Gotham, Season 3, Episode 20: Pretty Hate Machine
Apparently episodes 21-22 are both considered a two-hour finale, so this episode kind of acts like the penultimate episode of the season. Which, as far as I've seen, is a tricky business. It tends to be where the action ramps up for the finale, partially setting up the finale and partially resolving some of the lesser plot details. By this point it's clear that at least some plotlines -- Barnes' escape and Clone Bruce in particular -- aren't going to be touched upon for the finale, or if they will, it won't be as major as what's been built up in this episode.
Oh, and the Court of Owls? They're all quickly dispatched of by Bruce's teacher, apparently not Ra's Al Ghul (who any self-respecting Batman fan at this point would figure out as the mysterious master he's working for), but his lackey, the Sensei, who quickly gains the loyalty of Hugo Strange as well. The other members of the court other than Gordon's uncle, Kathryn and Talon are all nobodies anyway, so while, again, seeing Gordon, Oswald, Barbara and/or Riddler take down the Court from the inside would've been more satisfying, I keep forgetting that the Court is the mastermind behind the deaths of Bruce's parents, and so having him be involved in seeing its downfall is amazing.
Of course, Bruce doesn't give the order despite his heavy conditioning that left him barely a shell of his former self, and it's Sensei that gives the assassins the order to slit the throats of every member of the Court. It does mean that Bruce does have some measure of closure, though, seeing first-hand the people who ordered the Wayne assassination all murdered. And after the past two episodes forcing him to bury his emotions in that emotional safebox, it's a pretty safe bet what the Sensei wants to mould Bruce into the ultimate Talon. Or, well, a version of Batman, anyway. It's a pretty tear-jerky moment as Alfred rushes up towards Bruce, only for Bruce to keep choosing to follow the Sensei, leading to the confrontation as Sensei wants to ultimately corrupt Bruce, making him responsible to push the button that would detonate the rage gas in Gotham's train station. It's a little fucked up, that's for sure, and honestly I don't see what the point of it all other than trying to overlap the 'purge Gotham City' agenda with the 'corrupt Bruce Wayne' agenda. But Alfred's confrontation with the Sensei, him shooting the Sensei, the bomb being set off anyway and Bruce going ballistic and punching Alfred (ineffectively), is easily a pretty awesome setup to a pretty despairing moment as Alfred realizes that Bruce has been well and truly corrupted by this bastard.
Alfred isn't the only one who failed in this episode. See, Lee, having injected herself with the Alice Tetch virus (and giving herself a makeover that made the already unattractive actress like five times hotter), is convinced that she's attracted to Gordon's self-destructiveness, and wants to liberate said destructiveness from within Gordon... but wants him to choose. To this end, crazy Lee buries Gordon in Gotham's huge park, leaving him with a way out -- the virus. Lee wants Gordon to infect himself by his own choice, and as Team Bullock has to deal with both the virus bomb and rescuing Gordon, he ends up injecting himself to break free from his grave... which I guess will be the big Gordon problem for the season finale. Both main plotlines ended up in failure -- Gordon injected himself anyway and the virus bomb goes off -- and other than recovering Bruce from the clutches of the Sensei it's a loss for our heroes. And Bruce's brainwashed anyway, so it's a bit of a hollow victory.
Also, let's acknowledge the fact that Leslie Thompkins suddenly becomes so much more engaging once she goes off the deep end and becomes an antagonist. Leslie was never as irritating or hypocritical as Season One Barbara was, and the worst was her weird one-woman crusade to paint Jim Gordon as a villain (which honestly didn't go anywhere other than to lead to this development) but both Barbara and Leslie end up being evil and being so, so much entertaining.
While all of this is going, we've got the gangsters plot. Reality ensues with Firefly and Mr. Freeze apparently being bored of not having Penguin to tell them what to do and just buggered off, and Freeze finds that his only ally is Ivy Pepper, and she's not quite the plant-controlling supervillainess just yet. Oh, and Ivy's naivete means that she quickly gets suckered by Selina into telling Team Barbara where Penguin is -- with Selina's condition being that Ivy doesn't get harmed.
Now it's obvious that Team Barbara is going to self destruct sometime soon. Tabitha and Butch hate that Barbara's keeping Riddler alive. Riddler's more concerned about killing Oswald than helping Barbara. And Barbara's continued angry outbursts for the past few episodes is starting to alienate Tabitha, and has already alienated Butch -- who's only playing ball as long as Tabitha is. Of course, they're willing to put their differences together to take out their common enemy, Penguin, and as Riddler makes a long-winded point (oh, Riddler), Penguin is saved by the unexpected deus ex machina of... Fish Mooney!
Wait, what? Yeah, your guess is just good as mine, but Fish's big dramatic entrance with two huge men armed with assault rifles is the only time in the show's three-season run that I legitimately found Fish Mooney as the mob-boss-no-one-fucks-with that she tries to be. In the past she honestly has been more hot air than anything, but her just waltzing in, threatening everyone with rifles (and that goofy grin on Butch's face!), taking Oswald and leaving, is just amazingly done. It's weird to introduce her this late in the game, though, and I honestly thought that Butch and Tabitha have put their cards with Fish and betrayed Barbara, but apparently not.
So yeah, things are looking for a multi-way fight. Yes, the League's cryptic plans and what they're meant to accomplish is anyone's guess -- the gas hit like a single station and as horrific as it is, it's not much different from what the unleashed metahumans from Indian Hill or Jermone's one night of chaos will do. And the rather convoluted way that the League has to operate just to set it off, including corrupting Bruce (with a convoluted bait-and-switch bit with a clone) and the whole Court of Owls business means that it's unnecessarily complicated... though honestly, I'll be honest to say that I don't care about the main plot, not really... it's a fun wild story that they're telling and I'm more invested with the stories of the individual characters than whatever the fuck the League's planning.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The identity of Bruce's teacher (credited as 'the Shaman' throughout the episodes he showed up in) is Sensei, as Hugo Strange called him that. Considering his role and his talk of a greater master, and his almost-certain ties to Ra's Al Ghul, I'm pretty certain that it's specifically him that the character is supposed to represent. The Sensei was the supposed leader of the League of Assassins, although the leader of the League is later revealed to be Ra's Al Ghul. Sensei exact role and relationship to Ra's is unclear, with some stories portraying Sensei as Ra's father, while others showing him as a rival in leadership.
- The Demon's Head that Sensei tells Bruce to find is, of course, Ra's al Ghul, which is Arabic for just that.
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