Tetch meets with a drug dealer to purchase an accelerant for a concoction he’s brewing. A psychotropic powder called the Red Queen catches his eye. He immediately uses it on the drug dealer where the effects are instantaneous.
Ed has spent the night with Isabella, both charmed with each other and not knowing how quickly time has passed. He invites her to dinner, with a riddle of course, and she happily accepts.
Back in Penguin-ville, Oswald has taken it upon himself to try and file a missing person’s report for Ed. But it’s not needed anymore, as Ed shows up telling Oswald that he’s now in love.
Tetch and his thugs infiltrate a morgue and acquire Alice’s body.
Bruce feverishly makes dinner. The honored guest? Selina. Bruce asks for some privacy after Alfred gets a bit too nosy.
The GCPD is now on scene at the morgue. Barnes and Harvey deduce that Tetch will most likely thaw Alice’s blood for purposes unknown. Jim catches wind of this and also makes an appearance. However, Barnes and Harvey aren’t too happy about his presence, forcing him to leave.
As Ed helps Oswald dress for the Founders Dinner, he gushes about Isabella. Oswald tries his best to temper down Ed’s infatuation.
Fox informs Barnes about the investigation into Alice’s blood—and it’s not good. The rats which were exposed exhibited violent rage and later died. There’s no cure. Barnes is worried about what Tetch will be doing with the blood, but we all know that his real worry is what’s happening to himself.
Mario has a quick private moment with Leslie. He’s not happy about Jim using Leslie in Tetch’s sick game from last week. The conversation is cut short when Jim arrives to visit Valerie … again. Leslie confronts Jim and wants him to admit that he’s still in love with her. Jim, the stubborn bastard, won’t do it and quickly leaves.
Penguin shows up at the library where Isabella works, and feigns needing a book to brush up on Gotham’s history. He quickly starts his scheme of revealing Ed’s stay at Arkham, and the murder of Kristen.
At the hospital, Tetch purposely catches Jim’s attention and leads him down a stairwell. Tetch ambushes Jim and gives him a dose of the Red Queen. From here, Jim goes to La-La Land.
With Jim’s bad luck, his hallucination has Barbara as a guide in an elevator. She quickly gives him the only rule: he has to ride out the trip. The first stop is the GCPD where he finds a creepy Bruce. That changes with an explosion, leading Jim to his wartime past. Here, he’s greeted by Oswald doing his best Twin-Peaks-The-Man-from-Another-Place backwards talk. The scene changes again and Bruce shows him a bunch of dead cops and then shoots him, with the resulting blood being a string of pearls.
Harvey interrogates … er … threatens a lab technician, but Barnes steps in playing the role of the “good cop.” The technician soon pushes his luck a bit too far and Barnes’s blood-rage kicks in. Harvey ends up having to pull Barnes off the suspect. The freaked out technician reveals information that points to Tetch targeting the Founder’s Dinner.
Tetch laces all the wine glasses with Alice’s infected blood. Yep, we all know what he’s up to.
Jim awakens to Barbara giving him CPR … and he’s pretty disgusted by it. His hallucination brings him to a 1950s Leave-It-to-Beaver-type setting where he’s married to Leslie and has two kids. The light quickly flicker and everyone disappears. Angered, Jim fights with Barbara, but she gets the upper-hand, forcing him to comply.
At Wayne Manor, poor Bruce sits alone with a prepared meal. Aflred tries to comfort him, thinking that Selina stood him up. Out of blue, she appears and tells him that she had “stuff” to do. As Alfred leaves the young love birds, they both note that this new relationship is “weird.”
At the Founders Dinner, Oswald is talks to Kathryn—the woman who seems to be leading the Court of Owls. As the conversation continues, she identifies her family as one of the oldest in Gotham and that they’ve had their eyes on him for awhile. She excuses herself, but not before telling him that he’ll be contacted.
As the guests sit for dinner, Tetch and his men break in. The GCPD raid the place right before Tetch forces everyone to drink the tainted wine. An infuriated Barnes beats Tetch, revealing his infection. Tetch sees evidence of Barnes’s condition and laughs gleefully.
Back in Jim’s hallucination, a much more calm and concerned Barbara leads him to his final vision where he meets his father. The two take a drive and Jim recollects his father’s noble deeds. Jim’s father tells him about the “Gordon Code,” located on a ring. As the hallucination comes an end, Jim sees Mario shining a light.
Isabella, regardless of Oswald’s slandering of Ed, still shows up at the mansion. Ed comes clean about everything, but, surprisingly Isabella still accepts him. In an awkward moment, Oswald walks in on them kissing.
Jim retrieves a box and rummages through piles of trinkets. He finally finds the ring and reads the Latin inscription: “While we breathe, we shall defend.” Jim pays Barnes (who’s now looking at his own will) a visit and asks to be a detective again. Barnes happily welcomes him back to the force. Kathryn meets with a man in the shadows who’s revealed to be wearing the same type of ring Gordon retrieved.
Best Moment - Barbara does make this show better. Even in a hallucination, the character’s antics are hilarious. And Erin Richards’s masterful switching between insanity and genuine concern is a joy to watch.
Final Thoughts - This episode would’ve been more suited as a Valentine’s Day special. We had a budding romance between Bruce and Selina, and the awkward love triangle between Oswald, Ed, and Isabella. And this just shows how Gotham defies all logic. Who in their right mind would still show up for a date knowing that the person spent time in a psychiatric hospital after killing his previous girlfriend and chopping her to pieces!? Hey, this is just regular business on this show. Insanity is the baseline.