Gotham, Season 5, Episode 6: 13 Stitches
I'll try to keep things a bit more succinct so that I could get these out in a more timely fashion. It's a pretty solid episode of Gotham, starting off with mind-controlled Edward hunting Gordon, leading to a brief physical scruffle that I honestly find a bit silly because it asks us to buy into the fact that somehow scrawny Edward Nygma is the physical match for Gordon... but eh. Gordon whacks Edward in the head with a pair of handy defibrillators that also has the side effect of shorting out the mind-control chip in his head, because... well, comic-book logic, eh?
And we get a brief bit of all of Gotham's main players banding up against the real big threat -- Eduardo and his commandos, who clearly doesn't have the city's best interests at heart. We get a brief scene of Alfred (who recognizes the mercenaries) and Bruce trying to talk to Gordon, before they are 'escorted away'... but, of course, these is Bruce and Alfred, so the commandos get whacked around while they go off on their own. Meanwhile, Gordon and Edward hang out at Barbara's bar, and we get a fun little sequence where Edward pretends to be mind-controlled when Eduardo shows up, only to throw a goddamn kitchen cleaver at one of Eduardo's soldiers. It's a bit silly that he doesn't go for the main man himself, but eh, you gotta have a show.
Eduardo then goes ballistic, locking down the GCPD base and locking up Bullock and most of Gordon's supporters, while the rest of our main characters converge in one of the many warehouses in Gotham City. Lucius (who's... there) removes the chip from Edward's head, which provides them with the evidence against Walker, the main sponsor behind Eduardo... but then Eduardo forces Gordon's hand by revealing that they've captured a slightly-amnesiac Leslie Thompkins, which Eduardo deems is a criminal (I mean, he's not wrong) and all criminals from Gotham are fair game.
Gordon demands that they do a Riddler/Leslie exchange at Haven, but thankfully, he's not too stupid to take Eduardo at his word. While Gordon distracts Eduardo, the rest of the team goes off to broadcast the chip's evidence to the mainland, which gives us the two-part climax. It's mostly just fun action scenes, admittedly. Gordon and Eduardo have a confrontation with words that leads to a shoot-out, and... and I don't really super-care of their military backstory, but it's neat, I guess. I'm more curious about just why military-yes-man Eduardo and his enigmatic employer are so willing to write Haven off as acceptable losses.
Bruce gets to beat up one of the mercenaries as he sets up the broadcast system, but the best part of this episode, of course, is Edward Nygma showing up in a bomb suit, ranting about how he wants to play a game, and sets up this huge math riddle... that Bullock, hilariously, was able to solve because "that particular mouse is extinct, I remember that trivia! The answer is zero!" It's... it's a hilarious bit of misunderstanding, and Nygma being Nygma, of course his compulsion actually makes it so that the (fake) bomb does "disengage" when zero is put in. He's saved in the nick of time, of course, but it doesn't make the whole sequence any less silly.
The good guys win, and apparently in the mainland (and offscreen), Secretary Walker is thrown out due to her inhumane methods, and I do kinda appreciate that this one is off-screen. Then while the episode seems like a win for the good guys -- Eduardo impaled on some metal rods, Walker is unseated, and everyone's alive... we get a bunch of bombs thrown our way when Senator Walker walks up to the dying body of Eduardo, and then gives him that silly face-mask that Dark Knight Rises Bane wears, and promises to get him better with Hugo Strange's help. Meanwhile, she activates her second operative, which is pretty obviously Leslie, who is in the middle of a heartfelt conversation before she goes all murder-town.
Gordon uses a taser to knock her out (and surely Lucius could take this chip out too, right?) but then Barbara shows up with a hilarious, out-of-nowhere bombshell: she's pregnant. And the way Barbara says it with a "long time, Lee" as she walks straight out, with Bullock awkwardly saying "congratulations...?" is just such a hilarious comedic bit. Honestly, it's a bit of a soap opera plot twist, and I really shouldn't like this plot twist at all... but it's so stupid, out of nowhere and so hilarious that I can't help but like it.
We've got a couple of B-plots running around. The first one seems to be an immediate foreshadowing to the next episode, which is Jeremiah randomly kidnapping Alfred, and holding him hostage because despite what logic might tell you, apparently that underground river tunnel works, and Alfred's being held in a house across the river. Joker plans are always pretty fun, so I'm kinda interested to see where this goes.
The longer B-plot is Oswald and Selina teaming up to hunt down jewel thief Magpie (an actual Batman enemy!). Selina quickly figures out that Oswald wants to get off the city, and I do like how Oswald notes that he's done everything he could for Gotham City -- sometimes twice over, which is a fun little nod to Oswald's... erratic motivations throughout the series. Over the course of the episode, they hunt down Magpie and end up outsmarting her, although not before Oswald is tricked into making a deal with Selina to basically allowing her to get a slice of Oswald's profits later on. It's a fun little team-up, honestly.
Overall, a pretty solid episode. Not a whole ton to really complain about other than maybe the suddenness of Leslie's inclusion into the episode. But most of it, from the Magpie side-plot to taking down Eduardo for the first time, are done pretty well.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Magpie, a.k.a. Margaret Pye, is a minor Batman enemy who fashioned herself after the magpie bird, and has an obsession for stealing shiny objects. She used to work as a museum curator before her mind snapped after realizing that she would never really own any of the valuables around her.
- Eduardo finally re-establishes that he was imprisoned in Pena Duro, just like comic-book Bane.
- Bane being rescued from a hellhole by a female benefactor that he is now deathly loyal to is the inspiration for both movie live-action versions of Bane from Batman & Robin and The Dark Knight Rises. His mask and muffled voice is also from TDKR.
- Speaking of live-action movie comparisons, Penguin and Catwoman teaming up is an allusion to the big bad ensemble of Batman Returns, only with, of course, none of the sexually-charged libido that Burgess Meredith's Penguin has.
- Selina liking diamonds is, of course, a nod to her comic-book alter-ego's most common modus operandi... jewelry thefts.
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