Gotham, Season 1, Episode 5: Viper
A nice episode that, again, holds itself pretty well together. There are some characters who really only show up for the sake of showing up and showing that they're doing stuff (Bruce, Alfred, Selina, Nygma) and don't really have too much to do with the whole massive gang war plot, but then again not showing them would leave a lot of empty holes that would be padded by other filler-y stuff, so I guess there isn't any real way out of this.
Anyway, there are a couple of plots running down, and I do like how they intersect at multiple points -- the first Gotham episode that does this nicely, in my opinion. On the Gordon/Bullock front, we've got this dude Stan Potolsky who's giving away a crazy drug Viper (proto-Venom) for free to make a point, and they're hunting him down. Young Bruce Wayne, meanwhile, is doing some investigation into Wayne Enterprises and finding out that they're corrupt, and this takes him to the charity targeted by Potolsky. Bruce's leg of the plot takes fairly less screentime, though I do appreciate how the whole Wayne thing ended up mattering in the long run, making Bruce and Alfred's constant presence in the show actually somewhat matter.
The third plot running is Oswald finally coming clean to Maroni about his connections to Falcone, and this ends up leading to a confrontation between Maroni and Gordon to collaborate the Penguin's backstory. And Maroni's sending his troops to hurt Falcone, hit him in his beloved casino. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Fish Mooney is training Liza the seductress to, uh, resemble Falcone's mother or something? Also she's working with another one of Falcone's lieutenants. It's all actually shaping up pretty nicely, with all the pieces moving into place. Pacing's also improved. Gotham is the show that likes to have a lot of wasted scenes that could've been exorcised, and while there are some eye-roll 'why does this have to take so long' moments with Fish's scenes in particular, I thought this particular episode was pretty neat.
I do like the confrontation between Gordon and Maroni... I actually like Maroni's character a lot. He's just this big happy dude unless when he wants something, then he makes it clear that he's not a mob boss for nothing. He treathens to slice Penguin's face off with a meat slicer! That was fun. Maroni's like, your average evil 'if you fail me I'll kill you' bad boss, but he rewards dudes like Penguin if they come through. I like him. Also, he re-establishes that Oswald's nickname of the Penguin is appropriate for him... and I must say, with his suit, it is appropriate for him. I also like Maroni's interactions with Oswald, which are fun. Oh, and they manage to his the Mouth, Falcone's pride and joy casino which they said they were going to do last episode, which is all well and great.
Oswald, meanwhile, tries to worm his way up Maroni's hierarchy though his attempts nearly got his face sliced off for good. It's a good thing Gordon shows up (well, gets kidnapped) to collaborate his backstory. Interesting to see this development that now Gordon, Maroni and his lieutenants all know that Oswald Cobblepot is alive. I'm into Penguin's character as always, and I'm very much interested in all this gang-fighting.
Maroni's not the only one out for Falcone's neck, though, since we get introduced to another one of Falcone's lieutenants, the Russian Nikolai. Falcone calls in a meeting of his lieutenants and whatnot, and he doesn't consider Maroni getting that piece of Arkham a victory -- though I'm sure with Maroni hitting the casino, he'll change his mind. Fish and Nikolai get into some fierce verbal arguments with Nikolai appearing to be an extreme misogynist, but the end of this episode reveals that the two of them are working together to bring down Falcone... and are sleeping together. Well.
Fish is also training the girl from last episode, Liza, to be this sex-trap for Don Falcone... by teaching her to be motherly and liking operas. Which takes up a bit too long, especially early on in the episode. Though it all kind of makes sense, since a couple episodes back Fish arranged an 'accident' for Falcone's mistress. So Don Falcone's type is women that resemble his mother and can sing the songs his mother sings? That's... interesting, all right, but kind of keeping the whole mafia theme. Falcone meets Liza at the end of the episode while feeding pigeons (he doesn't bring bodyguards with him?) and they kind of bond together.
We get a short scene of Selina stealing a wallet and slinking around like a cat and beating up the dude she stole the wallet from, but otherwise she has no bearing to the plot other than to show up and be like, 'hey, guys, Catwoman's in this show!' and general Gotham-is-a-shithole atmosphere building.
Bruce is investigating stuff, and goes to a Wayne Enterprises charity with the express purpose of trying to share his findings about Wayne Enterprises possibly being corrupt to the board, but he finds out from his father's friend Mathis (who's not on the board) that, y'know, the board doesn't give two shits about charity events. Of course, this happens to be the same charity targeted by Stan Potolsky, and Bruce sees first-hand that some things just aren't right about his parents' company now that they're gone. On the same vein, Alfred, who's trying to get Bruce off of his obsession, ends up helping Bruce out with his detective-ing after seeing what's happened.
I'm not sure where this will go, and I don't think I'm a fan of the idea that this ten year old boy, Batman or not, can just waltz up to a company and somehow 'clean' it of corruption.
But for the meantime, it gives Bruce something better to do than, as Alfred puts it, seeing Bruce grilling himself like a bloody pork chop.
Also, as it turns out, both we and Bruce find out that Molly Mathis is involved with WellZyn, the subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises that hires Stan Potolsky and, as we find out, manufacture pharmaceutical weapons, and had cleaned out Warehouse 39 or whatever it is that Potolsky tells Gordon to check out with his dying breath.
Bullock is not, though. He's finally warming up to Gordon and we get some nice moments where he's actually bonding with Gordon over cheeseburgers and trying to figure out his problems (incorrectly guessing a fight with Barbara as opposed to being kidnapped and threatened by Maroni) which is nice. He's still got his lazy streak, and a borderline sociopathic streak about how they should keep all the decent citizens in and allow the bad guys to kill each other off. Also "WHAT'S ALTRUISM?!" is the funniest moment of the episode, how earnestly and angrily Bullock shouts it out. And they actually worked it into the plot on how they managed to figure out where Potolsky's going to hit, which is nice.
Essen gets a fair bit more screentime here, though she ends up being pretty generic, and the only reason I even notice is only because she's a character from the comics. Nygma also shows up, though this time he isn't doing his Riddler schtick, only telling them about all the scientific properties of Viper and showing off his unhealthy fascination with the effects of the disease.
Anyway, I've rambled on for this long and haven't even touched on the main Viper plot! This dude, Stan Potolsky with his mangled ear, is going around handing off ampoules with this drug Viper to random hobos and hookers and whatnot. The first dude that sniffs it robs a convenience store of its milk and has enough strength to rip an ATM machine off, and while we learn later on that his name is Benny or something, there is a moment where he's all 'you're all mortals' and stuff, and the fat shopkeeper calls him "Zeus". For a moment I thought we're getting an origin story for obscure Batman villain Maxie Zeus, which would make sense considering he's a bit of a lunatic and seems old enough to show up at this point in the timeline, but no, he's just some random guy. Funny as hell, though.
And I do like how they're doing this Viper thing! It gives the victims enhanced strength and some crazy-ass shit going on with their skin, but after a while their bones break and they kind of crumble. Nygma says that it activates genes and stuff and whatnot, which I suppose is a good an explanation as any, though it consumes too much calcium, leading to the bones breaking and for the victims to pursue as much milk as they can.
Potolsky is working with a philosopher professor of his to expose the evils of WellZyn and Wayne Enterprises, and the professor namedrops that the second, refined batch is called Venom! Which is another nice plot thread to run alongside the whole mob fight thing. It is nice to see this, really, after TDKR's Bane replaced Venom with some stupid anesthetic mask that makes less sense than sci-fi super-steroids. (I'm never letting that one go) Because, really, you don't make a show about Batman or a Batman-related stuff and just tell all the mob and mafia storylines and whatnot... they have their place, but if things like Venom or laughing gas bothers you so much maybe you shouldn't bet watching a Batman show. Or making it.
Overall, though, it's a pretty decent episode that could've done with some trimming, but still felt pretty good and keeps me interested. Venom! Penguin! Arkham! Mob fight! Wayne corruption!
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