Duck Fox

Confession: turns out its super hard to do NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month—Google is your friend) while simultaneously writing ~5000 words in weekly superhero TV show reviews. Nonetheless, I will go back and review that errant episode of Gotham, and will get last week’s Arrow review out before the end of the day. Today, though, let’s talk about “The Mask,” Gotham’s eighth outing, following directly after a decent end to the first arc. So without further ado, the review:

Trust is an interesting concept. Putting one’s faith in another being, especially another being which has the capacity to lie, seems ludicrous on its face. And yet, sincerity leads to cooperation and genuine appreciation for another person. So long as you don’t break someone’s trust, chances are you will get along swimmingly and have a great relationship. But when you do happen to lie or betray someone, it can be an uphill battle to bring a relationship back to a normal standing. Tonight’s episode of Gotham explores the lost trust between Gordon and the precinct in general, but Harvey Bullock and Sarah Essen specifically, and cements the series as a worthwhile watch.

We open the episode on what looks like a fight club for rich white guys, with two dudes fighting in an empty office building, and one of them ends up getting a little cut up by a paper shear made into a makeshift sword. Edward Nygma thankfully doesn’t pile on the riddles when he finds a finger in the deceased man’s mouth after his body turns up in a dump. 

Gordon has a chat with Coleman’s (the victim’s) mother, which turns up little. But after chatting with an informant, Harvey and Bullock find out Coleman had a business card in his pocket for Sionis Industries. The two head over to talk with Richard Sionis (Todd Stashwick), whose penchant for masks should be familiar to comic fans. The real lead, however, comes from a bathroom break. Gordon investigates and finds a guy with a bloody nose, and another with a bleeding hand who tries to take Gordon down and escape. Bullock’s “heroism” prevents this, naturally, and after an interrogation they realize Sionis hires employees for his financial firm based on who wins in old school arena matches. It’s as stupid a plot as you would imagine, and yet, that’s where Gotham seems to be finding its magic: embracing the campier elements of the comics. 

It only gets campier from there, as Gordon heads to the abandoned building Nygma managed to clue them in to. He’s promptly knocked out by Sionis, only to reawaken in the midst of the fight club, now more of a “Murder and you’re hired” club, though. Instead of the victor being the person who bests the other applicants, he will be determined by the one who finishes off Gordon. Pretty lax motivation for taking down a cop…. But then Sionis adds a million dollar signing bonus. Gordon’s “Oh crap,” just about sums it up. Back at the precinct, Gordon’s absence has Bullock worried enough to rally the entire squadroom to action. After taking down the three would-be entry level employees, Sionis himself steps into the ring with a samurai sword and demonic mask. Gordon takes him down by stealing his sword. For a brief moment, he appears to want to let out his rage and disillusionment into Sionis. But this is Jim Gordon. He does things by the book. Essen and a gaggle of cops come in to back him up as he arrests Sionis. The denouement has Bullock and Gordon come together to renew their uneasy partnership. Gordon is still not going to turn away from what he feels his duty is: protecting Gotham and bringing down the scumbags who are making the task difficult for him, and Bullock is still more or less out for himself. But now he’s willing to back Gordon when it counts.

Penguin, meanwhile, intimidates a woman into giving him her broach, which he uses to get back in Fish Mooney’s good graces. She’s not buying it, and stabs him with his own gift. And licks the blood. I presume they don’t know about AIDS or Ebola yet…. After their altercation, Penguin, trying to figure out how to fix the bad blood between him and Mooney, asks the most reasonable person he knows for advice: his mother. It’s no wonder he ends up kidnapping Mooney’s new errand boy and squeezing him for information before unceremoniously offing him. On the flip side, Mooney continues her plans against Falcone. She uses her new secret weapon, Liza, to grab some info from Falcone. I had my doubts about this storyline, but it’s shaping up nicely. Liza is struggling to justify her actions because Mooney is already rich and respected; why does she feel the need to try and replace Falcone? Mooney takes her aside and shares a few details of her past—she was allegedly abused as a young girl, and has sworn to never be subservient to any man. How much of this is true remains to be seen, as Mooney chats with the mysterious old woman who sings at her club and is now confirmed as her mother. We know there’s a nugget of truth there, which is all Liza needs (along with a kiss on the cheek from Fish in full “den mother” mode) to get back in the game. The best part of this plot is that Mooney gets to prove she’s got the skills to hang with Falcone and Maroni as far as being a manipulative gangster. After all, what better way to do this than to have her honeypot Falcone? That’s certainly a strategy Batman never tried. 

Speaking of Batman, when we join Bruce Wayne this week, he’s finally ready to return to school. Well, Alfred is ready to have him return to school. Bruce finds all the children… childish. Of course, Thomas Elliott (comic readers should recognize him as a youthful Hush) seems to be out to prove him wrong by asking for all the details on his parents’ deaths and then confronting him in the hallway for a good ol’ fashioned brawl. He comes home with a bruised face, leading Alfred to teaching him a cool trick with a watch around the knuckles. It’s a great turn around when Bruce rolls by Elliot’s house and lays him out, telling Alfred it would be an incredible shame if he doesn’t punch Elliot into next week for insulting his family. I have to agree. Of course, this leads to the final scene, where Bruce feels empowered after taking down Elliott, and asks Alfred to teach him how to fight. A decision he will no doubt regret. I kid, I kid! But seriously, Alfred got this whole “fighting evil” thing started, so he really only has himself to blame when Bruce decides to become Batman. 

From the beginning, this episode seems to want to confront the idea of Gotham finally turning around, thanks in no small part to Gordon standing up to Zsasz and, later, the mayor and Falcone. Sarah Essen is ashamed to have run out on Gordon. It’s true, she has a family. But she’s also contributing to the system that will make life incredibly difficult for that family as long as they live in Gotham. Bullock says he didn’t mean her when he mentioned the precinct’s cowardice. But of course he did. Even he wasn’t willing to back Gordon until the very end. It’s a tough issue to tackle, especially because Gordon is so traumatized. Even when he tells Barbara what she wants to hear—“there are no monsters”-- in the end, he could only struggle futilely against the mire of Gotham’s degeneracy. The dream of a better Gotham—a decent city where he could live, love and even prosper—died with the Waynes. 

Of course, the other theory floated in this episode is that Gordon is just itching for a fight. Naturally this has less credence given the mythos behind the character, but it’s an intriguing theory devised by Harvey Bullock. The likelier case is that Bullock is using this as an excuse to disengage from Gordon completely. Why bother helping the guy if he’s going to go for losing battles? While he ultimately decides to stick it out, his sentiment is perhaps shared by an equally disillusioned Barbara Gordon.

And let’s take a minute to talk about Barbara Gordon. A lot of people seem to dislike her, and I have to admit I was a bit aggravated when she didn’t leave town as Gordon requested. But Erin Richards did some fantastic stuff in last night’s episode. The trauma of being kidnapped by Zsasz and held hostage has her drowning herself in booze and pulling a gun on Gordon when he enters the apartment. Her character’s evolution seems to have been fast tracked by last week’s episodes, but it’s great that she’s no longer just the spoiled fiancé with a drug problem. When she runs off in the episodes final act, it’s from a more mature position. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that Gotham didn’t make this about an affair (though I’m sure that will be coming if we’re following the comics). Rather Barbara really can’t take the stresses of Gordon’s job, and some part of her also likely feels he will be better at his job if she’s not around to get kidnapped. 

The show also served up a great deal of character development to Gordon’s other (comic book) love interest, Sarah Essen. Zabryna Guevara sells the torment Essen feels for abandoning Gordon well, and when Essen ultimately steps up for Gordon—signing on to look for him before others in the precinct and then actually finding and helping him bring Sionis in—it’s a pivotal moment in their relationship. Even if they don’t explore a romance between the characters, a friendship that will almost certainly endure has been forged.  

“The Mask” plays with a lot of plot threads, and ended up paying off most of them within the episode proper. Though some seams—like Fish Mooney’s and Oswald Cobblepot’s—are not yet fully woven into the fabric of this new arc, the majority of the episode appropriately deals with the fallout from Gordon’s rebellion. Glad the series didn’t simply slip back into things with a lame case of the week. Instead, we had a decent, if not wholly original case of the week. Though Selina Kyle was very jarringly forced into the episode to set up a cliffhanger. When it focused on rebuilding the trust between Gordon and the precinct, the episode was firing on all cylinders: progress was made without sacrificing characterization. As mentioned above, Gordon and Bullock are still the same characters, with the one difference being they realize they can coexist now. Even in Gotham. And when it counts, they can trust each other with the important things—like their lives. For a city like Gotham, that’s worth more than the whole of Sionis industries.