Rage Apéritif, Revenge Entrée: Gotham Season 2, Episode 7 Review
"Nobody's telling the truth. This is Gotham."
This is why I love Detective Harvey Bullock. He'll outlast every mayor, every crime boss, and every chief of police because he keeps it real, and realistic.
"Questions like that are above my pay grade and below my sense of wonder."
Even fellow cops falling victim to Death By Stiletto doesn't surprise him, so guessing Penguin is involved in some bloody, crazy scheme to unseat the mayor? Just another day at the precinct.
The Maniax are back, include newly elected mayor Theo Galavan's sister Tabitha with her sniper rifle and sassy assassinations. It's all she can do to restrain herself until after he's sworn into office.
Right on cue, the mayoral celebration turns into a massacre. Public events turning into bloodbaths: the Gotham season 2 go-to.
The most meaningful - even poignant - murder in this episode actually had the least amount of blood, as Tabitha stabs Penguin's kidnapped mother in the back as he's holding her in his arms, after pleading for her life and freeing her.
Carol Kane, otherwise known as Madame Morrible in the Broadway musical "Wicked," played that dying scene to perfection, over-the-top, comic-book perfection, which sent Penguin into an even more vicious spiral of rage. (Robin Lord Taylor said working with Carol Kane was the highlight of his career.)
Mayor Galavan can't wait to leverage that rage, so he goes on live TV and baits Penguin, "a man not even a mother could love." Even by Gotham standards, Theo Galavan is one cold, manipulative bastard.
Silver St. Cloud is the homecoming queen lookalike of Bruce's private school, planted there by Uncle Theo specifically to catch Bruce's eye. And it works. Next step: get Bruce to sign over Wayne Enterprises to Galavan.
Selina "allergic to front doors" Kyle is the mystery girl from the wrong side of the tracks who's killed people, protected people, allied with the criminals, allied with the cops, and everything in between. She has a soft spot for Bruce and sees exactly what's going on here, even if he doesn't.
We know Selina: she's going to do something to stop it.
Maybe this is the real Supergirl show on Monday nights?
Selina has not only been to lunch at the Wayne Mansion with Silver and Bruce, but also been the fly on Penguin's conference room wall since the downfall - that's one way to put it - of Fish Mooney in the season 1 finale. If Jim Gordon made it worth her while, she'd have a lot to say, on a lot of subjects.
But let's not go any deeper in re-tread territory than we already are. Jim Gordon vs. the city's top crime boss, who on some level he kind of believes, and with whom he needs to form a new alliance to take down somebody worse. Jim Gordon with inexplicably bad instincts - and lousy aim - for a GCPD second in command after a season and change on Gotham.
Jim Gordon, who still doesn't see his ex-girlfriend Barbara clearly for the dangerous psychopath she is, and he'll be sorry next week.
A re-tread I look forward to? Harvey Bullock's "Sometimes the good guys have a bad night."
P. S. Cory Michael Smith won me over by kicking and screaming at the vending machine (although most of us buy bottled water and not dead people's hands), but I'll start writing about the Riddler when that story line stops feeling like a completely separate show. We're starting to see the Riddler's long game. Finally.
Coming up, episode 8 "Tonight's the Night"
