Gotham, Season 4, Episode 5: The Blade's Path
This week's Gotham is a bit of a step-back from the previous four episodes, to be honest, but that's mostly because of how disjointed the episode feels between its myriad subplots. On one hand, we have the very fan-servicey redoing of Butch Gilzean as Solomon Grundy. The actor for Butch has always impressed me with how he manages to make a relatively bland character be interesting, and his role as Solomon Grundy (kudos to the makeup department too, for making him close enough to the comics but still has this rather weird feel of old-timey live-action Hulk) is pretty fun as he shambles around, revived from the Indian Hill chemicals that turn him into a dumb zombie that shamble around and kill people.
Grundy meets Riddler, who's stooped to a pathetic level of attempting to rob pharmacies and getting his hand stabbed by a cheque-needle thing while being mocked by a pharmacist about trying to steal placebo vitamin pills. He's so intent on regaining his intelligence and lashes out at everyone, but Grundy decides that he is Grundyfriend. And after Grundy helps Riddler beat up a bunch of people who wanted to lynch Riddler, and Riddler pours water on Grundy's burnt arm, the two end up being a bit of a weird duo.
Bruce meanwhile continues down the vigilante path as he confronts Ra's al Ghul, who gives Barbara some weird glowy mystical power, and then proceeds to kidnap Bruce and taunt him, saying that he's going to have to kill Ra's to end his reign. While Alfred and Gordon are basically a buddy-cop movie as they beat up assassin policemen. Bruce ends up... actually killing Ra's by stabbing him through the heart? And I thought Gotham was going to be where I get my proper no-killing Batman! I thought we've gone through the whole "I kill but I regret it" thing with Alfred in the season three finale, but I guess this is trying to have Bruce deal and wrestle with the regret of killing a bad man? Ra's isn't particularly well-written in this episode, mostly just cryptic and creepy, and while the death scene is amazing, I do think that we've not seen the last of Ra's al Ghul simply because, y'know, the dude's Ra's al Ghul. I am curious to see where we go with Bruce's character, thoguh.
Sofia and Penguin are... curious. Sofia keeps dangling the carrot while subtly criticizing Penguin's inability to control the criminal operation, then invites him to eat lunch in public while she serves Penguin's mother's recipe, and later massages Penguin's foot. It's kind of reminiscent of season one Gotham where Fish and Maroni (I think?) sends a woman that reminds Carmine Falcone of his mother to basically kind of make him let down his guard. Sofia's pulling from that playbook, I think. I'm still not sure about Sofia's character, though.
Oh, and EvilLeslie is the doctor at the underground fighting arena that Grundy and Riddler show up in. That's cool, I guess?
Overall, I don't think the episode's bad per se, but it isn't one that wowed me that much, considering that there are two big events that happen here -- Solomon Grundy's introduction and Ra's al Ghul's supposed exit, and neither really felt like they actually had the oomph that they deserve.
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