Gotham - 'Damned if you do...'

There is no way this relationship is ever going to blow up in Gordon's face.

Season 2 of Batman Hasn't Begun Yet - subtitled 'Rise of the Villains', so that's promising for our heroes - opens with Penguin the 'King of Gotham', Gordon directing traffic, Harvey Bullock tending a bar and Barbara checking into Arkham Asylum with her matched luggage.

Commissioner Loeb soon finds an excuse to give Gordon the boot when he shoves his useless partner after tackling a man calling himself Zaardon the Soul Reaper (who claims to have been given dragon's blood to drink by 'the Master'.) Also Lee urges Gordon to move on, he goes to Penguin for help getting back in, which Penguin offers if Gordon will do a debt collection job for him. Gordon at first passes, but Bruce of all people persuades him that sometimes the right way is the ugly way. The job goes south and Gordon kills a mobster, but Penguin is as good as his word, forcing Loeb to reinstate Gordon and stand down, leaving Sarah Essen to become the new Commissioner.

What I love about this series is its nuanced portrayals of female characters.

Meanwhile, Barbara Gordon makes friends with Richard Sionis and Jerome whatsisname (you know, the creepiest of the 'could be the Jokers' from Season 1) in order to gain access to a phone. She calls Gordon to claim that Lee framed her and was the one to attack her, and Lee to say she's going to kill her, which kind of robs the first call of credibility. Then Zaardon arrives, dies, burps sleep gas and Barbara and her chums are rescued from Arkham by a slinky chick in leather.

A bloodthirsty, almost sexually ecstatic killer? That's new. Interesting. No,
wait... the other thing.

Said slinky leather chick is Tabitha Galavan, sister and enforcer of Theo Galavan, newly arrived civic luminary and presumed future anti-Bruce Wayne, who offers the six rescued inmates a place in his organisation. Sionis, who is a colossal moron, tells the man who has him strapped to a gurney to sling his hook because he's all possessive of Barbara's pants. He offers Galavan a million dollars as soon as he hits the street, so it's kind of a surprise that Tabitha half-throttles him with a whip then stabs him to death, rather than throwing him out of the window.

After failing to crack the code to his father's secret vault (it turns out it was 'BRUCE',) Bruce blows open the door with Alfred's help and finds a hidden study and a letter, warning him to leave well alone unless he feels a calling.

'Damned if you do...' is not a complete writeoff, and Bruce and Alfred in particular get some good stuff. The continued prominence of Barbara is not encouraging, however, and while Theo is James Frain and I can never feel entirely bad about increased levels of James Frain, Tabitha is everything wrong with female villains over the past thirty or forty years. I'm also not sure if Lee is still working, like, at all; I hope she is, because I'll be very sad if the last half-decent female character in the show - Selina Kyle is working for Penguin, which makes even less sense than her wielding a shotgun for Fish Mooney - has been reduced to the role of imperiled girlfriend.