Wow! This episode was so incredibly good!
Let's go through the low, medium, and high points of it.
LOWS
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None!
Everything was so good!
MEDIUMS
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...None?
Everything was so freaking good!
HIGHS
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1. Penguin
I am just so impressed with everything regarding Penguin: Robin Lord Taylor's acting (as always), the fact that he is still haunted by his mother's death, and the direction the writers seem to be taking him in.
At this point, I think it's safe to say that Penguin did not intend to be captured by the GCPD or to be put in Arkham. I only suspected he might have intended for that to happen because he was so calm and he claimed to be crazy when Captain Barnes dragged him into the department.
But, no. If Penguin had planned for all this to happen, I'm sure he would have planned to have some recourse available to him, someone looking out for him maybe. Penguin wouldn't have let things get as far as they have.
Hugo Strange has now successfully brainwashed Penguin.
Strange did this by inducing horrible hallucinations in Penguin (using Dr. Crane's fear formula, it sounds like).
In a very vivid scene, Penguin hallucinates about an evil version of himself killing his mother with a baseball bat. His real self (who's still evil, but would never hurt his mom) can only watch from the chair he's tied to.
That hallucination seems to confirm that Penguin still blames himself for his mother's death, which is a sentiment he expressed to Nygma in Season 2a. In Season 2a, Penguin says that his mother died because of his weakness. He was saying how her death was an example of how the murder-road that Nygma wants to follow only leads to pain.
It's true that Penguin's mother never would have been murdered if Penguin hadn't been so evil and power-hungry. So, considering that, Penguin was right to feel guilty for her death. Well, maybe not guilty for her death, exactly. But guilty for all the evil things he did that obviously caught up to him.
I expected he would feel guilty for doing them simply because they put his mother in danger, and not so much because they were horrible things to do.
However, there is also the fact that Hugo brings up "remorse."
He brought up "regret" when he first met Penguin, and this episode makes it clear that Hugo's priority in brainwashing Penguin was to make Penguin feel remorse for his crimes.
Therefore, it's possible that Penguin's guilty hallucination was designed by Hugo to make Penguin feel remorse, and it wasn't so much a reflection of Penguin's real feelings of guilt.
However, at the very least, Penguin's hallucination shows how much pain he's still in over his mother.
The hallucination is just the latest in a long series of such depictions, showing Penguin's lasting pain over his loss, and I love it because it's realistic and relatable. Any real person would still be feeling the pangs of loss after going through what Penguin has. It's just that a great many TV shows don't allow their characters to remain depressed for very long. Real-ness be damned.
And I was afraid Gotham would be no different. They gave Penguin three episodes in which to mourn his mother in Season 2a, and I thought, "Well, I guess that's it." And I thought three episodes was generous, as TV shows go. But, nay! It seems Gotham is being truly generous.
As horrible as it sounds, I'm glad Penguin has remained sad since his mother's death. It simply makes sense for him to have done so.
How does the hallucination scene prove that Penguin remained depressed since his mother's death?
I mean, it doesn't PROVE anything, really. I just feel like we can assume that Crane's formula brought Penguin's worst fears and regrets to life. It just caused him to suffer more acutely. He's been suffering ever since his mother was first kidnapped, just less acutely.
I now feel pretty confident in my theory that Penguin became too depressed to competently lead his men, and that's how Butch took over.
I was scared that it would turn out that Penguin planned to let Butch take over and that Penguin planned to get captured by the GCPD, as part of some sort of hammy plot. That, to me, would indicate that he very quickly got over his mother's death and moved on to making new evil plots.
Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case!
So, Hugo brainwashed Penguin into being kind, remorseful, and normal. Obviously, Penguin has to revert back to being a villain at some point. Up till now, I couldn't wait to see Penguin rise to power again as a gentleman of crime, King of Gotham's underworld.
However, after the scene in which Penguin plays that word association game, after actually SEEING Penguin as a good, kind, normal person...I'm not at all sure I want him to go back to the way he was.
Wouldn't it be nice if Penguin could just be a good person, leave all the bad stuff behind, and maybe move away from Gotham and live out his life peacefully somewhere else?
I remember having similar pointless hopes when Penguin was recovering from his gunshot wound in Nygma's apartment. Penguin actually said that he was leaving Gotham. As much as I knew that that would never happen, it didn't stop me from hoping.
Oh, well.
But this brings up the very important question of where his character could go from here. Really, he could go anywhere, and that's very exciting. I mean, obviously, he'll end up being some sort of crime lord again, but will he be a kinder crime lord or a crueler one?
Some people might think the answer is obvious, but I think it could go either way.
What's even more interesting is how he's going to get there. Basically, he's starting from scratch. He has the emotional disposition of a baby and he has no power left in Gotham, so how are the writers going to get him from point A to point B?
I think the answer will have something to do with Hugo's promise that "good things happen to good people." Obviously, the truth is that bad things sometimes happen to good people, and good things sometimes happen to bad people.
Therefore, when Penguin discovers (or re-discovers, more likely) the truth of "good things for good people", it will likely impact his desire to be good. If you're only good because good things are promised you, and then you don't get good things, why would you continue to be good?
But the real question is, why would Penguin continue to be anything? As I've said in previous reviews, love is the only real motivator, and he lost the only love in his life when he lost his mom. Then, because he had no real motivation to hold on to his power, he lost control of his men. (I theorize.)
So what's going to happen to Penguin? What actions will he take while he's under Hugo's control? What are Hugo's uber-mysterious plans for Penguin? And once Penguin is no longer under Hugo's control, what's going to motivate Penguin to go forward and reclaim his throne?
I'm so very excited to see what the writers have planned!
2. The Joker Cult/Nightclub/Whatever
The nightclub was a like a character in itself.
Apparently, people will put on punk clothing, clown masks, and Joker-esque makeup and come to this club to rock out to live music while footage of Jerome is projected onto the walls.
It's scary.
I mean, the last time we saw people watching footage of Jerome, these people were so immediately and massively affected by the footage that they started laughing maniacally and murdering people left and right.
But the people in this club don't seem quite that crazy. And that's part of what makes it creepy. Is it just that Jerome's footage has lost its power and these people aren't that bad?
Or are they vicious barbarians who have simply learned to reason?
It's like these people are SECRETLY evil, and they're just biding their time, being smart, plotting in secret to take down civilization, rather than making the mistake of creating chaos in the open and going to jail for it.
Combine the stagy costumes and makeup with the secret Jerome-cult undertones, and you get a theatrical, creepy, mysterious delight of a fictional nightclub.
3. Jeri
And Jeri is the obvious leader of said secret Jerome-cult. I mean, like I said, it's not clear if such a cult even exits, but if it does, I'd totally buy Jeri as the leader of it. She's perfect for it. She embodies the nightclub.
She embodies "theatrical, creepy, mysterious, and delightful."
Her appearance (very much inspired by Joker/Dead-Jerome), singing, and some of her antics are theatrical. She's creepy and mysterious when she tells Bruce about Malone and gives no reason for her actions other than "Who doesn't like to play God?" And she's delightful every time she speaks with that cute, Southern accent.
I hope Jeri comes back. I think she'll make a great villain.
4. Bruce Wayne
David Mazouz is just getting better and better as Bruce Wayne. His facial expressions were heartbreaking when he was talking to Malone.
Also, his massive character growth in this episode is very convincing.
To paraphrase Bruce, "You can't kill murder. The only way to start fighting these things is to not do them." I was surprised that I actually understood Batman's "no killing" policy, for once. (Has it ever been explained before? I just thought it was a given part of Batman's character.)
I believe he came to the right conclusion. And it was very well-explained HOW he came to that conclusion. Matches Malone was a horrible, horrible person, but he was a person, and Bruce saw that.
I personally believe the golden rule is always supposed -- SUPPOSED -- to apply. No matter how much a person might want to be cruel, a truly good person will do unto others as he/she would have them do unto him/her. That means always forgiving and never hurting.
The fact is, though, that no one is truly good. Everyone is at least a little bad. And is it even possible to always follow the golden rule? Sometimes, maybe you're caught between a rock and a hard place.
Moreover, sometimes, maybe a very deep aversion to doing something can be considered the same as an inability to do it. Not wanting to do something can make it extremely hard to do. Can it maybe become so hard as to be considered impossible? Where is the threshold of impossible?
That is a discussion for another time.
Anyway, Bruce sounds very much like a pacifist in his closing lines. This episode explains his belief that one should not kill others. But as Batman, he does physically attack others. I wonder what will happen to him to make him think that it is okay to physically attack other people if it is not okay to kill them.
I am looking forward to finding out. The Gotham writers sure are taking us on a heck of an emotional and philosophical journey!
5. Matches Malone
Malone fascinated me because he was an unusual example of why Gotham needs Batman.
Malone talked about how tired it can make someone to keep getting away with his evil deeds. It makes him wonder whether there really is a God. I can totally imagine myself thinking that in his position.
The story of Job tells us that sometimes bad things happen. God lets them happen for reasons beyond our understanding. God gives us the promise that it's always for the best in the end. In the end, Job was happy, and his story inspired billions and billions.
But I've always struggled with the conflicting ideas that God loves us and yet He lets bad things happen to us. I struggle with the idea that I'm supposed to have faith in God to help and protect me, when I know that something bad could happen to me at any time. If it's for the best, it will happen.
For instance, if I'm driving into a blizzard, I don't worry about crashing if I remember that God is protecting me. If, however, I remember that it might be for the best that I crash, I get worried again. Because God might let it happen.
Anyway, the fact is that it hasn't ever happened. In general, the things we worry about don't happen, because God does protect us and want us to be happy. But when the bad things do happen? It can be hard to keep having faith. When they happen regularly? When you're the one DOING them? I imagine it's a million times harder.
Well, Matches Malone did horrible things regularly, and it tired him out. There's no rest for the wicked, because they don't or can't have faith. Without faith, they have to worry.
So, if Batman protects the good people of Gotham from the bad people, it might benefit not only the good people, but also the bad people. It might keep their faith alive, too. Interesting, no?
7. Nygma
Nygma was so wonderfully over-the-top this episode, talking to himself all evil and crazy-like, out loud, in public, and no one seemed to notice. I mean, Nygma's always been weird, so maybe the people around him just don't notice anymore, but whatever. It was great. Classic villain. I absolutely loved it.
The only thing that disappointed me was that I expected Penguin to show up at Nygma's apartment at the end, which he didn't. It would have been hilarious if he did, but it's intriguing that he didn't. Where else does Penguin have to go?
Guess we'll find out next week, on Gotham! (This show is making me feel like a kid again, watching a Saturday morning superhero cartoon!)
RATINGS
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General: 10/10
Compared-to-All-The-Content-I've-Ever-Loved: 9/10
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