By

John McGee

WOW! What a night! Did you see all those Harley Quinns? Batmen and Supermen! Jokers and Jack Sparrows—but best of all, that Gotham episode! How did this year’s traditional scarefest top eating candy to your heart’s content? Read on to find out!

The good news:

Tetch is finally reaching the end of his rope. He grabbed his sister’s body and drained her of the last of her poisoned blood. The very, very little of the marketing I saw for Season 3 did nothing to whet my appetite for his character other than the fact that we’d be seeing a Mad Hatter. Now he’s easily become one of the most interesting villains we’ve seen. Ever rhyming (kudos to the writers for bothering with that) he schemes to poison the most powerful people in Gotham with his sister’s blood.

Jim Gordon has to come to grips with his messed up head (and boy does he deliver). He hallucinates facing his demons after lying to Lee about saving her last episode and even Bullock angrily asserting that Jim’s “scared” of the badge. He goes through an elevator with a completely seductive and even vulnerable Barbara. (I have to watch some season 1 episodes again—I’m forgetting what she was like before she was crazy). It was haunting and emotional to see Jim experience life with Lee and kids, failure to Bruce and a tear-jerking conversation with his dad. All hallucinations, all realistic and touching.

Jim Gordon returns as a detective to the GCPD following his soul-searching quest. Finally.

Tetch gets captured and fails to poison the Gotham power heads. Duh.

Penguin, instead of killing Nygma’s girlfriend, tells her that Ed was in Arkham in an attempt to break them up, but it only makes their relationship stronger. They’re made for each other, which means Penguin might ruin it by killing her. The cliché is that Penguin kills people and tantrums when he’s denied what he wants. So hopefully the writers avoid that.

I totally forgot in last episode’s review that Bruce kissed Selina. Now they’re having a little date that she’s late for because “it’s weird for me.” So now she’s in a relationship with a plank of wood. Because that sums up the acting skills we’re getting from Mazouz’s side of this thing. Honestly just watch her. She’s the only one who’s obviously taken classes or just has the talent to show range of emotions and enunciate, say her lines differently each time etc.

The bad news:

The guy seemingly bossing around the Court of Owls lady was wearing the ring that Jim’s dad was wearing in the hallucination. The Court is already being denied proper justice already; now we’re getting sidetracked into Jim’s dad. Great.

Best episode of the year by far. There’s no contest. What a Halloween treat.

9.5/10