Gotham 2.05 “Scarification”

Gotham is certainly building a great rivalry between the big bad guy calling the shots now, Theo Galavan (James Frain) and one of the stars of the series first season, a Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) that is threatened, disrespected and used by Galavan, who continues to keep Penguin’s mom (Carol Kane) trapped alone in some nameless place; therefore driving poor Oswald crazier and crazier. The further exploring of that relationship and of the new status quo, where Penguin finally appears to gain a bit of valuable information about his new enemy, make for the best parts of an episode that still misses part of the crazy, chaotic charm of the three-part arc that began this season.

Maybe it’s because the new characters that we were presented with – expert arsonists tasked with setting certain Wayne Enterprises buildings on fire, as part of a Galavan’s most personal mission yet – felt a little dumb at times, completely diminishing the power of their actions, which centered the episode.

One of these new characters is Bridget Pike (Michelle Veintimilla), Gotham’s gender-swapped version of Batman’s villain Firefly. She’s presented as a scary girl serving her stepbrothers, forced to take part in their arsons, and, even if she is not at all into it at first, seems to have acquired a taste for it after her first night into action; even creating herself a fire-resistant uniform, in a nice touch to those villain-building scenes.

However, even after she kills one of the members of the recently created GCPD’s Strike Force, it is hard to take Bridget as a dangerous threat. Instead she comes across as an inexperienced bad guy whose fight scene leaves much room for improvement. Maybe it was intended to look this way, and the girl will get scared and escape that world…but either way, the death of Luke Garret (Lenny Platt), was surely intended to be one of the major shock moments of the episode, but instead it feels somehow flat and unimportant.

This is also the case with the other death of the episode, in a shoot-out at the Merc, a sort of Home Depot for Gotham’s villains.

Captain Nathaniel Barnes (Michael Chiklis), Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), a sadly still misused, almost absent Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue), and the guys (and girl) from the Strike Force break into the Merc right when one of the arsonists, tasked until this point with breaking into the buildings, explodes into pieces as one bullet from Gordon impacts a bomb he was carrying under his clothes.

Yes, completely explodes.

And his death, as later with Luke Garret’s, doesn’t feel important or eventful, instead being something to generate a – mostly effective, however – joke between Captain Barnes and Jim. Sadly for him, he is only treated as a plot device, the turning point that had to happen for the creation of Firefly.

There were really enjoyable factors where the episode did work and entertain, such as Penguin’s exploration of the nature of a simple knife in possession of the Waynes. We get to learn hidden parts of Gotham’s dark history, of a bloody incident involving the Waynes and the Dumas (now with their name changed to Galavan). I not only loved this story, but also how it was told; and the fact that it may be an introduction to the Court of Owls, as we see that there’s a sect working from the shadows with Theo Galavan, whose entire purpose is now clear: destroying the Waynes.

Next stop: killing young Bruce Wayne.

Speaking of whom, both Bruce (David Mazouz) and Alfred (Sean Pertwee) are left out of the episode, and that’s a pity, as theirs is a very interesting quest, different from Gordon’s. I hope they have just rested for this week. Next episode, “By Fire,” will continue Bridget Pike’s story. But what I’m really hoping to see more of is that crazy, raving and a bit lost Penguin.

Because who else keeps a butcher’s knife under his table, should it come handy?