'Gotham' Recap: Villains Night Out
SPOILER ALERT: This recap contains storyline and character details for this week's episode of Gotham.
It's a good week to be bad on Gotham. Penguin's doing all right; Nygma's doing all right; Zsasz is shooting up the place; heck, even Jim Gordon gets a taste of what working with criminals can do for justice. It's no wonder the city will eventually embrace Batman's vigilante justice when it comes.
Gordon is investigating the murder of a smalltime drug dealer; he asks a witness to come to the precinct to talk to a sketch artist. While there, the witness is murdered and the evidence points to Det. Flass (Dash Mihok), a crooked cop working narcotics.
Once again, he finds his fellow officers unwilling to cooperate, and Internal Affairs rules the witness's death — he's stabbed multiple times in the back with an icepick — a suicide. In desperation, he turns to Penguin, who is happy to do his friend a favor.
Related: Missed the Previous Episode of 'Gotham'? Catch Up With Our Recap
Despite his admonition that no one get hurt, Penguin's goon gets evidence and a confession out of Flass's underling, Delaware (Niko Nicotera), by nearly drowning his wife. The evidence gets Flass thrown in jail and the precinct on Gordon's side for standing up to dirty cops. However, the episode ends with Delaware begging Gordon on his knees — as if he were talking to a Mob kingpin — to spare his family. It's definitely not anyplace Gordon expected to find himself as he begins to realize the price of justice might be his conscience.
Penguin is just a "few loose ends" away from claiming all of Fish Mooney's holdings, and he invites his mother to the club to celebrate. Carol Kane is absolutely marvelous as she laughs and dances with her son's goons. She claims a scarf, unaware that Fish's mole, Liza, was strangled in it last episode. "I am so proud of you, I could spit!" she says with the glee of a young girl.
Of course, one of those loose ends decides to show up as Penguin does a little cutting loose of his own. Once he's shooed away all his men, he has his own little dance party. It's a side of him we rarely get beyond the occasional demented cackle; the real Oswald Cobblepot is bitter and spiteful and grandiose. As he announces the imaginary opening of his bar to "celebrities from around the world," Fish and Butch reappear, intent on reclaiming what is theirs.
Fish has been sent to some sort of "doctor" to extract an apology from her. That means suffocation and broken kneecaps and who knows what else. She's saved by Butch, who has overpowered his captors on the way to the incinerator. They dish out a beating to Penguin, but he, in turn, is saved by Victor Zsasz (Anthony Carrigan). Fish gets away, but Butch gets shot in the leg, and we don't yet know if Zsasz killed him or took him home to "play" with.
Elswhere, Nygma tries a marginally less creepy approach to woo the lovely Miss Kringle (Chelsea Spack): a greeting card with a heartfelt, if amateurish, poem. Flass — who is a world-class jerk as well as a murdering, crooked cop — finds the card and reads it aloud to hoots of laughter. Kringle goes to apologize to Nygma; she doesn't like him, but she didn't intend for him to be mocked like that. "There's still hope!" he says to himself after she's left, which is the wrong takeaway from their interaction, but it's definitely a cobblestone in Nygma's pathway to becoming the Riddler.
Related: 'Gotham' Star Cory Michael Smith Explains How the Riddler Will Find His 'Evil Nature'
Bruce Wayne has returned from a trip to Switzerland, and he drags Alfred out looking for Selina. They run across Ivy (Clare Foley), who lets Selina know he's looking for her. Bruce wants Selina to come back and live at Wayne Manor, ostensibly because she saw the face of his parents' killer, but also because he doesn't have any peers to speak of. She rejects him, saying that she lied about seeing the killer (it's still not clear whether she was lying then or lying now), but she wants him to stop "hassling" her.
The episode ends with Fish on the docks with Bullock. She's leaving town, but she'll be back to exact revenge on Penguin, which pretty precisely mirrors Penguin's exit from town in the pilot. Fish and Bullock share a tender kiss before she leaves. It may not be a superpower, but the way she wraps men around her finger (Bullock, Butch, Falcone) might as well be.
Next week is the introduction of a major Batman villain: the Scarecrow. Gotham has only got better in terms of developing its bad guys; hopefully they don't drop the ball here. Even casual fans are aware of Scarecrow from the Christopher Nolan movies. How do you think they'll do? And is there enough room on the show for another villain? Let us know in the comments below.
Gotham airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on Fox.
