Thanks to Gotham I can watch a super hero series without the constraints of the genre, because, even though I love Batman, his background, his sick and twisted villains, and all the craziness that comes with it, I am not someone who has read all the essentials — most of them, yes; but there’s always some storyline here or there that has yet to be read.
However, the joy with Gotham is that it has taken the spirit of Frank Miller’s Year One and Jeph Loeb’ s Dark Victory and The Long Halloween, splashed them all together and taken the best, while creating something new, fresh, but reminiscent and easy to identify with the Batman mythos — both for longtime fans and newcomers alike.
This episode continued the non-stop mode that the series has taken since it came back from the winter hiatus. We had huge developments on all fronts, with characters speaking their minds and again changing their status quos.
Bruce (David Mazouz) and Alfred (Sean Pertwee) face Detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), accusing him of not having prioritized the Waynes’ murder investigation above all the crazy shit that’s been happening to Gotham and, let’s be honest, in his crappy love life.
This is a situation that could have felt forced, as clearly Jim has always wanted to help Bruce recover and has fought the GCPD on numerous occasions in order to keep on investigating the kid’s case. But alas, it is very well handled, showing that at least for now, Bruce’s and Jim’s destinies seem to drift apart. In my mind this is something good, as up until now, most of the cases that Jim had were something that always meant one more little clue for Bruce to solve his parents’ death mystery, no matter what the case was about — “Balloonman,” “Arkham”…
Now the kid faces a different dynamic, where he will have to become the world’s greatest detective on his own, without the help of the good detective Gordon.
And hey, what about a seemingly-defeated Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), who was forced to say goodbye to Gotham in order to save her life, after Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) seemed to reclaim her former club? Well, she isn’t as defeated as one might think, making a calm but angry phone call to her rival, Sal Maroni (David Zayas), who, as you might know, is employing the Penguin, and already has some suspicions about his creepy right hand man.
What ensues after Mooney’s tip that Penguin has been playing all of them for fools, working for Falcone (John Doman) the whole time, is good old fashioned mafia procedures. The Don (Maroni) taking Penguin out of town — and therefore out of reach — for a meeting with “the guy with the thing,” the way he tests his loyalty for the last time with a little “telling secrets” game, and the classic squashed like a bug inside the car; all are moves we’ve seen in one iteration or another in mobsters movies, and it is maybe because of this familiarity that I feel, when executed with such skill as to still have you smiling and loving the characters even more, Gotham’s got that touch. It knows which buttons to push, but also how to create new and unique stories out of them.
Poor Penguin’s world is, once again, coming to an end, as now he not only has Mooney but Maroni on his tail. All of his covers and double-crossings are over, now that he’s out in the open. But then, what does he do, in a wonderful scene to top the whole thing off? Well, of course, he comes back to Gotham, like any madman would.
But hey, we got more! We get the first taste of the evil that inspires Batman’s villain The Scarecrow, and we already see the villain at a young age, watching his father, Dr. Crane (Julian Sands), literally instill fear into a defenseless woman, as she’s about to relive her worst nightmare. Sound familiar?
More to come on that front next episode!
And, finally, we’ve got a little bit of love — something that the writers seem intent on adding to the show — giving both good old Detective Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) and Gordon — the much better for him than Barbara, Dr. Leslie Thompkins (Morena Baccarin)! — special someones with whom to connect and help make it all a little bit brighter.
If that’s possible in this screwed up Gotham.