‘Gotham’ season 3, episode 13 review: Don’t steal Jerome’s face

Bad things happen in “Gotham.” It feels like with the vast majority of our episode reviews, we could just write this, put it online, and save everyone a great deal of time.

Yet, that wouldn’t be anywhere near as much fun! This show has a lot going on right now, and as we get closer and closer to the winter finale, we’re only picking up steam.

Jerome is alive – Hey, you knew it was coming. The character was given a new lease on life thanks to Dwight, the ringleader of the merry band of misfits running amok and causing trouble in the city. The first thing that he did upon rising from the grave is have a little chat with Lee Thompkins, who (understandably) was not altogether interested in seeing him be back around.

What this scene between the two did produce, however, is one of our favorite gif moments of the season so far.

If nothing else, Jerome and Mason Verger from “Hannibal” now have something more in common.

You see, Dwight had already ripped off Jerome’s face in an attempt to sway his followers that he had brought their idol back from the dead — which ended terribly. It wasn’t until later that he got it back from him, and then killed him for his insolence. Goodbye Dwight; we hardly knew yet.

So what’s Jerome’s new endgame now? It seems to be going after Bruce Wayne, the one person left on his hit-list given that Theo Galavan is now dead two times over. Kudos once more to Cameron Monaghan on an incredible performance, and one that felt almost a tad more alien and distorted than the first time around, where Jerome was just an angry, insane young kid wanting to watch the streets burn. There is an interesting, jaunted way in which he slinks around now, and you see some of that in his delivery below.

Worse news for Gordon – There wasn’t a whole lot that he was able to do about Jerome through most of the episode, and matters didn’t get better for him and Lee, either. The two characters were kept at arm’s length because of Barbara’s clear reminder to Jim that she wanted nothing to do with him still.

So much for Selina’s mother – Elsewhere, we may have started to see the beginning of the end for the Bruce / Selina romantic relationship, as she realized that the only reason that her mother was back in town was to run a sting operation on her own daughter and her new boyfriend. Bruce realized it was happening, but still didn’t tell his girlfriend about it. We’re not sure in what universe he thought that keeping this a secret from her was a good thing to do — if he just needed an excuse, a better one would have been to say that he didn’t want to run the risk that his intuition was wrong, keeping Selina from ever having a chance to start anew with her mother.

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There wasn’t a whole lot of movement forward on the Penguin – Nygma front this week beyond the hole for the former being dug a little bit deeper, mostly because Barbara and Ed are playing him like a fiddle. Oh, and they’ve got Butch in on the act as well. His empire is already crumbling in the public eye, and it will only get worse over time.

If you love Jerome, you loved “Smile Like You Mean It” — also, you probably loved it if you love The Killers, since that is such a great reference to one of their songs in the title. This brought a lot to the table, and we’re rather thrilled to say that the majority of it was entertaining, crazy, and exactly what you’d want from this character’s return. Grade: A-.

Next week – The winter finale is here, and based on what we’ve got going on with Jerome right now, it looks DRAMATIC to say the least.