Gotham - 'Prisoners'

Gotham does Prison Break, but Ben Mackenzie is no Wentworth Miller.

After a spell in protective detention, Jim Gordon is moved to F-Wing of Blackgate Prison, general population, with love from ex-commissioner Loeb.

The Warden commissions an inmate to have Gordon killed, but the intervention of a young offender named Puck and the one honest guard in Blackgate sees the first attack deflected to just a beating. Bullock visits and promises to get him out, but also has to break the news that Lee has moved south after losing the baby, so fuck you Gotham for that little offscreen development. Still; at least they weren't eaten by hounds.

Elsewhere, Oswald's new family unravels, as his father's wife and - as it turns out - step-children plot to see the interloper off. They reveal his past as the Penguin, but he has already confessed much of that, and attempt to have the daughter seduce him, and finally attempt to poison him, succeeding only in poisoning the father when he decides to have a glass of sherry against doctor's orders. This does prevent him passing on his inheritance to Oswald, and I suspect that the legacy's destruction may trigger the Penguin's return.

ITMA

Back at Blackgate, another attempt to murder Gordon is interrupted when he is murdered by someone else. The honest guard spirits the 'body' out before Jim recovers consciousness after this little masquerade (good thing too, as throughout the proceedings he's just adorably clueless,) and then coshes the bent Warden when Jim insists on going back for Puck, who has also received an aptly prison-style beating. Bullock gets him away from Gotham to meet with the architect of his rescue, Don Falcone, who offers to help him get away, or to get him safely hidden in Gotham.

On discovering that Puck has died of his injuries - I actually thought he was going to turn out to be some sort of horrible criminal, so now I'm the asshole - Jim decides that he has to make things right. He won't run; he's going back to Gotham.

'Prisoners' is a weird episode, as it seems to exist largely to get the series out of a corner that it painted itself into by having Jim sent to jail. There was clearly no interest in giving him any kind of prison storyline, and indeed he basically sleepwalks through this whole episode. I guess it's supposed to be a kind of shock, but it doesn't make for a very interesting protagonist. Mind you, that's Gotham's troubles in a nutshell.