Episode Title: The Son of Gotham
Original Airdate: 11-23-15
Without going into too much detail just yet, I think it’s safe to say that I’m pretty much fully on board again with Gotham. There’s only a couple middling things here and there that have been bugging me, but for the most part I’m truly enjoying where the arcs are for every character on the show. Gordon, Riddler, and Bruce are all three continuing down a darker path. Meanwhile the escalation of the Court of Owls, currently referred to in the show as the Sacred Order of St. Dumas, is a little bit out there but I can go along with it for now.
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I will say right off the bat that the best part of this episode was the entire mini story arc with Bruce Wayne, who I will refrain from calling “Baby Bruce” or some variation at least for a while. Even though I correctly predicted what was going to happen from the moment Silver St. Cloud and Bruce Wayne were captured I still really enjoyed how it played out. Especially the moment at the end where Bruce revealed to Cat what he had said when he whispered in Silver’s ear and used the truth about how he felt towards Selina to make it sound more convincing. We also got to have a nice little moment with Alfred facing off against Tabitha Galavan, it’s been a little while since he’s been able to show what he can really do besides be a butler.
As for the police force, it does have an awfully mixed reaction towards officer deaths. Over the course of two seasons, probably a few dozen officers have died via various gang wars and whatnot, but this is the first time that we really get a moment of an officer’s funeral. Not only that, but it’s the very cliched funeral with the rain and the black umbrellas that’s usually reserved for when an important character dies, not just some random officer that was introduced a couple episodes earlier and had maybe ten to fifteen minutes of screen time before her death. It also led to Gordon’s very Batman-like discussion of the morality of killing severely psychotic criminals in order to prevent further deaths, while Lee provides the counterpoint that without justice, Gordon would just be another murderer albeit one who wears a badge. The random skunk-haired, cannibal criminal is a far cry from the Joker, but the similarities are there, it was one of the low points of the episode for me, but I also understand why it was there and even though I didn’t entirely like the scene, I don’t fault the show for including it.
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Another moment that was somewhat predictable was the hearing for Mayor Galavan where the former Mayor unsurprisingly testifies that it was all a lie, Galavan had nothing to do with it, and instead it was actually the Penguin. Ok, I did lie a little bit, I was completely aware that Galavan would be set free after this hearing, but I didn’t put enough thought into it to predict that he would place the blame on the Penguin which is a smart move. We also end the episode with Penguin finally back on the streets with at least one of his minions on the trail of Galavan, with a completely coincidental rescue of Gordon along the way. I imagine there will be more working together between Gordon and Penguin, though it will have to be away from the prying eyes of Captain Barnes who would be much more likely to turn Penguin in rather than work with him. And just a final quick mention to the Riddler who gets a brief scene with Lee that shows both his continued darker side along with a bit of comic relief through his unlikely houseguest Penguin.
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