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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews Gotham Season 05 Episode 05: The Blade’s Path

October 20th, 2017 by Todd Black Comments

After a few smaller episodes, Gotham really bounced back in my mind with “The Blade’s Path”, as it built upon some very fun themes and stories to deliver some shocks and surprises and some twisted team-ups.

First and foremost, I would give this episode a 4/5 just for how it did a near perfect interpretation of Solomon Grundy’s origin!!!! Gangster…plus swamp…add in a nursery rhyme…equals…Solomon Grundy!!!!!! Seriously, that was near perfect. And then, to pair him up with Riddler??? Genius. Even if Ed doesn’t think so at first.

Meanwhile, the Bruce/Ra’s Al Ghul storyline took some very interesting turns. Not the least of which was that the point of the knife was that it was the only thing that could kill Ra’s, and yet, it could only be wielded by the one that Ra’s had a vision of. In this case…Bruce. This was compelling for much of the episode as Bruce was still struggling with the loss of Alex last episode, and he rightfully blamed himself. But, he still held on to his “one rule”. And yet, he did kill Ra’s, which is a very un-Batman thing to do. However, that’s a good thing. This shouldn’t be a straight path to his destiny, it NEEDS to be full of twists and turns in order to make it meaningful, and they did that here. Bruce is now unsure of his path, and that makes for interesting stories.

Now, the Penguin story isn’t as compelling, especially since we KNOW that Sophia is playing him, it’s just that we don’t know how she’ll personally screw over Penguin. I did appreciate her desire to get in with him so much that she found that Goulash recipe, that was a nice touch. I’m still hesitant, but I’m willing to give it a chance.

In the end, “The Blade’s Path” was a very fun episode, and one that had one heck of an ending…Leslie’s back!!!! And…she’s…back on the dark side…uh-oh!

4.5 out of 5 nerds

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!