Gotham, Season 1, Episode 22: All Happy Families Are Alike
As I feared, Gotham's myriad plot threads all come to a head in the finale, and it is a trainwreck... but bizarrely, not because of the mob parts being unsatisfactory, but because of some sudden changes to several characters that felt out of place, as well as some character changes that kinda sorta makes sense considering what happened earlier in the season, but ends up coming out of the left field in the finale. And of course we don't get a big big mafia fight (we just skipped to 'two weeks later') like what I would want, but let's not kid ourselves -- the show's really only going to show the main four players.
The most egregious example of the random character change being Carmine Falcone suddenly deciding 'oh by the way, I want to quit this whole gangster thing' came totally out of nowhere. And, yes, we did see shades of him wanting to settle down, what with all the business with Lysa and him taking a backseat throughout most of Gotham's latter half... but not having seen Falcone for a long time, compounded with this random revelation, really caught me off-guard.
Also, Selina, who really doesn't have any business poking her nose around in the whole gang plot, suddenly shows up with an ugly haircut as being recruited into part of Fish's posse. What the actual fuck? She contributes absolutely nothing to the finale other than a few exchanges of words with Gordon and being kind of a dick to him, and her joining this giant mob fight doesn't really jive well with her earlier self-serving thief but ultimately decent person who looks out for herself characterization.
Also while as awesome as it is to see a minor character like Butch being pivotal in the climatic battle between Fish and Penguin, he really haven't done anything at all throughout the past few episodes, being mostly interchangeable with Penguin's other stooge, Gabe. After the first meeting post-brainwashing, Butch kind of disappeared into the background and while it's cool to see his little brain-wreck here while trying to choose between his programming and his loyalty to Fish, and ends up shooting both of them... it still kind of felt flat, y'know? Surely we could've snuck in some scenes of Butch struggling with his loyalty in the previous two or three episodes to make his big moment here something?
Fish's return was also handled relatively poorly, just showing up in a boat for no good reason, randomly deciding she wants to be mob queen again, and showing up to arrest Falcone, Gordon and Penguin when they arrive in the same warehouse Fish was waiting at.
Also I'm not that big of a fan of Gordon spending most of his screentime this episode being chained up. They escape from Maroni's men! Oh, wait, Fish is there and they're tied up. They escape again! And then they're tied up again.
Another odd moment here was Bruce and Alfred spending so much time ransacking Thomas Wayne's study while Alfred tries his best to convince Bruce that his father was a good guy. That took way too much time and is honestly a large distraction from the whole mob thing.
But to praise the finale, the mob stuff was definite good stuff. Again, we didn't see much of it and there really isn't much reason for Falcone to go around looking at fucking chickens while a mob war was going on, but the main plot of the episode happens when Falcone's men came under attack by Maroni's men with bazookas, and he finds himself in this shitty hospital, while the city's government and police force has just basically given him up to Maroni.
I do like how Gordon understands how Falcone is the best 'bad guy', and despite his unwavering idealism throughout the season he's been forced to make deals with Penguin, and now he's actually fighting to keep Falcone alive. Again, like the Butch situation it really could've been portrayed better if we saw some interaction between Gordon and Falcone in the episodes leading up to this, or, y'know, actually saw Falcone at all. Or examples of how his grip would be better than Maroni's, beyond Maroni being a hothead and a thousand rivals will be coming for him.
At least the Loeb plot is being saved for next season, other than the short cameo in the hospital, because the finale is already cluttered enough as it is. The little shootout there with Gordon taking out Tommy Bones and a good amount of Maroni's men is a blast to watch, and the scene where Penguin arrives to Falcone and does this grandstanding speech about how despite Falcone being (mostly) a friend and mentor to him, he has been gunning for the top the whole time. It's a great, powerful scene.
So of course Gordon shows up to ruin it and chain Penguin to the wall. Penguin's whole 'you owe me a favour' thing is downplayed more than what I expected it would be, which is certainly welcome. I really thought it would take up more space and give Gordon a big moral decision moment, but no. It felt organic and nice and not really forced.
It's a shame, then, that the plot kind of became stagnant as our heroes are chained up before Fish and Maroni shows up... before picking up again when Maroni and Fish has that tense talk about 'babes' and 'number one and number two', with Maroni being drunk on power and just trying to pressure everyone to falling in line under him. Also we see Penguin's little subtle 'devil in your ear' role in getting Fish pissed off at Maroni... though to be fair, Maroni is a complete moron for immediately trying to pressure Fish to calling him boss and taunting him with the 'babes' thing moments after Penguin told Fish that Maroni wants to be the boss.
And then Fish snaps and shoots Maroni in the head.
Well, so much for being protected by canon! Everyone thought that all these characters that will show up in Batman comics will be protected by plot armour, but it seems anyone that's not Penguin is fair game. Maroni is very certainly dead as a man with a bullet in his head can be, and it's clear that beyond the big name villains like Penguin and Riddler, everyone else is probably fair game.
The big fight after that ends up being between Penguin and Fish, though we did spend a bit just wishy-washy-ing before getting to that point. It's a fun little confrontation that's a long time coming, with the Butch moment helping to make the fight slightly more tense. I do like how Fish, despite being a bit of a horrible person most of the time, actually does care for Butch enough not to blame him... while Penguin whacks Butch over in the head and pushes Penguin down into the waters below.
As any savvy comic book fan will tell you, being thrown into the water off-screen is almost assuredly a recipe for eventual survival. But that takes Fish and her weird hairstyle out of the picture for the time being, and really that was what everyone expected would happen in the finale. It's portrayed well enough to not feel formulaic, though, and Penguin's subsequent rather-pathetic "I'm the King of Gotham" yell was wonderful to see. And indeed, Maroni and Fish are dead, Falcone is out of the picture... why the other random mob people would follow Penguin is probably a mystery, but Penguin definitely wins, with the war he instigated taking out all the big players out of the picture.
I honestly half-expected Butch to push Penguin down after Fish, but that didn't happen.
Gordon gets this nice talk with Falcone after everything is done and Falcone wants to go off and retire, and that's a pretty great moment. Also unexpectedly Falcone hands Gordon over a little keepsake from Gordon's father, before walking out and entrusting the city to Gordon, a nice little parallel to the first episode's talk between Falcone and Gordon. It's still weird for Falcone to randomly decide to abandon Gotham, though, but eh.
Speaking of fathers, Bruce Wayne discovers that Thomas Wayne's big secret wasn't evidence against the Wayne boards, or evidence that Thomas Wayne is as bad as the others (though really that's probably out of bounds, as interesting a twist that would be to explore). But rather... the, uh, batcave? What the actual fuck? That was my reaction to that shot. Just me making a flat "what the fuck". Honestly don't know what to think about it.
Also running throughout the episode is this little counselling session between Leslie and Barbara. And we're left with the tenseness of whether Barbara has actually been fucked up by the Ogre enough to be planning to kill Leslie... or simply just airing her crazy experience out. At times before her eventual snapping, she does show evidence that might go one way or the other, and it would be great... if the episode didn't already have this big, interesting mob plot. Honestly Barbara going berserk and all The Shining should've been the third part of the Ogre arc instead of clogging up this finale.
It's all a bit m'eh, though Barbara's insanity was tense to watch. In a subtler sense, like Maroni's death, Barbara going all crazy effectively breaks Gotham away from traditional Batman canon since Barbara's not going to be Mrs. Gordon after all this madness.
Nygma shows up for a bit near the end, completely going psycho as he starts hearing voices in his head, delightfully complied from the insults that Kringle, Bullock and other random police people have been shouting at him and that mental break is absolutely awesome. Kringle does figure out the 'NYGMA' riddle, and while Nygma does manage to avert suspicion that breakdown as he argues with himself about the stupidity of leaving a clue and just, y'know, going bonkers is kind of awesome. With Penguin's arc mostly done in this episode beyond his mommy problems, it seems that the show is building for Riddler's origin for the next season's big bad.
It's not a great finale. It's a mess. There are certainly great parts, with the Gordon, Penguin and mob bits being the best parts... the plot kept cutting away to Barbara and Bruce without really needing to, but it's still a relatively serviceable finale. The mob plot is really great, with the scenes involving them being truly tense and a delight to watch... shame, again, that the finale was so messy and keeps cutting away to other, less interesting plotlines. With the mob plot over, though, I really don't see much that will interest me for the next season because the Batcave and Wayne mysteries doesn't really hold that much for me.
Penguin won, though, and I like the Penguin. So yeah.
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