What They Say:
Welcome Back, Jim Gordon – Gordon suspects an inside job when a homicide witness being held for questioning ends up dead; Cobblepot gives Fish Mooney a taste of her own medicine.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Gotham has finally moved Gordon back to the GCPD rather than being a part of the Arkham crew, which is a good thing because they never really seemed like they were sure about what to do with him there. The potential for exploring the relaunch of Arkham was definitely there, but it instead worked just to give Gordon a job to do. Granted, it cemented him further in the GCPD because of what he and Bullock had to do in a short amount of time, and it now has him playing by the rules of the city even more, but it felt like some squandered time in establishing more of just what kind of sieve that Arkham can be. There was a lot to like in several areas, especially with the dynamic between Bullock and Gotham, but the big sell for me kept coming back to seeing the way that Falcone asserted himself after some understandable self doubt considering all that had happened. And now we have Penguin with some new things to play with, though you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop – again – and crush him a bit.
The cold open for this episode definitely plays things in a creepy way as Fish, now in Falcone’s hands, has been brought to a very little known place where a man named Bob, is all set to start her proper interrogation. Which is basically a whole lot of torture. She’s certainly of the mind that she can handle it of course based on her history, and that provides a solid subplot for the episode. On the police side of things, we get introduced to Detective Flass, a regular in the comics world dating back to the year one storyline in Batman back in 1987. Bullock and Gordon are called in to check out a homicide involving a man named Pinky Littlefield and that means they’re getting to do some actual detective work here in figuring out who it is that killed this guy. They do have a witness, but things go pretty badly for him – in the precinct of all places, as he gets killed there by a mystery man with an ice pick while he was waiting to do the sketch artist thing.
Gordon naturally takes all of this personally as he brought the witness into the precinct to get more information, and things naturally have him thinking that it’s likely to be a cop or someone in the precinct since the cameras were turned off. Bullock and Essen naturally warn him off of this, especially since he just got reinstated, but Gordon still has that mentality of doing things right and true, even if it costs him. He’s playing it a little bit smarter now, but still mostly who we’ve seen him as. It’s fun watching him put several cops to the test in trying to figure out who is involved, and he actually has an angle to work with, though it gets complicated as it goes along because the guy he fingers for it is an undercover cop, but still comes across as guilty as hell. Of course, Gordon’s approach doesn’t work well and he just ends up creating more enemies, which is what he usually ends up doing.
As the investigation goes on, it becomes clearer to Gordon just how bad the corruption is in Gotham as Bullock gives in and provides the Flass connection for Gordon to chew on. That redoubles Gordon’s efforts, but we see how they start working in the best lead they have, but it’s made clear that the corruption works up through the commissioner, which we saw a good dose of in the previous episode as well. This kind of corruption is blatant, but it gets even worse when the Captain reveals that the witnesses death has been ruled a suicide, making it harder for Gordon to investigate certain aspects of what’s going on. Ruling it a suicide of course is ridiculous and seeing Gordon lash out at it is great, even if it’s just made clear once again how ineffective the police can be because of how things are swept under the rug. Essen does have a decent moment here though as she tries to get it through to Gordon that there are good cops that want to do the right thing here, but that it’s damn hard because of things like this.
This storyline, while interesting, takes an odd turn as it goes into the final act where it’s all just, well, literally dropped on Gordon’s desk at the precinct. It was interesting to see Gordon look for some potential help through Penguin as his position has changed, and it does get him the results he wanted, but it’s one of those moments that has Gordon working with the darker side of the elements of Gotham and that’s a hard thing to deal with since it could draw him further into it. Where it becomes interesting, in a kind of big way, is that when Gordon confronts Flass about it, it becomes about showing the cops that want to do good that they have to stand up, especially since Flass is making it clear he’s untouchable. Gordon’s playing it big, even though it may mean digging his own grave, but sometimes there’s more evidence than you can dismiss and it can start to change things. Of course, we know that things will only get worse in Gotham and, in a way, never better.
This episode also brings Bruce back into play as he’s searching for Selina in the city, having Alfred drive him around and even doing some walking the streets to find her. It’s amusing the way Alfred is surprised that he’s taken by women at such a young age, and Alfred has some fun lines when Ivy crosses paths with them and he’s just a little disturbed by her and her appearance. Time with Bruce is minimal here, but it’s fun to see Selina show up at the manor while he’s playing chess against himself. Selina is cute with some of this and Bruce shows a bit of his disconnect from their social stations, but he’s just so honest towards her as he wants her help in trying to find his parents killers and offers her residence in the manor. She sees what he’s doing as some kind of hassle, but he’s just so innocent in this in a way that she can’t let herself stay around him and she does what she can to sabotage it. It’s simple pre-teen logic in a way, but it’s not laid out in a great way and just feels kind of forced.
Fish’s storyline in the episode is fun as it gets going, seeing her pushing back hard against her tormentor by showing that she’s pretty damn crazy herself. There’s a good kind of scenery chewing going on with her here that makes it fun since you have to be whacked to stay in Gotham in general and to get into the criminal enterprise side the way she has. It’s not something that goes on for a long time overall, but it kicks off right and has a fun little sequence with her surprise rescue by her second, Butch, who himself managed to escape being tossed into an incinerator. Butch is ready to get the hell out of Gotham with her at this point, having holed up temporarily to give her time to recover. But she’s not intent on leaving until she can get some payback with Penguin over what he did, especially with Liza. It’s certainly right for her character and mentality, and the lack of having men to work with for it certainly doesn’t slow her down. At least she has a pretty good idea where Penguin will be because it’s obvious that he’s going to be living it up at her former club since that was the big thing for him.
The dynamic between Fish and Penguin is definitely a lot of fun to watch as they both push back against each other, though at different times, as Penguin will do anything to live in the face of such a person. But when he does push back with his words, it’s some cutting stuff that gets to her in a big way and it’s fun to see her lash out at him as well. What makes it all the more fun is that as things can’t go smoothly, Zsaz shows up in his quest to find Fish and makes for quite the fun exchange that really can put Butch in a very different position going forward, if he survives. Fish’s escape goes in a different direction and it’s good to see the connection between her and Bullock coming into play again. It’s been touched upon a few times, but there’s a bit more to it to be explored as well, especially as she asks him to find Butch and that she will come back, even as he warns her away. You really do wonder more of what their relationship is all about in the past to see how it got here and what really binds them together in this way.
In Summary:
Gotham has a pretty solid episode here where there’s a number of things moving along that gives us a decent story involving Gordon and the threads related to his investigation. Sometimes it gets pushed to the background more than you think, but it works well towards what it does in the final minutes as Gordon realizes what it is that he’s done and what he’s involved in now. I was glad to see Bruce back in play and while it was left unsaid for a bit, interesting that Alfred basically took him out of the country for a bit after his involvement with Selina to give him some breathing room. The police side of things is the big play here overall as it wants to say there are more good cops there than we’ve been lead to believe, but that can go only so far. For me, the real fun was watching Fish and Penguin’s storyline play out throughout this with a nice twist of Bullock at the end just add a little more fun to it all.
Grade: B+
