Gotham S03E11 Review: RHYME BATTLE

Gotham, Season 3, Episode 11: Beware the Green-Eyed Monster

So yeah, it's the mid-season finale so a fair amount of things happened here. Mario Falcone takes center stage as an antagonist, and honestly, if we, the audience, didn't have the knowledge of Mario's infection with the Alice Tetch virus... it's a pretty good plan on Mario's part to basically discredit Gordon and make him look like a psychotic, paranoid ex who's absolutely desperate to get Leslie and Mario's wedding cancelled.

Mario pretty amazingly gets one step ahead of Gordon every time (although why he thinks leading Gordon to Arkham would make him suspect Mario more, I can't say -- that was the only real plot hole in all of this), managing to find a way to fool the Alice blood laboratory tests, managing to taunt Gordon and get ahold of Victor Zsasz ("Hi-ho.") to make Gordon antsy as he is forced to wait for the wedding to happen, causing Gordon to rush and blurt out "you can't marry him!" to Leslie and generally the end result causes Gordon to look, well, psychotic. Leslie is convinced, Carmine is convinced, and Mario gets to marry Leslie. 

It's not until the final scene that Gordon manages to somehow prove to Don Falcone that Mario beat the tests, and it is a bit stupid for Gordon to force that Falcone allow he go to get Mario alone. Really, shooting the kneecaps of Falcone's two henchmen isn't the best way to show that you're not stable. Leslie tells Mario that 'a small part of me will always care of Gordon, but you're the man I married', which is basically the best answer anyone could hope for... but whereas Alice's blood incited wrath in Barnes, Mario gets stuck with envy (I guess that makes Jervis the sin of lust?) and the voices in his head basically causes him to pick up a knife and is about to stab Leslie from behind.

Of course, Jim Gordon arrives alone, the nincompoop that he is, and opens fire, killing Mario... but not before the knife he is holding gets dropped into the fucking ocean, and some of Mario's blood splattering onto Leslie. Our hero, ladies and gentleman. What a fucking idiot. 

Yeah, so Gordon ends up gunning down Mario after an entire episode of himself failing to convince Leslie or Carmine that he's not an insane ex grasping at straws. He doesn't have evidence of Mario's murder weapon, Mario is dead which means Carmine is likely to go on a rampage through Gotham to fuck things up, and Leslie is infected with Mario's blood. Yeah, things are not going to go well for Jim for the next half of this season and it's all because of his fault. Why not allow some of Carmine's men to tag along? Or failing that, several other policemen?

And honestly, around halfway through the episode Gordon himself did have his motivations get blurred from 'save Leslie from the infected Mario' to 'stop the marriage I love Leslie'. So yeah, Gordon's the fool.

Mind you, he's a love-addled fool, and while I still find the conclusion of Gordon gunning Mario down in a way where you can't prove Mario was about to kill Leslie absolutely and utterly dumb, the emotional, bumbling confession before Leslie walked down the altar is pretty well-done, with Gordon confessing that he's too afraid to intrude on Leslie's happiness in Atlanta and all that. 

The rest of the B-plots all edged up to a climax that promises to shake the status quo. Barbara plants the seeds of doubt in Edward's head, that Oswald killed Isabella for love. Edward refuses to believe this until he tries to gauge Oswald out, by trying to be 'more than friends'... which Oswald immediately takes as a love confession while Edward was trying to imply a business partnership. Edward knows how Oswald can be, and he quickly makes an alliance with Barbara and a very angry pair of Butch and Tabitha to make Oswald suffer. Which... I don't really care about? I mean, we saw Oswald get absolutely destroyed last season, seeing it happen again, just with Edward and Barbara at the wheel instead of Theo Gallavan, seems repetitive. 

Meanwhile, Bruce, Selina and Alfred do a heist. Ivy and random Whisper Gang dude apparently decide not to come. It's a bit repetitive and of course it's going to be Selina that walks down the tightrope (which little Bruce holds up on one end? Instead of fixating it to the other wall or something?) to steal a statue. It's... whatever. Talon attacks the three of them but it ends in the heroes' favour as they manage to murder Talon, and are rescued by a cat burglar. Namely, Selina's mother who isn't missing but is actually some kind of spy or whatever? I'm actually surprised that Selina's seemingly fantastical accounts of her mother might actually be true. Whatever the case, though, Bruce Wayne has made it out with something that they said might destroy the Court of Owls.

So yeah, the stage is set for a lot of Court of Owls intrigue in the next half of the season... but I'm not really looking forward for more Oswald/Edward drama and definitely not to the inevitable long Gordon emo-fest as he gets punished for his utterly moronic decision to go bring Mario in alone.

One really good thing to come out of this, though? Gordon and Jervis's rhyme battle in Arkham Asylum. That was absolutely hilarious, and the fact that Gordon actually tried to humour Jervis was unexpected and very welcome.