Aside from Gordon’s attempts to flee Falcone’s wrath, much of the episode focuses on Penguin himself. After weeks of seeing the snively little snitch work his way from the Falcone to the Maroni crime families, the curtain is finally pulled back a bit and his allegiance is made clear. Up until this point we were led to believe that he was acting solely out of self preservation and was looking to get into the Maroni crime family to take down the Falcone family. As it turns out, he’s actually working for Falcone, and let the mob boss know about Fish Mooney’s mutinous intentions a long time ago.
The revelation itself is handled in a clunky flashback sequence at the end of the episode, but it’s a good enough reveal that the execution didn’t bother me too much. Fish noticed that Falcone was acting as if he knew more than he should, and now we know that he clearly does. Gotham seems to work best when it focuses on these mob storylines, and I think that’s part of what made “Penguin’s Umbrella” so enjoyable. The noir aesthetic and crime drama elements really fit perfectly within the Batman world – as seen with what Christopher Nolan did with both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight – and while Gotham doesn’t quite come close to the finesse of those big screen outings, it does fare better when dealing with the likes of Fish and Carmine Falcone that it does with, say, the Balloonman or the Spirit of the Goat.
A big element of that is the introduction of Victor Zsasz, a serial killer from the comics who cuts tally marks into his own body for each person he kills. Anthony Carrigan (who recently showed up on The Flash as one-off villain The Mist) does a great job with the role, and introduces something we haven’t quite seen in the series yet: subtlety. He doesn’t ham it up as Zsasz or go too far down the crazy-killer-rabbit-hole, and instead walks that fine line between comic book villain and frightening sociopath. Maybe the series is finding a better way to introduce and deliver its iconic Batman villains? I certainly hope so.
All in all, I really enjoyed Gotham this week. I also finally have some hope that we have a great series waiting for us. The mob story gave us plenty to chew on for the coming weeks, Gordon finally managed to get Bullock to show a bit of passion for the law, and Penguin’s true motives (well, as true as Falcone thinks they are, anyway) were revealed. This is the kind of episode that has lasting effects on those that come after, unlike the one-off villain-of-the-week episodes we’ve been given thus far, so let’s hope that the pendulum continues to swing in the right direction.
