Gotham Review: Blood Rush (Season 3 Episode 8)
Gotham Season 3 Episode 8, “Blood Rush,” finally reigns in the messy and ill-conceived Jervis Tetch and gets back to talking about the characters we know and love (or in some cases love to hate).
This episode is hard for me to watch. You may recall that Penguin’s mayoral bid was heavily influenced by Trump’s real campaign. Even though that was several episodes ago, I am still at a loss for how Penguin pulled an ace out of his sleeve.
Of course, if someone could with the platform “Make Gotham Safe Again” it would be Penguin, who lives in a town full of criminals.
I have accepted Penguin as the mayor of Gotham, but the wounds from “New Day Rising” still feel fresh.
In fact, my feelings about a fictional character holding the title of mayor in a town of criminals can only be expressed in this Hamilton gif!
This is all to the left of the point when it comes to this week’s episode. Unlike the last four episodes, which focused on political intrigue and a character with enough foresight to see just to the tip of his nose, this week’s Gotham focuses on the characters again, and it feels like coming home.
Something about these first episodes of the season felt disjointed. Maybe it was that Jim wasn’t in the GCPD. Maybe it was a case of too many threads and not enough time to package them all into nice neat storylines. Or, like I kept saying about Tetch, you just can’t let your villain marinate in your universe enough to make him a credible, realistic, and terrifying threat.
The capture of Jervis Tetch in “Red Queen,” is probably one of the best things for this season. Pulling back from the opulant crime caper each week and letting us focus on the characters and relationships we love with time and resonance is what made this episode so strong in my eyes.
And there’s even a nice little quippy welcome back as Jim walks back into teh GCPD. No hugs and handshakes, just a badge toss and an exchange between two bros that couldn’t have been more perfect for the moment:
JIM: That’s if, no welcome home?
HARVEY: Please if we had a big to-do every time you came back to the GCPD we’d never catch any bad guys.
Personally, I’m very happy to see the Harvey and James Gordon bromance come back into play. From the very moment that Jim walks back into the GCPD. It feels like old times. It feels like they haven’t missed a beat and yet it made all the difference to the story.
With Jim Gordon back in the GCPD, I it feels like there is no more dead space as characters wait for information. This episode didn’t have three sets of characters out maneuvering each other. Instead, the GCPD move and get information as a unit.
Ironically, as Harvey and Jim reunite, Captain Barnes starts to feel the pull of Alice Tetch’s blood. It is kind of setting up a spy on the inside story as the virus inside the drop Barnes was exposed to starts bringing out his anger about the lax justice system in Gotham. Particularly all of the free, and guilty, criminals. On this episode, he starts going on an almost vigilante spree as he still hopes for a way to stop the virus.
This is the kind of compelling “villain” we need. I don’t want to call Captain Barnes a villain because he isn’t. Gotham’s system is broken and even though he’s inside it, he can’t seem to fix it.
You have Penguin as the mayor, and this was after Nygma bought back all the votes Butch purchased for him. Do I really need to say more?
Well, long story short, “Blood Rush” is just the beginning for Captain Barnes, but the way the scenes are shot are really giving us a fascinating look into his psychology. What I am really curious about is if the voices he is hearing are telling him the truth. Are all the people he’s looking at really guilty?
Although Gotham has a really strong seedy underbelly, I find it hard to believe there isn’t one person without blame. Those voices can drive him to do something he may regret.
If Gotham continues to climb like this now that it’s found it’s footing I will be very pleased with how the rest of this first half of this season goes.
What did you think of this episode of Gotham? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Gotham airs Mondays at 8/7c on FOX.
Lauren Busser
Lauren Busser is an Associate Editor at Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in Bitch Media, Popshot Quarterly, Brain Mill Press Voices, and The Hartford Courant.