Shades of Smallville (Gotham Season 3) - TAROR #35

Running on Rooftops: The Comic Book Adaptation Podcast

Gotham Season 3 Review

Let's get started by talking about the season three finale of Gotham, Heavy Dirty Soul. Not sure if it's a reference to something but things got pretty heavy, things got pretty dirty and weren't terribly soulful. This finale was pretty effective in wrapping up all the various plots from this past season. We had all of Al Tetch's blood coming into fruition in the whole virus plot. All of Nygma's as well as the Penguin's various plots came to an end. Finally, we have all of the Court of Owl stuff wrapped up in the previous episode, as well as the League of Shadows being introduced.

Quality Content in the Finale

Ra's Al Ghul was pretty good. He seemed like a pretty spot on depiction. Not a fan of the whole prophecy angle for Batman coming about or Bruce's special destiny or whatever. I do think it's a pretty spot-on looking Ra's. The whole Tabitha and Selina starting to work together thing was a good choice. Another positive thing would be the end of the whole Penguin and Riddler storyline. Penguin's gambit at the end did kind of remind me of how invested I was in his story in the first season. The very last scene where Bruce is dressed up as a vigilante was kind of surprising. I had a feeling that he's kind of almost old enough to start doing something like that. The moment did have kind of shades of Smallville season nine where Clark wore that dark outfit for almost pretty much the same thing as what Bruce is wearing except he didn't wear a mask

Elements that were not so good

Alfred getting stabbed is always a bad time. In general Bruce's treatment of Alfred throughout the last few episodes could be better. Which to be fair, he has been brainwashed, but he did stab Alfred and then as soon as Alfred woke up from his healing coma or whatever, he just asks him, "Oh no, Alfred. What should I do?" And not, "Alfred, how are you? I'm sorry. The whole Jim turning evil and Lee going bad as well with the virus seemed like too much. Hopefully, after this season, Jim becomes a decent cop and not tortured, dark, evil cop Jim. I couldn't care about the whole Butch, Tabitha subplot because I really just stopped caring about Barbara, I know she was important, but I forgot she had some importance.

Gotham Season 3's improvements

While the season finale had its issues, the Gotham Season 3 may have been the strongest season yet. The last scene in the first mid-season finale where Jim has to shoot Mario when Lee doesn't know that Mario's about to kill her was really powerful and really quality filmmaking. Also, Jerome's return was great. I wasn't really excited about it at first, but it was executed fantastically. They were really good episodes and it feels like the Joker's actually arrived in the show. I don't know if that's one of the motivations for Bruce to actually start being a vigilante in this next season, but it was a good turning point for both him and Jerome. Anyway, I think Gotham has improved, but I do think that ever since they started the whole rebranding from Mad City to Heroes Rise, the quality kind of started to fall, ironically. It's been improving and it's been enjoyable. Most of the season has been a really good time, but I just think if they got their act together in the last half, It would have been a really great season.

Time Codes

• 00:00 - Intro
• 04:22 - Good Stuff in the finale Gotham Season 3
• 09:02 - Bad Stuff in the finale Gotham Season 3
• 15:02 Gotham Season 3's improvements
• 21:54 - Outro

Ratings Gotham Season 3 Finale HeavyDirtySoul

• Darryl: C+

Gotham Season 3

• Darryl: B-

References

• Previous Gotham Finale reviews:
  • A Sprint to Transference! (Gotham Season 2 Finale) -IROR #35
  • Agents of Gotham (Season Finale Part 1) - ROR 8

http://www.cbr.com/gotham-not-batman-origin-owlman/