Posts tagged: Batman

Gotham S02E10 “The Son Of Gotham” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 10pm
Writer: John Stephens
Director: Rob Bailey

Essential Plot Points:

• A woman flees from a mugger. He pulls a gun on her and she’s saved by a… monk?

• Jim gets dressed for Officer Parks’ funeral. He and Barnes, on a cane after his injury, help carry the coffin. No one is happy. Especially Jim, who goes to see Galavan after the funeral. He asks if Parks’ name means anything and Former Mayor Evil says no. Troubled, Jim leaves and returns home.

• In another very special episode of At Home With Lee And Jim, he opens up about how he feels he should have killed Flamingo. Lee tries to reassure him but Jim is going pretty much full dark side.
• So much so, in fact, that when he returns to work he’s convinced Galavan is planning something. Harv is working leads from his contact in the Church but Barnes wants Jim on the case of the mugger the monks took. (We know but they don’t that he was sacrificed by having his throat cut.)

• Jim is having none of this and when Harv gets a tip about Galavan trying to buy one of Gotham’s old churches. Intrigued, and feeling the need to describe it as a “Chinese slap slap joint”, they roll out.
• Just in time to find the Monks killing people there! Twist! Jim gets into a nicely choreographed fight with a monk and stabs him.
• The monk, unfazed, pulls the knife out, walks off and into traffic. He tells Jim about, “Gotham being cleansed” before he dies.
• MEANWHILE, AT THE GOTHAM ACADEMY FOR RICH, TRAUMATISED CHILDREN!

• Bruce and Selina are planning something. This involves Bruce offering to pay for Silver’s uncle’s defence if he gives him the name of the man who killed his parents. Silver accuses Bruce of manipulating them and Bruce, amazingly, doesn’t crown her Queen of Hypocrite Mountain. Instead, she agrees to take his offer to her uncle. Before she does, Bruce whispers to her and then kisses her. Selina is not cool with this. Neither notice the hit team following Bruce.

• MEANWHILE, BACK AT A GATHERING OF POLICE COSPLAYERS INCREASINGLY AMAZED NO ONE HAS BUSTED THEM!
• Barnes tries to kick Gordon’s ass about ignoring him. But when Gordon brings him proof about the Monks he reluctantly agrees to let him run with it. Especially as there have been two more deaths in the last few days with the same MO. Whoever the nine are, their blood is being spilt pretty quickly…

• This also leads to a conversation with Lee where, brilliantly, she points out that monks in the city really should be more noticeable. Harv and Jim have an idea and head out to the sewers. They begin tracking the monks, unaware their quarry already knows they’re there…

• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE PLOT WE SECRETLY HOPED WOULDN’T SHOW UP THIS WEEK!
• Lee notices Ed arguing with someone on the phone. It is, of course, the Penguin. Ed, of course, lies massively unconvincingly about it and the fact Miss Kringle has left with her abusive ex-boyfriend. Lee, of course, either buys it or decides she doesn’t want to get any awful on her and leaves.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE PLOT THAT IS NOT AS IT SEEMS!

• Silver calls Bruce and tells him her Uncle has accepted his terms. On his way to meet her, Bruce is met by a van. Inside, Silver is bound and gagged inside and he’s ordered to get in. They’re threatened by Tom the Knife, a thug who claims he works for the people who really run Wayne Enterprises and are very unhappy about the thought of it changing hands.
• Demanding to know what they know about the murder of the Waynes, Tom gives the kids a choice; speak or he’ll start cutting the fingers off one of them. Silver admits she lied and her Uncle said to keep Bruce busy until that evening. Despite this, Bruce stands up to him but neither of them say a thing. Bruce screams as he’s taken off to be tortured.
• MEANWHILE, IN THE SEWERS!

• The cops find the Order’s altar and the latest sacrificed criminal. Harv is attacked by a Monk whom he promptly puts down, hard. Jim persuades him to go for help for the injured man and realises, conveniently, the Monk is explaining the plot in his comatose state. Jim impersonates another Monk and learns about the Son of Gotham before Harv and the paramedics return.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE WAREHOUSE IN RESERVOIR DOGS!

• Tom returns holding a bloodstained knife. Silver snaps, telling him to untie or she’ll have his entire family killed. Tom, delighted to finally “meet” the real Silver presses on and she panics and reveals that her uncle did tell her the name of the killer; M Malone. Tom stops and asks his employer if, “we’re good”.
• Bruce says yes they are.
• Unharmed and very angry, the future Batman appears. He calmly explains that he wanted to trust her but realises he can’t. Bruce and Selina thank Tom for the help and they leave a tearful, panicked, Silver alone, despite being terrified at the thought her uncle will kill her.

• MEANWHILE, AT EVIL TOWERS!

• Tabitha is retrieving something from a secret compartment when Alfred appears, looking for Bruce. They snarl at one another and then, presumably to fill a few minutes, fight. Tabitha kicks Alfred’s ass and, badly injured, he collapses into the back of a passing garbage truck.
• MEANWHILE, AT THE COURTHOUSE!

• Harvey Dent celebrates another day of not being Two-Face yet by being part of a trial that collapses when Mayor James recants his statement. BOOOO! YOU SUCK, MAYOR JAMES! Galavan is exonerated, Jim punches him and Jim is arrested. OR IS HE?!

• MEANWHILE, BACK AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR

• Bruce and Selina return. Bruce tells her what he whispered to Silver, about how much she means to him and how connected they are. He recalls Selina’s early line about how the best liars tell the truth and tells her it was the truth, just not about Silver.
• Selina, obviously cuted out, leaves. The whole thing is adorable and lovely.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE ODD COUPLE!
• Penguin and Ed argue. It’s still awful. Then, Penguin’s henchman shows up to tell him Galavan’s been exonerated. Penguin gets enraged and heads out.
• MEANWHILE, AT THE DOCKS!
• Jim wakes up tied to a crane. Galavan monologues about his evil plan. This is actually a thing that happens. He tells him about the Order of St Dumas and the plans for the city and then has him untied and beats the ever living crap out of him. He orders Jim beaten to death and leaves.
• But Jim is saved! By the Penguin! Who slaps him around screaming about Galavan until he passes out!

• MEANWHILE, AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR!
• Galavan comes to get Bruce and Cockneyman is nowhere to be found…

Review:

Picture Gotham as a plane.

Picture that plane in a nose dive, the engines on fire.

Picture, slowly, that dive start to level off. That was last week.

This week it starts to climb.

The reason is Bruce Wayne and Silver St Cloud. Who knew that was a sentence we’d ever write?

But seriously, the Bruce plot is the best thing this episode because it’s a direct response to something last episode. Remember Alfred’s line about Bruce not being able to deceive people correctly? Bruce bloody does.

The centre of this episode is very clever, because it, like Bruce, lies to you. It presents itself as a frankly very dull, “Bruce and Silver are kidnapped” plot. It tells you this is to do with the corruption at Wayne Enterprises. It tells you this has nothing to do with the Galavan plot. It tells you Bruce still believes Silver.

It never once tells you the whole truth. And it’s brilliant.

There are few arts more complex, and under-appreciated, than the creation of deliberately slightly fake drama. That’s what this episode does and it drags you in too. We only became  suspicious when Bruce was dragged off to be tortured. By the time the splendidly (possibly too) chirpy Tom the Knife came out it was pretty obvious something was fishy  by the time he called to Bruce you could almost hear the them tune from Leverage. Very, very well played.

In one episode, the show has set up more forward momentum than Bruce, Selina and Silver have had for most of the season. Bruce isn’t reactive anymore, he’s out in front of the things that keep happening to him. Selina is simultaneously impressed and slightly worried and Silver, who’s awful, is finally written out. We hope.

Even better, the episode doesn’t hand wave away the really nasty episodes of its plots. Because a good chunk of this episode is Tom lying pretty convincingly to a pair of kids that he’s going to mutilate them. That’s about as awful as you can get and the show doesn’t back down from it in the slightest. This is the strong, morally ambiguous drama Gotham likes to think it always is and it’s so, so good to see it back.

Elsewhere, the episode is fun but not on the same level. Jim is clearly traumatised by Officer Parks’ death and that’s giving Ben Mackenzie some meaty stuff to play with. However, he spends most of this episode trundling around the sewers with Harv investigating the Order of St Dumas. It’s fun but it feels like marking time and leads to the more than slightly ludicrous final scene.

But the episode’s worst crimes are saved for last. Galavan being exonerated is as deeply weird as it is expected. This is what happens when you cast Richard Kind as an authority figure! When will you people LEARN?! Worse still, Cockneyman and Tabitha have a fight that serves no purpose other than to put them in position for next episode. And maybe give Alfred some nasty infections given the garbage truck he escapes in.

But despite that the episode is worth it for the Bruce plot and the start of something new with Jim. Gotham’s still got big problems but this is the second week in a row it’s improved. Keep it up, folks. And give Bruce more to do, he’s great now.

The Good:

• “Does the universe normally like you this much, Detective?”
  “First time.” Nice exchange, which is also a tacit acknowledgement of Jim Gordon’s awful life.
• “It’s weird – why has no one seen these monks until now? A) They’re killing people and carrying them across town and B) THEY’RE MONKS!” Lee Thompkins! The best detective in the GCPD! And she isn’t a detective!
• “I believed you.”
  “Yes, that was the point.” This is COLD. This is Bruce as he will be: cut off, wearing the face of a normal person, always playing four steps ahead. Brilliantly done and very disturbing.
• “AMATEURS.” Despite all the problems with the Ed/Penguin plot this was adorable.
• “We have a very small window. I have places to be. You have to die.” The monologue isn’t great but this line is a gem.
• The Bruce plot! So much the Bruce plot.
• Officer Consequences has reported for duty. It’s an immense relief that Parks’ death isn’t being hand waved away. It remains massively over-the-top and upsetting but it does seem to be a massive left turn onto Dark Side Boulevard for Jim.
• Harv and Barnes really not getting on and studiously ignoring that fact is one of our favourite things about the show. That and the fact that by and large Harv is now the cop Jim thinks he is, while Jim is now the cop everyone else thinks Harv is.
• Other Harv! Don’t worry, buddy! If we keep seeing you this irregularly it’ll be ages before the whole Two-Face thing!
• The Order of St Dumas. The show is using them in a really fun way. They’re a lot stabbier than we remember but they’re still the sort of extreme, “We will save you to DEATH!” characters that made Azrael so interesting. And if, as seems likely, we’re getting Azrael this year too that will put a very different spin on Bruce’s transformation.

The Bad:

• That Monk Harv bumrushed was awfully talkative given his serious injuries. And apparently didn’t think anything of being blindfolded. Or talked to by a member of his relatively small order whose voice he didn’t recognise.
• Casual racism when used as a character note is, well, still casual racism. It’s understandable that both Harv and Barnes would refer to the massage parlour with derogative terms but it still strikes a bum note. Although in fairness that’s as much to do with the show’s previous “eyes closed head down can’t lose” approach to dealing with non-white dude characters as anything else.
• Why do Alfred and Tabitha fight again? Think about it; Galavan clearly hasn’t turned State’s evidence on his sister because he’s claiming he’s innocent. She wasn’t arrested at the same time as he was, there’s no evidence tying her to anything and she’s free to come and go as she pleases. Given the GCPD’s increasingly clear rota system for who has the brain cell that day she won’t even be under surveillance, odds are.
• So why in the blue Hell does she face down the butler of the city’s most prominent figure, attack and badly injure but not kill him? He didn’t see whatever she was retrieving from the apartment, he clearly doesn’t trust her but he presents no actual threat. Is she really that bored? REALLY? Or is this simply a nonsensical action beat to give two characters stuff to do and move them into position for next episode?
• Ed. Bickering with Penguin. About house stuff. Oh God.
• Bless him, we love Tommy Flanagan’s work but he’s a little all over the map here. Like we said earlier though, that plot being rickety is kind of the point.

The Random:

• So… Galavan’s an expert martial artist now? I mean it’s logical… ish, kind of, given that he was apparently raised by the monks. Still seems a little weird watching him go all Lethal Weapon 2 on Jim though.
• Tom The Knife is played with flamboyant aplomb by Tommy Flanagan. A former Glasgow DJ, Flanagan tried acting at the insistence of friend Robert Carlyle. It worked out too as he’s become a frequent flyer on TV and the movies. He’s best known for playing Chibs in Sons Of Anarchy but he’s also been in Gladiator, Alien vs Predator (where, magnificently, his character was named after Aliens comic scribe Mark Verheiden), Braveheart and 24 and will apparently appear in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2. We’ve not got any information on casting at time of writing but let’s face it, if he’s not one of Yondu’s boys we’ll all be shocked.
• The Order of St Dumas, as we’ve touched on before, are from the comics. Azrael is the name of their assassin/enforcer, a member who has taken on the duties of punishing the orders’ enemies for centuries. In the comics, the latest Azrael, Jean-Paul Valley, takes over from Batman for a while. Here, I suspect, we may be getting a look at an earlier model…

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read our other Gotham reviews

Gotham S02E09 “A Bitter Pill to Swallow” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 10pm
Writer: Megan Mostyn-Brown
Director: Louis Shaw Milito

Essential Plot Points

• Tabitha walks past a newspaper stand. The headline is MAYOR GALAVAN ARRESTED!
• She talks her way into the secret room at a bar. Which is actually an Assassins Night Club/Bureau.

• RUN BY MISSY! THIS IS AMAZING!
• MEANWHILE, AT NYGMACIDE TOWERS!
• Ed wakes the Penguin up who he’s nursing back to health like the angriest of all birds. Penguin is having none of this. Ed drugs him anyway.

• MEANWHILE, AT GCPD HEADQUARTERS!
• Jim gets back from seeing Barbara and is confronted by Lee. In another edition of At Home With Lee And Jim she again shows just how much of a grown-up she is and politely points out how awfully he’s acting. He agrees, kind of apologises and runs off to help Captain MachoFace search Galavan’s apartment.
• MEANWHILE, AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR
• Silver shows up and, because it’s Bruce’s turn to be an idiot this week, he believes she had no idea about her uncle’s intentions.

• Alfred arrives, throws her out and basically tells Bruce he’s awful at this and needs to stop. Bruce tantrums. Cockneyman is having none of it.
• MEANWHILE, AT EVIL TOWERS!
• Jim gets into an elevator with a polite, gentle man who is very clearly a horrifyingly violent criminal. After Jim turns down what we choose to believe is a poisoned caramel, the Werther’s Original Killer opts for good old-fashioned piano wire. He and Jim beat the crap out of each other until Jim drags his unconscious form into the penthouse.
• The assassin’s phone rings, Jim answers it, they hang up. No one really does anything.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT WHAT WE CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IS MISSY’S TARDIS!
• Missy puts the call out: Jim Gordon dies. Now. She also calls Flamingo, an unusually horrible, cannibalistic assassin who was previously off her love list.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT NYGMACIDE TOWERS!
• Ed chats to the Penguin and asks for his advice about his newfound fondness for homicide. Penguin, crushed by the loss of his mum, is having none of it and even turns down the offer of a quick brutal murder of one of Galavan’s hoods.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT EVIL TOWERS!

• Jim beats the assassin, threatens him and hangs him out of a window. Barnes actually reacts to this and stands him down which is nice. What isn’t is the realisation that a hit team is on the way in. With only Barnes, Jim, rookie Officer Parks, a CSI and presumably a stick with an angry face drawn on it, the GCPD is in big trouble.
• Nonetheless, they prevail. Although they lose the CSI along the way and Barnes gets knifed in the artery, meaning they’re trapped there and more assassins are coming…
• While they wait to see who gets there first – their back-up or their killers – Jim and Barnes talk. Barnes explains, in a moment that’s actually really well done, why he’s such a stickler; he executed a young prisoner during his third tour. That awful experience, and deed, haunt him. He makes it clear he doesn’t wish that on Jim.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT NYGMACIDE TOWERS!
• Ed plays Penguin a piece of music he was singing when he fell asleep. Penguin reveals his mother used to sing it to him every night. Again, Ed tries to bond with him. Again, Penguin vows to leave. This time though, Ed gets through; he points out that Penguin’s empty life is also his strength. He has no weaknesses now. And neither does Ed. It’s a surprisingly great, really dark scene.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT EVIL TOWERS!

• The GCPD back-up arrives. Hurray! And they’re all instantly killed by Flamingo! Booo! Despite orders not to, Jim answers Flamingo’s taunting walkie talkie message and goes down to fight him. They beat the hell out of each other and Jim wins, ending up kneeling on Flamingo with his gun in the killer’s mouth. Ignoring the laughter of his opponent, he refuses to kill him and reads him his rights.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT NYGMACIDE TOWERS!
• Ed and Penguin celebrate their new found MurderBrohood with takeout and homicide. BFFs forever!
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE GCPD
• Flamingo is brought in, feigns illness and tears Officer Parks’ throat out.
• MEANWHILE, IN THIS WEEK’S EPISODE OF AT HOME WITH LEE AND JIM
• Lee basically points out Jim’s a human dumpster fire. He agrees and asks why she’s with him. She jokes that she has no idea and yet again, somehow, these two are the most interesting and real part of the show. Their conversation about Jim’s astronomically huge anger issues is a real highlight. And one completely shut down by Jim getting the news about Parks.
• MEANWHILE, AT BLACKGATE!

• Tabitha shows up to visit Theo. He tears a strip off her for hiring the assassins and points out they’ve almost won anyway. She admits she was angry over Jim hurting Barbara and he points out that, sister or not, he’ll kill her if she screws up their plans again.
• MEANWHILE, AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR!
• Bruce, who’s been shut down from sneaking out throughout the episode, is met by Selina. She tells him Silver’s evil and helps him sneak out so she can prove it.
• MEANWHILE, AT THE DOCKS!
• The Monks of St Dumas arrive and proceed to murder a poor patrolman a LOT before walking slowly into Gotham…

Review:

After two weeks in the gutter, Gotham is back on the sidewalk.

Just.

There’s a lot to enjoy here. And, amazingly, a lot of that involves Ed. The ghastly time-wasting of the last two weeks is replaced by a plot that’s as bleak and psychological as Gotham always thinks its being. Ed “saves” Penguin and points out the pair of them have nothing left to lose, which means they have no weaknesses. It’s a horrifying, dancing-in-the-ruins style moment and it finally, FINALLY, puts the all new all-evil Ed in something other than a lousy Dexter ripoff. This is the Riddler being born; a fiercely analytical brain built on a foundation of revulsion and dreadful, curdled self-actualisation. Disturbing, tragic and genuinely funny – instead of just trying to be – the Ed and Penguin scenes are a highlight of the episode. Who knew we’d be writing that?

Elsewhere the episode also scores highly. The dismally bad action scenes of the last few episodes have been replaced with actual fights! With actual choreography! And actual meaning! It’s startling and pleasingly burly. The assassins/GCPD throwdown is especially good precisely because it’s messy. There’s something desperate, untidy and scrappy to it. It drives and is defined by the plot, just like the other two fights here and that’s such a welcome change.

Plus, no return to a gunfight carried out through a building, which is a bonus.

Even better, the episode finally turns the entire focus of the show onto Jim being an awful human being. The bad-conduct kiss from last week? Addressed. His ridiculous propensity for violence? Addressed. Ish. His getting officers killed because he’s an idiot? Addressed. To be fair that continues this week but at least it’s not under the rug anymore. All of this stuff is fun, interesting and often surprisingly well written character development and its weeks past due.

Then there’s the murder.

We go into detail about the murder of Officer Parks below. It’s very finely balanced writing, so much so it’s difficult to call if it’s good or awful. The scene is definitely within the boundaries of gratuitous at the very least. It’s also certainly a massive tonal shift from everything that went before and, depressingly, sees the show change the channel from “Pretty good action procedural” to “CHECK OUT THE AWFUL!” again.

But most of all it feels jarring. And perhaps a little mean-spirited. After an episode that’s finally honestly pretty good, ending it like that feels almost belligerent.

The Good:

• Michelle Gomez! Michelle Gomez as the head of a Gotham Assassin Bureau/Night Club is wonderful. Much more of her please.
• Context! We find out the awful thing Captain Barnes did. We see Jim called on his nonsense. We see him acknowledge he’s very nearly dangerously unbalanced. We even see Ed and Penguin find a curious kind of wholeness in the realisation of their bleak, empty, predatory existences. This is really good stuff.

• Really solid fight choreography. Gotham has been bloody awful at this for weeks now with the dire “Extras stand in position and fire off camera” attempt on Galavan’s life being an all-time low. Here we get:
  • A pretty solid close-quarters punch-up in the lift between Jim and the first assassin. The “run up the wall” move is a little OTT but it worked for Jack Bauer all those years ago. Also EXCELLENT Bag Fu Jim!
  • A nicely burly, untidy fight between the second wave of assassins and the GCPD.
  • A good, methodical duel between Flamingo and Jim. No big flashy moves, no showboating, just two guys beating on each other until one of them doesn’t get back up.
• Tone. This feels, for the first time in weeks, like a Batman show. The balance of brutality and high drama is (mostly) spot on, the characters act far more believable than they have in weeks and the pacing actually serves the show instead of dragging it down. After the catastrophic last couple of episodes this isn’t so much a relief as it is cause for celebration, fireworks and small feral warrior bears to play the drums on the helmets of the Stormtroopers they’ve killed and, we presume, eaten off camera.
• “Most people fight their dark side. Lately, you find ways to give into it.” Lee nails Jim to the wall every time she opens her mouth this episode but this is the best one.
• “Getting information out of a girl like that requires a level of deception you do not yet possess, Master Bruce.” A great line because the more you read it, the sadder it becomes. Alfred is essentially paying Bruce a compliment because he’s not good enough at subterfuge to find out something to his disadvantage quiet yet.
• “I believe in the beauty of extreme measures.” So do we, Not-Quite Missy! Come back soon!

• “If you’re planning on killing me could you get on with it? At this point it would come as a welcome relief.” Penguin articulating our feelings about the last few weeks of the Ed plot beautifully there.
• “I’m just a man and at the right moment a man might do anything. Any man. There is no line. There’s just the law. That’s what separates us from the animals.” This is a pivotal moment for Jim. This is the first time we’ve really seen the man he’ll become start to appear and it’s also the first time this show has come within a hundred miles of giving Michael Chiklis lines worthy of his ability. Nicely done.
• “A man with nothing that he loves is a man that cannot be bargained, a man who cannot be betrayed, a man who answers to no one but HIMSELF! And that is the man I see before me. A free man!” This is another wonderful, horrible piece of dialogue. This is Ed acknowledging and embracing how broken he is and turning his own inner Tyler Durden on Penguin. And it WORKS.
• “I almost crossed the line tonight.”
  “No kidding. How out of character.”
  “Scared me a little.”
  “Welcome to my world.”
  “Why the hell are you with me?”
  “Beats me.” Never change you two. Actually, Jim, change a lot you’re an enormous asshole. Lee? You’re perfect.

The Bad:

• The GCPD arrested the Mayor. This is a case that will make or break careers and the reputation of the Force for a generation. It requires subtlety, diligence and precision. It gets: Captain MachoFace, JimJim the Hot Mess, a SINGLE CSI and a rookie. God damn it, Captain Barnes…
• Where the Hell are the Jimshirts this week? Did he kill them all off? AGAIN?

• Flamingo. In the comics he’s not that interesting but Gotham turns the volume on him all the way up and breaks the dial off. The fact he’s a cannibal in the show but not in the comics sums up the problems with him and the show very neatly: endless excess with little regard for character.
• For an episode filled with surprisingly well done violence there’s a really lazy tic in here. When Parks is killed we get a long shot of the cops failing to pull Flamingo off her. Barely two scenes later, we’re shown the order of St Dumas all stabbing a single watchman to death. Why? The spectacle’s obvious but like everything this show screws up, it’s not necessary. Parkes’ death is just as shocking without the pile-on; the monks are scarier if one of them kills the guard not all of them like a horde of homicidal pigeons.

The “Honestly Don’t Know…”

• Right. The murder of Officer Parks. On the one hand, it makes perfect thematic sense. Jim has had his long night of the soul and chosen to let Flamingo live. He’s made a definite ethical choice and feels like he’s turned a corner. Then, his ethical choice tears the throat out of a good hearted rookie.On the other hand, the scene could, and will, be read as offensive two different ways. Firstly there’s the gratuity of it. We get three separate, extended shots of Parks’s weeping, terrified, screaming face as her throat is torn out. We see her pain. We see her blood spread across the floor. We see her terror and her helplessness.
• Yet again the suffering of the female characters of Gotham is fetishised in a way that’s at best misguided and at worst disturbing. This is certainly the first scene in the show that’s truly got under my skin.Then there’s the confused symbology of it. Parks shares a name with civil rights activist Rosa Parks and, like everything else with this deeply weird and upsetting plot that could be read one of two ways. The positive view is that she occupies Rosa Parks’ position within the universe of Gotham; a woman whose actions ultimately change her world for the better.
• The negative view is that even if that is the case the catalyst of that change denies her of all agency. Rosa Parks changed her country through polite civil disobedience. Officer Parks may have changed Jim Gordon by being murdered and, it’s implied, changed him for the worse too.
• The end result is a punch that lands but feels like one that lands below the belt. You understand her death, you understand why the episode goes there but you find yourself desperately wishing it hadn’t. In some cases that’s the mark of genuinely great horror. Here it simply leaves you feeling numb.

The Random:

• Not-Missy has excellent musical taste! “Peaches” by The Stranglers plays over our first view of what is very clearly not her TARDIS but just a night club full of assassins.
• Special thanks to Nick Eden, who pointed out the infinitely more logical spelling of ‘Lee’ to me than the one I’ve been using.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read our other Gotham reviews

Gotham S02E06 “By Fire” REVIEW

Airing in the UK on Channel 5, Mondays, 10pm
Writer: Rebecca Perry Cutter
Director: TJ Scott

Essential Plot Points

• Butch is having his entrance interview with the Galavans. It’s going well. Less so for the chap behind him in the noose, balancing on a pile of books. Butch gets the job, the noosed gentleman, who turns out to be a Congressman, gets to live in return for backing Galavan for Mayor. Cautious yay!

• On the mean streets of Gotham, Jim Gordon is chasing his man down! His man in this case being a disfigured former arsonist who, in the first of several dreadful lines this week, tells Jim that a female arsonist is “Mad real, like a unicorn.” Jim beats the guy up to get this non information.
• The Strike Force members who are accompanying Jim tell him Captain Barnes has ordered them to write up all infractions of conduct, even with superior officers. Jim Gordon doesn’t care! He gets results!

• At Selina’s squat, Bridgit is hiding out. In fact, Bridgit is cleaning up because she doesn’t know what else to do. Selina suggests they do some crime and takes them to a human trafficking auction. Bridigt is adamant that they should help the women being auctioned off but Selina’s all about the money. They rob the place and make a pretty good team. In fairness as well, the fact that combined they weigh maybe 150 lbs and there are only two of them is offset by the fact Bridgit HAS A FLAMETHROWER and clearly enjoys using it.
• MEANWHILE, AT THE GCPD!

• Jim Gordon’s results include a note in his file. Barnes writes him up and Jim fights him on it. Jim argues that Gotham requires grey areas, Barnes believes it’s black and white. He also, intriguingly, hints at something very bad in his past that gave him this black and white world view. He tells Jim they have a lead and shows him security footage of Selina and Bridgit escaping from the human trafficking auction. He then tells Jim they’re going to take down the killer. Which sounds a lot like executing the killer. Which, if that’s true, means Barnes is a colossal hypocrite or has no short term memory.
• Jim recognises Selina and goes to talk to her. Harv suggests he take the Jimshirts, sorry Strike Force, but Jim decides to go in quietly.
• MEANWHILE, AT STATELY WAYNE MANOR!

• Alfred and Bruce are boxing. Alfred is in the process of tucking his young ward up like a kipper when Bruce bites him. Complementing his student/boss/ward for fighting dirty, Alfred tells him Silver invited him over for dinner. Bruce blisses out.
• Alfred punches him in the face.
• Bruce accepts that he maybe needs to focus a bit more and goes back to training.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE GCPD!

• Yay it’s the Ed scenes for the episode. Ed overhears Leigh and Kringle talking about Dougherty and himself. Kringle admits that she wants Ed to be a little more forceful and he steps in, maximum suave, and tells her what they’re having for dinner that night. It is, in fairness, actually quite sweet.
• Nearby, Harvey interrogates Ivy Pepper. Remember her? In return for a candy bar (which Harv may have stolen and be eating himself in later scenes), Ivy gives up Selina’s location and then patiently waits to be used again in another ten episodes time.
• MEANWHILE, NEAR THE GOTHAM BUS STATION

• Selina walks Bridgit to the bus but is interrupted by the Pike brothers. Boo! They are both evil and awful awful characters! They kidnap Bridgit and Selina, despite kicking one brother’s ass and getting his gun off him does precisely nothing other than look a bit sad as her friend is driven away.
• The reason? The guns she had at home were better, apparently. She’s tooling up when Jim shows up and they have a standoff. Selina explains Bridgit’s past and Jim orders her to stand down. She refuses and Jim promises he’ll do everything he can to bring a wanted cop killer in. I’m sure this will go excellently.
• MEANWHILE! BACK AT THE PIKES!

• Bridgit is chained to a radiator and her brother throws firecrackers at her until she agrees to work for them again. The Pikes, because they’re idiots, are overjoyed and tell Bridgit to fix dinner. Instead, she decides to fix VENGEANCE.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT PENGUIN GARDENS!
• Penguin is very amused by Butch’s new hand and not at all amused by how little finding Penguin’s mother he’s done. He sends the big guy back into the fray and Butch isn’t happy.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE PIKES!

• The Pike brothers stand very still while Bridgit incinerates them to death. Not long after, Harv and Jim arrive and find the corpses. One of them wakes up, spits the word “BITCH” and is kicked the rest of the way dead by Harvey.
• This actually happens.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT EVIL TOWERS!

• Butch finds the remote cunningly hidden on Galavan’s desk and discovers nothing that Penguin didn’t already know. Galavan arrives, good naturedly sees through Butch’s lies and figures out Penguin is controlling him. He offers to “help”.
• Tabitha comes in and beats Butch up unconvincingly.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE GCPD!
• Jim is now completely on board with bringing Bridgit in alive. Barnes wants her, its implied, dead.

• Selina meets Bridgit at the pigeon loft they used to hang out in. She asks why her friend doesn’t just leave and Bridgit says she wants to stop the people who hurt them, like her brothers. Selina hugs her friend and leaves her to her fate.
• MEANWHILE, AT EVIL TOWERS!
• Bruce has dinner with Silver and the Galavans. Tabitha arrives late and has WHAT IS CLEARLY BLOOD ON HER FACE. No one says anything.
• MEANWHILE, AT NYGMA TOWERS!
• Ed and Kringle have dinner. Ed confesses he likes her. She feels the same. They kiss and head off to the bedroom.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE HUMAN TRAFFICKING AUCTION!

• Jim gets a call from Selina saying she thinks she knows where Bridgit is going. She’s right. Bridgit goes back to the auction, torches a guy and lets the victims out.

• The GCPD arrive and Jim tries to talk her down. Barnes orders no one to fire and, of course, someone does, opening a leak in Bridgit’s suit. She then, for no reason other than the plot requires it, torches a GCPD car until it explodes and sets her on fire too.
• MEANWHILE, BACK AT EVIL TOWERS!
• Galavan talks to Bruce. He assures him his father was a good man and if elected mayor, he’ll help Bruce clean up Wayne Industries. Bruce is very cool with this.
• MEANWHILE, AT PENGUIN GARDENS!

• A bloodied Butch staggers back to Penguin, sans mallet and tells him he’s found his mother. Penguin is overjoyed and, maybe, not paying attention. Butch may not be under his control anymore…
• MEANWHILE, AT HOME WITH JIM AND LEIGH!
• Selina is holding a gun on Leigh. Just go with it, Leigh does. When Jim comes home she demands to know what’s happened to Bridget and Jim tells her she’s dead. Selina goes for Jim, telling him he promised and Jim defends himself very very badly. He even, in arguably the most callous moment in the last two episodes, tries to get Selina to flip on who employed Bridgit. She lets slip it was Penguin, refusing to believe Jim will go after his “friend” and leaves in disgust. And you can’t blame her for it either.
• MEANWHILE, AT LOVENYGMA TOWERS!

• Kringle, in a genuinely sweet moment, opens up about being frightened of Dougherty. Ed reassures her by first confessing and then proving that he murdered Dougherty. Kringle panics, tries to flee and Ed inadvertently suffocates her to death while trying to explain he’s not a murderer.
• And montage!
• Ed cradles Kringle’s lifeless body, sobbing hopelessly.
• Penguin and his boys tool up to go get Mrs Penguin.
• Nearby, Selina cries for her friend.

• At Indian Hill, a Wayne Industries facility, two interns explain the plot to us as Bridgit, very much not dead, is wheeled into a room lit like a pop video. She’s a monster now, she’s fireproof! Her suit is melted to her skin! Dramatic music!

Review:

The short version of this review is, “This is a bad episode of Gotham.” The plots stumble over one another, things happen for no reason other than they need to and there’s some dismally bad dialogue.

Here’s the long version. This episode demonstrates everything that’s wrong not with Gotham individually but as a concept.

Firstly, the ludicrously big cast. While it’s always nice to see Cockney Butlerman and his amazing sidekick Billionaire Boy, we get Alfred for maybe two minutes here. Those two minutes are entirely expository. He’s not the only one either; poor Leigh is reduced to being the foil for Kringle and Selina in her two scenes.

This happens every week, as I mentioned last week. But this time it’s different. This doesn’t feel like a natural collection of characters. It feels like a show working off a tick list of who is scheduled to be in this week’s episode. Some of it works but some of it, a lot of it, really doesn’t. It feels disjointed and choppy, like you’re changing channels inside the TV show.

Then there’s the wildly uneven tone. I’m increasingly thinking of Gotham as a 1990s action movie filtered through the old Adam West Batman TV show because there really is that amount of tonal movement inside every episode. Sometimes inside scenes too. We get jet black comedy, sickening violence, moments of impressive character work within seconds of one another and the whiplash that leads to is difficult to sit through at times. Witness the massively uneven Galavan stuff this week, veering from the cartoon lunacy of Tabitha showing up to dinner with blood on her face to Galavan sweet talking Bruce and Tabitha “deprogramming” Butch. That’s horror, psychological drama and badly-staged action all in the space of 43 or so minutes.

That brings us to the action. For a show that promises one gunfight a week or your money back, Gotham’s actually getting worse at staging fights. Selina vs the Pike brothers is nonsensical, Bridgit vs the GCPD (Round Two) is a bad cover version of their first, also badly-staged fight. Worst of all, the Butch and Tabitha scene exists to do nothing other than remind us that Tabitha likes whips because it’s sexy and that the show has no idea what to do with the one-note gag of Butch having a mallet for a hand. Inside this season, we’ve had the genuinely impressive fight between Gordon and Aaron, the terrifying havoc the Maniax wreaked and Alfred and Gordon taking on a room full of thugs in a manner that was brutal, practical and character driven.

This week? No snap, no spark to the action and very little point.

Worst of all though is the show’s tendency to get in its own way. There’s actually a lot of good stuff this week. Selina and Bridgit’s plotline is great. Their similar upbringings and different world views are the most Batman-like thing in the episode and Selina in particular benefits hugely from this plotline. She feels. She doesn’t want to, and denies it, but Selina cares about people. The seeds of the woman she’ll become and the razor line she’ll dance between hero and villain are sewn here and done so in a manner that’s subtle, organic and impressive.

Then Bridgit’s carted off to the monster factory as Intern Exposition explains the screamingly obvious.

Gotham isn’t a good show. It’s not a bad show either. It’s about five wildly variable TV shows struggling to gain your attention and constantly being pushed aside by their siblings. Most of the time, the fun elements come to the fore. Sometimes all you hear is five different voices screaming for attention. That’s this week. Next week, who knows?

The Good:

• “I tried to help her it just went a different way.” “IS THAT WHAT YOU CALL IT WHEN SOMEONE DIES?!” This is great Jim’s a sanctimonious ass who has no idea of the consequences of his actions a lot of the time. It’s way past time someone called him on it.
• “Ah yeah, my kicks did it maybe it’s because he was FRIED LIKE A TAQUITO!” Nice line. Awful characterisation.
• “There’s a line. I learned that the hard way.” “Respectfully sir, this is Gotham. There are grey areas. I learned that the hard way too.” I love this. It’s one of the smartest things they’ve done with this version of Jim Gordon. He’ll go toe to toe with anyone, including a man who’s basically him in 30 years just minus the ’tache.
• “Hey! Last time we saw this chick she had a shotgun pointed at us. Maybe you should take the Fascist Youth huh?” I think Harv might have a problem with the Jimshirts. Hard to tell.

• “Dear me, a mallet.” THIS IS PERFECT. It’s a ludicrous plot that gets even more ludicrous this episode but Penguin’s delivery, along with Butch’s Barney Bear-esque glower is wonderful.
• “You’re cute. For a Doctor.” “Thanks, you’re cute. for a gangster.” Despite having no apparent reason for existing, the Selina and Leigh scene is actually rather sweet.
• “Hi Selina. Sorry about this Leigh.” “Oh hey no problem.” Again, the At Home With Leigh & Jim sitcom within Gotham gets the best moments. You can almost hear the laugh track on this and I mean that as a compliment.

• The Captain Barnes/Jim ethical do-si-do at the centre of the episode is interesting ground. I really want to see this build to a head, either with Barnes forced to compromise himself or Jim forced to do something for the greater good long-term not short term.

The Bad:

• The Pikes aren’t characters they’re walking cliché machines. Not only are they playing snaps when Bridgit comes in but they stand there like idiots for a good ten seconds before she incinerates them.
• You’re two of the only honest GCPD cops. You’ve just found a crime scene with two deeply charred bodies. Do you…
  A) Confirm they’re dead?
  B) Call the paramedics immediately?
  C) Make an off-colour gag about barbecue and then kick the one survivor the rest of the way dead while panicking?
  Yeah. Thought so.
• There’s a lovely moment of fight psychology where Selina uses her smaller size and lower centre of mass to flip one of the Idiot Brothers and take his shotgun. It is instantly negated by her doing nothing with the loaded weapon in her hand as Bridgit is driven away.
• The lingerie model human trafficking auction. The one that Bridgit liberates. The one where, the way the episode is cut, it looks like the cage the slaves are being kept in IS NOT LOCKED.
• Why exactly was Selina holding Leigh hostage? Was it to try and force Gordon into bringing Bridgit in alive? If so could she maybe have told him that?
• “They tell people she’s dead. But that’s a lie.” In an episode dotted with staggeringly bad dialogue, Interns Rosencrantz and Guildenstern explaining what the Secret Facility they’re in is for is a new low.
• Tabitha Galavan sits down to dinner with three other people, one of whom is very clearly not evil, with blood on her face. It’s very very clearly blood. There is nothing else it could be. It’s treated like she has spinach in her teeth. I’d love to think Bruce notices, notices that no one else is making a big deal out of it and is suspicious. But let’s face it, the chances of that aren’t high.
• The Butch/Tabitha fight is lousy in a couple of dozen ways. The choreography’s awful, the selling is worse and the story behind the fight is completely lost in the half-assed way it’s blocked out.
• “Oh snap, Bridgit’s gonna get it!” STOP.TALKING.
• “Damn. I hate how it smells like good barbecue.” Much like Captain Barnes’ line about the exploding arsonist last week this is a pretty good gag. Exactly like Captain Barnes’ line about the exploding arsonist it’s also a ludicrously callous, unfeeling thing to say that makes a previously sympathetic character look like an enormous tool.
• “There’s a freaky firefly chick on the loose with a flamethrower. Let’s start there.” No! Bad Gotham! No alliteration for you!
• “It’s mad real! Like a unicorn or something!” The really sad thing isn’t that this is a Godawful line that should never had escaped from first draft. It’s that his point about women getting to do anything meaningful in Gotham is pretty much true.
• This episode Leigh talks to Kringle about boys and is held hostage. I can only assume Morena Baccarin is catching up on her reading during the vast swathes of nothing to do.
• It’s tempting but too early to call Bridgit’s story as yet another, “You who are hideously disfigured must become a monster for only handsome people are good!” story. That particular framework has blighted comics and related media for decades. Remember how every time there was a slightly alternate or non-squeaky-clean kid on Smallville’s first few seasons they’d be the meteor freak of the week? Yeah. That.
• Anyway it looks like whoever’s running Indian Hill is building their own little monster farm and that may not go well. But we’re not there, so let’s give them a shot.

The Random:

• Shot of the week is this gorgeous silhouette of Selina’s brief moment of badassery during the fight. Shame the episode didn’t do anything with it.

Review by Alasdair Stuart

• Read our other Gotham reviews