Rating the rogues in Gotham: Joker stole the show. Gotham was neat in that we had *multiple* depictions of Joker and they worked in a lot of fucking shit for him. I'm not sure whether I preferred Jerome or Jeremiah, but the combination puts them well ahead of everybody else. I also loved Ecco, but I'm not sure where to put her on this list (especially since she had a relatively small role) so I'm just giving her a nod here.
Riddler took a while to really get going. The whole Miss Kringle build-up was as predictable as it was painful to watch. After that, we had to briefly suffer through a cliche mental breakdown involving schizophrenic delusions but the payoff was great, considering that he hatches a whole plot because he suspects Gordon is onto him which involves repeatedly misinterpreting Gordon's actions in hilarious fashion. The frame-up was great, because the initial stunt felt like such an Adam West series homage and the scheme was so well executed (it was frame-up in the show I enjoyed). And on the whole, Cory Michael Smith's performance was a delightful. He was involved in most of the season's high points.
Professor Pyg was an unexpected pleasure. I have to give Gotham a lot of credit for making me like a character who I absolutely detested in the comics and supporting media up until now. He had a great mix of goofy and creepy even before the really big payoff with the twist (which was kinda predictable with the dinner scene). My only criticisms are that they had him slip out of character and we *already* had a cannibal dinner scene.
It took a while for the show to bring in Scarecrow, but we finally had nearly everything I could hope for (a good costume, a decent origin story, and storyline relevance) even if he was kept a little less developed and influential than some of the others. Having the two Cranes was a plus, although they probably could have worked both storylines into the same character. I expect that the only reason they didn't is that the main rogues gallery had to be age-appropriate for Bruce so nobody could be more than 25 or 30 years older than him. "The Fearsome Doctor Crane" worked as a standalone story and I liked how they introduced Jonathan Crane as the Scarecrow after.
Victor Zsasz was a character I hadn't cared about in the comics, but he was great for comic relief and random badassry. However, his betrayal of Penguin was kinda flaky and they didn't really do much with him after that. I'll mention that Headhunter was also fun, but he doesn't really deserve a spot on the list because he was only in *maybe* 2-3 episodes and seemed to exist so that Penguin's top henchman could fall into a trap that Zsasz would have been too smart for.
Jarvis Tetch was something of a surprise. While I hated the character at first (and didn't like him much in other media), he kinda grew on me and he was definitely one of the show's most sinister villains. I imagine part of the reason I disliked him at first was the stupid facial hair, which kinda made him look like he was a woman pretending to be a man
Prior to her first death, Fish Mooney was great. And Jada Pinkett Smith reminded me a bit of Eartha Kitt in the Adam West Batman. While she was more of a supporting player who served to build up Penguin, she shone in her own right. Season 2 didn't really do her that many favors and then she played a somewhat minor role after her revival (vanishing completely for a while then only showing up to die). Had she been written off at the end of season 1, she would have had a better overall character arc.
The Penguin was all over the fucking place. He had great moments and absolutely terrible moments. And the fact that he constantly yo-yo'd between being in favor and out of favor, being in power and out of power, is largely why I rate him lower than a lot of the others. The Pax Penguina was fucking awesome and gave new meaning to "organized crime." On the downside, the Peguin's look was never quite there, no umbrella gun (or umbrella weapons period outside of the knife-handle), he had so many dropped story threads, and his character was wildly inconsistent. The decision to try to pair him with Ed was weird and a little out of nowhere, but it's more a symptom of the weird writing rather than a larger issue.
Mr Freeze and Firefly were both good in their respective roles. The one problem with Freeze is that his Nora dies early (also, oddly enough, the actress who played Nora in Gotham also played Nora in Being Human, which was the only other role I knew her for) and consequently his whole character motivation seemed a little flaky afterward since, up until his change, everything he did was for his wife. Despite knowing that the dead could be revived, he never seemed to even broach the subject with Hugo Strange.
As for Hugo Strange himself, I'm kinda iffy on the character. BD Wong was a weird choice for the role and we never saw much depth to the character. While he was in a mastermind role at first, we quickly see that he answered to the Court of Owls and then he just had a minor supporting role throughout the rest.
Ivy was just flat-out bad. There were 3 actresses and 3 separate performances -- mope-y child, airheaded twenty-something, and evil eco-terrorist in her thirties -- and not one really jived with me. The personality shift from child to twenties Ivy feels out of place and she was more used for comic relief than anything. Twenties to thirties at least had more of a logical mood swing, although her awakening in the sweater (which I didn't remember her wearing for a long time previous) was weird.
Theo and Tabitha Galavan were pretty lousy. Theo was insufferable for most of his run (although he made a neat Azrael) and Tabitha frequently lacked discernible personality, even after
The Court of Owls was terrible. Part of the problem is that they were were just serving the League of Shadows, who were also awful. Everything about that was terrible. You had a criminal mastermind (Strange) revealed as simply serving a secret society (the Court) and then, on top of that, you have ANOTHER group controlling the Court. Who the fuck that thinks that's a good idea?
Ra's was also terrible. Other than wanting to die, he had no real discernible character movie and the Bruce as an heir thing was never all that established. He goes under everybody else simply because I'm still not sure what the fuck he was doing there.
---
(\/)(\/)|-| There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.