TypicalGotham, always too much.
Foxs pre-Batman saga had, by my count, three different series finales.
Technically, season 5 ended Thursday.
Credit: FOX
And it was also a prologue, table-setting the characters for their legendary journeys.
See Commissioner Gordon on the rooftop.
See the Dark Knight emerging from the shadows.
See the Joker, for real this time.
See The Batman Story.
And the final hourfilmedfor this seriesaired last month.
The Trial of Jim Gordon was added late in the order.
How will we fit a new story into our rigidly constructed continuity?
is not a question you worry about theGothamwriters asking.
It was one of those love letter to the characters-throw in episodes.
TypicalGotham, this love letter featured an actual wedding.
(Its Gotham, man, all the concrete is broken.)
Flash forward 10 years, and everything looks familiar.
Gordon has a mustache.
Oswalds gone Full Penguin, exiting Blackgate after nine and a half years in the clink.
Also in Arkham: Jeremiah Valeska (Cameron Monaghan), a comatose vegetable, his face scarblasted pale.
And Monaghans final-phase demi-Joker is three exclamation points stapled onto a straightforward rescue plotline.
Harvey (Donal Logue) is in trouble, hell be fine.
There is a gala interrupted by a bomb, quickly defused.
Barbara Lee (Jete Laurence) is in trouble, not for long.
Gordons thinking of retiring, he wont.
Penguin wants Gordon dead, he lives.
Lili Simmons was okay as adult Selina.
Making this Catwoman a glitter-dressed It Girl Around Town felt off-key, though.
Then the very last shot: Batman.
Your mileage may vary.
I yawned:This again.
So I loved the way-too-brief scenes with Barbara, now a red-haired real-estate empress.
Barbara dismisses the monumental structure.
In three months, he wont have the tallest building on Gotham anymore, she says.
Roughly translated:Hey, Batman, Mines Bigger.
You get the vibe the storys not done between these two.
Shes still one-upping local paragons Gordon and Bruce Wayne.
Imagine the stories Moms telling Barbara Lee about the men who think they run Gotham.
The show brought alotto comics-adjacent culture in this extremely Batty decade.
Which brings us back to Monaghan.
One last fun appearance from a dominating character, whose collective 20 episodes form an essential counter-origin.
See Joker at Ace Chemicals, dangling a victim over an ocean of green acid.
He sounds, somehow, like a jilted romantic, pining for the one that got away.
Listen to this makeup monstrosity talk about Bruce Wayne.
He just abandoned us, the madman says.
Do you know how it feels to have the one, theonlything you love ripped away from you?
And the batarang stabs in the back of his hand.
And the madman laughs, ecstatic, triumphant.
And love lives in Gotham.
Finale grade: B
Series grade: B+
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