Carnival of chaos.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Apparently, this is Gotham's Winter finale. That's a thing now. It just came back, after its Midseason finale, for these three episodes. Now it's gone until April.
Before I get into, once again, how awesome Cameron Monaghan is as "Joker" Jerome (I mean, we all know this, right?) I have to get a bit of business out of the way.
How many times can both the GCPD and Wayne Manor get invaded? I understand these these are two major established sets for the show and that production moves fast and it's easier to just use them for most everything - but come on! Crazies inside the police precinct again? Bruce's mansion getting broken into again? At least have Jerome nab Bruce -- I don't know -- outside on the grounds? Or maybe in his car trying to get away? At this point I question why Wayne Manor even has doors or windows.
RIP Crystal Owl.
All that aside though, let's address what was pretty cool about "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies" (which is a fantastic Faith No More song, by the way). We'll never get Batman vs Joker on Gotham. But we can have a young Bruce Wayne fighting a proto Joker-type character in a battle that was more or less indicative of many Batman/Joker clashes. Jerome's driven the city into madness. There's a carnival as the backdrop. Bruce is driven beyond reason and wants to kill Jerome, but he doesn't. He beats him silly (mushing up Jerome's own dead face) and then stops himself. So within this fight, this little arc, we got Bruce deciding not to kill, even though he'd been pushed toward it (he thought Jerome had killed Alfred).
It was reminiscent too of Bruce sparing Matches Malone's life back in "The Ball of Mud and Meanness." Here though, Bruce's choice not to kill, his act of mercy, was turned into an active credo. He and Alfred really latched onto it at the end, using it to start up a new chapter of his training. Plus, Bruce seemed to inspired by Jerome's mad (and correct) words about there being no real heroes in Gotham. Now all Bruce has to do is train more, see a swarm of bats at some point, and deal with the Indian Hill clone that the Court now controls. In fact, Bruce's new mantra, about not killing, will probably become a telltale way for Alfred to know when he's replaced by a lookalike.
Part of me wishes there was a bit more to Jerome's return other than just wanting to kill Bruce Wayne (for reasons that he himself didn't really understand), but it was still fun and fairly gruesome. Especially Jim punching Jerome's face clean off! Sometimes Gotham can shine with its overt grossness. Also, Jerome made carnival games a whole lot more murder-y using innocent citizens for lethal bouts of Whakamole, Balloon Pop, and the Dunking Chair. Oh, and let's not forget him painting Bruce's face with the guts of one of his crazy henchmen. Yes, this was an admirably gory chapter.
The less said about Ed's final trap for Oswald, the better. At this point, Ed's scheme to take down his former best friend has taken longer than his entire time with Isabell(a). And was the whole point for Oswald to somehow escape that acid trap? Because Ed said he wanted to make sure Oswald knew that he could never really love anyone before he died, but that came after Oswald narrowly escaped the first trap thanks to a moron cop wandering by. Then, after Oswald proved his love, and his willingness to sacrifice, Ed just shot him anyway. Something he could have done in the first place. And was Penguin being shot and dumped in the river supposed to be reminiscent of the pilot episode or is it that Gotham really only has a few particular cards to play and locations to use?
The Verdict
The Bruce/Jerome stuff was great here in the goofily malicious "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies," giving us this show's version of Batman vs. Joker. Elsewhere, with Riddler and Penguin, things didn't go so well as Ed's tired and convoluted revenge plot (thankfully) gasped its last breath.
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