Gotham S01 E20 – Poor Life Choices

Alex Gotham, Season 1, TV , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Previously: Christian Grey came to Gotham and Selina killed a guy.
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Under the Knife

Alex: Bruce is hanging around under a bridge. Some dodgy guy tries to start on him, but Selina appears and scares him away. She went back to check on Reggie, whose definitely-dead body has now been found by the cops. Bruce gets teary and asks why she did it. Selina yells back that she saved his life by killing Reggie, because otherwise this Bunderslaw guy would have found out what they were up to. Bruce suggests that they go check out Bunderslaw’s safe at the office to find out what he’s hiding, and Selina agrees to help after making him promise not to tell anyone what happened to Reggie.

Marines: Well, thank god Wayne Enterprises makes all of their employees keep a ALL MY SECRETS ARE IN HERE! safe.

Alex: CREDITSHAPPENEDSUPERQUICKLYTHISTIME

GCPD. Ed is murdering some watermelons.

He stops and licks some watermelon entrails off his gloves, which is kind of gross. (M: Yep.) Gordon bursts in and demands to know where Inara is, asking him to skip the riddles for once. Ed obliges and stammers that she went home.

We get a very quick shot of Milo Ventimiglia in his Christian Grey apartment. He’s surrounded by newspapers as he pockets a knife and heads out. Then we cut to Inara’s place, where she’s taking a bath. She hears a noise somewhere in the apartment and gets out to investigate. She checks her phone and sees that she’s missed some calls from Jim. Grabbing a large kitchen knife, she does a bit of exploring and ends up getting startled by a stray cat hiding under her bed. Relieved, she picks up the landline and calls Jim, whose phone starts ringing right behind her. She turns around and smacks him in the face with the handset, because apparently he thought it was a good idea to just sneak up on her.

In her bathroom, Inara tends to Gordon’s phone-related injury while he fills her in on how he may have accidentally sent a serial killer after her. Inara isn’t too bothered and is mostly just interested in the part where the killer comes after a ‘loved one’, which makes her happy. She refuses to leave town and encourages Jim to keep doing his job.

Mari: Jim is real lucky we all know Inara survives in the comics. If he got her killed, we’d be having some words. And by that I mean I’d be yelling at my TV. Like, more than usual.

Alex: In a noisy bar somewhere, Milo downs a drink and then sits down at a table with… Barbara. Remember her? Yep, she still exists. Sorry. (M: It’s okay if you get rid of this one Milo!)

Barbara takes Milo back to the Clocktower Apartment and checks that her ‘roommate’ Selina isn’t around. Is Barbara wearing a wig? Her hair looks really strange. Anyway, Milo spots that she has an invitation to the Wayne Enterprises charity ball, which Barbara explains she goes to every year. She hands Milo a drink and removes her coat. He asks if she isn’t worried that her boyfriend will catch them, I guess because he’s pretty bad at this stalker thing and is working with some out-of-date information. (M: Maybe Barbara is still “in a relationship” on Facebook. It’s time to move on, girl!)

Barbara gets offended that he thinks she’s the kind of girl who’d cheat on her boyfriend if she had one, which she definitely wouldn’t (except that she totally cheated on her boyfriend just a few months ago, but whatevs). While her back is turned, Milo pulls out a knife and prepares to get to the murdering. But then Barbara gets all self-indulgent and announces that nobody would miss her if she was dead, which makes him think twice. She brats about how he’ll probably run away screaming as soon as he sees the ‘real her’. Instead of just going ‘UGH, Barbara’ and leaving like the rest of us would, he gazes at her adoringly and looks kind of besotted.

Penguin’s Club. Penguin meets with some Irish mobster who looks pretty much exactly like the Irish mobster from Austin Powers.

Penguin asks this guy to help him kill Don Maroni and all his lieutenants, insisting that he’s serious. Penguin admits that Falcone doesn’t know about this yet, but insists that he’ll be happy when it’s done. The guy says thanks but no thanks, so Penguin asks him if he likes being number two. No, Penguin, Number Two was this guy:

Mari: Everything that just happened was A+.

Alex: Why thank you:

Penguin promises the Irish Mobster that if he can bring Maroni’s bullet-riddled corpse to Falcone, then he’ll become Falcone’s go-to assassin. The Irish Mobster is convinced.

GCPD. Bullock and Gordon meet with an old cop friend of Bullock’s, who investigated The Ogre’s very first kill before dropping the case. The cop tries to deny it, but Gordon knows that the Ogre killed this poor guy’s wife. There’s something scratched out of the evidence file and they want to know what it is, but the cop’s scared for his daughter. Gordon eventually persuades him to talk by showing him photos of the Ogre’s eleven victims. The cop explains that the first victim was a nurse at a private clinic downtown. Bullock assures him they’ll have cops protecting his daughter until they catch the killer. They head outside, where The Ogre is parked across the street, watching them.

GCPD records room. Kristen and her new cop boyfriend are smooching when Nygma interrupts them, carrying some recently-murdered watermelon.

Mari: If Nygma starts dancing next, I’m 100% back into this show.

Alex: Absolutely.

New Boyfriend asks if Kristen forgives him for something, and she awkwardly nods. He leaves, saying goodbye to ‘Riddle Man’ and stealing a cube of watermelon as he does. Nygma tells a nervous-looking Kristen that he needs the forensic records from some old murder cases. As she takes the details, he notices some bruises around her wrists, which she admits she got from her new boyfriend but insists that she deserved it.

Oh great, that’s just what this episode needed. More violence against women. This fucking show. Nygma tries to ask her about it some more, but she hurries him out, telling him it’s none of his business.

Wayne Manor. Bruce is reading some files on Sid Bunderslaw when Alfred walks in. Bruce asks Alfred to get his tux ready for the ball tonight, then asks him a random question about killing people when he was in the army. Alfred assumes Bruce is talking about the conversation he had with Reggie, and assures Bruce that any killing he did was necessary. Bruce tries to persuade Alfred to let him go to the ball with Selina unchaperoned. Alfred teases him a little, but agrees to wait in the car outside. Bruce asks for some clothes and shoes to be sent to Selina.

Bullock and Gordon are hanging around at an expensive cosmetic surgery clinic. Bullock reassures Gordon that Inara will be fine, but Gordon’s still worried and thinks that anything that happens to her will be his fault. A doctor greets the cops in the hallway and they explain they’re looking into the murder of one of his nurses. He tells them that she was recommended to them by a patient of theirs, but she hadn’t been working there long before she was murdered. He refuses to give up the patient’s name without a warrant. Outside the clinic, Milo is hiding in an alley with his car and almost knocks down the cops as he speeds away.

Back at the station, Gordon and Bullock explain to Essen that The Ogre was tailing them.  Just then, Gordon gets a call from The Ogre himself. He quotes a recent article about Gordon being the GCPD’s ‘rising star’, then warns that he’ll kill someone Jim loves if the investigation continues.

The Ogre hangs up and Gordon tells Essen that they need to show The Ogre that they’re not afraid. We cut to Gordon holding a press conference on the steps of the GCPD, filling the public in on The Ogre’s previous murders and asking for anyone with information to come forward. The Ogre watches all this on the TV.

Mari: I appreciate that Inara was there for support, but the kiss before the speech is probably making it way too easy for The Ogre.

Alex: Thank goodness he’s kind of a crappy stalker who can’t seem to pick up on these extremely obvious clues.

Clocktower Apartment. Barbara is looking for an outfit to wear to the Wayne Charity Ball, and Selina casually mentions that she’s going as Bruce Wayne’s date. Just then, some guys turn up with a bunch of fancy looking bags and boxes with outfits for Selina. She looks unimpressed, but Barbara grabs some of the bags and drags Selina off for a makeover.

GCPD. Bullock gets off the phone with the clinic doctor, who’s now given up the name of the patient they were looking for. Her name was Constance van Groot, and Gordon kindly fills us in on how that’s one of Gotham’s oldest families. They guess that maybe she had a son.

Penguin’s club. Penguin is horrified to find Maroni there flirting with his mother, who’s having a great time. They insist that Penguin join them at their table.

Clocktower Apartment. Bruce shows up to collect Selina and recognises Barbara as Jim’s old girlfriend. Selina slouches out in a dress which I’m not quite sure what to make of. I like the top and the bottom separately, but I’m not sure I like them together. I have absolutely zero fashion sense though, so what do I know?

Mari: The whole look together was weird and I can’t pinpoint why. She looks cute twirling and when the camera gets a little closer? Yeah, I don’t know.

Alex: Massive van Groot mansion. Bullock and Gordon just walk in without a warrant, because they’re running out of time and Jim can’t be bothered with protocol when his girlfriend might be in danger. Inside the house there’s one tiny fireplace which surely can’t be doing very much to heat the thousands of square feet of space down here. They find a man hanging in a noose from a door frame, apparently having just chosen this exact moment to attempt suicide. They cut him down while he’s still alive, and Bullock declares that he’s fine after slapping him in the face a bit. Bullock runs off to check the rest of the house while Gordon handcuffs him to a table. The Hanging Man mutters ‘he told me, but I was too slow’.

Upstairs, Bullock enters an enormous bedroom where there are several photos of the Hanging Man and another person. The other person is a child in some of the photos and a grown man in others, but in all of them his face has been scratched out. Bullock heads over to the bed and throws back the covers to find a very dead, mummified old lady.

Wayne Enterprises Effing Dance. Lots of rich old people smile at cute little Bruce Wayne and his date. Bruce tells Selina to keep looking around for Bunderslaw while they dance.

Bullock fills Essen in over the phone: the Hanging Man was the old lady’s butler, and they reckon The Ogre is probably his son. They guess that The Ogre killed her and they pretended that she was alive so that he could live off her money. (M: I mean, but they had to keep the body in the bed? I think not.) Back in the house, they interrogate the butler and ask him how many more women his son has to kill before he’ll help them. The Butler doesn’t seem to know what they’re talking about, insisting that his son’s only ever killed one woman.

Wayne Ball. Bruce and Selina walk around this crowded room just casually talking about murder. Bruce tells Selina that she crossed a line that he never would, and she says she’d do it again without it bothering her one bit. Just then, Bruce spots Bunderslaw.

GCPD. Ed confronts Kristen’s Asshole Boyfriend about hurting her. Asshole Boyfriend tells Nygma to calm down because women need ‘a firm hand’, especially if they talk back like Kristen does. Ed promises that he won’t let him hurt Kristen again, but Asshole just shrugs and leaves.

Wayne Ball. Barbara is standing around looking smokin’. She’s surprised to see The Ogre there, who asks her to dance.

The Butler’s interrogation at the Van Groot house is intercut with shots of Bullock explaining the whole thing to Essen back at GCPD, for maximum expository effect. Between them, they explain that the old lady doted on the Butler’s kid, so much so that he started to believe he was really her son. Eventually he asked if he could take her last name and be written into her will, but she just laughed at him, so he killed her. His dad helped him cover it up, but they haven’t seen each other for years. The Butler just got a call out of the blue today warning him that the police would be coming. He insists that his son definitely couldn’t have gone around seducing women, and pulls out a photo to prove it. It’s basically a picture of Milo Ventimiglia with a cauliflower photoshopped over one side of his face.

Mari: And ladies hate cauliflower, am I right?

Alex: Later, at the clinic, Gordon shows the photo to the doctor and he reluctantly admits that Milo was one of his patients.

Oswald’s. Mama Penguin is embarrassing her son with stories about how he was always too good to play with other children, saying what a proud mother she is. Maroni asks if she’s really stupid enough to believe that her son is only a nightclub owner. When she protests that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Maroni starts to fill her in on all the people her son has killed. She starts to gets upset as Penguin assures her that Maroni’s lying. Maroni grabs her roughly and asks exactly when she realised she’d given birth to a monster. She faints on Oswald’s shoulder and Penguin tells Maroni that he’ll pay for this.

At the dance, Milo explains to Barbara that he made a large donation in order to get his hands on an invitation, just so that he could see her. She’s flattered. He apologises for the way things ended the previous night, and sympathises with what she said about nobody liking the ‘real’ her. He tells her that he knows what it’s like to be one person on the inside, and have people see another person on the outside. She gets spooked at first, but agrees to accept his mysterious offer of ‘help’.

Mari: Reminder: if any of this happened to you in real life, RUN.

Alex: Snark Lady lifesaving advice for the day: a guy who pays $10,000 to stalk you to a ball after only meeting  you for the first time yesterday probably isn’t someone you should go home with, even if he does look like Milo Ventimiglia.

Elsewhere at the ball, Bruce greets Sid Bunderslaw and keeps him talking while Selina swipes the safe key from his pocket. She presses it into some putty inside a makeup compact, then slips it back. Bunderslaw seems eager to get away from Bruce and quickly excuses himself, just as Selina spots Barbara leaving with The Ogre.

Ed is waiting in his car outside Kristen’s house when Asshole Boyfriend comes round. Ed gets out and confronts him, telling him to leave Gotham. Asshole laughs at Ed’s obvious crush on Kristen, then punches him in the stomach. He pulls Ed up and goes to punch him again, but Ed pulls out a knife and stabs him a whole bunch of times. Yikes. The guy’s last words are ‘Riddle Man’ as he slumps to the ground. Ed looks at the bloodstained knife and alternates between saying ‘oh dear’ and giggling manically.

Mari: His hair looks especially evil in these shots too.

Alex: Mama Kappelput’s apartment. Penguin tries to laugh off everything Maroni said, but she’s looking terrified. She tells him to cut the crap and tell the truth, or he’ll break her heart. He swears to her that he’s just a nightclub owner and she nods and goes to bed, looking hurt. Just then there’s a knock at the door and it’s a guy delivering flowers for Mama, from Maroni. Oswald tells the guy to give Maroni a threatening message, but then changes his mind and just kills the guy with a bit of broken vase instead. Mama asks what all the noise is and he claims he’s just helping the neighbour take out some trash, as he drags the delivery guy’s corpse away.

GCPD. For some reason we’re getting even more exposition from Essen about how The Ogre had surgery and started seducing and killing women after the old lady rejected him, even though we know all that already. (M: This is a three episode plot! The writers don’t know if our brains can handle it.) (A: Don’t remind me.) The photo of The Ogre’s new face is missing from the clinic’s files, but the doctor kindly drew them a sketch which does sort of look like Milo. Gordon starts recalling everything The Ogre said to him on the phone, and realises that the article he was quoting had an old picture accompanying it. Jim wasn’t alone in that photo.

Jim rushes to the Clocktower Apartment and finds Selina there. She explains that Barbara left the Wayne Ball with some guy. He shows her the doctor’s sketch and she confirms that it’s probably the same guy.

Ogre Apartment. Milo pours himself a drink while Barbara asks what’s behind the mysterious door. He says she can see for herself so she steps inside. Some kind of fetish-club soundtrack kicks in as Barbara looks around the murder chamber. The Ogre joins her and she smiles.

WTF BARBARA WTF WTF. I know I said this in the last recap already, but there are FREAKING SWORDS AND AXES AND MURDER WEAPONS all over the walls. I’m no expert on these things but this is very clearly a MURDER ROOM, not a kinky playroom. I thought Barbara made some poor life choices when she chose to leave Jim and go on a bender with her ex girlfriend, but DAMN.

That’s the end of the episode, by the way. This horrible horrible plotline is STILL not over. I hate everything.

Well, except #gothamsnark. That’s still pretty great. Thank you to our tiny band of remaining #gothamsnarkers for seeing it through to the bitter end!

 

Next time: Barbara might get murdered in S01 E21 – The Anvil or The Hammer.

Alex (all posts)

I'm a thirty-year-old postgrad living in Scotland. When I'm not writing (which, between my degree and Snark Squad, is almost never) I watch entirely too much TV, and live in constant fear of the day that I run out of things to watch.





Marines (all posts)

I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.





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