Gotham Returns and Nygma Just Wants to Be Loved

"How the Riddler Got His Name" was an occasionally zany, occasionally touching, and completely satisfying baptism of crazy that saw the final transition from tortured killer-nerd Ed Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) to The Riddler -- one of Gotham's most notorious villains and one of Batman's most enduring rogues.

Reluctantly guilty over killing (but not really killing, of course) his BFF Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and aimless without political strings to pull, a vengeful murder to plot, or anything resembling a job, or a social life, Ed Nygma embarked on Gotham's latest wave of terror by kidnapping the city's most brilliant minds, asking them his trademark riddles, and then disposing of them when their answers were disappointingly pedestrian and, most importantly, incorrect.

Gotham is riddled with the barely functional husks of characters who, if we're at all familiar with Gotham's source material, are instantly recognizable as key figures in Batman's mythology.

Taking the time to explore these characters in the deepest, darkest depths of their demented psyches gives us a much more satisfying payoff than magicking Ivy into the sexpot everyone knew she was going to eventually become anyway.

The Riddler's journey is far from over, given what we know about the rest of this season, and of course the not-at-all-surprising "revelation" that Penguin survived Nygma's assassination attempt on him.

[...] was Nygma's ringtone supposed to sound like the interlude tunage from groovy 1960s Batman?

Because that's AWESOME.