Gotham - 'All Happy Families are Alike'

"Well, here we are, chained up in a warehouse. Again."

One of the oddities about Gotham - the city, rather than the show specifically - is that it has never escaped from the social aesthetics of the 1920s, and for all their modern cars and cellphones, Gotham's rock stars are its mobsters. This is reiterated when the TV news talks about the growing war between the Falcone and Maroni gangs, making it clear that the leaders of Gotham's underworld are not shadowy figures, living largely off the grid on cash-only purchases, or at least shunning the limelight, keeping their own hands clean, operating through layers of concealment and legitimate cover (for which see Daredevil's Wilson Fisk,) but big names who probably get interviewed for magazines and stuff.

Image of the week, if not the series.

The news in this case is that Falcone is on the out. Jim Gordon is disgusted, knowing that Maroni is incapable of bringing the kind of stability that Falcone has. Falcone is the villain Gotham needs, not the one it deserves. Thus he interrupts Penguin's attempt to murder his erstwhile benefactor in a deserted hospital, engaging in a massive shootout with Maroni's assassins - who arrive escorted by the Commissioner himself - and spiriting Falcone to his safe house, aided by the increasingly reluctant Bullock, and accompanied by Penguin and Butch, as having arrested them he can't leave them to die.

"So, I turned into a gun-toting, mummy's girl urban guerilla...
at some point."

Unfortunately, Fish Mooney has returned to Gotham and is the last person alive who knows where Falcone's safe house is. She plans to sell him to Maroni for her piece of the pie, but Maroni picks up the idiot ball and just can't not condescend one time too many, leading to a bullet in the brain and a firefight between Mooney's street rats and Maroni's surviving boys. Oh, yes; Mooney has recruited her new muscle on the streets, including Selina Kyle, who has taken some sort of personality bypass to replace her wildness with a desire for security and mothering. Gordon, Bullock and Falcone escape, while the decimation of both gangs leaves Penguin and Fish in a final rooftop struggle which sees Cobblepot emerge triumphant as 'the king of Gotham'.

Fair play, Erin Richards gives solid gold crazy.

Elsewhere, Barbara rejects trauma counselling from anyone but a doubtful Dr Thompkins. She talks a little about the Ogre before asking if Gordon ever hits Thompkins and then progressing rapidly into a degenerating spiral of mental breakdown and trying to murder the good doctor with a kitchen knife. In the ensuing fight, Thompkins incapacitates her attacker without rescue, for which props are given.

Regrouping at Barbara's place, Gordon comforts Thompkins, and gets some avuncular advice from Falcone, who once more tells him that he knew and respected Gordon senior. He announces his intention to retire, leaving Gotham's future in Gordon's hands, and presents him with his knife, which was originally Gordon senior's. His lesson: Even an honest man needs a knife sometimes.

In Barbara's favour, she does a little better than Eddie Nygma. Kristen Kringle cracks the riddling clue in his false Dear Jane letter, which turns him into Gollum.

Seriously; check that shit out, Precious.

And then Bruce discovers his father's secret entrance to the Batcave. Straight up, secret entrance, cave, with bats; and it opens to the strains of Prokofiev's 'Dance of the Knights', if the hints of some sort of prior Dark Knight weren't strong enough. I have to admit, I did not see this one coming, and I hope it doesn't turn out to just be where he kept the good brandy and the bad porn.

Either way, that's for Season 2 of course, which offers us the prospect of the Penguin's underworld, Victor Zsasz hitting the unemployment line, Batboy, the rise of the Riddler and fuck knows what they'll do with Barbara now. I hope to see Montoya return and for her and Thompkins to provide a much needed non-psychotic, non-token female presence, and for the show to find a beat other than procedural villain of the week, in which mode the show is almost the antithesis of the familiar offbeat detective format, featuring a dull detective and offbeat villains.

I also hope to see Gordon becoming less of a stiff, and bringing some order back to the GCPD. I want to see a solid arc with less rambling digression, and fewer characters - especially fewer female characters - utterly changing their personality on the turn of a die.

Gotham has a lot to fix in Season 2, but I will at least be planning to watch what happens.