It’s a new day in Gotham! Even though the city has a new protector, the hunt is still on for Kate Kane, and time is of the essence to see who finds her first. After weeks of dropping hints and building up the mystery, we’re finally starting to get some answers. It doesn’t help that the new Batwoman is slowly dying due to kryptonite poisoning! So don your cape, fight the urge to lower to your enemy’s level, and join us as we give you five thoughts on season 2, episode 7, “It’s Best You Stop Digging.”
1. A chance for Ryan to have a story independent of Kate.
The biggest problem with the past couple episodes of season 2 was that while Ryan was wrapped up deep into the mystery of what happened to Kate, she never seemed to have a strong connection to the conspiracy at hand. Sure she wants to help Luke and Mary and even understands that they should find Kate before Alice does, but at the same time, this mystery is preventing her from coming into her own. That changed in “It’s Best You Stop Digging” by giving Ryan a truly internal story.
After weeks of not providing information to her team about her kryptonite-infected wound, it finally caught up to her this week. The injury is slowly killing her, breaking down body functions but, more importantly, causing hallucinations. “It’s Best You Stop Digging” has Ryan fighting against herself as she tries to find Alice and Ocean and get vengeance for the death of her mom, betraying the Bat code and killing Alice. It’s as if the show remembered that they established a connection between Ryan and Alice and took advantage of it. But the stronger aspect of the episode is that it’s making Ryan look at what it means to be the bat. She doesn’t have the connection that Kate has, this desire to protect some legacy, so she has to come to her terms with what that symbol means. While this was explored previously, this is the first time it’s felt impactful, mainly because it’s an internal story.
2. Jacob Kane’s increasingly slipping status
The further we get into season 2, the less I care about the storyline’s Crows involvement overall. There’s a certain fun in the cat and mouse of a superhero story being between family members, but at this point, he’s just looking incompetent and sad. There’s the ever-developing story where Jacob is constantly on the outs of everyone in his life, not knowing the secrets his family and friends are hiding from him. He’s continuously one or two steps behind on the hunt for his daughter. He’s becoming isolated in the story, and “It’s Best You Stop Digging” is no exception.
While there’s the continuing conspiracy of Hamilton Industries and his family life fallout, the writers are seemingly having difficulty figuring out what Jacob’s role is in the story. Something is missing without having the cat and mouse of Kate and Jacob. It seemed for a moment that there was going to be more of an antagonistic relationship between the Crows and Ryan, with Jacob moving into more of a purely adversarial role. Still, they haven’t made that happen yet. As it stands, he seems to be lost in all the other stories and lacks meaningful involvement in the story.
3. Filling in the blanks of Alice’s mind
“It’s Best You Stop Digging” is a big character-driven episode, creating parallel narratives between Alice and Ryan, exploring different facets of how they ended up in their current positions. While Ryan deals with hallucinations brought on by kryptonite poisoning, Alice learns about the blank spaces in her memory (and relationship with Ocean) from Tatiana, Safiyah’s right-hand woman. Alice learns that Safiyah wanted her trained because of their mutual hatred of Catherine Hamilton, hoping to take advantage of this rage for revenge, and how she fell in love with the man training her to be an assassin, Ocean. But as the episode progresses, Tatiana continues to complicate the story, implying that the real reason Safiyah kept Alice around was her love of Alice.
One of the things that makes these flashbacks and the episode overall is that Tatiana seems like a somewhat unreliable narrator. She’s approaching the story with a hatred of Alice, so it’s difficult to parse what is true and what’s being concealed, which is exciting. But by the end of “It’s Best You Stop Digging,” the story is that Alice and Ocean were going to run away together, raise desert rose plants, and be happy together. Safiyah wasn’t fond of this and erased their memories using someone named “Enigma,” her hypnotist. For Alice, it was something crueler, creating the villain she has become for Gotham.
Continued below4. Different sides of a similar coin
Both Ryan and Alice struggle with their newfound information and roles throughout “It’s Best You Stop Digging.’ Ryan convinces herself that she only has this last chance to avenge her mother and kill Alice because she’s dying. She keeps having hallucinations of her mother dying, and she wants to remove the person responsible for it. The episode ends with a fight between Alice and Ryan as Ryan gets close to delivering the killing blow but is stopped by her mother’s hallucination, telling her to be better. It’s an impactful moment and makes the ideas from the first thought that much stronger. Ryan chooses to rise above her rage, not to let the circumstances beyond her control transform her.
Alice, similarly, is going through an identity crisis, but at the crossroads of a potential of change, that there was a time she was actively trying to be better and start over, but Safiyah removed that option. Who knows how much they’ll explore this going onward, but it’s interesting to see these two characters confront this aspect of their lives. While the parallel stories weren’t entirely balanced, they raised similar themes and blended these stories better than any race for a map could.
5. The race for the miracle cure
While the hunt for Kate Kane is the driving force for most people in the story, the bigger conspiracy is the control of the desert rose. This magical miracle cure is grown and controlled by Safiyah on the island nation of Coryana. “It’s Best to Stop Digging” expands the central conflict of finding Kate to stopping a near dictator who controls a lifesaving cure and uses that ownership to manipulate power. This is a good pivot, mainly because it makes these stories more personal to Alice and Ryan. Ryan never seemed all that interested in saving Kate, but now she has a purpose of being involved, saving her life from Kryptonite. For Alice, it is now part of a larger conspiracy. Why is this flower so important to Coyyana? Why is it worth destroying her life? For the first time in a couple of weeks, the show is going in an exciting direction.
So what did you think? Sound off below in the comment section, and we will see you all next time!
