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Gotham S01 E19 – Fifty Shades of Nope Nope Nope

Previously: Gordon found the commissioner’s mentally ill daughter and ended up with an endorsement for president of the union.
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Beasts of Prey

Alex: Fish and her snazzy new eye gaze thoughtfully out of the window at Organ Donor Island.  She heads downstairs and schmoozes a little with some of the rich patients, who are having a grand old time at the fancy facility while recovering from their illegal transplants. Then she sneaks into an empty room and breaks open the door to take a casual stroll outside, where she spots a helicopter. Just then, some dudes with guns pull up in a car, led by a guy calling himself ‘The Catcher’. She introduces herself and feigns ignorance about not being allowed outside. He waves a gun at her and orders her back into the mansion.

Gordon pays a visit to Wayne Manor. Bruce congratulates him on his appointment to president of the policeman’s union, although when he asks what that actually means, Gordon just sort of shrugs and goes ‘meh’.  So, not much apparently. Gordon knows that Bruce is lying about not knowing who stabbed Alfred, and guesses that they’re keeping quiet so that Alfred can go after him on his own. He tries to get the truth out of Bruce, but the kid refuses to cooperate and insists on talking about sandwiches instead.

GCPD. A kind of cute redhead cop approaches Gordon and kisses his ass a little,  which gives Jim this face:

Marines: You know he’s just thinking, “I knew being the good guy would pay off one day!” I’m sure this happiness will totally last.

Alex: Cute Redhead has brought him the case file for a recent homicide he’s been looking at. The victim was a young woman called Grace Fairchild, but the cops have dropped the case without finding her killer. He wants Gordon to look into it. Gordon is reluctant to take on more work, but Cure Redhead wins him over with some of his own Good Guy spiel.

Gordon brings the case to Inara and fills her in on the details. Grace disappeared from a bar four months earlier and was never seen alive again. Inara suggests they check out some ‘speakeasies’ in that neighbourhood, because this show likes to troll us with its unspecified time setting. (M: In addition to this show trolling us with still being a show that exists.) (A: That too.)

Organ Donor Prison. Fish’s poor drunk pal is lying on the floor, recovering from having an organ removed against his will. Fish comes to check on him and whispers that she needs his help, because she’s going to get off the island or die trying. I think I heard a chorus of voices yell ‘die trying, die trying!’ just then, but I’m not sure.

Mari: It was either a chorus or just me shouting it loudly and over and over again. In different voices.

Alex: CLOUDSCREDITSWHATEVER.

Alfred is home and getting ready to go out, although he doesn’t look at all well. He tells Bruce he’s off to find Sketchy Reggie, who he expects will be lying around in a ‘shooting gallery’ somewhere by now. He also says that Reggie is probably ‘off his maracas’, which is a thing no English person has ever said, ever. Bruce tries to forbid him from leaving, but this is apparently the one time Alfred decides not to take orders from his tiny employer. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), his stab wound reopens right then and there, preventing him from going anywhere.

Mari: Way to be plot appropriate, suddenly open gut wound!

Alex: In a bar somewhere in Gotham, Penguin meets with Miss Rosa from Orange is the New Black! (M: I don’t watch that show but I do know Gotham. What a DOWNGRADE for Miss Rosa.) (A: Accurate.) She’s kind of speaking with the same Eastern European-sounding accent that she had in OITNB, even though she was meant to be Hispanic there. And here I think she’s maybe meant to be Italian but I really have no idea. Anyway, Rosa owns a bar and Penguin wants to buy it from her. Rosa threatens him with a rolling pin, but eventually agrees that he can have the bar if he can break up her granddaughter’s relationship with some deadbeat guitarist. (M: Weird.)

GCPD. Gordon is trying to persuade Bullock to help him with the murder case, and Bullock says something gross about his ideal woman being a ‘mute supermodel’ who likes to cook, because he’s still the worst. Ed shows up and brings him a list of places in the neighbourhood with liquor licences, and he’s also taken the trouble to check which ones were missed by the original investigation. Gordon remembers to thank him this time, and Ed looks happy. He also asks Ed to look into a piece of evidence that’s missing from the case file, and Ed bounces off looking delighted about having a new puzzle to solve. Gordon persuades Bullock to come check out the bars with him.

Island Prison. Fish has gathered a few of the biggest and toughest captives, and talked them through an escape plan. She explains that she’s picked them, rather than her friends, because she needs muscle. Her plan is to steal a boat which she spotted outside. One of the guys asks why they can’t take the helicopter he heard landing the other day, but she points out that none of them know how to fly it. Fish promises to get hold of the keys to the boat.

Gordon and Bullock are on a speakeasy crawl. Gordon shows the picture of the victim around and the bartender recognises her, remembering her because she was on a date with a super-hot classy-looking guy. This throws us into a flashback where Super-Hot Classy-Looking Guy turns out to be Milo Ventimiglia! (M: MILO. DOWNGRADE FOR YOU TOO.) He’s at the bar with Grace, who flirt-asks him why he’s single. He replies that he’s looking for something which ‘frightens’ people and I get a horrible feeling, because this reminds me an awful lot of a certain handsome billionaire and his ‘very singular’ tastes. He tells her that he’s looking for real, intense love and laughs at himself for sounding so cheesy. She agrees that it’s ‘totally’ cheesy, but is clearly pretty smitten. And I mean…

Fair.

Mari: He’s slicked back the emo-bang he had for all of Heroes, so yes. Fair.

Alex: This is apparently some kind of magical flashback not limited to the bartender’s memory, because now we’re back at Milo’s apartment at Escala, probably, which is of course super fancy. He tells her to go open some wine while he goes to hang up her coat. As he does so, he closes a door that’s been left ajar, and we get a glimpse of a Red Room of Pain deal inside.

OH GOD.

Of all the ways in which this show could have got worse, they picked literally the very worst of the worst. I’m almost impressed.

Mari: It’s like they know our trauma. 

Alex: Back in the present, Gordon freaks out over the fact that their murderer was right here in the bar, and vows to track him down.

Bruce sneaks out of Wayne Manor while Alfred is snoozing on the sofa, and heads to a Gotham gun range.  Coincidentally, Penguin happens to be walking past just as Bruce is waiting to enter. Penguin pauses for a moment, because he can smell budding teenage vigilantism? IDK. (M: It smells a little leathery, a little emotionally unstable and surprisingly like lavender!) (M: I’m guessing.)

Penguin heads into a warehouse where they’ve got the guitar-playing boyfriend chained to a pole. He’s refusing to break up with Miss Rosa’s granddaughter, so Penguin orders his thugs to start removing some fingers. Ew.

GCPD. Inara is re-doing the autopsy on Grace Fairchild. She says the results are unusual, because there was no trauma or abuse to her body other than the stab wounds, even though she was missing for four months. Yeuch. I can’t describe how much I hate this plotline. Bullock suggests that she ran away on her own and that maybe the murder has nothing to do with her going missing, but Gordon isn’t buying it.

Magic flashback. Grace wakes up in Christian Grey’s bed and finds him waiting with breakfast for her. He suggest that they go to an exhibition together, but she protests that she has to go to work. He insists that she doesn’t because he bought the company she works for, or something, and tries to get her to eat. I have the absolute worst case of déjà vu right. She tries to leave but he violently grabs her wrist and tells her she’s not going anywhere.

Prison island. Fish sneaks into Dullmacher’s office and starts rifling through his drawers, but he returns and catches her in the act. Behind her back, she picks up a very large and sharp-looking letter opener, as she concocts an unconvincing story about needing more supplies for the inmates. He threatens her with a gun and she eventually breaks down and ‘admits’ that she was going to use the letter opener to kill herself, in order to stop him and his team of terrible special-effects technicians from turning her into this:

Mari: Thank you for refreshing our memories, though honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

Alex: None of us will. The memory will live on long after this show is finally cancelled (pretty please??). Anyway, Dullmacher believes Fish’s tale of woe. He sends her off with a warning not to misbehave again.

Bruce is wandering in a sketchy Gotham alley when Selina appears in an unnecessarily showy manner. (M: Because cat!)

She greets him with ‘I could have smashed your head with a brick’. Right. He asks for her help finding Reggie, because he’s checked every gun range in the city and still hasn’t found him. Selina laughs at Bruce for misunderstanding what Alfred meant by ‘shooting gallery’.

Miss Rosa’s bar. Her granddaughter is wearing entirely too much leopard-print and sobbing on Miss Rosa’s shoulder, presumably because her fingerless guitar-playing boyfriend broke up with her. Penguin shows up to collect his payment.

GCPD. Ed has a photo of the missing piece of evidence. He takes great pains to explain that finding a photo of the evidence isn’t the same thing as finding the evidence itself, but no one cares. The missing piece is some kind of ceramic painted heart. Bullock recognises it as a serial-killer’s calling card and freaks out.

Magic flashback. Milo and poor Grace are sitting down to enjoy a romantic home-cooked dinner, except that she’s handcuffed to the table and babbling nervously about how she might have overcooked the lamb. He takes a bite and tells her that she unfortunately did, but it’s fine. She starts apologising and crying, which seems to piss him off more than the burnt lamb itself. He sighs and tells her that things just aren’t working out between them.

We cut to the Red Room of Pain. The walls are actually GREY though, and covered with a selection of weapons which indicate that this is definitely more murder-chamber than BDSM playroom. (M: …but so was the Red Room of Pain…) Milo is wearing an apron and has Grace blindfolded with her hands chained to the ceiling. He snaps a polaroid picture which he adds to a case full of other photos of blindfolded about-to-be murdered women. This is almost enough to make me quit recapping on the spot, but I reluctantly press on. Milo takes his time choosing a murder weapon and eventually settles on a knife while he crazy-monologues about how he’ll find the right woman eventually.

Rosa’s (now Penguin’s) bar. Penguin explains to his bodyguard that he wanted the bar because it’s where he’s going to kill Don Maroni. The camera moves around and we see that he’s been staring at a picture of the Don on the wall.

Island Prison. Fish gathers her group of big dudes and they all head upstairs. She leads them to a door and says she unlocked the gate outside last night, but as soon as the door opens an alarm will go off and they won’t have much time to get to it. She gives them the boat keys and tells them to go on ahead without her, because she’s going to go back and get her friend. She opens the door for them, setting off the alarm, and runs off with a warning not to leave her behind. They don’t find this suspicious at all, because they’re the muscle rather than the brains of this operation.

On her way back down into the prison, Fish runs into Dullmacher who gleefully tells her he’s going to chop her up and do horrible things with her body parts. Just then, the door behind him slides open, and Fish’s Pal steps out with a bunch of other prisoners. They beat up the doctor a bit and then Fish yells for them to leave him there.

Outside, The Catcher and his men chase the group of heavies to the gate, which Fish of course lied about unlocking. They realise too late that they’ve been set up. Fish and her friends slip out of the door unnoticed and make their way to the helicopter, which Fish knows how to fly because of reasons. (M: She took a year off from running the streets to learn, maybe.) The Catcher and his men open fire on the Big Dudes, but then hear the helicopter taking off in the distance. The Catcher takes aim and manages to shoot Fish in the stomach through the window. She gasps and bleeds as the helicopter continues to take off.

GCPD. Bullock fills Gordon in on the serial killer they’re looking for. He abducts attractive young single women, keeps them for a while, then dumps their bodies around the city. He’s known as The Ogre. The GCPD have kept it quiet all this time because any time anyone investigates him, the Ogre goes after their families and kills the people they love. Gordon gets ‘oh shit’ face.

Not-A-Gun-Range Shooting Gallery. Bruce and Selina find Reggie passed out upstairs. Bruce demands to know who sent him. He’s not talking, so Selina grabs his bag-o-drugs and holds it out of the window. Reggie explains that he was just meant to take some documents, but Alfred surprised him. After Selina wiggles the bag out of the window a bit, Reggie elaborates further and says it was a man named Sid Bunderslaw. He warns Bruce to leave it to Alfred to sort out. Bruce tells Selina to give Reggie back his drugs, but she drops them out of the window instead. Bruce tells Reggie that he’s sick and needs help. Reggie turns nasty and threatens to tell Bunderslaw that Bruce is after him. He turns and spots his drugs on a ledge below, so he chooses this moment to lean right out of the window to get them. Bruce makes a move as if to push him, but hesitates, so Selina does it for him. Bruce is horrified.

GCPD locker room. Cute Redhead Cop from earlier is getting roughed up by Bullock. He explains that Loeb gave him the case to give to Gordon, telling him exactly what to say to butter Jim up.  Bullock urges Gordon to drop the case, because he probably hasn’t gone far enough to draw the killer’s attention yet. Gordon, of course, refuses to let a serial killer just keep wandering the streets. He leaves a message on Inara’s voicemail asking her to call him as soon as possible. Just then, he spots Loeb on a wander through the police station. He rushes over and grabs the commissioner by the throat. A couple of cops make a move to stop him, but he inexplicably stops them just by holding up a finger.

Mari: It’s a really serious finger. That finger is totally not joking.

Alex: Gordon warns Loeb that this is the last straw. There will be no more games or deals, and once he’s put the Ogre behind bars Gordon will be coming after him.

The episode ends there, because this show hates me and of course this Fifty Shades plot is going to be dragged out for more than one episode. Of fucking course.

 

Here are some of the best tweets from the small band of loyal snarkers still soldiering on with #gothamsnark. You guys are the best.

Next time: Nygma has a breakdown in S01 E20 – Under the Knife.

Alex (all posts)

I'm a thirty-year-old postgrad living in Scotland. When I'm not writing (which, between my degree and Snark Squad, is almost never) I watch entirely too much TV, and live in constant fear of the day that I run out of things to watch.





Marines (all posts)

I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.





Written by

Alex

I'm a thirty-year-old postgrad living in Scotland. When I'm not writing (which, between my degree and Snark Squad, is almost never) I watch entirely too much TV, and live in constant fear of the day that I run out of things to watch.