Welcome to another Gotham recap! Gotham also known as the show where the heroes don’t wear capes and the villains don’t wear masks since everyone is awful in some sort of way, shape or form anyway!
This week in Gotham, Good Guy Jim Gordon gets what was coming to him and the city’s resident teenage hoodlums go on the run.
As always, the recap is split into The Plot, The Gay and The Ugly so read on to find out what went down this week.
The Plot
The episode opens, a woman appears confused and lost at Wayne Manor. “Not sure you should be here,” says the groundskeeper. It takes about three seconds before he’s dead with his blood on his murderer’s forehead as a post-battle celebration. Rest in pieces Mr. Groundskeep, we hardly knew ya.
Energised from the kill, our Lady of Death and her crew head inside the Manor, where Bruce, Selina Kyle and butler Alfred Pennyworth reside. Unfortunately for Alfred’s good soul he’s given her exactly what she wanted by inviting her in, falling for her line about having been injured in a car accident. Alfred gets the lumps knocked out of him for his trouble (and a gunshot to the shoulder) while Selina and Bruce hotfoot it through the Wayne Manor grounds, looking to hide in the city until it’s safe to return.
Not that it will be safe any time soon though as Selina, a witness to the murder of Bruce’s parents, is a wanted woman. Whoever was behind their deaths wants her head on a plate, a stick or just dumped in the gutter. Selina (and Bruce, as he’s now on the run too) will have to hope that the Gotham City Police Department gets the assassin squad before they get to them.
Similarly fearing for his life is Penguin. Reeling from last week’s vault explosion in which he lost millions, mob boss Falcone wants to know why Penguin (his informant) didn’t tell him that mob boss Maroni was up to something. It was mob boss Fish Mooney who was behind it, protests Penguin, but Falcone wants proof it was an inside job.
So it’ll be a bad day for Fish then as while Jim interrogates Harvey Dent asking who could have known that Selina was the witness (he says he leaked Jim’s name for leverage and Dick Lovecraft may have been behind it), Harvey Bullock interrogates Selina’s homeless friend who says that Fish might have a lead about a fence who knows where Selina is. And, this is all kicking off as Falcone is digging into Fish and his other lackeys about paying more money to him in order to recoup his lost funds.
Not that any of it is phasing her (yet) at least. She speaks to henchman Butch, explaining that even if Falcone is onto her about the vault explosion, he can’t be certain of it yet. As a result, she thinks that they should get some more people on board so that they can take Falcone out once and for all. I think that this is a stupid plan and that they’ll all be dead by the end of the season but what do I know? At least she’ll be able to call in a favour from the GCPD as she decides to tear up the city – she’s just told Alfred and Harvey where to find the fence.
Chasing up a lead of his own, Jim shows up at one of Dick Lovecraft’s apartments wanting to know if the blasted blighter was behind the Selina/Bruce hit. Surprisingly, Dick cacks himself faced with the barrel of Jim’s gun and tells him that the hit squad is after him too, for knowing too much. It’s no made up story either as Dick’s literary surname would suggest, as the assassins soon show up, knock Jim out cold, Dick running scared. What happens when Jim wakes up? He finds Dick dead in his bathtub, Jim’s gun apparently being the murder weapon. Good luck scrubbing your prints off that one, Jimbo.
Things are going similarly pear-shaped for Bruce and Selina who have gone under the radar to meet this fence. Selina’s got thousands of dollars worth of merch that she pilfered from the Wayne’s but the fence is a stingy so and so and won’t give her much for it. Much more valuable he says, are Selina and Bruce and so he soon locks them in a room, waiting until the assassins get there.
The thing about locking two super smart teens in a room together is that they’ll escape, or at least try to. They make too much noise and Shady Fence sends a guard to see what’s up. There’s a chase, some hiding and a big bit of ass-whooping but Bruce manages to keep it together under interrogation, deflecting questions long enough for Selina to get out of dodge. In the nick of time Alfred and Harvey show up and save him from any more questioning, but the female assassin gets away.
When Bruce and Alfred get home, Bruce gets a nice surprise at least. It’s Selina! She sneaks up, returns those stolen goods from earlier and the two of them kiss before she hightails it out of there. It’s not safe for them to be together, after all. But aw, it’s love’s young dream!
As that whole ‘rich millionaire Dick Lovecraft got killed and Jim could take the fall for it’? The Mayor of Gotham is telling everybody that it was a suicide, with Dick being driven to it thanks to Jim’s relentless questioning and that Jim will be punished for it. With Harvey on the Mayor’s side there’s not a lot Jimmy can do and so he takes his stuff and reports to Arkham Asylum where he’ll be working for the foreseeable future.
The Gay
I’m actually dealing out minus points for the queer content in this week’s Gotham.
Last week ended with Jim’s girlfriend Barbara Kean having slept with ex-girlfriend Renee Montoya, after she left Jim (it’s unclear if he’s been dumped for good) following the stress of being kidnapped. This week, however, we got no mention of it.
There was no mention of Renee or Barbara at all despite the two of them being pretty dang integral to the story. For shame Gotham, I thought you were turning things around in the gay department.
The Ugly
I was mostly disappointed by the lack of Barbara and Renee just for the fact that it seemed to suggest that them getting together last episode was a sweeps week ploy (last week was the final week of sweeps – sweeps being the time where television networks increase ratings to get more advertising money) and that it was insignificant after all.
This episode didn’t really have the ‘sizzle’ of a mid-season finale (though when we’re comparing it to the superiority of HTGAWM, maybe that’s not a valid criticism) so I would have liked the show to have increase the suspense a little.
Nonetheless, the show will be back after Christmas so you can expect a new episode of Gotham (and a new recap) then.
