As I watched it, and some random summarising here and there.
Previously on Gotham: Mr Freeze. Oswald loses his damn mind pre-Arkham and takes the fall for Jim. Jim tells Lee he almost crossed the line (the line is a dot to you, mister). Hi Bruce!
As always long post will be long. Gobblepot may sneak in here, in a ‘wailing and rending my garments kind of way’. I may bitch a lot about writing. If not your thing, don’t read :)
Police cars screech up to the chemical company where Fries has gone to fetch the chemical he needs to help his wife. Jim and Harvey follow the trail of frozen corpses until they find a message scrawled in the ice: ‘Free my wife’.
Alfred has asked Lee to visit Bruce, because he’s worried about the unresolved trauma from the kidnapping - and possibly because he still has a fancy for Lee.
Lee tells Bruce that he was violently abducted and almost killed, and that it would be normal to be affected by that. Bruce said he wasn’t scared, but felt intensely alive. He asks if he’s abnormal. She says he’s unusual, if he’s being honest. Bruce says he’s always honest. Lee lives with Jim, so this must be a new experience.
She tells him he has a second chance and should seek closure - not pursue a dangerous obsession - he’s not a homicide detective, he’s a schoolboy. Bruce says you can be two things at once and just about gets the bat signal in his eyes. Lee gets the duplicitous fiance signal in hers.
Bruce claims he’ll do things legally, but Lee calls him out. What happened to honest? That’s the other Bruce, he responds. He has another bat-moment. Lee has another troubled relationship moment.
Bruce thanks her - the conversation has been ‘clarifying’.
(A note at this point - this is the first conversation with obvious double meanings in this episode. There’s lots for some reason. I don’t mind them if they’re subtle - but wow, these were heavy handed.)
Barnes is furious at Fries’ demand. Seven cops are dead! The senseless waste of cops’ lives is Barnes’ job! (RIP Alpha Team).
He has the brilliant idea that they’ll move Nora to Arkham so she can be cared for, and lure Fries there - to a secure location. It’s stunningly bad - so Jim agrees to it. Harvey is the voice of reason, as usual.
Lee hates this idea too - using a dying woman as bait in a mental asylum. Jim is pretty condescending. He tells her that it’s the least bad option, and then tries to forbid her from coming. Lee is insistent that Nora is her patient. Jim tries to use her pregnancy to sideline her. Lee is pissed. They do not part amicably.
A bloodied corpse at Arkham. Strange has been fishing in corpses for Fries’ formula. He is thrilled that Nora will be sent here - it’s perfect for his plans.
Much as I despise Strange as a character for torturing our murder birb - he’s an excellent character. Apart from being very well-played, so measured and creepy, he’s consistent. I know what motivates him. Academic curiosity and achievement. He’ll sacrifice endless test subjects for his goals. He’s all about the abstract - the idea of rehabilitation, for example - and would probably be moved and delighted if he achieved it - but the individuals he’ll experiment on to get there don’t mean a thing to him.
Even Fries thinks Arkham is a dumb idea.
Oswald is restrained, kicking and screaming. He’s told he’s going to be the face of their rehabilitation programme - what a coup to rehabilitate a man like him. He refuses - and is told he doesn’t have a choice.
Ack. Oswald is magnificently defiant. He tells Miss Peabody that vexing him is a mistake. He laughs at the mask they present - daring them. He’s terrified as the mask goes on, though. He’s drugged, calms briefly, and then screams and writhes in pain as electricity is applied (suggested by the visuals anyway).
Afterwards, a fragile looking Oswald sits at a table in some social area. he tells himself it’s OK - that it was a dream. The other inmates try to engage him in duck/goose. Oswald is confused, and says he’s a penguin (presumably clinging unconsciously to his personality - but it’s impossible to read anything realistic into how this will be written) Miss Peabody threateningly tells him to participate. He is scared, and placates her.
Harvey spots Oswald. He’s shocked. Jim looks....I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say mildly concerned. He says Oswald looks drugged. Strange says that they had to calm him, as he was agitated. Jim waits for a moment, looking back at Oswald. Harvey stays longer, watching Oswald with concern. This is why Harvey is #3 on my Gotham ‘would bang’ list, while I wouldn’t touch Jim with a barge-pole.
Lee sees Barbara in the ward at Arkham. Look at all the medical equipment around the woman in the coma! Oops - no - there isn’t any. Miss Peabody is a bit weird and gloaty - calling Babs a sleeping beauty. Dr Strange loves a mind-fuck to the extent that I wouldn't put it past him to have set this up if he had been told in advance which police personnel were coming: Miss Peabody does spend quite a long time twisting the knife in Lee.
Jim and Harvey secure the gates. Harvey goes off somewhere.
Oswald is being moved. He spots Jim and screams for his help. Jim tells the guards to wait, and give them a minute. Oh Os. He thinks Jim’s going to rescue him. Jim doesn’t believe his protestations of torture, saying it doesn’t look like it (the world’s most fucking unimaginative detective, right here).
Jim says it’s treatment. Oswald’s lawyer says he was insane after all. Jim seems pissed that Oswald apparently took an insanity plea - which is really, really rich of him since Oswald took the blame for Jim’s murder of Galavan in the first place. Jim’s moral hypocrisy is getting so big and warped that it could be his super-villain trait. Ed has riddles. Selina has cats. Jim has being a self-righteous prick with some severe memory loss about crimes he committed and a stunning knack of not feeling guilty.
Oswald is taken away screaming by the guards. You owe me, Jim Gordon. I lied for you. I lied for you! You killed Galavan, not me. Jim watches him go. It’s hard to tell whether he looks concerned for Oswald or just worried about being found out. I lean towards the latter here - to be honest - he looks shifty.
Strange watches the whole exchange on a camera. Chilton liked his strategic cameras too. Is this a thing when you run a mental hospital?
So - a little summarising at this point.
This seems to be a rehash of the S2 part 1 Jim and Oswald plot. We know Oswald is being tortured, like we knew Galavan had Gertrud. Jim doesn’t believe him - due to Galavan the first time, Strange this time. Oswald will suffer while Jim is oblivious.
The problem with this type of ‘misunderstanding’ plot is that it just gets frustrating really fast.
It’s worse here because Gotham is being pretty sketchy with the detail in terms of how Jim reacted to Oswald taking the blame. In S2i, it was easy to set up the misunderstanding. Jim was still pissed about Ogden Barker, Barnes was breathing down his neck, and Galavan was pulling strings.
Here, though, we have murder husbands once minute, Oswald taking the blame the next without Jim even having to grudgingly ask like usual - and now Jim apparently doesn’t give a damn that Oswald is serving his time for him? Did I miss an episode? Did Jim suddenly lose all vestiges of decency when I wasn’t looking? I said after last week’s episode that if the show didn’t bother to show us any guilt on Jim’s part - he’d wind up looking like a terrible person. And he does.
Bruce helpfully summarises his plotline while working on his boxing. Alfred gives him the info on Malone, and makes him promise that when the time comes - Alfred will be the one to do the killing.
Lee wanders over to a comatose Barbara, grabs her by the face, and tells her, ‘you don’t know what you’re missing, bitch’. Does she mean her life with Jim? I dunno, Lee. Barbara already had a doomed engagement with Jim where he lied and condescended to her a lot. I think she knows exactly what she’s missing.
Nora and Lee have another suspiciously meaningful conversation - where everything Nora says relates to Jim and Lee. You see the man he used to be. You close your eyes to the bad stuff. Stand by your man. Tammy Wynette. Blah blah.
How many more double-meaning conversations is Lee going to have to endure? I’m half-expecting Harvey to have a heartfelt chat with her about that time he missed his birth control pill and wound up pregnant to a really unsuitable detective. (NB - yes, birth control is the responsibility of both parties - I’m being flippant)
Harvey grouses about the assignment. A van bursts through the gates. it’s a decoy, and Fries is elsewhere.
Fries breaks the wall down and searches the asylum for Nora, with Jim and Harvey in pursuit. Strange shuts them in a corridor with some glee - but Jim manages to slip through.
Fries is in the interrogation room that I would like to see Oswald burn the fuck down by the end of the season. Strange offers him a way out - but it’s clearly a trap. Fries takes it, though.
Jim finds Nora and Lee - but Fries is right behind him. Fries says he’ll save her life and then give himself up. Jim tries to tell lee to leave - but she says Nora is her patient and it’s not his call. Lee, Nora and Fries - leaving Jim locked behind them.
Jim gives chase. Harvey yells at Strange to hurry up releasing them. Strange enjoys keeping them there. He really is excellent. Brief chat between Harvey and Jim about where Fries would go. Home - where GCPD apparently just left all his lab stuff. Top notch policing, there.
Poor Lee has some more Meaningful Conversation to get through: ‘How will you take care of her if you’re in prison?’ Nora wants to die, but Fries says no - that as long as she’s alive, there’s hope. She sends him on fool’s errand for a necklace, and when Lee’s back is turned, switches the solution for one of his failed versions.
Nora tells Lee that Victor’s not a bad man, and that she’s sorry for her part - she did nothing because she loved him.
Fries arrives with the necklace. Nora asks him not to hate himself. We have to watch as he slowly kills his wife, unaware. it’s actually pretty painful - and not as silly as it could have been.
Selina! I’m so happy to see someone whose moral judgment I mostly trust! Bruce wants her to get him a gun - he’s going to kill Matches. Selina is sceptical - and warns him that it would change him forever.
Nora crumbles as an aghast Victor watches. He asks Lee if she knew. She seems genuinely shocked, and says that she didn’t - and she’s so sorry.
Harvey’s voice on loudspeaker from outside the house asks Victor to come out and avoid any more sadness. Harvey is a sweetheart.
Victor asks Lee to go out and tell them he’ll give himself up. Lee tells him that Nora loved him, and she’s envious of their bond. Envy would suggest that she does not feel she has that bond with Jim.
Victor kills himself with his own formula.
Jim is pouring coffee. He tells Lee to go back to bed - but she can’t sleep. He tries to make Lee feel guilty about ‘putting their baby at risk’. She asks about the risk that Jim takes. He claims that’s police work (and he’s pretty condescending here) - but Lee says it’s all him. She also tells him that she knows he’s lying about what happened to Galavan (although perhaps not the grim details). She says Galavan needed to die - but Jim lied to her. They look a bit done, at this point.
Oswald is still resisting, so they make the ‘treatment’ more aggressive. How much more of this do I need to sit through?
Victor is not dead, and is sealed in a room at Arkham. Strange is happy at the prospect of researching with him.
As we watch Oswald being tortured, Strange comments that death is a new beginning - and beautiful flowers can spring from barren ground. We also get a glance at canisters containing what looks like Galavan and Jerome.
Overall
Oswald
Oswald needs to get out of there, and soon. Given the speed with which Victor’s apparently terrifying brainwashing was reversed - I’m sure there’s a quick narrative hand-wave available to get him back to something near functioning - although this is just more trauma to add to the pile Oswald’s already been given.
Jim & Jim/Oswald
Jim seemed slightly concerned initially when he saw a drugged Oswald - but quickly bought Strange’s explanation about sedatives. He also told the guards to give him a minute with Oswald. I could perhaps buy that he thinks Oswald is lying about torture - even though Oswald looked pretty damned sincere.
The knot that’s causing all the problems is Jim’s apparent lack of guilt at letting Oswald take the blame for him. And if the storyline doesn’t show me guilt, or explain a lack of guilt - then I’m left to think that Jim simply doesn’t lose any sleep over it. It’s the Ogden Barker problem again. And when you’ve got to the point that he apparently doesn’t really care about committing murder (twice) and letting another man take the fall - then what differentiates his lack of conscience from, say, Ed’s? Or Oswald’s? Or Loeb’s?
I think part of the problem here for Jim is that there’s not the same sense of him being on a grand mission to clean up the city anymore - because they ditched the mafia/city corruption stuff from season one. So now Jim just does whatever he feels like - and it’s hard to justify murder for personal whims, as opposed to a city cleansing crusade.
Lee
Lee gets to be a real live girl! Finally! Why couldn’t they have done this ages ago? From her conversation with Bruce about unresolved trauma - and her subsequent behaviour with Barbara - it’s clear that Lee is not over...well - pick one of her many traumas since dating Jim.
A personality trait - she’s fiercely dedicated to the patients in her care. To the point where I don’t really understand why she ever took a job working with corpses - it’s a waste of her talents. She should clearly be working with live people.
It looks a lot like her relationship with Jim is on the outs. She’s tried flat-out support, she tried suggesting solutions, she gave him an ultimatum. Nothing has worked. The big message the show kept trying to give was that Lee had to leave Jim for Jim’s sake - that this loss will be the wake-up call for him. But she should also want to leave for her own sake, and her child’s sake - because Jim Gordon would make a disastrous husband and father at this point.
Sundries
I thought the actress playing Nora was very good, and am sorry to see her go. The Fries’ couple’s storyline was unexpectedly pretty touching.
Hugo Strange is excellent. The lack of humanity, corrupt use of power - it’s all perfect for Gotham - and his motivations are much more credible than Galavan’s were.
Didn’t like the couple of allusions to stress being bad for the baby, and hope that wasn’t foreshadowing.
Can i add my 2 cents into this? Okay so with the new episode i really do think jim's being a cold hearted *ahem*....yes...specially in regards to oswald who has literally given up his freedom for jim & his family and i would like nothing more than to slap some sense into him BUT! BUT i'm going to take jim's side since no one else seems to be ; ● one of the things that made jim gordon a fav for me in the batman comics was that he was so plainly human there was nothing all that extraodinary about him ('cept maybe his 'stache) specially when compared to the costumed villains & vigilantes he was always surrounded by and gotham's jim also shares this trait and well...humans are...well fuck ups...yeah?? ● oswald's a criminal and a murderer (albeit a somewhat nice murderer but still) & for jim (specially as a cop) he's going to be justifying that though oswald didn't kill galavan his stint in arkham will be for those he did kill ● did he feel guilt when he saw oswald at arkham? I think he did...just a bit that was so miniscule it was hardly there...but mostly i think any gulit he would have felt would have been washed over by relief...relief that it wasn't him in that situation because like i said he's a character that's so plainly human and most humans when pushed to it look out for their own intrests in spite of who they may harm by doing so. For jim- himself, leslie &(more specially) their baby will mean more to him than oswald. ● he will also see oswald as an adult who confessed to the crime by his own choice & declared his insanity by his own choice. Jim probably sees it as something he brought upon himself ● as the protagonist of a story jim's behaviour is really terrible and not winning him any brownie points. But to me it makes the whole story more realistic given the situation. Jim's a (somewhat corrupt) cop who is just trying to get through his job and start a family (that already looks like it's starting to fracture) while oswald's a criminal. Even with what oswald did for him jim shouldn't care (not that i agree with it) ● as far as anyone knows oswald killed galavan and jim gave chase. So if jim were to show any kind of emotion other than cold indifference during the two times he saw oswald during this episode it'd really be giving something away. It's not like he can assure oswald that he'd get him out with two ordelies just feet away from them (not that i'd really expect him to do this either way) ● jim's just a cop not a hero. It's not like he can bust into arkham & free a known criminal and expect to get off scott free (though i really and i mean REALLY want him to do this) which is why batman is needed in the first place, he can break all the rules because when you get down to it he's a criminal himself. If jim could do all this we wouldn't really need batman (though bruce is still a kiddo here so jim if you feel any need to be self destructive and break into arkham go for it! I support it all the way) ● jim has a bigger picture than just himself now. Though his relationship with leslie seems to be fizzling out he does care about their kid and he can't very well look after a kid if he's behind bars. Not to mention that his own father died when he was a kid and had relations to the mob which is something that caused conflict for him so he wouldn't want his kid to go through the same thing ● does jim care about oswald? I think he does....a tiny tiny bit...'it's-barely-there-and-he-probably-wants-to-ignore-it-anyway' bit. If he didn't i don't think we would have gotten that 'mummy's little monster' scene ● is ignoring oswald's plea for help going to come back to bite him? Unless he does something to help get him out before it's too late then yes. Oswald's going to reach that final straw & give up on jim and he's going to go from being 'the penguin' to 'THE Penguin' one of batman's A-list gotham rogues...there is no way this can't come back to bite jim None of these are predictions for how jim will continue to act during this season considering that he is a character shown to make rash at the moment decisions so for all we know he'll be storming arkham two episodes down the road from here Overall as much of a terrible person jim was in this episode i'd take his side cause not only was there nothing else for him to do but his actions were true to a person in a real life situation like that y'all are welcome to argue any point with me so on a totally different angle ; ■ bruce is becoming more batlike ■ selina you precious kitty ■ harvey's a breath of fresh air in an angst riddled episode ■ leslie was a sweetie & her reaction to barbara was the best ■ hugo strange & ms peabody (??) are taking up my hatred for galavan ■ victor fries' origin story has not failed to make me cry again ■ the amount of my protectiveness over a fictional murderer alarms me ■ WHY!?!? WHY DO THEY HAVE TO BRING BACK GALAVAN!?!? isn't oswald suffering enough as it is!?!?! ■ red hair = jerome there is nothing to argue here.
