Tuesday, May 23, 2017

My Review of Gotham's 3x19: "All Will Be Judged"


Written by Ken Woodruff
Directed by John Behring

Barnes (to Gordon): "The word will go out. No one will escape from the Executioner's blade."

Yeah, except when said blade ends up being shot off one hand but up until that point, Barnes had something of a point. Complete with a ridiculously OTT new look, Barnes had succeeded in capturing Gordon and even came close to enacting justice on him.

Of course, Barnes was also destined to fail because he actually let Gordon talk instead of just getting on with the execution itself. If you're a bad guy on this flipping show, just don't let Gordon get a word in at all and you might stand a chance of actually outsmarting him.

Still though, while Barnes's whole Executioner thing isn't really that riveting, it did take up a lot of the episode's screen time as his team up with Kathryn came to a swift end when the latter ended up losing her head. I'm actually shocked that Kathryn lasted as long as she has and at least they gave her a memorable exit before Gordon shot off Barnes's killer blade hand.

With Kathryn out of the way though, we still have Temple Shaman as the main figurehead for the Court of Owls and while Other Bruce's identity was exposed to Alfred by Selina, the real Bruce seems to falling into Shaman's influence all the more as the two of them made their return to Gotham this week. Going by next week's episode though, it seems like we might be lifting stuff from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises as we head into the finale.

Elsewhere. Oswald and Nygma found themselves having to work together in order to get out of their cages. The bickering between the two of them as they engaged in some petty mind games before grudgingly teaming up was a lot of fun to watch and while I don't doubt they'll both do their best to try and kill the other next week, we all know they're both going to fail as well, don't we?

As for Leslie, this was a dark episode for her. She started things up with a chilling nightmare sequence involving Mario, got the worst sense of 'clarity' from visiting Jervis before getting into another slanging match with Gordon and infecting herself with the Tetch virus. I mean, there's potential with a virus infected Leslie for the remaining episodes this season but what a monumentally stupid thing for her to do. Are the writers planning to kill her off in the finale? It certainly feels like she's got a death wish at the moment.

- Barnes escaped being brought back to Arkham, so I wonder if either Oswald or Nygma will try and recruit him in the next episode.
- Bullock really needs to do with getting some actual security for the GCPD now.
- No Ivy, Barbara, Tabitha, Lucius or Butch in this one.
Chronology: From where Light The Wick left off.

All Will Be Judged was as filler as you could get, episode wise but it was entertaining enough filler. The Oswald/Nygma and Leslie scenes added a little more bite into the episode than Barnes could've done but I'm definitely keen for the Court of Owls to be retired in the next three episodes though.

Rating: 7 out of 10

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