TV Review: Gotham: Season 1, Episode 17: Red Hood [Fox]

Fox‘s Gotham Red Hood TV Show Review. Gotham: Season 1, Episode 17: Red Hood features what might well be the grossest moment in series history, a very foreboding ending, and…more filler. This is another one of those episodes that could do with a few less plot points floating around, and

because its ideas themselves are interesting–if grisly–that’s a shame.

The bit of the episode that the title refers to concerns a gang of bank robbers whose leader wears a red hood. After stealing some money bags and hearing the cops approaching, the robber wearing the hood throws some of the money to the people outside, purely with the selfish motive of causing commotion to block the cops, but the gesture spawns a legend of the Red Hood as a modern day Robin Hood. People love him in a way that they don’t love most criminals, which turns the garment into a coveted symbol for others, and soon the gang leader is assassinated by an underling who seizes the hood and takes over; continuing the tradition of giving back some money to the people, and implying the violent coupe will repeat itself, too.

That has the makings of a fine narrative; a moral parable about how once someone crosses the line, it can be hard to go back, because even when criminals do charitable things, they can beget more greed. It could also teach a lesson about demagogic thinking and the myths it spins around charismatic ubermenschen representing popular virtue in themselves. The problem is that Gotham is a cop show; the Red Hood  narrative, when it’s viewed at all (instead of the other plot points) is approached from the lens of Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) and a witness to the robbery, Chaing (Lee Wong). There’s not time for deep moral quandaries; simply the cops chasing and shooting at the robbers.

Meanwhile, Alfred (Sean Pertwee) gets a visit from an old coworker named Reggie (David O’Hara), who has fallen on hard times. Reggie seems an amiable guest at first, and even offers to help Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) with his combat training, but it soon comes out that he’s quite a shady man, and hinted at that Alfred used to be, as well–and then it gets worse…

There are other plot points that revisit other characters in their ongoing the plot, but the only really arresting bits involve Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), who continues to prove in new brutal ways that there’s no depths to which she won’t sink to get her way, and her old lackey Butch Glizean (Drew Powell), who for a point seemed to have been brainwashed by Szasz to work for Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor), but may in fact be planning something of his own.

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