Gotham S1E13 Review: Gray Morality

Gotham, Season 1, Episode 13: Welcome Back, Jim Gordon

After the big, explosive last episode, we return to more mundane detective/gangster stuff, with around two big plotlines and a couple absolutely unrelated smaller things going on at the same time. It's actually a pretty fun episode, albeit one that could've had a faster pacing. It's not really that big of a complain in my opinion, though.

The main plot is Gordon confronting Arnold Flass, who DC veterans would recognize as the shitty cop from the Year One comics who Jim Gordon beats up and brings down for being corrupt. Also Gordon's comic-book first partner. And basically the same thing happens here albeit without Gordon beating up Flass in the woods. Though even without prior comic book knowledge, the show doesn't really try to cover up the fact that Flass is a gigantic scumbag who has everyone in his pockets. And the whole drug bust thing isn't really the big interest, though the scene where Jim Gordon just marches up to Flass and arrests him in front of everyone is pretty awesome. We also see how much of a goddamn asshole Flass was, with the victim who he killed being extremely likable. It's a pretty generic 'I'm a good guy, I have a great relationship with my wife, I'm honest oh no I'm dead and here's my grieving family and it's sad' poor victim, but that doesn't make it any less effective.

The thing that makes it more interesting than just some generic police plot is the fact that Gordon, at his wits end with no one really willing to help (he tried Bullock, Essen, and attempting to apprehend Delaware twice) he seeks help from Penguin... and Penguin's second-in-command, Gabriel, basically waterboards Delaware's wife and tortures her to get information out of Delaware. And the scene at the end with Delaware basically begging and broken in front of Gordon and pleading for him to leave his wife and kids alone... it's pretty jarring to see how such a gigantic douchebag like Delaware has been broken down by Gordon's one mistake of trusting his friend, Penguin.

Granted Penguin himself is doing it all in good interest, and he does genuinely want to be friends with Gordon... he just doesn't particularly care how he does it. All the talk about favours and drinking and stuff... A good chunk of the episode is Penguin inviting his slightly-cuccoo mother to Fish Mooney's club, which is pretty much going to be revamped by the Penguin into the Iceberg Lounge in all but name. We get some rather 'eh' moments with Gertrude, and I truly expected Gertrude to be caught in the crossfire between Penguin and Fish... but no, that doesn't happen.

Fish, well... she spends the first third of the episode being dragged into this torture chamber run by this dude called Bob who only manages to slap her once and put her head into a bag. Butch manages to break free and beat Bob up before he could smash Fish's kneecaps, and rescues her... and Fish wants to kill Penguin first before skipping town, which is fair enough, since Penguin is just spending an entire minute's worth of screentime getting drunk and being kind of hilarious (even if that scene ran on for a bit too long). Fish cuts him off before he can name it the Iceberg Lounge, but instead of doing the smart thing and shooting him right there or beating him to death with the baseball bat, Fish forces Penguin to kiss her shoes, and even has an angry shouty-conversation with him for a bit, allowing Mr. Zsasz and his three weird gothic henchwomen to show up and rescue Penguin. Who's a bit more awesome this episode, even when he's still getting beat.

Also Fish brings up the 'umbrella boy' thing, which I totally forgot was a thing. I guess Oswald will start embracing all the things that used to be jeerings to him. He's already embraced the Penguin nickname, after all.

Butch manages to kill one of Zsasz's henchwomen, and Zsasz goes around and gets to make creepy faces and I am definitely liking this incarnation of Zsasz. Butch manages to get Fish to safety and stays behind for a heroic sacrifice... but Zsasz shoots Butch in the knee and I think brings Butch back to torture. Butch is kind of awesome for a minor character this episode, what with his loyalty and everything.

Also, Falcone should've really left Zsasz around near the torture house so Butch couldn't get away.

At the end of the episode Bullock helps Fish escape and get to a ship out of Gotham, but Fish promises vengeance and asks Bullock to help her find Butch, and it's nice to see that Bullock still has his own grayer areas which makes him a bit more complex than just Gordon's ever-snarking partner. I also do like how Bullock and Essen knows all the ins and outs of the corruption, and doesn't really tell Gordon that unless it's relevant because, y'know, Gordon is a crazy warpath of justice and naivete.

That's about it for the two main plots, and time to move to the side-plots. We've got Eddie Nygma doing his Riddler stints, getting shouted at by Bullock... and giving Kringle a non-riddle poem. Of course he gets absolutely humiliated by Kringle's generic-jock friends who discover the poem, but Kringle herself seems to... not mind Nygma's letter enough to apologize for her friends' behaviour, though she still obviously doesn't care much for Nygma himself. Which is nice and all, but I still do think it takes a bit too much screentime. Nygma's scenes while not interacting with Kringle is kind of hilarious, including his gigantic smile when Gordon is arresting Flass.

Also, using a giant magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers to separate onions from his spaghetti or whatever? You know you can just ask the takeout to not include the onions?

The other side-plot involves Bruce Wayne going around looking for Selina, and it takes up, again, a fair bit too much of screen-time. We get the little handwave that Alfred took Bruce to Switzerland or something for a while which was why he wasn't around last episode, but he's going around looking for Selina, wanting to give her a snowglobe. He finds Ivy instead, who's still being creepy (but at least seems to have gotten better) and Ivy asks $20 from him to deliver a message to Selina. And, Selina, of course, being the tough-girl-but-fragile-inside messed up girl that she is, basically tells Bruce to fuck off and lies to him about seeing the Wayne killers. She probably doesn't have real friends and is totally freaked out at the prospect of someone who acts so nicely but in her head is doing it to get something out of her. And thus, Bruce Wayne has smashed a snowglobe and learned what heartbreak is for the first time. I don't... particularly care, I guess?

Relatively great episode, even if Falcone is kind of an idiot for putting Fish in the rather-incompetent Bob's hands, and the slow side-plots... but I must admit, the show does have a couple of tense moments. Fish's torture (even if I don't exactly like Fish), the scene where the witness dude is obviously going to be murdered, the scenes with Penguin fooling around with his mother and I expect Fish to come in and gun her down... The next episode is THE FEARSOME DR CRANE and being a big Scarecrow fan I'm either going to love that episode to bits or bitch all about it.