Welcome back to our recap of Fox’s hit TV series, Gotham. As the one person who watches this show, it’s been decided that I should be the one to chronicle its existence so history could never forget. Kind of like The Giver. As always, I refuse to look up anything that happened in the previous two seasons of Gotham because I only started watching two weeks ago. Also, look out for spoilers from here on out.
Last time on Gotham, Leslie Tompkins came back to Gotham and she’s dating Carmine Falcone’s son, The Mad Hatter tasked Jim Gordon to find his sister Alice, only for that to go completely sideways, and The Penguin busted The Riddler out of jail to help run his mayoral campaign. Also, Bruce Wayne’s clone cut his hair while watching Bruce sleep then stole Alfred’s car so he could take child Catwoman out on a date. I double checked and I somehow didn’t make any of that up.
1. Mad Hatter Goes Tweecore
After last week’s disastrous attempts to get his sister back, Jervis Tetch goes to an underground fighting ring where a family of circus wrestlers are training and hypnotizes them into being his henchmen. Not only is it incredible that Gotham City has a family like that, but Mad Hatter knows exactly where to find them. A big theory about Batman, one this show has been constantly stabbing in the throat, is that his existence in Gotham provoked the type of supervillains who would rise up to fight him. Considering that a dude in a top hat could easily find a gang of clown wrestlers with no problem, I don’t think Batman would have much of an impact as to how any of his villains come to be.
The best part of this episode comes after Mad Hatter’s gang attacks GCPD and one of them is captured and interrogated. Harvey Bullock, fresh from reading a Wikipedia article about lucha libre, tells the clown that he knows luchadores want to be buried in their masks. He then starts a lighter and begins to burn two clown masks until the brother freaks out, gives all the information he has and tries to blow the lighter out. Isn’t the tradition of masks in lucha libre for people who grew up with that culture in Mexico and not five hairy dudes from Queens? Look, I just have a lot of questions about how pro wrestling works in the world of Gotham.
2. Jim Gordon’s Sad Penis Adventures Pt. 2
Last week on Gotham, Jim Gordon had a one night stand with Valerie Vale which made him more miserable than he usually is. Then his other ex, Leslie Tompkins, came back to town engaged to a member of the Falcone crime factory and he was miserable. Also, his ex fiancee is now the insane owner of an illegal nightclub and everyone on the show has collectively agreed to not address that too much. You can understand why everyone would stop thinking about Barbara, considering how she’s acting less like a person and more like a haywire Sim.
Gordon’s inability to find love is clearly eating at him (although you’d think his priority would be that whole escaped army of mutants), so much so that the Mad Hatter utilizes that crack in Gordon’s psyche to harm him. He theorizes that Gordon really ants to die and brainwashes him to go into a The Happening style suicide trance whenever he hears the sound of a ticking clock. That may seem like hypothesis came out of nowhere, but considering that Tetch watched Gordon pour whiskey into his tea at 10AM on a Monday, I think “wants to die” is a pretty fair call to make.
Thankfully, Gordon’s able to snap out of it by getting over Leslie Tompkins. Then he saves the day, right?
3. Alice in the Underground
Hey Gotham, which character do you want to have stick around? The girl on the run with blood on fire or the Tim Curry looking rapist? The latter? No, no, that’s cool. Just throw Alice out a window and see her get impaled on spikes. It’s fine.
Continued belowIt’s not fine. It’s actually kind of upsetting how Alice Tetch’s life turns out to be. She gets born with evil blood, her brother hypnotizes her into his personal sex slave, and when she escapes she gets assaulted by a landlord, kidnapped by pro wrestlers, and finally dies when she Jervis lets go of her and she falls chest first into a conveniently place pole. It’s a pretty grotesque way for Gotham to say “Okay, we’re done with this storyline for now!” since Alice seems like the character it’d be really easy for everyone on the show to forget. Rest in peace, Alice. You were born miserable and you died miserable. At least Michael Chiklis got to taste your blood or whatever so he can turn into Clayface next week.
4. Make Gotham Safe Again
Hey! Tired of hearing about the election? Here’s Oswald Cobblepot as The Penguin. He’s going to grab all the women by their flippers. He’s going to be in cahoots with the KGBeast to dissolve NATO. He’s going to build a wall to keep clowns out of Gotham! That last one would make a good TV show actually. .
Cobblepot’s sudden campaign for Mayor of Gotham ends this week with a landslide victory, defeating Richard Kind, the hero Gotham needs but not the one it deserves. Cobblepot’s been running his campaign with other creepy white dude Edward Nygma to make this episode feel like it’s Veep but with two Jonah Ryans. Nygma notices that Penguin’s henchman Butch has been bribing voting officials so Penguin will easily win. Nygma tries to convince Cobblepot to run a clean election in the most savage way possible. A girl scout walks up to Cobblepot and thanks him for getting rid of the monsters. Then she asks Nygma for her money and waltzes off. Nygma asks if that’s how he wants to feel when he bribes his way into office.
The night of the actual election, Butch tells Cobblepot that Nygma went to all the election officials and took all the bribe money back so they could run a clean campaign. Cobble pot’s about to have Nygma shot in front of everyone (“There are thirty witnesses!” “I DON’T CARE!!”) when the results come in that Cobblepot’s the new mayor. Nygma says this is what he wanted for Cobblepot, to show him that the people of Gotham love him and to make sure he doesn’t lose that feeling the way he would have if he bought the election. Are… are The Penguin and The Riddler in love? Because this is the actual nicest thing I’ve seen anyone do for someone else on TV in maybe four years.
5. Clone Baby’s Day Out
This episode ended with Clone Bruce getting rekidnapped by the Court of Owls and I hope they somehow replace Regular Bruce with him. I know Regular Bruce was born first but this clone is the real deal. In the span of one episode he crashed a car, saved Selina Kyle from bookies, kissed her, then jumped off a roof after telling Bruce to “thank Selina for the kiss.” All Bruce did this episode was watch his clone fall from a roof and hope Selina didn’t actually kiss him. Honestly take a look at these two boys and tell me which one will grow up to be Batman. It ain’t the dude staring into his cereal hoping his street urchin girlfriend he doesn’t let live in his huge manor still likes him.
Next week on Gotham: Michael Chiklis is going to get changed into Killer Croc or something.
