First up on the recaps, I'll be talking about Gotham. It comes on every Monday's at 8pm (yes...same as RAW & The Originals) but that is the purpose of On Demand or you can watch the episodes on the website. It's really not hard.
1) Gotham Episode 11, Season 1 Rogue's Gallery - Right, so where did we leave off on this incredible show. Now don't mind me, I am officially caught up now. Before divulging into the events that unfolded in this week’s Gotham installment, it might be a good idea to spend a couple of seconds getting caught up with what happened before showrunner Bruno Heller and his team split for the holiday season.Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot revealed himself to be very much alive and working under false pretenses, pledging his loyalty to Carmine Falcone while working for Don Maroni. Fish Mooney was looking to kill off Falcone and starts to make serious moves when her Russian mob boss lover is killed. Gordon and Bullock have become good friends, even if they are standing on opposite sides of the moral train tracks. Most importantly, however, is Gordon’s firing from the Gotham City Police by the corrupt Mayor and sentenced to work as a security guard at the newly reopened Arkham Asylum.Speaking of Arkham Asylum, it looks like the latter half of the season will ooze with creepiness and a brooding Gordon as he rankles with his new placement. He’s found himself in the hot seat with his new boss after just a week on the job after two patients are killed on his watch. Gordon starts the tedious process of interrogating the criminally insane, introducing the audience to the cavalcade of questionable characters tossed into the rubbish facility. Besides contending with migraine inducing patients, Gordon’s also exploring a potential new romantic interest, the lovely Dr. Leslie Thompkins. Yes, the same Leslie Thompkins from the comic book that was good friends with the late Thomas Wayne and later grew to become one of Bruce Wayne’s most trusted confidantes during his late night Batman expeditions. Eventually, Gordon narrows the list down to just a few possible suspects, and when he’s invited to the basement by the eerie nurse who works side by side with him, he puts two and two together. Just as he’s about to enter the basement, Dr. Thompkins shows up and after a few seconds of awkward and muddled wordless communication, the nurse shows her manic side and darts through the depressingly grey hallways of the hospital. Believing the nurse, who dies a rather quick death after falling and electrocuting herself, was the true mastermind behind the gruesome electrocution deaths, Gordon packs up his stuff for the day and heads over to GCPD headquarters to celebrate. It’s only toward the end of the episode that the audience, and a newly disgruntled Gordon, becomes privy to the knowledge that the mastermind was indeed a patient. Jack Gruber, who’s been using electroshock therapy to build his own army of mindless zombies for his own sinister affairs. On the sunnier side of the city, the mob wars are heating up. Fish Mooney calls an emergency meeting with her last comrade in arms, Saviano, and starts to talk the untimely and unfortunate death of their fearless boss, Don Falcone. All, she repeats multiple times, hypothetical, of course She less than subtly suggests she should be in control of the family if Falcone were to meet his accidental demise, but is met with strong concerns from Saviano who insists he should be in charge, citing seniority. Who knew the mob ran themselves by union rules? In an attempt to get one over Fish, Saviano asks her loyal henchman and right hand man Butch to come over to his party, promising lavish business opportunities and all the wealth he could imagine. For a second, it gets pretty Sopranos. There’s a few scenes of, “will he, won’t he” trepidation before the final scene between the two. They meet at the brink of the city, on the waterfront, where Butch agrees to join Saviano’s camp, but confesses to ripping off Saviano when they were fourteen. “It’s been bothering me ever since,” Butch says offhand, before pulling a pistol out and shooting his former best friend in the head. Guess that phrase about friends and enemies is truer than anyone thought. Like in previous weeks episodes, the mob subplot is by far the most interesting. Maybe it’s because we’re still trying to fill the hole left behind by The Sopranos and now Boardwalk Empire, or maybe its because those are the most interesting characters on the show, but as the weeks go on, it’s obvious people want to see more of Falcone, Mooney, Maroni, and Cobblepot than Gordon and the other young Batman characters. With Arkham Asylum open, the possibility for future villains and character archetypes are endless. The biggest question most Gotham viewers, and fans of Batman, are going to have is whether or not Arkham’s most popular patient and nurse-turned criminal are going to show up. While Heller has confirmed that Harley Quinn will eventually make a debut, perhaps as a nurse at the Asylum, it’s too early to tell just how young they plan to introduce her as. There is still no word on the city’s most popular jester.
2) Season 1, Episode 12 What The Little Bird Told Him - Monday night’s episode of Gotham proved, that despite the namesake of the show, the series works best when the beloved batch of Batman characters are removed and the focus turns to the impending mob wars. Mobsters, come out and play. Fish Mooney is ready to drive the stake through her boss, Don Falcone’s, heart. Deciding his time as head honcho of the largest crime syndicate in Gotham had reached its untimely end, Mooney “kidnaps” Liza, the girl she hired and planted in Falcone’s house. With her hired hand back in her grasp, Mooney calls Falcone directly and attempts to disguise her voice while demanding Falcone leave town. Her longtime boss, however, sees right through the painfully obvious ploy and strikes a deal with his vicious yet cowardly usurper: he’ll leave town for good, effectively handing over the jewel encrusted crown of Gotham’s illegal elite, if she hands over Liza. On the other side of town, Oswald Cobblepot is still embedded within the Maroni camp, and has managed to keep his appearances up without any of his mob colleagues being the wiser. That is until he’s accidentally electrocuted while on his way to meet Falcone and knocked unconscious.Upon waking up, he locks eyes with Maroni and practically jolts into the air when the boss he’s currently two timing informs him that he muttered something about having, “to discuss urgent matters with Don Falcone.” Luckily, his flair for dramatic monologues lets him off the hook and with an ironic blessing from Maroni, he’s on his way to meet Falcone. Upon arriving at Falcone’s estate, Cobblepot regretfully confesses to his boss that Liza, the girl he had come to love as a daughter, was hired by Moony to help overthrow him. Armed with the newly discovered knowledge, Falcone saunters over to Mooney’s house and makes it extremely apparent to his backstabbing fellow: Falcone is back and is not about to be made a fool of again. Grabbing Liza, he wrings his hands around her neck and squeezes the life right out of her windpipes, dropping her to the floor before turning around and walking away, never looking back.
-Gordon is Back:
When Gordon left us last week, he was having some difficulties adjusting to his new job as a security guard at the illustrious Arkham Asylum. He couldn’t keep the prisoners in their cells and he had one of the more notorious masterminds actually escape the facility. This was a man that wasn’t about to be fast tracked through the security guard program. Luckily for him, he’s full of that good old American bravado and shows up unwarranted and unwelcomed to Gotham City Police’s headquarters demanding he be put on the case of escaped patient, Jack Gruber (affectionately nicknamed The Electrocutioner). Gotham’s smug police commissioner agrees to Gordon being allowed to rejoin the team, but only allots him and Bullock 24 hours to bring Gruber in and close the case. If he can’t work his magic within that time, he and Bullock would be ostracized from the police force for good. The two crack their knuckles, work the kinks out in their neck, and start sorting through the Arkham paperwork to find out more about their guy. Fortunately they have more than enough help along the way. The young and bookish Riddler discovers that Gruber isn’t actually their runaway villains last name, but an alias. The lucky pair then receive a visit from the striking Dr. Leslie Thompkins, the doctor Jimbo clearly had a thing for when he was working at Arkham. She brings them a voodoo doll she had to bribe a patient for and that somehow relates to the case. Just like that, eureka! The answer lies with Maroni. Gordon has the wise idea to bring him into the station and wait for Gruber to make his appearance, which after rounds of laughter coursing through the station as Maroni tells his jokes, he does. He manages to roll in a small cylindrical container that sets off an electricity bomb of sorts and stuns the entire outfit of Gotham’s finest in blue…except for Bullock and Gordon who were smart enough to wait outside. They barge in and after a pretty mediocre stand off –as all the other standoffs have been thus far in the series.
Gordon grabs a glass of water off a close by desk, and tosses it all over Gruber’s mechanical device, effectively shutting it down.Once Gordon stands tall and pretty for the press, he’s reinstated as a top dog detective on the force. He ends the night off with a steamy kissing session with the one and only Dr. Thompkins leaving no question that his relationship with Barbara is most definitely over. Or at least very open. Who knows with these crazy kids and their relationship statuses these days?
-Thoughts:
As said before, this episode of Gotham proved that removing the notorious criminals fans fell head over heels for in the comics makes the show more engaging, exciting, and exceptional. It feels like an adult program with sinister undertones that was missing from Fox’s lineup. Attempting to please fans with overzealous pandering has only evoked uproarious distaste for the direction of the show and seems to trivialize the actual ongoing of Gordon and his brothers in the police force. Half way through the season, the decision to drop characters like Detectives Montoya and Allen has been one of the better calls, and proves that less is indeed more. The mob storylines work wonders for the series and is the reason fans are tuning in. There’s simply not enough happening with the original cast of villains, all now young misfits trying to make it through puberty, to keep the intrigue high enough week after week. But the question of Falcone’s continuity in the criminal hierarchy of Gotham? That’s damn fascinating.
3) Season 1, Episode 13 Welcome Back, Jim Gordon - Whatever happened to a code among criminals? After Don Falcone’s momentous return as the unmatched overlord of Gotham’s underworld in last week’s episode that resulted in the ambiguous shooting match between his henchmen and Fish Mooney’s camp, things between the villains have gone haywire. Most importantly, Fish Mooney isn’t dead. She’s just been kidnapped by what appears to be Falcone’s go-to sadistic butcher. When placing a bag over her head and suffocating her within an inch of her life doesn’t work, Mr. Butcher picks up a nasty looking crowbar and just as he’s about to rip into Mooney’s knee, her ever faithful right hand man Butch comes to her rescue.
On the other side of town, Oswald Cobblepot has brought his dotting mother over to Mooney’s club that he’s all but ready to inherit. ust like his darling mother, he instantly falls in love with the exquisite decadence that comes with Mooney’s club, and when he’s finally left alone to bask in the monumental glory his hardworking turncoat ways have given him, he comes face to face with the very woman he’s about to steal from. Always ready to become the double-crossing cowardly criminal, Cobblepot bows down before Fish, literally kissing her foot while begging for forgiveness. Before they’re able to really get into the nitty gritty details of Cobblepot’s backstabbing ways, trained assassin and voted the number one person in Gotham you wouldn’t want to stumble upon in a dark alley, Victor Zsasz shows up guns blazing. He doesn’t manage to take down Mooney, but he is able to maim loyal Butch.
The most shocking moment, however, came at the end of the episode when Fish tells Bullock she’s getting out of town for a bit and he responds by kissing her. One of Gotham’s top cops hooking up with one of Gotham’s top mobsters? It may be a little clichéd and redundant, but intriguing nonetheless. Well, well, well. Gordon’s back in blue.
After having his badge reinstated at the end of the previous episode, Gordon (who’s become more of a boy scout than Marvel’s Steve Rogers) is on the prowl for another big case to prove he’s still one of Gotham’s best. Luckily for him, a case fitting that exact description just about lands in his lap when an innocent civilian is killed with an icicle while giving a statement inside police headquarters. It doesn’t take long for Gordon to make himself private enemy number one within the force after he starts scrambling around the station and interviewing every cop who had access to their victim. Bullock tries to tell him, as politely as a cop with no sense of manners or etiquette can, that he’s about to make himself more enemies than brothers and sisters on the force in his search for the murderer. Nonetheless, one of his interrogations leads to the arrest of a police officer, but it all gets a little sticky when Gordon is told the guy is an undercover narcotics officer who’s been working on a case for years. Less ignorant than the rest of the police force, apparently, Gordon stalks off in disbelief and is rewarded with a small peeping confession from Bullock who admits he knows the Narcotics team has been turning over drug warehouses and using the product they find for themselves or selling it at a higher price than what it was originally going for. With just a little more investigating, Gordon finally concludes it was the head of the undercover Narcotics group that killed their victim so he and his fellow police goons wouldn’t be ratted out for their drug dealing side life. One rousing speech later, in which Gordon rips off his badge and asks what good the GCPD is when brave civilians willing to come forward and point fingers can’t even trust the cops they think are there to protect them, he manages to sway the rest of the police force into backing him.
Gordon: 1 – GCDP’s bad eggs: 0
Bruce Wayne is back, unfortunately. Remember when Bruce Wayne went on a vacation last week and the episode seemed to roll along pretty smoothly?Yeah, that ended this week.
Turns out Wayne actually was on vacation with Alfred, but now that’s back, he wants to connect with kids his own age again. When he doesn’t find his best friend and current love of his life Selina Kyle in any of the scuzzy locations she brought him to when they had their night on the town, he leaves a message with Ivy – who looks much older in this episode than she did in her first episode a couple of months back- that he’s looking for her. He doesn’t have to wait too long at his manor before Kyle comes leaping through his window, harshly asking why he’s been stalking her.
Embarrassed, he admits he was worried about her and when he sees the faintest of smiles tug at her lips, he asks her to move into the manor with him where it’s safe. The idea of charity clearly doesn't sit well with the independent pussycat, who smashes the gift he brought back for her on the floor and warns him to leave her alone for good. Heartbroken, it’s with a stiff talking to from Alfred that he refocuses his attention on finding out who killed his parents (remember when this was important?) and ridding himself of something as mundane and ordinary as girl problems.
-Thoughts??
Like I said the mob wars are the most interesting part of the show and continue to be so week after week, but unfortunately showrunner Bruno Heller and his team keep trying to amalgamate plot lines until it becomes a disaster hour. It’s hard to care for Wayne when he’s barely in the show, and Ben McKenzie’s acting is so outrageously overdramatic, it’s hard to take any scene he’s in seriously.
& there you have it folks, can't wait for the new episode of Gotham.