Following the uberly powerful episode which saw the death of Beth (from the other Earth), it was going to be curious to see how the fallout came to be. “Drink Me” did answer some of those questions, even if it came at a cost.
First and foremost, somehow the death of Beth resulted in Jacob Kane being released from prison. Which is odd given that the person who was hired to help him was Mouse’s father and he took Mouse from the hospital (which no one seems to care about…) and so you have to wonder how he exactly got cleared…but I digress. With Jacob back in control, and Alice presumed dead (oh the irony) the goal was to secure the trust of Gotham. How do you do that? By catching a vampire of course!
The debut of Nocturna is a mixed bag in numerous aspects. Not the least of which is that in the New 52 and beyond, Nocturna was an actual vampire and had some very…uh…controversial story arcs with Kate. Granted, some of that wouldn’t have translated well to the screen, but going Arrow-esque with the translation of her? Meh.
Some of it was cool, like her actually having fangs and injected Ketamine into her victims so she honestly could drain them of blood? Nice touch. Having her NEED the blood to live? Nice touch. But then throwing in the, “they get to live and I deserve to die?” bit…not so much.
And you notice how they didn’t mention how Nocturna knew how to fight? Surely someone who couldn’t go out into the sun (via skin condition) wouldn’t know how to do martial arts, even in Gotham, but I digress once again.
The real stars of the episode were Kate, Alice and Sophie. All of whom had to come to grips with various things in their lives. Kate had to come to grips with Alice being alive and Beth begin killed…and having no idea who did it. Alice now has no Kate, no mouse, and a fuse that is getting ever smaller. What’s more, she still WANTS Kate to have faith in her, but it’s not working, and she’s desperate to try and prove her worth. Finally, Sophie gets some well-deserved attention via her duality with the Crows and Batwoman. Their kiss at the end was very ironic, and you have to wonder where it’s all going to go from here.
In the end, “Drink Me” worked best when it wasn’t focusing on a faux-vampire, but sometimes, you just have to work with what you got.
Todd Black
Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!
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