The biggest problem with the first season of Batwoman, other than than the often eye-roll-inducing dialogue, is the storytelling. It’s been, to put it lightly, a bit of a mess. There are some interesting ideas and themes at play here, but they’re often underexplored or completely ignored for episodes on end. That creates a jumbled narrative arc that, so far, Batwoman has struggled to gain control of.
I mention this from the outset because I think “Grinning From Ear To Ear” is an episode that’s particularly representative of the season as a whole. It has its ups and downs, its fun moments and its tedious ones. It can’t decide on a tone, and there are narrative arcs left dangling, but there’s still just enough forward momentum to justify the show’s existence.
The episode begins with a disturbing scene set in 2011. A teenage girl puts makeup on her face while her mother yells at her from outside the bathroom. When she looks into the mirror, all she sees is ugliness. She breaks the mirror and slices her face open with the shards. That sets the stage for a series of gruesome attacks in present day Gotham, as the former teenage girl is now a sociopathic killer determined to scar the faces of various social media influencers. Apparently Gotham has a lot of those?
The hunt for the killer is the episode’s least interest aspect. Either the writing is too on-the-nose—the scene where the killer threatens to murder her mom and explains exactly why she’s doing what she’s doing is a perfect example of Batwoman’s inability to keep the subtext from becoming text—or the ideas are too thin. There’s some brief promise in the idea that Alice might have an ally in this killer, but that quickly goes downhill when we once again get a face-stealing scene.
I don’t know, I’m just a little tired of the many, many face-swapping moments that count as twists this season. They all feel like narrative cheats, and the show’s gone to the well over and over again. It’s not all that surprising anymore, and it’s hard to shake the idea that these “twists” are just a narrative shortcut for a story that doesn’t have any legs or real dramatic tension.
At least the show is making some headway when it comes to Sophie’s relationship to her sexuality. That’s been a troubling storyline all season, moving in fits and starts (and don’t even get me started on the show going back and forth on whether she knows who Batwoman is). While her romance with Batwoman is thwarted, she does come to realize that she can’t keep living a lie. Again, the writing annoyingly makes the subtext into text, with Sophie talking about “wearing masks,” which she’s done in previous episodes, but the emotional progress is promising.
The scene where Sophie finally reveals her sexuality to her mother is predictable, but it works because of how far Sophie has come this season. She was a fairly cliche character to start, but her journey has been emotionally sound, and it’s played well against Kate’s own identity-seeking journey as Batwoman.
The show would do well to focus more on the inner lives of its characters, and flesh out their motivations. This episode mostly does a good job of that. Despite the tacky writing, we leave this episode with a better understanding of how Kate is viewing her role as Batwoman, and how that impacts not only Gotham, but the people around her. Add in Sophie’s own growth and Mary starting to claim some space for herself, and you’ve got all the ingredients for Batwoman to start developing more meaningful storylines.
Stray observations
- Hey everyone, I’ll be filling in for Alani this week and next while she’s on vacation. My thoughts seem to be on the harsher side compared to hers, so perhaps this is the beginning of a solid hero-archenemy rivalry between us.
- Jacob is slowly starting to realize that his specialized police force run with very little oversight is perhaps just a little bit corrupt.
- “Mentally deranged leader?!?!” Rachel Skarsten is very good at line readings.
- “Where’s the dislike button when you need one?” For a radio personality/blogger, Vesper Fairchild is very bad at speaking like an interesting, normal person.
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Mary pretty much confirmed Kate is Batwoman, tries to tease it out of her, then essentially offers Kate the chance to bring her on it when she’s ready. Mary is just The Best.The villain was really underdeveloped this week. I couldn’t figure out what her motive was, and she got overtaken by Alice before it really came to anything. It would be nice if the show could find a way to let rogues come and go without everything coming back around to Alice.I mean, I knew the Sophie coming out scene was coming, but it still worked. Not least of which because it gave her character some desperately-needed sympathy for the audience.Gee, it sure is nice for Jacob to wake up and finally start to realize how fundamentally terrible it is to have a private sector police force that is answerable to no one.
The Sophie coming out scene & her rejection by her parent was almost exactly how it played out when Maggie Sawyer came out to her dad on Supergirl & just as painful. Which makes me now think that while I don’t really want Kate and Sophie to be together, maybe they could have Maggie crossover to this show & her and Sophie get together. Also I like Batwoman and Supergirl to explore similar themes like that, it makes me feel that it is even more right for the shows to be in the same world & crossover with each other, as well as being scheduled back to back
Crazy theory: the Maggie Sawyer in “Supergirl” is the Earth-38 doppelganger of Earth-1/Earth-Prime’s Renee Montoya.
That is complicated, but I could be into it
But now they’ve established that doppelgangers can’t stay on the same Earth without one of them having to die, which would mean Maggie probably bites it.
Mary’s been “I’d make a fantastic side-kick” for 2 episodes now. I’m beyond appreciative that she’s not “I’m so betrayed!! Angst!” like so many DCCWTV characters before her.
I’ll give this show one thing, Kate and Sophie do actually have chemistry together. It’s just a shame that it’s been tarnished by all the shit that Sophie’s done.What a waste of Duela Dent though. Nearly every villain they’ve covered so far has been a shallow copy of their comicbook counterpart. Hush was just Thomas Elliot with no gimmickery, Magpie was just a regular thief, Nocturna wasn’t a vampire and now Duela Dent is an anti-plastic surgery crusader.Poor Mary, you may as well tell Kate that you know she’s Batwoman because she’s never going to do it herself.
Every Alice-Mary scene is a highlight since they are the show’s two best characters and I love how their antagonism has developed even as they get more casual with each other. I especially loved Alice twisting the knife that she knows Kate’s secret identity, though Mary does not realize that Alice (like her) figured it out herself & the secretive Kate for sure was not going to actually tell her if she wasn’t forced into it. Mary’s reaction to finding out that Alice saved her from Nocturna with a blood transfusion was also wonderful. I realize there is a lot to overcome for Mary and Alice to eventually become buddies but is that too much to hope for??
If Alice is going to continue to be a thing after this season I would imagine yes.
At least Alice started therapy in this episode!
Alice would have a LOT to make up for…what with her, you know, killing Mary’s mother and all.I do think they could make for very entertaining frenemies.
Alice: Some day we’ll look back on all this and laugh (laughs maniacally)Mary: I hate you
I could see this turning out like Damon/Alaric on The Vampire Diaries. Damon killed Alaric’s wife, Alaric tried to get revenge but Damon killed him. Alaric got better and the two became best friends. Crazy, but it’s happened.
Oh good – Kate and Sophie got back together again, and then broke up again. Exactly the sort of innovative drama that we’ve all been crying for…Predicted number of Kate-Sophie relationship changes between now and the end of the season? I guess since Sophie needed to work some things out, that means it’ll be at least an episode before they next get back together again, right?
Why you gotta go and waste Duella Dent like that?
Otherwise a decent episode as uninvested as I am in Sophie and Kate though just get Mary knowing out in the open already.
Exactly, I was expecting bigger things from Duella. Also they name dropped Harvey (in this continuity she’s his niece?)
And still a beloved DA.
Which is odd, because if they’re post-Batman at this point, then Harvey must have become Tw0-Face by now.
I thought the “beloved DA” line was sarcasm.
OK, the final shot of Mouse getting forcibly overdosed on the fear toxin was striking. But a few things rang sour for me this week, too:* The Alice and Mary stories are teetering on the edge of overkill, and they’re threatening to suffocate Kate getting more interesting developments in her own story/life.
* Sophie might have fallen into that trap herself, had we not gotten the chance to see her confront her homophobic mother. Still not seeing her and Kate as the OTP the show insists it is, though.
* Besides echoing the other comments about the lackluster use of the Duela Dent identity, I have to ask: is Luke using existing Batfiles or some redacted version, because it’s hard to imagine Kate taking over the mantle before Harvey Dent became Two-Face.
Not looking forward to Jake having to tell Luke that his father’s murder is actually unsolved & likely related to Crow corruption, probably in league with some Batman villain who wanted to take out his main ally Lucius
Very good point, and one that underscores the glaring weakness that is the lack of any GCPD characters in the show. How can you have a Gotham show without any cops?!
Especially weird given that Maggie Sawyer and Rene Montoya based on canon really should be involved in the show
They already tied Maggie to Supergirl and her actress won’t be back so that’s not happening. As for Renee, I guess because she was in a movie she’d not usable now.
I mean, Floriana Lima isn’t doing a ton of stuff right now — is there any reason they couldn’t jump her over to this show?
She’s the one who wanted off the show so you’d have to ask her.
She’s on A Millions Little Things…
Maggie has already been done on Supergirl (and is a Superman character anyway) and Renee probably has some issues due to the Birds of Prey movies.
They let Gotham use Renee Montoya (barely), I think the ArrowVerse shows could use her tooI liked Floriana Lima as Maggie but would be fine if they recast someone else to play the Earth-Prime version of her
And this time they could maybe hire a Latinx actor if they want to keep the character of Maggie Latinx.
They do have cops, it’s just that they’re all Crows and like only two of them are actual characters.
GCPD officers found Duela Dent, sans face, tied up in that factory, and it was shortly after Crisis that Batwoman met Officer Slam Bradley.
Yeah, but is Slam even a recurring character? How many of those officers are? It’s also tough to have a show trading on Batlore without somebody even mentioning whether Jim Gordon took a sabbatical.
Another mystery to put on the back-burner:Where are the Gordons?Who killed Lucius Fox?Why did Batman leave Gotham City?To get a little more headway on these plot threads and more, tune in next time, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!
Apparently Harvey was never Two-Face in this universe.
DAMMIT, BARRY.
Maybe it has Paul Sloane as Two-Face instead?
At this point, shouldn’t we really be blaming Oliver?
Does this look like an innocent man?
He’s practically dancing on Oliver’s grave.Okay fine – we still blame Barry.
Hey, there’s always time. That face can get messed up whenever it needs to.
* Besides echoing the other comments about the lackluster use of the Duela Dent identity, I have to ask: is Luke using existing Batfiles or some redacted version, because it’s hard to imagine Kate taking over the mantle before Harvey Dent became Two-Face.I thought Luke’s extremely sarcastic tone when referencing Harvey was a way for the writers to have their cake and eat it; either he was making fun of this serial killer having a relative in law enforcement, or he was making fun by calling Harvey Dent the famous DA, and not the gimmick-gangster Two-Face, leaving them open for any kind of Two-Face story they want to do if they decide they want to do one.
Something I do find a curious choice in the show is how it treats Gotham. Now, to be fair, the CW DC shows in general are not that interest in the cities, I mean there’s really nothing special about their Keystone City or Starling City beyond some scenery and it makes sense as they are not really that defined in the comics either.Gotham City, though, is a really distinct place and at best has this mood where you can feel that this is the birth place of monsters. Now I don’t expect the show to hit that, but the way it just dispenses its villains is at times baffling, especially since it doesn’t even try to build the city as that foreboding character.
I feel like the show’s writers don’t understand how faces work? Alice cuts off Duella’s face intact and just…lays it on top of her actual face, and that makes her look just like her (including normal lip motion and expressions), until she flicks it off and there’s her normal face with not even any blood on it. Then in the same scene, Cartwright’s plastic surgery face just peels off too? WHAT THE HELL?
Magic Plastic Surgery, it runs on the same gimmickry as the Mission Impossible Movies do.
The thing that kills me about the whole face-swapping thing is that there was no point to it. Why couldn’t Alice simply walk into the doctor’s office wearing her own face?
Because she finds it useful that everyone thinks she’s dead.
She seems to get around just fine everywhere else. She robbed Mary’s clinic wearing her own face.
She robbed Mary’s secret, illegal clinic knowing Mary wouldn’t report the theft because it’s supposed to be secret.
Mary already knows that she’s still alive, and her clinic has barely any patients these days it seems.
Her therapist told her she needed a shield to confront him. Alice wanted to use Duella as her shield, but just her face.
– If Sophie had told Mary about why she didn’t think it was Kate anymore, that might have discouraged Mary as well.
– Look at Mary. Trying to be a sidekick.
– Wait, she’s 28 and the second in command of the Crows? She should have at least another decade on to be in that position. I know that I should have realized her age before, but I never really thought about it.
– Since you need to press a button to activate the Batcam, I don’t think he’ll be using it without your permission.
– “Let’s get out of here so they don’t catch you…and leave your running car behind. They’ll never think to attempt to trace that.”
– Now Mary knows that Alice knows that Kate is Batwoman. How will that change their dynamic?
– When Sophie mentioned masks I seriously thought that they were going to make her Batwoman’s sidekick.
– “You don’t think that the Crows would destroy evidence, do you?” Isn’t that the guy that offered to destroy the video of Sophie talking to Batwoman?
the whole timeline with Kate’s expulsion and Sophie’s advanced position makes so much more sense if they’re like 5 years older than the show insists they are, but the CW is afraid of the word “thirty,” so here we are.
Chyler Leigh (34 at the time) playing Alex Danvers: “I’m almost 30, and I feel like a kid again.”
It’s The CW — by age 30 you should have been the CEO of at least one company, married and divorced, and wearing $2200 outfits out to run errands. At 44 you’re an honored elder and once you turn 50, the red mark on your palm flares up and it’s time to put you out to pasture.
Black Lightning is the only exception to this rule, and that’s because it was developed for Fox.
It’s not too far off formula though. Jefferson Pierce has been married and divorced before the series’ start, and while he’s only a high school principal, he does dress way nicer than any principal I’ve ever seen.
… once you turn 50, the red mark on your palm flares up and it’s time to put you out to pasture.
Depends on how old The Crows* as an organization is, and Sophie’s supposed to be highly skilled and motivated (enough for Jacob to see her as a surrogate daughter and know her mom’s phone number), so she must have worked extra hard to earn that promotion.*A show based on a comic book made it this long without making one “The Crow” joke?
Westpoint graduates are special? Also maybe Jacob was surrogating Sophie for Kate (He did mention it was supposed to be the both of them!) As for Sophie being a sidekick, she’d have the skills no? I’d like to consider Kate, Sophie even Julia Pennyworth to be “on par” in the Arrowverse. And suddenly why am I craving a Batwoman/White Canary duel just for fun?
-How is Kate getting to and from balconies Supergirl-style?-How dumb is Sophie’s mom sneaking into a mercenary’s apartment with no warning?-“Dog ate my breakup?” <3 Luke-Did Batwoman and Sophie just make a mature decision about their potential relationship? What network is this and what has it done with the CW?-Somebody please hug Sophie after her mom was terrible.-Somebody please also hug Mary after telling Kate how much she trusts her.-Maybe this Sophie+Mary friendship is a pretty good idea?
Did Batwoman and Sophie just make a mature decision about their potential relationship? What network is this and what has it done with the CW?
It’s the writers on “Batwoman”. Notice how they’re learning from the mistakes of the other Arrowverse shows. They didn’t drag out the “Kate realizes that Alice is Beth” reveal, or the “Kate tells her family that Alice Beth” storyline. They’ve been making some excellent choices on this show.
they didn’t even drag out confirming Alice = Beth! totally agree, they’re making great choices
“Where’s the dislike button when you need one?” For a radio personality/blogger, Vesper Fairchild is very bad at speaking like an interesting, normal person.
The root of the problem there is, TV writers/showrunners don’t think The Media are normal or interesting.
Stopped watching after the break. Too much like a soap opera. Not enough Batman/woman stuff.
Damn straight the face swapping stuff is played out lazy bullshit.
I like the Sophie’s mom story is just trying to make me feel sorry for her after weeks of calling her The Worst. Well you won’t get me that easy, Batwoman writers! *shakes fist in air*
I thought the face swapping thing was neat whenever Mouse did it because it seemed like maybe it was a unique thing he could do but now everybody’s just whipping those things off like I’m watching old episodes of Lupin the 3rd.
And now Mouse has a new thing: tripping balls off of the Scarecrow’s Fear Gas.
Yeah, there’s a real Scooby Doo vibe going on now.
Other highlights of the episode:Bat-villain name drop: Harvey Dent, here being described as Duela’s uncle.The now-unsolved case of the murder of Lucius Fox is expanded on with missing footage, and he had fans among The Crows for all his work for the people of Gotham. Which opens up the motive: him being black, armed robbery gone wrong, or a hired hit? Like I think his best friends, Thomas and Martha Wayne?2nd Bat-villain shout-out: The Scarecrow, by way of his Fear Gas, which Mouse was unwillingly huffing.
Sophie’s mom’s “Sorry for that, but what’s disappointment supposed to look like?” line was ice fucking cold.
If this show had aired 20 years ago, Hudson Leik would’ve made an awesome Alice.
… do nightclubs typically become a coffee joint during the daytime? *gasp* Is the club itself wearing a mask?
Pretty weird that this show forgets that bisexuals exist.
The first canonical mention of a character as massive to the DC mythos as Harvey Dent, and it doesn’t warrant so much as a stray observation?! Let alone any lip service whatsoever to Duela’s portrayal in the books. What is most fascinating to me is the idea that Harvey Dent is characterized as a “beloved ADA,” and thus is in a POST-Batman world. Either Harvey never became Two-Face, and is still active in his job, in which case we ought to see one of the last honest ADAs in the city, especially given the recent disgrace of the “cabal”…surely Luke would know of Bruce & Harvey’s alliance and suggest Kate make contact as well. OR, and perhaps this is the more intriguing option, that “beloved ADA” remark could have been deceptively past tense, and perhaps Harvey DID become Two-Face, and Batman & Gordon covered up his fall from grace to preserve the city’s ideal of him, similar to the Nolan films. Perhaps it would even potentially have something to do with why Batman went away! Although obviously not under the SAME circumstances, since the citizens of Arrowverse Gotham still look at Batman as a symbol of hope, not a murderer, as was the conceit in the films. Still, I’ve always found the idea of covering up Two-Face’s existence to preserve Gothamites’ memories of Harvey one of the most interesting concepts introduced in the films.
These angsty millennial villains are so trash lmao
“and don’t even get me started on the show going back and forth on whether she knows who Batwoman is”Not sure why you’re confused about this. The show has been pretty clear. Sophie figured out Kate was Batwoman. When Kate realized this, she had Alfred’s niece appear as Batwoman when she was in the same room with Sophie. Ever since then Sophie has thought that Kate is not Batwoman.
Alice rips off Duella’s face to reveal her own face. Wait, she literally cut that face off of Duella – the inside of that mask would be covered with blood and tissue, so Alice’s own face would be bloody and messy. But when Alice pulls the mask off her own face is nice and clean.