Jessie Robertson reviews the second episode of Batwoman…
As we venture further into Gotham, Kate’s past becomes the focal point. We left off the pilot episode with a bombshell (I think a lot of longtime CW fans saw coming) but one nonetheless that has to be explored. Kate fits in well with the rest of The CW heroes as it becomes her singular goal to find out if “Alice” is really her thought to be dead sister Beth.
To start on this mission, we need to start getting into Kate’s mind and we see a bit of it here. The funny thing as this show moves in it’s season direction, I’m quickly realizing (at least for now) this is less a show about a Bat-family member and more about Kate’s drive and the story of these two sisters. Their drama escalates quickly when Kate tries to get the knife with her sister’s birthstone embedded into it checked for DNA; when Luke can’t help her (he hasn’t fully figured out the Batcave systems yet) she turns to Sophie. When she does, she’s ambushed by the Wonderland gang and the knife is taken back. This doesn’t stop her from finding a member of that gang she injured the night before and dropping a code word to him: Waffles.
The meeting of sisters plays out just as you would expect but I like that they let Alice (Rachel Skarsten) play a bit with the scene. Could she just be someone who knows about her sister from the news and research? Possibly, I guess. But, as she plays with Kate, she lets her know it’s actually her. The plan to go about ruining their father’s life for ending the search for her body is not really a supervillain plot per se, so again, it cues up a Gotham City that’s less about crime bosses and murderous psychos and meets somewhere in the middle.
There are some other things that the show is doing well: the cinematography looks stepped up in this show, as if it has more to show off in the big city of Gotham. The opening scene of how the resources dwindled looking for Beth is a nice visual and if you don’t get Nolan Batman Begins vibes from the scenes with Kate cycling around the city, you need to rewatch those films. There are plenty of normal Batman tropes in film at this point but so far, they aren’t using up too many. The underwater explosion scene later on also looks higher than the budget I would expect for this show in it’s first season but I’m not complaining.
7/10 – Another slower build that kinda of yo-yo’d the pace of the story of these two sisters in different directions that wasn’t quite a home run; maybe a single looking like a double.
Jessie Robertson
