TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Batwoman Season 2 Episode 5: Gore On Canvas

The more episodes that comes out in Season 2 the more I realize that the Batwoman writers team have a certain vision for what they want Ryan Wilder to be and it’s something that just doesn’t work with the whole of the show in various facets, and “Gore on Canvas” proved that by making her have more erratic decisions and choices than ever before.

Let’s start out with the fact that she STILL hasn’t told the whole Bat-squad about the bullet and only told Mary because she knew she could get her to stay quiet to Luke. And the reason she isn’t telling Luke is because she’s afraid he’ll say she “can’t cut it” because of the injury. Despite the fact that Luke would know that the attack was on one of her first nights’ out in the suit, and the injury was from a bullet supposed to KILL BATWOMAN and not just injure her, so yeah, he’d understand the injury. Plus, he likely would know about the various properties of Kryptonite because of his analysis of the previous piece and thus would likely know how to cure Ryan. But no, ‘let’s not tell him about it, sure.

Then, there was the conflict over Ryan’s trust of the Crows. This part was ok to start because we saw her getting a bad break in episode two when she was arrested and grilled by Sophie. That was a built upon thing so I was ok with it…until she let her personal beef with them (righteous or not) get in the way of her trying to SAVE KATE! She thought that her starving method would stop an assassin loyal to a Queen (dumb…) and then she only got information WHEN the Crows showed up…and then blamed them for when the assassin took the cyanide capsule (that he didn’t take before because…?). How does that work? Because if she had gotten information from him on her own…the result would’ve been the same.

But my biggest beef with this episode was when they intentional abbreviated what happened to Lucius Fox in order for Luke to have similar feelings about the Crows. Because recall, yes, a Crow killed his dad, AFTER he (and he alone) was paid off by Tommy Elliot! PLUS, even the guy who killed Lucius admitted he didn’t WANT to kill him, it was an accident because he threatened Lucius’ family and thus Fox struggled instead of giving up the journals that Elliot wanted. But instead, they framed it as if all the Crows are dirty…even though we know they’re not for various reasons. And so to try and frame it to show that Ryan was right, they had two Crows injure Wolf-Spider (not even touching that one) and leave him for dead because they didn’t want “an excessive force charge”.

I get it, they’re working hard to make the Crows be like the police who oppressed protesters and are violent against movements like Black Lives Matter. But look at shows like The Rookie and you’ll see there’s a way to do it without altering dramatic parts of the story to make it “fit the mold”. Ryan came off as childish in her ending speech that was supposed to be inspirational no doubt in the eyes of the writers. And isn’t it hilarious that she said she “wont’ help the Crows” yet saved Jacob not one episode ago?

If you really want to know how bad things were in my mind, that story that Evan told about Kate? That was more riveting than everything Ryan did because not only was it believable, you KNOW that it was 100% what Kate would do and that story driving him to do various things was just as believable. Ryan has not had that kind of impact.

THANKFULLY…the rest of the storylines weren’t too bad. Mainly, Alice saved the day once again with her finding of Ocean and their “shared history” slowly came to life. Granted, it was a bit dumb that it happened upon seeing each other and lightly touching one another, but it could’ve been worse…and the fact that Ocean has the REAL painting is very curious indeed.

“Gore on Canvas” struggled to make good connections and choices with various characters and things once again suffered as a result. I’m not sure what to expect from the rest of the season by expectations are getting lower by the episode.