Duck Fox

Courtesy of Fox

Pilots are tricky beasts. You have to establish all the main characters that the series will revolve around while making sure not to drop too much information into the heads of eager new watchers. The follow up is almost always going to experience diminished returns, both in terms of ratings and in terms of “wow” factor as the series finds its regular rhythm without trying to grab eyeballs and be new and shiny. Gotham generally continues this trend, and dives more fully into its case of the week structure.

But before we get into that, let’s discuss the overarching storyline, which is just gearing up but already one of the most compelling parts of the show. Fish Mooney has a tense meeting with her boss, Carmine Falcone. Falcone thinks Mooney’s coming after him, given her association with the traitorous Cobblepot, and assures her she’ll regret a decision to take him on, however indirectly, by beating her lover. The pure rage Mooney contains over Cobblepot putting her in this position is palpable. The scene does little more than serve as a precursor for what’s to come, however. Not that that’s a bad thing, but Mooney’s one of the more interesting pieces on the chessboard of Gotham pre-Batman, partly because she’s a genuinely compelling character with a fantastic actress attached to the role and partly because she’s the wild card who could die, turn over a new leaf or do just about anything since she’s not tied even loosely to canon.

Elsewhere, Montoya and her partner are hot on the heels of Oswald Cobblepot’s disappearance. They naturally presume their corrupt precinct to have murdered him. Cobblepot himself makes friends with a group of roadies heading out of Gotham. Well, makes friends for about two minutes before they inquire if he’s ever been told he walks like a penguin. Bad move. Oswald casually dispatches his newfound friends, bringing his body count up to 3 since escaping Gotham. By the episode’s end he’s continued his villainous evolution, kidnapping a poor auto mechanic and ransoming him with little success. Unless you count ticking up his kill meter as success.

I predict Gordon having some regrets about letting him go. Though Gordon didn’t actually kill Cobblepot, his conscience isn’t clear for leading the precinct to think he did. The blasé nature of GCPD’s corruption is, surprisingly mined for laughs. Actually, one of the most surprising things about this series thus far has been how campy and goofy it is. While there’s certainly precedent for a less “grimdark” Batman mythos (IE, the Adam West Batman baby boomers grew up on), the show’s focus on corruption and the criminal underworld suggested it would be a less loose and more serious examination of the city. Tonight’s episode seems to be denying this is the case. Starting with Commissioner Sarah Essen (Zabryna Guevara, earning her main cast credit) being more annoyed than menacing when Gordon refuses to let Bullock beat a confession from their victim. Even Penguin’s murders are more darkly humorous than menacing through their macabre.

Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon return to write and direct respectively. I’m not sure how many episodes this dynamic duo will be working on, but hopefully they’ll at least return for a few—they’ve got the balance between the underworld story and Gordon’s weekly case down. The crazies of the week are kidnapping kids to sell to the Dollmaker for unknown reasons, though presumably he’s not going to serve them
tea and crumpets.

But it’s the episodes namesake, the (in)famous Selina Kyle, AKA “Catwoman” (Camren Bicondova)—just before she became a woman—who serves as the connective tissue tying much of the episode together. Selina Kyle is one of the homeless riffraff who escapes from the Dollmaker’s kidnappers. Knowing the danger she’s in, and realizing that she’s got information that would be valuable to the intrepid detective Gordon regarding the murder of the Waynes, Selina intends to use her knowledge of what happened to her advantage. As Gordon and Bullock run all over town trying to find out who these guys are—leading to Gordon to compromise himself and actually allow Bullcok to beat a suspect—Selina’s trying to get out of dodge. Essen and the mayor put together an initiative to get all the homeless youth off the street and send them to foster care to be placed with loving families… or less loving juvenile institutions. Selina’s snagged under the new initiative by the Dollmaker’s goons, who I really should mention are excellently portrayed by Lili Taylor and Frank Whaley. Their quirky way of systemically kidnapping and attempting to murder people is very reminiscent of comics. The light hearted approach may be unwelcome for some, but for me it elevated an episode that was otherwise a little too light on the plot.

The one thing that still feels a little too tacked on is Bruce Wayne. There is no end to the irony of that statement, but it’s true that the episode’s weakest moments come from the interaction between Gordon and Bruce. While the first episode’s resonance between Bruce and Gordon comes from the pain of their shared loss, reliving that theme in every episode is going to get old fast. Alfred enlists Gordon’s help to get a more and more distressed Bruce to open up about his feelings and spend less time forcing himself to endure the pain of a burning palm.

Gotham’s second outing was missing some of the deeper emotional beats from the pilot, but the subversion into campiness allowed the case of the week characters to shine and gave us some great banter between Bullock and Gordon. Because Gordon himself is still straight laced enough to feel guilty about even implying the murder of a man, the show manages to strike the balance needed to make it entertaining without being empty. So far there’s still a good reason to tune in and Watch It Like a Bat Fox.

Score: 7.5

Watch It Like a Fox:

• More of crass, intense, but still very loving Alfred.
• The weekly crazies are just the right kind of campy.

Duck It:

• Bruce is still not the main character, but worse, young Wayne is horribly shoehorned in.
• Few of Selina Kyle's scenes seem to matter. Talk about a misnomer.