For a character who started off geniusly conniving his way to being Falcone's right hand man and saving grace, he's now becoming a punchline, a joke, a character who's barely getting by on the skin of his ass and needs help to run a club. This is getting frustrating as I've been waiting to see The Penguin become truly unhinged. He had a wonderful moment where he set Frankie up and stabbed him, that was great but ever since then he hasn't many moments like that. I'm waiting for the time when we'll see the capable, polite and well mannered but extremely dangerous arch villain come out. With this episode titled "Everyone Has A Cobblepot", I'm hoping the focus will be on The Penguin and less on Fish "Who Gives A Crap" Mooney. So clean up time, Alfred got shivved, Penguin's club is going down the tubes, Fish Mooney..., and Alfred's buddy (Reggie) sold him out to Wayne Corp, and now they're preparing to move on Bruce. All up to speed? Excellent! Let's get to it!
The Dollmaker is starting to grate on my nerves, if they need their patients alive then hows about this, PUT THEM IN COMAS! There's actually a movie titled "Coma" where people are put in comas and their organs are harvested. They could've easily pumped some kind of knock out gas in the dungeon and then just gathered up the people with no fuss. Unfortunately, he strikes up a deal with Fish Mooney...which means that her character's gonna be around for awhile...I'm not exactly sure where this plot thread is going but it can't be anywhere good, not with Fish Mooney involved.
Det. Arnold Flass is back and I knew with a talent like Dash Mihok, he wouldn't be absent from the series for long but this just takes the cake in terms of the Commissioner now setting Flass for being President of The Police Officer's Union! Not for nothing but how connected is Flass and just how crooked is GCPD? You'd think that after getting publicly humiliated that no one came to his aide when he was arrested he wouldn't bother with such things, and Jim Gordon wasn't exactly made an example of in the aftermath of Flass' arrest. The twist if Bullock turning coat on Jim was played nicely. Harvey & Gordon danced around The Cobblepot issue but now it's fully out in the open. BLACKMAIL! BLACKMAIL, MOST FOUL!
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| BAD IDEA, BAD IDEA! |
Commissioner Loeb has the goodies on all of GCPD's finest, including Harvey. This makes Jim Gordon far more unique than he'd like to be, but it just makes me love his character even more. His unflinching determination to follow the rules, to be the good guy is inspiring really and Ben MacKenzie does that without coming off as cheesy or Boy Scoutish (that wasn't a dig at Superman). The thing is, his hard-nosed, teeth-gritting delivery makes him perfect for this kinda role. Nicholas D'Agosto makes another appearance as Harvey Dent and I'm liking this guy, he's young, he's handsome but more importantly he's competent and has a real thirst for justice and truth, the same way Gordon does. If they build on his character just right, the moment when he becomes Two-Face will be truly tragic.
The problem with GCPD being corrupt is how Gordon goes about un-corrupting it. Let's play this out logically, Commissioner Loeb has leverage on everyone in GCPD, so "Battlefield Earth" rules dictate that Gordon must get leverage on Loeb, and while that was the maintain behind storming into a den of thieves with only a lawyer and a threat and expecting to have a little chat which EXTREMELY short-sighted. The thing is mobsters in Gotham are willing to roll on cops if it means getting out of serious jail time, now would've been the PERFECT time to see Fish Mooney and consult with her on the matter, maybe getting some information on Shi Lu BEFORE jumping in there would've been beneficial or finding out how to butter him up might've helped. While I love Gordon's unflinching service of the law, his lack of ability to play the game of politics is staggering and will likely get him killed (of course, it won't because he's Jim "Freakin'" Gordon!).
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| And that's how a Bill becomes a Law. |
Speaking of politics, our man with the plan Oswald finally sticks his beak in this episode and MAN, I'm loving him. Robin Lord Taylor plays The Penguin with a hint of savagery to him, you can tell when he delivered the line "I like information.", now if they can just keep this Penguin going, instead of the lucky bumbler we've been seeing in the past few episodes. Now that Penguin is the new "guy" who can help Gordon, I'm hoping we'll be seeing him a lot more. And considering Penguin's deal he cut with Gordon, is this a stepping stone to Penguin betraying Falcone and eventually becoming top mob boss of Gotham? He's been saying since the first episode "I'm it's future.", maybe the future is coming sooner than we think. While The Penguin was played for comic relief for most of the episode, the little stinger more than made up for it. If we can have more ruthless moments such as these, I'll be one happy camper.
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| I'm surgical with this b*tch. |
Moving right along, let's talk about The Riddler or Edward Nygma as he is now. I keep going back and forth and whether or not I actually like him. I've said this before but The Riddler is easily my favorite Batman villain as I love riddles, I love puzzles, brain teasers and things of the like, but this guy...to turn villain all for the sake of (the admittingly hot) Ms. Kringle...well...I'm none too keen on that. A few episodes back we saw Edward stuff body parts in a locker to get the medical examiner's job...only he didn't get the medical examiner's job...Leslie Thompkins did. I'm not too pleased with how they're doing this as The Riddler is a massive genius and while he's OCD at times, he is a forced to be reckoned with, not some awkward guy who's constantly hitting on some chick. They need to re-tweak his character ASAP. The Riddler deserves better.
Getting back on topic, the plot twist of Loeb's "Cobblepot" being his daughter and the actual killer of his wife, while I never believed Loeb killed his wife (I was expecting some sort of mob hit), I like the fact that Falcone has the girl stored up there as evidence and Jim finally managed to play the game, haggling for Bullock's file and now President Of The Police Union, As we saw in "Spirit Of The Goat", Bullock is a hero at heart and at this moment Donal Logue really shines with his warning to Jim. You can tell deep down he really likes Jim. It's an excellent moment that show Bullock isn't just a dirty cop but a dirty cop that knows he's dirty and has made his peace with it. Their dynamic is excellent because through Jim, Bullock is becoming less dirty.
In conclusion, episodes like this are very well crafted, Jim Gordon got to advance as well as...er...Fish *sigh*, but overall a lot of stuff was accomplished and THANK GOD we didn't get Bruce going vigilante looking for Reggie and teaming up with Selina to figure out why The Wayne Board wants him dead and why Alfred got shivved. I have a sneaking feeling that'll be next week's episode. I still want to see more done with Penguin and The Riddler and when I say more, I mean GOOD stuff. We'll see what we see, until then, I got some serial killers to get to in "The Following", pulling double duty tonight, gang! Hang tight!
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