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Despite being a big tease for fans of DC Comics, Gotham’s Red Hood episode was a bit of a let-down…

This review contains spoilers.

1.17 Red Hood

Holy self-inflicted eye gouging, Batman! This week’s Gotham delivered the show’s most gruesome scene yet, but was also shocking in less-endearing ways.

For starters, the ‘previously on Gotham…’ intro promised us some exploration of Alfred’s murky past. Instead, though, the script skimmed briefly over Alfred by giving Pertwee about the same about of screen-time he usually gets.

A similar fate befell his fellow British-butler-with-lots-of-secrets Jarvis in Agent Carter, but with 22 episodes (and a confirmed second season) Gotham should really serve this superbly acted side character better. As it stands, it feels like we learnt nothing about him this week at all.

Additionally, Fish Mooney’s strand continues to infuriate. Yes, Fish gouging out her own eye to prove a point...

The thematic clothesline that props up "Red Hood," one of the best episodes of Gotham to date, is blessedly simple: What empowers the people of Gotham City? Each character answers that question differently, because each of them is after different things. (This has been your Yogi Berra–ism of the week.)For its owners, the titular red hood — a garish balaclava that's treated with as much reverence as Thor's tesseract — means invincibility. A group of bank robbers stumbles into infamy and fortune after enterprising member Gus Floyd (Michael Goldsmith) wears a red mask to their first job and survives two different attempts on his life. The most daring of these two escapes — he avoids a hail of bullets from a near-sighted security guard — makes it seem as if Floyd is protected by his mask, making his superstitious, cowardly gang fight for control of his red hood. Floyd's subplot is the...