Meanwhile, Oswald’s old boss Fish Mooney has her own confusing plot against mobsters in motion. Auditioning new talent, Fish demands that along with singing talent, the young ladies in question must seduce her. Okay?
Fish can’t decide between the two best candidates, so you know what she does? She has them cat fight to the death! It was laugh out loud, but not because there was actually any humor in it. I get the feeling Maury Povich was watching this at home and felt embarrassed for Gotham. Maybe it was because of the plot, but this was the first episode where I felt that Jada Pinkett-Smith was asleep at the switch as Fish.
With a cat fight on the soap opera checklist, it was apropos that outside of the crime-doings the main plot this week was Gordon and Barbara’s very shrill and predicable fight over Gordon’s hiding things about his job and Barbara’s hidden past with Montoya. Of course, Gordon isn’t going to come out and tell Barbara that “Peter Humboldt” is Oswald Cobblepot, and therefore he didn’t kill him, and while one can at least understand Barbara’s anger about being left in the dark, I’m not sure what Gordon’s angry about. Is he ticked that Barbara had a relationship with Montoya? Is he angry that Montoya’s trying to turn Barbara against him and winning? Or is he angry with himself and this box he’s found himself trapped in?
Somewhat more redeeming is Gordon’s relationship with the young Bruce Wayne, although scenes with Gordon, Alfred and Bruce are starting to feel like the Batman version of My Two Dads. Bruce wants to do his part to make sure his parents’ vision for Arkham is achieved, but the increasingly pragmatic Gordon tells him the compromised solution reached between the two proposals will at least stave off a gang war (for now), which begs the question once more if Gotham can and/or deserves to be saved? Gordon says it’s worth trying. Meanwhile, I think it’s worth trying to see if there’s more than one room in Wayne Manor.
While this week’s Gotham was pleasantly more even in both style and substance, there should be, at this point, some sense of where it’s going. This week we get no mention of Gordon’s deeper probing into the Waynes’ case, and he seems to have given up looking for Selina Kyle. Meanwhile, are we to understand that Fish’s revenge scheme against Falcone starts with tempting him with some strumpet that can’t carry a tune?
I like the idea of Gotham, I think they’ve put together a good cast and there’s a lot of production value up there on screen. But out of four episodes now, I think we’ve had four different types of shows, and there’s nothing to say that next week we won’t get a fifth.
