Welcome back to Gotham! There isn’t much needed to send it over the edge into chaos, with the city tenser than ever. The False Face Society grows in influence, Black Mask has a deadly new enforcer with a brainwashed Kate Kane, and Snakebite is increasing in influence. Then the zombies attack. The problem is that Gotham’s protector is nowhere to be found when the city needs her the most, simply because of a broken system. So don your cape, grab your dosage of antidote, and join us as we give you five thoughts on season 2, episode 14, “And Justice For All.”
1. A new Snakebite with an insatiable hunger
Of all the designs of the second season of Batwoman , Snakebite is one of the most identifiable, a double needled syringe with one vial of yellow and one of red. The drug is all part of Roman Sionis’ plan to sew chaos in Gotham. The drug is potent but becomes a nefarious tool used against the city in “And Justice For All,” adding powerful chemicals to turn users from those simply chasing the high of reliving the past into ravenous zombie-like creatures.
While this isn’t exactly treading new grounds in terms of “chemically created zombies,” there are plenty of visually interesting elements of this new Snakebite. The drug manipulates the pupils to become almost catlike, it slowly works its way through the system, making the user lose grip on their reality, and then, of course, you have the blood-splattered faces and hands of those eating the flesh of others. The batch of Snakebite was distributed mainly amongst poor people in a slum region of Gotham, and it’s not entirely clear if this was by design or a rogue faction of Black Masks plan. In any case, it ramped up the tension on the streets between GCPD, the Crows, and the disenfranchised of Gotham.
2. Remembering the past and beginning the long road to healing
Another user of Snakebite, Jacob Kane, is under the strict care of his step-daughter after overdosing on the drug in “I’ll Give You A Clue.” While the two of them have conversations about Jacob’s use of the drug (with him lying and calling him on his bullshit,) the clinic gets a visit from someone of the cannibalistic dose of the drug. It’s possible that “And Justice For All” is the most amount of screentime Jacob and Mary have shared so far on the show, and there are some pretty compelling moments in those scenes.
Throughout “And Justice For All,” Jacob begins to see Mary’s importance to Gotham after the patient tells them that he discovered the clinic after Mary helped an ODing friend. Jacob even helps Mary save both the victims of the zombie attack by using his field medicine skills. At the same time, Jacob grows closer to Mary, Mary’s realization that Jacob uses the drug to see his daughters upset her. While Jacob is going to dangerous routes to see his lost daughters, he loses the daughter right in front of her. Jacob’s story is treated with much more dignity than one would expect from a CW show, which is a nice change of pace. There is some serious pathos to the character, even if his story sometimes feels overlooked.
3. How do you know when to stop searching?
While Gotham is dealing with zombies and Snakebite, Alice is dealing with the fact that her sister is still alive and desperate to get her back. The majority of “And Justice For All” is Alice tracking down Enigma to find ways to get her sister back and then finding items to bring back her memory. While most everything with Alice is good, it does seem like her story is in a bit of a holding pattern. She not only reconnects with Ocean but again goes through the same cycle of “she never loved you, she pitied you” what was happening in the early parts of the season.
It seems as if every episode is designed to just toy with Alice and the audience, getting her tantalizingly close to bringing Kate back only to have it snatched from her at the last second. “And Justice For All” largely continues this trend, still without giving a reason for Alice’s motivation. There’s no rule that you have to know the inner thoughts of every character at all times. At this point, though, it’s starting to get a little ridiculous.
Continued below4. The choice to be better than those who keep you down
From last week’s trailer, it seemed that “And Justice For All” was teetering very dangerously close to “a very special” episode territory, with Ryan, Luke, and Sophie getting arrested simply for being black. The three characters are all detained by two bigoted white beat cops, harassing the patrons of “The Hold Up” to play music too loud and hold a fundraiser without a permit. Later, Sophie also gets detained in plain clothes for questioning the authority of the cops’ actions.
The real meat of the episode comes from when the three characters have a conversation in the holding cell about what the “right” way to deal with the situation might have been. Ryan argues that it’s important to stand up for yourself, especially when they did nothing wrong, Luke talks about the value of keeping your head down and playing by the rules, and Sophie discusses trying to fix the system from within the Crows. It’s all very basic stuff, nothing too radical or revolutionary on this basic cable show, but it’s better than nothing. At the very least, it’s a good characterization of how each of these characters views the world and how complicated it is to be African American, regardless of your background. In any case, each chooses to be better than those who use their bigotry and power to harass them, choosing to save the city instead of letting it fall apart.
5. Double lives and broken systems
One of the most effective things about “And Justice For All” is paralleling the lives of two white criminals against three African American citizens. It’s little things like how the police treat the Snakebite user in Mary’s clinic, politely asking him to move his car because he’s blocking a hydrant or trying to help him, even as he’s charging ravenously towards them. The body language is even different.
But the more tragic one is that Luke, trying to help Eli, a white carjacker, gets mistaken by the Crows as a potential criminal and shot when he tries to pull out his phone to show evidence of Eli breaking and entering. Agent Tavaroff mistook the phone for a gun. The shooting of unarmed black men is a significant problem in America, and now that problem comes to Gotham. The speed, brutality, and efficiency that Tavaroff uses in the scene are shocking and disgusting and a cold reminder that this is something happening often. “And Justice For All” is a stark reminder of that.
So there you have it. While one problem is solved, the Batfamily is broken. What did you think of the episode? Sound off below!
