Amph Gotham - the TV series

Clearly Ivy encounters the most nefarious of Bat rogues: The Whore-Moan; and runs afoul of its most devlish concoction: the Puber-Tea.


EDIT- More info on this season: http://www.darkhorizons.com/harley-croc-grundy-coming-to-gotham/

The short of it:

Spoiler

-Proto versions of Croc, Harley & Grundy will be developed on the series, though it's unclear if they'll be in this season or not.

-The cult of The Joker will develop this season, with callbacks to Jerome.

-Fish will only appear in the first 2 episodes of the first half of the season but will return for the backhalf.

 

And the subtitle for the first half of the season is "Mad City".





"I don't think Gotham's running out of monsters anytime soon."

 

Bullock and Alfred had the best lines, once again.

Though poor Alfred having to fight off potential assassins (even if it wasn't an assassin this time) in the mansion is getting to be a cliche now- especially since you can't really top the Azrael scenario (or it's amazing conclusion).

The Gordon/Vale/Police stuff was interesting- getting to see Jim play with the system a bit, etc. and I'm guessing the photo'd monster is a version of the Man-Bat?

All in all, a lot of setup. Let's see how crazy it can get with that, because that's where the show shines.

 

I don't mind Fish- she's basically a 60's Catwoman homage without being Catwoman.

And while Barbara has always been one of the weaker parts of the show, I did take note last night that they're using her better now. She's much more tolerable as a semi-stable villain than as either a villain-in-the-making or conflicted character.

 

So you're saying Vale will mistake the wings as being Gordon's?

 

Some interesting news on the direction of the series (a 5-year plan, apparently), and how the first half of the season's subtitle changed from "Heroes Will Fall" to "Mad City":

“If you are looking at the five-year plan of the show, it was that you start out with the world that looks more like ours. The whole idea is you show how a city like Gotham, which is the title character in a lot of ways, how a city turns dark and how a city enables villains and supervillains to exist. We’re telling this story of how that crazy world that Batman exists in came to be, not just these individual villains that also make our world.

The last season was really an attempt to say, this is how supervillains exist; this is why. They didn’t just pop into being, they were birthed out of Indian Hill and some of the things that were going on in the city at the time. That was always the goal. And how it changes the show going forward is that we can still always pull from that Carmine Falcone mobster, more gritty, noir-ish world to tell stories, but we can also have this new element of Man Bat or Firefly or Mr. Freeze and the technology that surrounds that. We just have a bigger canvas to paint from, basically.”

...

"“As we got into the first 11 episodes — because that’s the first half of the season — we started falling in love with a character that’s going to be appearing in episode three. We started diving into the character of the Mad Hatter and the actor that we cast [Benedict Samuel], and we wanted to spend more time with him. We were really intrigued with how he’s not just a villain who blows stuff up. He’s a villain who can actually needle into the psyche and the emotional space of our heroes. [He could] use his actions to find out more about our characters and really test our heroes.

The theme and that title became much more accurate once we started seeing these later episodes develop like 6, 7, 8, 9 and the repercussions this big character was having. That’s why it changed. But the idea and notion of heroes falling is the bigger thing that we’re accomplishing for the season as a whole. If last season was about, how did supervillains come into existence, then this season is about the other half of that, which is not only do you need supervillains to exist for a city to fall, but also you need your heroes to fall. That can mean either they die, they’re killed, or they’re disfigured or rendered incapable of helping, or they turn into villains themselves. That’s a bigger theme for us for the whole season, but in terms of the immediate first 11, Mad City makes sense. There are literally monsters running around.” "

and,

Spoiler

In another interview, Woodruff confirmed the return of Cameron Monaghan’s Jerome later in the season and suggests the character’s seeming death was a deflection of Joker speculation: “Jerome was always supposed to be the inspiration for The Joker. Maybe he’ll go through an evolution that’ll end up becoming the actual Joker that we all know. The whole idea was that he was supposed to be the inspiration for it.”

 

Ok, people breaking in through that same window is just getting ridiculous. They've gotta start building a set for another room in Wayne Manor besides the study and the kitchen because at this point, more people have entered in through that window than legitimately through the front door.

That room be all like:

 

Just caught up on the last 6+ episodes.

Man, this show is getting frustrating. The Penguin/Riddler stuff in particular is just ridiculous. And while I did enjoy the "Evil Dave Grohl" take on the Mad Hatter, he was stretched out too far. The whole Barnes the Executioner thing seems like an ok idea on paper but the execution just didn't work (Chiklis just didn't seem convincing most of the time. I'm not sure if campy evil just isn't his thing or just poor directing choices but it started to remind me of the CW DC shows (but not in a good way)). And the Gordon/Lee stuff has also dragged on for too long.

BUT... I enjoyed Fish and her monsters from the episodes I had caught back when they first aired (as opposed to this Tivo mini-binge), everything with Bruce, Alfred, Selina and the Court of Owls has been good, Bullock is still amazing ("Crap."), the stuff with Ed and Isabella was actually darkly interesting (once you get past the Penguin's role in it) but abruptly ended just as it was getting really interesting, Falcone stole the show in the few scenes he's had this season (especially the limo scene with Kathryn) and I've even begun to kinda enjoy Barbara in her "more stable" villain role (which is weird given how much she was a distraction in the first two seasons).

I'm kinda in a weird place where i kinda want to stick with it but also kinda want to drop it after this season and just catch up on future seasons on Netflix.

And, yet, at the same time, I want to continue following this version of Bruce Wayne and watch him become (and then be) Batman. What season will he be hold enough to don the cowl? Season 12? Damn. Not feasible, even by Smallville standards.