Gotham S05E02 Review: Burn The Witch

Gotham, Season 5, Episode 2: Trespassers

Kind of... a weird episode? We get two distinct plots split between the Bruce side of things and the Gordon side of things, and neither are super interesting. I wouldn't call this episode a bad one, it's just... it just kind of feels like an utterly pointless side-quest, is all. It's like watching someone Let's Play a very story-centric game, but then they devote 45 minutes just showing themselves grind for potion ingredients or whatever. I dunno. I definitely wasn't in love with this episode at all.

Let's start with the Bruce side of the story, which is... it's kinda self-contained, and both picks up and immediately resolves the whole 'witch' mystery and the crippled Selina story set up in the pilot. The enigmatic 'witch' isn't a new character, but rather just Poison Ivy. And I do admit there's something very classic Batman when Bruce walks up and sees the corpses of humans choked to death and basically being used as fertilizer by Ivy's vines, and the whole set-up for this is pretty cool.

But then Bruce meets a group of... of genuine random people who apparently managed to lock Ivy in a basement with the aid of salt. All fine and good, but for some reason, despite being in a full "BURN THE WITCH" mentality, they're not doing so? I'm honestly kind of confused, and this is honestly just to set up a conversation between Bruce and Ivy to get Bruce to be duped by Ivy's sympathetic story. Ivy, of course, is faking the whole 'the plants are evolving and are out of my control' bullshit story, kills everyone once she's let loose... and I'm genuinely not sure at what point in that conversation when Defiant Bruce ends up causing Ivy to relent and decide to give Bruce the magic spine-restoring seed. Which I am genuinely surprised is an actual thing, and not a bullshit lie Ivy concocted.

And, yeah, Ivy holds a grudge against Selina over the whole Lazarus water thing last season (I legitimately forgot about it until she brings it up), but as Selina later notes in her monologue, apparently Ivy still has a heart. It's... it's honestly an all right plot when read on paper, a neat little character moment for Ivy that has roots on Gotham's own five-season-long history, while giving Bruce an important lesson in not being easily duped by pretty ladies and sob stories... but in practice, getting from point A to B to C is honestly just utterly random.

Anyway, the final shot of the episode shows that after a bit of a seizure freak-out, apparently the deus ex plantae ended up working and Selina can walk around, but the ominous stuff Ivy says manifests when Selina's pupils become cat-like. Which... eh? Never been a fan of Catwoman actually having cat powers, personally, but we'll see.

The Gordon stuff, though, really feels like a minimal-effort side-quest in an RPG game. After the random enslaved kids walk up to Gordon at the end of the previous episode, Gordon brings Bullock and a bunch of policemen to basically mount a rescue mission. Very admirable and simultaneously stupid, but that's honestly on par with what you expect from James Gordon. Everyone is gunning for Gordon's head, but instead of actual characters we care about (even the second-stringers!) we get... a bunch of random gas mask dudes who are so stupid that they think digging a tunnel under a river with pickaxes and shovels will work, as well as another gang with neon skull face paint or some shit. I do love the sheer ridiculousness, but at the same time, I just can't bring myself to really care about the Soothsayers or whatever they are called.

Honestly, this ends up being entertaining mostly because Bullock apparently woke up on the wrong side of the bed and is just super sassy throughout this episode. He's never straight-up an ass, but he's just so sassy about the many, many things that Gordon does this episode. I'm not sure if it's intentional that Gordon is basically a robot saying heroic cop things throughout this episode, if that's meant to be his way of coping or something, or if this is basically what Jim Gordon is for the rest of the season or what, but... I am entertained. Bullock's overacting and Gordon's single-mindedness is pretty fun, I have to admit, in an episode that's honestly kind of sub-par. "It's a freaking arrow, Jim! A FREAKING! ARROW!"

Anyway, we get some shoot-outs with Fallout enemies and reject extras from Batman and Robin, before Bullock, Gordon and a couple of the slave kids get separated from the rest of the group and end up in this bizarre horror house where poor Bullock finds a bunch of severed fingers, teeth and a burning skeleton, while Gordon meets with a creepy kid. This is the Mother and the Orphan and it's... it's kind of a rushed introduction, honestly, that wouldn't make me think that they are any sort of important recurring villains if not for my own DC knowledge. All they amount to do other than having a pretty creepy house is lock Gordon and Bullock in a room with some fancy strobe-flash filming, which is... it's kind of a cool direction for the episode from a technical standpoint, but ultimately it's not the best intro for Mother and Orphan. The setup and concept are cool and creepy, but the execution leaves me shrugging.

They get out from this side-quest within a side-quest, and face off against the Fallout dudes and the neon skull dudes again... and Barbara Kean decides to end this silly plotline by showing up in an armoured vehicle with a goddamn machinegun and murders everyone. I kinda laughed at that. Barbara and Gordon basically sort of have a non-committal partnership to kill Penguin, I guess, which is... kinda neat? We also get Lucius Fox, MVP of the show, to have apparently set up a great living block while everyone is away, and it's apparently so great and idyllic that we use a pretty bright camera filter for it. Honestly I really wished that we have any sort of hint at Lucius even working at this project, as this feels like a bizarre "oh by the way this really good thing happened" offscreen event.

Anyway... yeah, it just feels like a huge, huge side-plot as the whole missing kids subplot gets resolved, while we get an honestly not particularly impressive debut for Mother and Orphan. Penguin sits this episode out, but Riddler gets his own B-plot where... despite seemingly finding that chaining himself to bed seems to work, apparently Edward's Jekyll-and-Hyde moment has, in the span of a single night, interrogated a poor thug from the Street Demons gang, left him tied up in a bath tub, walked to the Demons base, killed everyone within, left graffiti claiming Penguin did it, and then tied himself up to the bed just to be a dick to Riddler. It's... it's kinda fun because Cory Michael Smith is a fun actor, and I'm fine with this Riddler stuff being kept as a B-plot for now.

Overall, though, it's still kind of a weak episode that feels like it belongs more in a video game and not as an episode of a final season of a TV show.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• During the No Man's Land portion of the comics, Poison Ivy was also de-powered and captured with the aid of salt, although in the comics she was captured by Clayface. 
• There's also some Arkham City vibes with her whole situation, having warpped up an entire building with vines - including a prominently placed angel statue, and working begrudgingly by directing Batman to find a special plant required for Batman to save someone.