

Kathryn is the one to inject Lee with the virus. Her name was the one Gordon wrote in the book back in Court HQ and Kathryn wants revenge for Gordon’s betrayal. She was always wary Gordon would betray them and as such already has a plan in place for vengeance. Kathryn has Barnes knock Lee out when he invades the GCPD and inject her (a plan Barnes agrees with as he wants Lee to be ‘freed’ like he was) before leaving her otherwise unharmed. This way we get all the fun of evil Lee without the out of character decision to inject herself purely based on the reasoning of a certified delusional psychopath like Jervis Tetch.  

Enjoying so far? Drop me an ask if you want me to fix something in particular! 😉

[justgotham]

Regular watchers of FOX’s Gotham are well aware that Edward Nygma a.k.a. The Riddler has experienced a variety of bizarre twists and surprising turns in his personal and professional lives. While working as a forensic scientist for the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD), this mild-mannered, bespectacled socially awkward young man with a penchant for riddles developed romantic feelings for a coworker.  Sadly, it was a case of tragic unrequited love that not only ended in one but two murders, but also the emergence of a twisted and aggressive alternate personality in Edward’s mind.

After spending some time in Arkham Asylum, Edward was released thanks to the intervention of Oswald Cobblepot (The Penquin), who he subsequently helped get elected the new mayor of Gotham. Oswald rewarded his friend’s unwavering loyalty by appointing Edward his right-hand man, but then love came between the two men in some very twisted ways. Angered at being betrayed by Oswald, Edward -whose Riddler persona continues to emerge and assert itself - decided to end their relationship by shooting Oswald and dumping him into the river in the show’s third season winter finale The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.

“Filming that episode was such a highlight thus far for me on the series,” says actor Cory Michael Smith, who plays Edward Nygma/The Riddler. “I feel fortunate for a couple of reasons, the first being that I’ve had a really lovely, in-depth transition from Edward to The Riddler, and I feel like our writers have done such an amazing job with my character. Secondly, the relationship that they’ve created between Edward and Oswald, and the way Robin Lord Taylor [Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin] and I have executed it has been so fulfilling for me. It’s certainly the richest relationship that I have in the show, and I think it’s also fair to say that it’s one of the richest relationships in the show, period.

“What’s so nice is that there’s now a history with Edward and Oswald, so when you go into a scene, it feels like there’s a ton of story to tell, and the two characters share a great deal with one another, which the audience has seen. There are a lot of mixed feelings, too, when you shoot these scenes because so much has been set up for us. Some of the scenes with Robin and I have been rather intense, and there were moments where both our characters were dear friends who not only loved one another – in different ways, of course – but admired each other, too. There’s also that deep sense of hurt where you don’t want to hurt one another, but at the same time feel you like you’re justified in doing so. You don’t enjoy it, but have to do it, and I think that’s a really interesting part of Gotham. There’s so much sadism in the show and it can get very dark, but when there’s a cost to it, that’s when it’s the most exciting and riveting to watch.”

Edward Nygma continues his “transformation” into The Riddler when Gotham returns this coming Monday with the aptly-titled episode How The Riddler Got His Name. Of course, any super-villain worth his or her salt would not venture out in public to perform their dastardly deeds without being properly attired, and The Riddler is no exception. The crafting of his character’s costume has become an important piece of the puzzle in Smith’s performance.

“Our costume designer, John Glaser, is absolutely incredible,” praises the actor. “With The Riddler, we set out on the path of putting him in a suit, and then we began experimenting with different fabrics and slowly making his costume a bit more patterned as well as a bit greener. They wanted to stick with that sort of design and tailored look. Certainly my character can adapt and change, and I’ve been interested in doing a full transition from awkward and gawky to really elegant and classy. So what does that look like clothing-wise? Well, that’s a well-tailored man who’s quite graceful, despite how he was a few years ago.

“So my character’s suits are super-tailored and very well-made. Some of the suits are made with fabric that has more of a matte look, while others have a little bit of a sheen to them and kind of glisten in the light. The fabric and tone of green changes depending on where The Riddler is and what he’s up to, but we really just wanted a classy, elegant look that was unique to the show. A new pattern maker cut the latest suit, so it fits like a glove and is really sharp and clean-looking.

“What I’ve enjoyed most, though, and found really helpful, is that I put on the suit first, but I don’t put on my character’s glasses until I’m on-set and about to start work. That’s when the whole thing clicks into place. The glasses are really important to me, and now that I have the full suit, which includes the bowler hat, it pulls it all together for me,” enthuses Smith.

[helianthologies]

putting my baby penguin in front of my laptop and making him watch the not about love edit. gotta put him on straight out the womb