Episode Title: The Anvil or the Hammer
Original Airdate: 4-27-15
As Gotham gets closer to the season finale it gets busy ramping everyone up to the extreme as some characters move ever closer to the ones that we’re very familiar with in the Batman mythos, while others stray even farther away from the characters that we know and love (or love to hate). And another episode without hide nor hair of Fish Mooney. Not that that’s a bad thing, though I have a sneaking suspicion that she will end up coming back near the very end of the season. And through her actions she will end this gang war that’s started in full force after the events of this episode. We also get to finish up the saga of the Ogre which had a promising start, but a rather odd finish.
At the end of last week’s episode, we got to see the Ogre reveal his lair to Barbara and she didn’t flinch. And over the course of the episode, she starts off being the strong woman but rather quickly gets drawn over to his side in what seemed like an attempt at a Stockholm syndrome. But it happened so quickly and without any rhyme or reason that it didn’t seem to make any sense. One moment she’s spitting in his face, and after being drugged and passed out, she has him kill her own parents and acts like a mental zombie as she’s being rescued. I could see her playing the strong woman and fighting against him for a long period of time, I could see her playing along with him until she could make her move at the right time, but I had no idea what this was supposed to be. It also brought out a level of violence and tenacity in Gordon that we hadn’t quite seen before now. I suppose it’s meant to show how he really does still have feelings for Barbara even though he’s with Leslie, it’s almost there, I just think it took a sharp left somewhere along the way.
The villains this week on the other hand felt a lot more appropriate, and well on their way towards becoming the Batman villains we’re familiar with. Penguin continues his manipulation and moves up to some expert level tactics as he fools even those closest to him in an effort to get Maroni off of his scent and onto Falcone in full force via a failed hit. It’s a much better position for him to be the manipulator to give himself a better position rather than the hands on guy he has been on several occasions in this show. Meanwhile, Nygma is left to his own devices to dispose of his first body. And while it was a little sloppy and a lot lucky, I can forgive it as it’s his first try. Not only that, but it does end up with a very important part of Nygma’s psyche, he can’t just leave everything clean, he has to throw in that little extra clue that he thinks no one else but him would ever notice, which he does with the detective’s “farewell” letter to Miss Kringle.
And of course we can’t forget about little Bruce and his own little Sherlock Holmes adventure. There is another nice little detail that I noticed, while she prefers the name Cat around everyone else, she refers to herself as Selina to Bruce. I quite like that detail. But Bruce finds out a few things in his little mystery solving adventure. First off, he isn’t as smart or sneaky as he thought he was. The guy he was after knew Bruce was on his tail the entire time. Second, we get our first little introduction to Lucius Fox. And third, Bruce learns the harsh reality that his father wasn’t a complete and total saint, but was involved with the operation to some extent. All in all, it was a fairly decent episode, the biggest disappointment was everything to do with Barbara, the writers just don’t seem to know what to do with her at all. Most everything else was surprisingly spot on this week.
Channel: Superhero 