Burning Down The House: Gotham Season 2, Episode 5 Review
The good news for horror film fans: this episode was one step below The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with theme music from Dracula and a touch of Stephen King.
Highlights include Tabitha gouging out the eyeball of a Wayne Industries executive to open a safe with a retinal scanner. Evan Pike, fire-starter for hire, getting shot up by the police, which sets off the explosive he shoplifted at MERC, the Office Depot for criminal enforcers. Penguin chopping off Butch's arm.
Say what?
Penguin figured out a shockingly brutal way to get out from under Theo Galavan's thumb and potentially to save his mother. Watching Penguin emotionally unravel and seeing how far he's willing to go shows why he's the lynchpin of this whole hot mess.
He now knows the 200-year-old blood feud between the Dumas (now Galavan) and Wayne families, basically the Gotham version of the Hatfields & the McCoys with arson outsourcing and a stolen dagger.
Selina Kyle and her friend, former street orphan Bridgit Pike (who was probably better off out there), own the Firefly tale, which is Cinderella 2.0. Bridgit even makes her own clothes! I fully expected dancing mice to appear on-screen at any moment.
I am desperate for one - even one! - original and unpredictable story line on Gotham. Origin stories do not have to feel recycled.
Galavan has to be somebody's lackey because he is never becoming mayor with his un-dynamic personality and creepy smile. He is vanilla as they come, but has been catching some good waves, making him the luckiest SOB in Gotham politics.
He's 20 kinds of boring, but if his sole reason for being is to bring the Court of Owls to Gotham, then I'm all for it.
But Jim Gordon endorsing Galavan's candidacy makes no sense. (And here I thought cops had a 6th sense about when something is "hinky.") Neither does street-wise Detective Bullock not knocking some sense into his partner.
Then there are the numerous mentions of Fish Mooney, and "when" - Butch is the only one who insists "if," because he knows what would happen to him - she's coming back.
Please oh please bring back Fish Mooney to knock some sense into absolutely everyone in Gotham before it falls off the season 1 cliff.
I still might regret not naming this episode "Slow-Motion Train Wreck."
Coming up next, episode 6 "By Fire":
