Female Fury: Batwoman Episode 205, "Gore on Canvas"

FTC Statement: Reviewers are frequently provided by the publisher/production company with a copy of the material being reviewed.The opinions published are solely those of the respective reviewers and may not reflect the opinions of CriticalBlast.com or its management.

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. (This is a legal requirement, as apparently some sites advertise for Amazon for free. Yes, that's sarcasm.)

Batwoman 205 Gore on Canvas

Batwoman finally gets itself a heterosexual couple; naturally, they're the villains. But that's all the wc;dw (who cares, didn't watch) subplot thread involving Alice's hunt for Ocean, the guy Safiyah sent her to kill. Plot twist: she's his sister. Plot twist again: not by blood. And it seems Alice and Ocean were both on her island nation of Coriana at the same time, but they can't remember each other except when they touch and get flooded with erotic memories.

The real crime, however, was committed by the showrunners as they try to shoehorn as many woke trope into one episode. The new Batwoman, Ryan Wilder, hates the crows, and within the first three minutes we get an ACAB -- "All Crows are Bastards."  Cut from there to two women eating food -- Ryan and her newly reunited girlfriend Angelique. It's all a meet/cute morning until Angelique notices Ryan's wounded shoulder -- and how did they do the bunny hop all night long and Angelique not notice it until now? Or am I expecting too much logic from the plot?

Ryan finally gets her wound treated by Mary at the clinic, but there's no sign of the kryptonite poisoning going on just yet. So symptoms other than extra tiredness. So Mary gives her pills that she says Kate used to pop whenever she was feeling that way, and it got her back on track.

Yes. Mary just gave Ryan speed. Not a medically sound "You need to get more rest" but a horrendously misguided "Take two of these and you'll be flying in the morning." That's absolutely unforgiveable, CW, and your story editors ought to be ran off the set.

Over at the Crows HQ, Sophie and Jacob interview some random guy who once knew Kate, because now he's an art dealer. Since Kate was looking for a painting by Jake Napier, they think he knows something about it. Jack Napier, of course, was the name given to The Joker in the Tim Burton Batman film of 1989. And in case you're thinking it's just a nice Easter egg, they literally name him as The Joker in this episode. The "painting" is actually some homeowner's guts spilled all over another painting, and Jack called it modern art. It was stolen from the active crime scene, and the legend began.

Things move on. Sophie thinks the Crows should get help from Batwoman. Luke and Mary think batwoman should get help from the Crows. A tense meeting is set up between Batwoman and Sophie, but Batwoman refuses to help the Crows. She and Luke share Crow horror stories, and when Luke reveals the Crows killed his father, she relents and takes his advice.

The plan is for Ryan to insert herself into the auction and steal the painting, because they've learned that it's somehow a map to Coriana, where they maybe just might find Kate. Ryan tries to buy her way in past the host -- who, surprise, is the same guy who told us his "coming out" tale when the Crows interrogated him earlier -- by presenting an original batarang as an exhibit item. He takes the exhibit, but he doesn't trust her -- until Angelique shows up! Yes, by astronomical coincidence, Ryan's girlfriend is there. Dealing drugs. Because she may be clean now, but a girl's gotta eat. Ryan asks what Angelique is doing there and is apalled at the answer. Angelique then asks why Ryan, a simple bartender, is there, but doesn't want to press it -- because, you know, that would totally unravel the plot and the writers would have had to actually work to tell a story, and goodness knows we can't have that going on while we're trying to score woke points on our trope bingo card.

Ryan examines the painting, then goes to the bathroom to put on the Batwoman suit that Luke hid there behind the tampon machine. But before she can still the painting, someone else does -- Wolf Spider. He's a leaper, like Batroc from Captain America. He's running from the crows, dodging bullets. But when two crows pull alongside him in the truck, blonde white Crow steers into him and hits him, while black passenger crow can't believe he just did that to an unarmed man. They take the painting from him and leave him injured, dying, on the ground -- hit by "toxic masculinity" Mary tells him later in her clinic. Fortunately, Batwoman arrives, her shoulder killing her, and she finds out Wolf Spider is Evan, who was trying to steal the painting for Kate. 

But the painting's a forgery. And that's the only point where the whole Alice/Ocean subplot becomes important. Because he has the real one.

We watched it so you don't have to.

Grade: 
2.0 / 5.0