Gotham S01 E15 – Butter knife coup

Previously: The GCPD failed to catch another criminal and Fish Mooney got kidnapped. Again.
—

The Scarecrow

Alex: It’s a stormy night in Gotham. (M: WHAT?! It’s usually so bright and cheery.) A random guy with white hair arrives home to his Generic Gotham Apartment and grumbles about the wind blowing through an open window. He goes to shut it, but two guys in hoodies appear and grab him as he screams in terror.

Fish wakes up on the floor in some kind of prison, dashing my hopes that her leaving Gotham the city for a while also meant she would be leaving Gotham the show. Sigh. She asks the friendly-looking guy nearby if she’s dreaming, and he replies that he hopes so. Two scary-looking thugs saunter over, chuckling to themselves. She asks Friendly Guy what’s up with them, and he explains that the first man to ‘come at’ a new girl almost always gets jumped by the second. Ew. Fish stands up and promises the thugs that the first one to touch her will die like *finger snap*, while the second will die slowly. She stands back, hands on hips, and asks who’s first. The guys exchange ‘WTF’ looks and walk away.

Marines: I feel like this should be a, “you go girl!” moment but– FISH IS SO WEIRD, ALEX. SHE’S JUST SO WEIRD.

Alex: Yup, I’m with you on that one.

Streets of Gotham. Inara thanks Jim for a lovely third date, and he tries to wangle an invitation back to her apartment for implied sexytimes. She turns him down because she has to get up early for her new job as the new GCPD medical examiner – which, by the way, she got. She didn’t want to tell him until now in case it spoiled their evening. He tells her that he’s totally cool with her coming to work with him, but he’s not very convincing. They kiss goodnight and she gets into a cab, leaving Jim looking worried for reasons that I don’t really understand

Mari: Maybe he’s thinking, “another good person at GCPD? She’s going to totally going to steal my spiel!” I don’t know. That’s all I can come up with.

Alex: To be fair, I say ‘looking worried’, but this could actually be his ‘I’m super happy and excited’ face for all I know. The poor guy apparently only has three facial expressions to choose from.

White Haired Murder Victim’s apartment, next morning. Bullock explains to Gordon that WHMV has the same surgical incisions as last week’s victims, meaning that he’s presumably missing some adrenal glands. Yes, folks, we’ve got another two-week villain on our hands. Let’s hope this one remembers to stay away from glasses of water. Gordon wonders aloud what Crane could be going with all those glands.

Crane’s house. Dr. Crane is removing what I assume is an adrenal gland in a plastic bag from the fridge. Lovely. He does some crushing and stirring and eventually produces some kind of serum which he loads into a syringe. He carries the syringe down the hallway until he’s standing at the bottom of the stairs, then jabs it into his arm. He starts freaking out and drops to the floor, looking up to see a vision of a pretty blonde lady walking down the stairs, surrounded by flames. She asks ‘why won’t you help me, Gerald?’ as he cowers in horror.

LIGHTINGCREDITSGOTHAMCLOUDSWHATEVER.

Wayne Manor. Bruce is packing a bag and Alfred offers to accompany him wherever he’s going. Bruce declines, saying it wouldn’t be right. He promises that he’ll be fine and will be back from his ‘hike’ before dark. Alfred reminds him that he’s never been on this hike without his father before, but assures him that his dad would be proud of him for carrying on the tradition. Bruce says that it won’t be the same without staying overnight to watch the sunrise with his dad in the morning, and Alfred suggests that maybe he can do that next year. Twelve-year-old Bruce takes off to do a little unaccompanied hiking and Alfred gets FEELS face.

Mari: …is it weird for a 12-year-old to go on a hike alone? ‘Cause I’m thinking “yes.”

Alex: Seeing as I was only just being allowed to walk to and from school on my own aged 12, I’m also going to go with ‘yes’.

Fish’s club. Penguin is telling Falcone about the car-crushing incident last week, and Falcone is looking like he could not give fewer fucks. Penguin’s fretting about Maroni coming after him again, but Falcone just scolds him for the club being such a mess. He suggests that Penguin give the place a makeover and get rid of the whole Fish Mooney boudoir vibe. That’s a shame. I quite liked that set. Penguin’s all ‘yeah… so anyway, about the guy trying to kill me…’ but Falcone tells him that the nightclub makes a lot of money – money that they need in order to keep him safe from Maroni. He plans to reopen the club in Penguin’s name, making it public that Penguin works for him now.

GCPD. Bullock is perving over pictures of teenage girls, because he sucks. The pictures are in a yearbook from the school where White Haired Murder Victim was an English teacher. Inara shows up to say hello and Gordon reintroduces ‘Leigh’ to Bullock, but nope. Still Inara. (M: Always Inara.) Essen shows up and Gordon awkwardly explains to her that he already knows the new medical examiner, ‘from Arkham’. The ladies leave together and Bullock commiserates with Jim about the missus coming to work at the office, saying that it’ll all end in tears.

Mari: Shut your whore mouth, Bullock. If Barbara comes back and Inara goes away, I’m blaming YOU.

Alex: Suddenly he jumps up because he’s spotted Crane in the yearbook – he was a biology teacher at the same school as the victim. Did they really need to comb through a yearbook to figure that out? I would think that there are easier ways to find out where someone works. Whatever.

Mysterious Prison. Fish introduces herself to the friendly guy, whose name is Kelly. She asks him where they are and he replies that some people think it’s a prison (like me, I guess), others think it’s hell, but he personally just thinks it’s cold. Some guards show up and throw some food trays under the door. Fish scrabbles to get breakfast but Kelly holds her back, saying that ‘the boss’ always eats first. The Boss steps forward and gets his food, then signals to the other prisoners that it’s their turn. Fish looks thoughtful and some ominous strings strike up a chord in the background.

Bruce’s Unsupervised Adolescent hike is underway. He spots a pebble on the ground and pockets it before walking on.

Mari: He looks at the pebble real long and hard. I spend so much time thinking, “is this something? Is anything something? Does any of this make sense?” while I watch this show.

Alex: At a fancy-looking school, a female teacher explains that Gerald hasn’t been at work for a while, but that he’s a good teacher and a good father who’s always been very protective of his son. She adds that he can also be very sombre, though, after his wife died in a car accident six or seven years ago. Bullock asks if Crane ever talks about fears or phobias, and the teacher overacts the crap out of her next line as she very seriously asks if someone’s targeting and killing phobics. When Gordon confirms that yes, someone is, she asks if the victims were by any chance missing their adrenal glands. She heads to a filing cabinet and pulls out an academic paper that Crane wrote about fear being a genetic flaw. She explains that he’s been trying to cure himself of that flaw.

For those keeping score at home, this is now 15 out of 15 episodes where someone’s just conveniently given Bullock and Gordon the answer to their case. Of course, there’s no way that they could possibly find out by themselves that their murder suspect PUBLISHED A FREAKING PAPER about removing people’s adrenal glands. Nope. Someone had to literally hand it to them.

Mari: Also, did this raise ZERO RED FLAGS? I like that this lady is all, “he’s a great guy! Oh, shit he’s killing people? Yeah, that makes sense.” Great, thanks for your help lady.

Alex: YUP. This whole scene is idiotic, but then it’s not like I expected anything else from this show.

Back at the GCPD, Nygma reads the paper and explains that Crane has been trying to ‘inoculate’ himself against fear by using a condensed source of the hormones that cause it, which apparently you can get from phobics. Just go with it. Bullock asks how many more phobics Crane is going to kill, and Nygma says that depends how scared he is. Bullock says that Crane’s afraid of failure, but Gordon doesn’t think that’s it. Nygma changes the subject for a second and starts gossiping about the new medical examiner, who smalls nice. Gordon isn’t listening, though, because he’s spotted in the paper that Crane had another test subject for his work.

Crane house. Dr. Crane is still hallucinating. The burning lady comes down the stairs and stands in front of him. Jonathan (Crane Jr). appears behind him and asks if he’s OK. Crane replies that he’s ‘glorious’: the cure’s working, and soon it’ll be Jonathan’s turn to be cured of fear forever. He asks if Jonathan’s ready, and although he doesn’t reply, Jonathan’s face very clearly says ‘no, absolutely not, never, nuh-uh’.

Falcone’s mansion. Maroni and Falcone are taking a stroll in the garden, doing that thing Mafia Dons do where they act like they’re total BFFs. Maroni says that he’s happy to be Falcone’s BFF, but it won’t stop him killing Penguin, and Falcone seems fine with that.

Mari: Me too! I’m fine with that.

Alex: Penguin’s (no longer Fish’s) bar. Penguin is running around fussing about decorations and wine lists and being a bit shitty to the staff. One of his goons comes in with some classy black and silver invitations to the grand opening of ‘Oswald’s. Penguin says that nothing can go wrong tonight because this is his ‘moment’. He asks the guy to deliver the invitations to everyone on the list, except for one which he’ll deliver in person.

Prison/Hell/Fridge. Fish approaches The Boss’s little corner of the place and charms her way past his guards. She puts on a slightly more high-pitched, cutesy voice than normal and flirts with The Boss, asking how come he gets to be in charge of all these other big tough guys. He puts out a small knife and tells her that the others all follow him because he has the only blade in the place. Seriously? OK. Fish asks to make a deal: she kneels down suggestively in front of him and offers to show him her ‘skills’ if he protects her from the other guys in the prison. He looks pleased at the idea.

GCPD. Penguin arrives to delivery Gordon’s invitation. Gordon isn’t around, but Nygma is wandering about and the two of them make eye contact. They walk towards each other in a very deliberate way, eyeing each other up. This makes zero sense, but I guess we’re supposed to be too distracted by the prospect of these two getting a scene together to care. It sort of works. Sort of.They wind up side-by-side and Nygma starts spouting riddles. Penguin is unimpressed. He turns to leave, but Nygma gives him a parting fact about Emperor Penguins, which gives Penguin murder-face.

 

He tells Nygma it was nice to meet him, and that he should keep moving. Nygma smiles and leaves. I don’t even know what the point of all that was, but it was delightfully random.

Mari: Agreed! That kind of meeting between two future super villains is a smarter, teasing thing this show can do. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than say, sticking a little girl in front of a plant before calling her Ivy. Just, as an example.

Alex: Elsewhere in the GCPD, Gordon and Bullock are discussing Crane’s phone records and credit card statements, but Gordon excuses himself when he sees Penguin. Penguin is super excited to see him and hands him the party invite, but Gordon rejects it. Penguin assumes he’s too busy and eagerly offers to help him with more cases. Gordon tells him that it was a mistake to ask for his help last time, and that he shouldn’t come to the GCPD again. Penguin looks heartbroken and warns Gordon not to treat him that way.

Mari: This is the exact wrong thing to say to a Very Good Guy.

Alex: Gordon looks nervous, but Penguin pushes the invite into his hand and tells him that the party won’t be the same without him. He leaves and, Gordon angrily throws the invite in the bin.

I don’t think we’ve really discussed this before, but what exactly is the deal with Penguin’s obsession with Gordon? There have been hints at him having a bit of a crush before, but this whole exchange seemed to really up the jilted-lover vibe. I can’t quite figure out what the show’s trying to do there.

Mari: I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess it made sense when it started as Penguin’s gratitude/weird obsession back when Gordon spared his life. And then, you know, stuff and reasons.

Alex: Crane House. Dr. Crane is preparing to inject his son with the adrenaline serum, saying that he loves him and would never do anything to harm him. Crane Jr. tells him to just get on with it, but then starts freaking out as his dad tells him not to struggle.

Out in the woods, Bruce reaches a couple of piles of stones. There’s a big pile with ‘TW’ inked on one of the stones, and a smaller one marked ‘BW’. Bruce takes out the stone he found earlier and adds it to his dad’s pile, but then he changes his mind, picks up the ‘TW’ stone, and angrily throws it into the trees. He starts sobbing and screaming, kicking down both piles of stones before falling to his knees. After a moment, he pulls himself together and continues on his journey. Unfortunately, though, he trips and falls, rolling an implausibly long way down the hill.

Mari: And this is why babies shouldn’t go hiking.

Alex: Later, Bruce sits up and winces as he tries to stand. He pulls up his trouser leg to reveal a very swollen, purple ankle. Ominous thunder booms in the background and he starts to look scared.

Gordon runs into Dr. Inara at work and she tries to give him a kiss, but he’s uncomfortable and tells him that kissing in the workplace isn’t cool now that they’re colleagues. I mean, it was also a little weird that time when you gave her that great big smooch right in front of all your other colleagues, but I would agree that it’s probably even more inappropriate now.

Mari: I feel like Dr. Inara is thinking, “…but I’m Inara. Who would mind if you kiss me?” NO ONE.

Alex: Bullock shows up to disapprove of their flirting, as if he’s the type of person to ever give a crap about being professional in the workplace.

Falcone’s mansion. Falcone offers Maroni a cigar and explains why he wants to keep Penguin alive: he likes having a clever man by his side who’s clever enough to know his own place. He promises to show Maroni his ‘gratitude’ for allowing Penguin to live, and Maroni says he doesn’t want money. Falcone says that he can take care of some judge who put away a lot of Maroni’s guys. Maroni says he’ll leave Penguin alone in exchange for the judge’s head… oh, and $200k, because actually money is pretty awesome. Falcone tells him he can do better than that, and leads Maroni down a hallway where some unpleasant sounds are coming from behind a door. They look through a window into some kind of Red Room of Pain situation, (M: AHHH. THE REPRESSED TRAUMA.)  (A: SORRY!) where the judge appears to be getting tortured by a dominatrix while a young man lies unconscious – or possibly dead – on the couch. Falcone offers to ‘share’ the judge with Maroni. We talked a couple of episodes ago about the bathtub scene being ‘the right kind of awful’, but this was just too much horrible for me.

GCPD. Bullock and Gordon argue about what to do next on the Crane case. Gordon says that they need to predict Crane’s next move by figuring out what made him the way he is. They decide that they should look into his wife’s death. Because they didn’t think to do that until just now? Seriously? What do these guys even do all day? An unknown amount of time later, Bullock successfully locates a news article about Karen Crane’s death, which was actually a house fire, not a car crash. Crane must have lied to everyone about how she died. From reading the story they realise that Crane and his son were in the house at the time of the fire, and deduce that Crane’s desire to ‘cure’ himself stems from his shame at failing to save his wife. The camera zooms in on the picture of Mrs. Crane, and of course it’s the pretty blonde lady from Crane’s hallucinations.

Back at the Crane house, Dr. Crane is again standing at the bottom of the stairs with a vision of his burning wife before him. This time, though, he’s totally calm. She eventually disappears. He hears the front door opening and runs outside after Jonathan, who stops in front of a SCARECROW as his dad tells him that they’ve started ‘the protocol’ and must make sure that they finish it. Jonathan protests that he isn’t even afraid like his dad, but Crane insists that everyone on the planet is paralysed by fear. He drags Jonathan back into the house. The camera lingers on that SCARECROW for a few more seconds after they leave.

Wayne Manor. Alfred glances from his watch to the storm outside, and looks mildly concerned. Really only mildly, though. Not at all like someone whose twelve-year-old ward is wandering around the forest, in the dark, in the middle of a storm.

Mari: They must not have Youth Mauling Bears in that area.

Alex: Said twelve-year-old fashions a splint for his ankle out of some sticks, and pulls himself to his feet.

Prison/Wherever. Fish has been summoned to The Boss and she greets him with ‘What’s up Doc?’ explaining that that ‘Doc’ is his new nickname, because he has such a wise look in his eyes. Fine, whatever. They have some ‘sexy’ chat about fireworks (IDK) and he invites her to sit with him, agreeing that they have a deal. She wants to discuss terms first, but he ignores her and drags her onto his lap, calling her ‘baby’. She strokes at his chest and tells him that her first rule is ‘don’t call me baby’. She grabs at his knife and slits his throat with it, then stands up and announces that she’s in charge now. This is so stupid. We’re constantly being told how badass and scary Fish is, but I have a hard time believing that all these dudes would start cowering in front of this petite woman just because she now has a tiny knife. But whatever. Maybe nobody else can be arsed being in charge.

Mari: It MUST be that because she steals the knife away within 20 episode minutes of being there. Everyone else is probably too hungry to steal the baby knife away. It’s like the plot of a Snickers commercial.

Alex: Crane house. Crane has another syringe and is preparing to inject Jonathan again, but they’re interrupted by Gordon and Bullock knocking on the door. Jonathan wants to get out of there straight away, but Crane is desperate to finish his treatment first. They make a run for it just as Bullock and Gordon burst in. Outside, Crane loads up the syringe as Jonathan protests that he’s using too much serum and that there isn’t enough time. Crane tells his son that he loves him, then jabs him in the neck. Jonathan looks up in terror at the SCARECROW which comes to life before his eyes through the magic of some incredibly crap CGI.

Bullock and Gordon point their guns at Crane and tell him to get his hands up, but Crane just shoots back before running off. Bullock chases after him and Gordon goes to help Jonathan, who’s still convulsing on the ground.

Mari: And this is why fear is useful, ladies and gentlemen, for when people point guns at you and want to kill you and stuff.

Alex: Woods. Bruce reaches the top of the hill and finds Alfred waiting for him. Alfred teases him about taking so long to get there, and Bruce snarkily thanks him for his total lack of parental supervision. He says that he just wants to go home, but Alfred asks if he’d like to wait and watch the sunrise instead, like he used to do with his dad. Bruce looks surprised for a moment, but then sasses Alfred, saying that they can stay if he thinks he can handle it. Awww. I mean, I’m still not really OK with the whole idea of letting children just go wandering off in the woods on their own, but awww.

Penguin’s club, aka ‘Oswald’s’, which looks pretty much the same as Fish’s club except that there’s now a giant purple neon umbrella behind the stage.

The opening is not going well. One guy head-bangs on the dance floor while the band plays something sort of punk-rocky. Maroni shows up and Penguin looks extremely unhappy, but offers him some drinks on the house. Maroni tells him that he’s spoken to Falcone and things are all cool between them now, as long as he doesn’t give Falcone any more of his secrets. Penguin agrees, in that usual unconvincing way of his. Maroni starts to pour champagne into Penguin’s glass and warns him that he’d better hope Falcone lives for a long time, because Maroni will be coming for him as soon as Falcone’s dead. Penguin’s glass is full, but Maroni keeps pouring anyway, so that the champagne ends up splashing all over the floor. It’s really very menacing. No, really.

Woods. Bruce has fallen asleep and Alfred wakes him up to watch the sunrise. They both sit in silence and it’s a lovely substitute-parent-feels moment, if you can forget about the part where Alfred totally left Bruce to struggle up a hill alone with a sprained ankle.

    Mari: It’s cool, girl. Because sunrise.

Alex: GCPD. Inara commiserates with Gordon about his suspect getting killed, presumably by Bullock. She says that her new job is going well, and invites him to the circus for their next date. He accepts, but reiterates his no-kissing-at-work policy. She complains that it’s not unprofessional to show your feelings, and he replies that it is. Says the man who’s constantly going around yelling and punching people in the office. She teases him a bit, but then agrees to be discrete.

Fridge Prison. Fish rounds everyone up and tells them that things are going to change, and that she’s going to introduce some order around here. Just then, the doors open and someone yells ‘she’s back’. The guards throw a woman through the door and she crawls around on her hands and knees before lifting her face to reveal empty, bloody eye sockets. She wails that ‘they took my eyes’. Yeesht.

Hospital. A doctor is explaining to Gordon that Jonathan will live, but that the effects of the hormones in his body will probably be permanent. He’ll be living in a state of constant terror where he continually sees the things he’s most afraid of in the world. After giving this harrowing speech the doctor just kind of wanders off, leaving Gordon watching Jonathan through the window. Jonathan looks towards the end of his bed and sees the scarecrow climbing towards him, only this time it is generally quite terrifying.

Jonathan screams in terror, and the episode ends.

 

Here are some of the only best #gothamsnark tweets from this episode!

“I’m dreaming right?” No. You woke up in a Scientology reeducation center. #ButIKidTheLordXenu #GothamSnark

— Starman Morrison (@GeekyGeekyWays) February 10, 2015

 

And now, Baby Batman, the rocks will have their revenge. #GothamSnark

— Jessica Smith (@antiscian) February 15, 2015

 

Could that focus on the scarecrow in the background have been any longer? We get it, that’s who he is #GothamSnark

— Dutchface (@Dutchface) February 10, 2015

 

NGL I haven’t been paying attention and I have literally no idea what Bruce is doing with these stones. Recapping will be fun #gothamsnark

— Alex (@AlexTheAJ) February 15, 2015

 

Holy child abuse episode, Batman! #gothamsnark

— Laura Lillies (@lillypad1985) February 14, 2015

 

Next time someone asks if I’m ok, I’m going to respond, “I’m glorious.” #GothamSnark

— Jessica Smith (@antiscian) February 15, 2015

 

Next time:  The Joker, maybe, in Gotham S01 E16 – The Blind Fortune Teller.