‘Gotham’ episode 16 review: Let’s talk about ‘Jerome,’ shall we?

To anyone who knows the world of Batman particularly well, you understand the importance of the Joker. He is the yin to Batman’s yang, the most notorious villain he encounters. There is no equivalent of this character in the “Gotham” universe.

So have this mysterious Jerome kid be the Joker would just be … meh. Right? This is no insult to Cameron Monaghan, who was actually rather good as this psycho kid (who was ironically not the main villain this episode) who was all messed up in the circus and family drama. It is just that to us, the Joker is really not meant to have any backstory. This is someone whose past was always an enigma, and to us, it is all so much more entertaining if we become invested in Jerome only to find out that he is a red herring. We’re not sure, after all, that we are even seeing much more of him after this episode in the first place.

To us, this part of the story was a clear miss other than some of the Dick Grayson references, which we found for the most part to be rather cool and a more natural way to introduce a character. Plus, the timeline here actually made sense given that Robin was not even alive yet.

Now, the other miss is whatever sitcom plot the show has going on right now with Barbara Kean, Selina Kyle, and Ivy. It’s like the worst sitcom ever, made even worse by the fact that the show really had no idea what to do with any of these people. Maybe Barbara will react negatively to seeing Jim with Leslie; as of right now, one of our last hopes for this character is mostly that she goes crazy. We don’t really even care if they deviate from the source material here.

In the end, this episode was very much a case of the show trying way too hard to do something that they really didn’t need to do, whether you are talking about the introduction to Jerome or Fish Mooney somehow continuing to be portrayed to us as some sort of fiercely intimidating presence, which we still do not completely buy. Episode Grade: C.