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.

Score: 8.5/10

Watch It Like a Fox:

• Your favorite Batman character is James Gordon.
• Intense action interspersed throughout a pulp thriller about a city full of criminals sounds like a good time.
• You've waited all your life for Alfred with a cockney accent.

Duck It:

• The man behind the glasses doesn't hold your interest.
• You're soured on DC adaptations since... Well, any live action DC movie.
• Batman needs to come sooner, rather than later.
• You're easily corrupted.

There are a lot of ways to handle death on a television series. Both plotwise and character wise. You can use the death of a character, whether minor or major, as a stepping stone to more aggressively move a story arc forward, or you can slow down and explore what the deceased meant to the other characters on the show. It's also possible to do both, but unless a TV show has created an atmosphere of breakneck plot twists and heel-face/face-heel turns every few episodes, it's hard to prevent shortchanging character for plot or vice-versa. Bitten opts to take the best of both worlds, but it doesn't quite have what it takes to tug at your heartstrings while simultaneously keeping you at the edge of your seat.

"Grief" opens on the minimalist funeral for Pete. The only individuals in attendance are the residents of Stonehaven, and they're barely done toasting to Pete when they hear the howl of a werewolf. After a short chase scene where the group loses the Mutt in the woods, Elena takes a minute to discuss the difficulty of balancing her life with Logan. It's rather unfortunate that the show is still sprinkling in bits of Elena's human life. I mentioned in an earlier review that there's little need for Elena to struggle so much with her werewolf and human sides, because there are numerous excuses she could craft that are believable and probably pretty true. Telling Phillip that Pete passed might make him think she's having really bad luck lately, but he certainly wouldn't suspect anything is out of the ordinary.

Thankfully, Elena decides to go see Jeremy before Logan starts complaining about how hard it is "pretending" to be an incredibly successful psychiatrist with a beautiful girlfriend... Elena and Jeremy's conversation is much more revelatory, with Elena mentioning she's never grieved for anyone before, as she was only five and thus too young to really understand her feelings when her mother died. Their conversation reveals an interesting dynamic, with Jeremy enunciated he feels as though Elena were his own child and Elena being angry that Jeremy's not taking steps to avenge Pete. Elena runs off and alleviates the tension she's feeling with a run, being joined by Clay.

Jeremy, meanwhile, goes to talk to the sheriff whose expanded role is actually doing wonders for the show. Though her role still consists mainly of eying Jeremy suspiciously and asking seeming innocent questions about his connection to the murders at Stonehaven, she's definitely much more savvy than your average small town cop. She even takes a minute to reach out to her retired predecessor about the Danvers, and apparently Stonehaven has seen even more mysterious occurrences-- a few years ago a telephone lineman was called to the property, but he was never heard from again after driving up there. They found his car later, but no sign of what had happened to the lineman himself. I'm guessing he became wolf food.

After their run, Elena and Clay take a roll in the hay- literally. Okay, so technically it's leaves, but point is they have sex, Adam and Eve style. They return to Stonehaven and Nick and Logan realize what happened (having a nose that's that accurate has got to be more of a curse than a blessing...), but the two play coy. Later Elena makes it clear to Clay that their sleeping together was a mistake. But this being a kinda-sorta love story, their compatibility gets mentioned by gossipy girls in diner when they go back on the hunt for the Mutt.

And on the hunt they go. After checking out a diner where one patron has a particular dislike of Clay (don't worry, Elena nips his violence in the bud by casually catching his fist mid punch), Elena and Clay pick up the trail of the Mutts at a hotel and check it out, only to find the new Mutt, Thomas Leblanc, is an escaped convict, same as the old one. They also see familiar Mutts named Kane and Karl Marsten enter with the newbie. They hide in the adjoining room, Elena using body spray to cover their scent, and then escape out the window before any of the Mutts catch on.

After regrouping at Stonehaven, Elena and Clay fill everyone in, and Jeremy realizes Kane and Marsten are likely planning to take out all of Danvers clan. This scene is intercut with Daniel Santos, an old pack member and great great grandson of an Alpha, visiting Logan. Daniel asks for Logan to convince Jeremy and Clay to let him join Stonehaven to deal with the Mutts. Of course, Logan is skeptical as Clay killed Daniel's brother some time ago.

The episode closes with the Stonehaven gang heading back to Mutt motel. Clay leads the charge, but before he can open the door Elena pulls him out of the way. Good thing, too, because a shotgun was rigged to shoot upon opening the door. With that trap out of the way, they head in safely and see an empty room. At least empty of people. It seems to be pretty full of rage, though, judging by a note scribbled onto the walls by one of the Mutts, saying they will be coming after Elena for their notebook. They also call her a bitch, which I find weird because I have to doubt Elena would be offended by that.

In terms of character development, the first half the episode definitely made up the bulk of actual forward progress. Elena's grieving process is fairly straightforward, but we do get to see a bit of how she and most of the other members of the pack come together to deal with such a loss. That said, Elena's backsliding by sleeping with Clay felt a little too tacky. I get that she's having trouble dealing with Peter's death, and what could make you feel better than a roll in the hay with Clay? But her casual sexcapades right after talking down to Jeremy about how he wasn't doing anything to avenge Pete struck an odd tone. Especially when she basically insists it won't happen again. But I've never had much patience for the "will they, won't they" thing.

What's great about this particular post-death episode is how easily it slides into moving the plot along. After the first half of the episode, with the small exception of Phillip and his little sister talking about Elena (BTW, what was up with Natalie Brown's speech? It sounded like she was hiding an accent, but she's apparently Canadian so I don't know why she sounded so weird) and how perfect she is for him, every single scene seemed to further the plot along.

While "Grief" didn't really blend the plot and character aspects together as well as a more seasoned show might have, it did escalate things in Stonehaven, and the fact that Pete's dead means the storyline has real stakes. If the show manages to just get rid of Phillip, it'll really be something to look forward to in the coming weeks.

Getting Our Ducks in a Row:

• Daniel Santos and Karl Marsten are shaping up to be truly great antagonists. Marsten in particular is really creating that "love to hate" kind of a vibe. 
• I keep saying get rid of Phillip- and meaning it- but I will miss Natalie Brown's Diane:
• "I'm a woman. We just know things."
• Also, if they get rid of all the human world stuff then Logan's girlfriend would be gone too, and we'd be left with just Elena and the sheriff for female cast members. This whole "women aren't born wolves" thing kinda sucks for the show.

Grade: 8.0/10