For some reason, the Court of Owls is keeping them alive in these cages. I’m not sure why these two would be kept from the purge, since they were the kings of the underworld for some time. They are the exact type of people that the Court of Owls should be trying to kill. Yet, all they do when Nygma tries to escape is confiscate his lock pick and beat him. They know if they have any change of escaping they need to work together. They agree to a no-murder rule for the time being, so they are free to murder each other on the outside.
If we learned anything from the past, it is that they work together well. They set up an ambush on the guards. Nygma doesn’t take the chance to actually slit Penguin’s throat when he had the chance, and Penguin doesn’t leave him locked in the cage. It seems like it takes them a solid 5 minutes to get out of there with their combined efforts. They exchange threats (as proper villains do), and then they go their separate ways. Though, I can’t wait to see Barbara/Tabitha/Butch’s reaction when Nygma tells her that Penguin is still alive.
Meanwhile, Selena is on the way to kill Clone Bruce. Clone Bruce just asks how when he sees Selena, and doesn’t even pretend to be regular Bruce to try to get away with it. He says that he is glad that she is alive, which doesn’t really mean much after attempted murder. Though, I’m sure the only chance in which that would help would be if Nygma reacted that way to Penguin’s revival. Yet, Selena is still pissed and insulting him. Why would does she get up on an elevated surface and taunt him? That clearly didn’t work the first time. She is clearly not the brightest, but she at least she is able to warn Alfred of the truth before Clone Bruce knocks her out. It doesn’t help too much considering Clone Bruce just knocks him out next, after an intense head-butting contest.
When they wake up, Alfred is ready to go after Real Bruce, but Selena isn’t so eager. For some reason, she is still pissed at Bruce for the whole con artist mother situation. I think I would ignore this in a life or death situation, but apparently, Selena does not think the same. However, her assumption that he may already be dead would be a fair assumption if this wasn’t Gotham and no one ever dies here. Alfred is rightfully pissed that Selena won’t even try to help him, and says that she is no better than her mother.
Honestly, she deserves it, because she admits that she is only in it for herself. As if saving the boy that has done so much for her isn’t a fair trade off. It’s disappointing because I did want to see her and Alfred work together.
What Alfred doesn’t know is that Real Bruce is back in Gotham now. And I doubt his ex-girlfriend and butler being dead would help this old guy’s purpose right now. At this rate, Bruce is going to have to go through the process all over again to get over the murder of Selena and Alfred. Currently, this process includes locking away his mother’s pearls in his mind to get rid of the pain from that night. I thought we established this last week when he locked up his father’s cufflinks. Apparently, this is even more important, because Bruce can’t make himself do it.
Seeing this, the old guy shows Bruce the truth (whether this is actually the truth or something just made to convince Bruce is yet to be seen). The truth is that this old guy didn’t want his parents to be killed. It seems that lower management acted before asking in the matter. The old guy wants The Court to pay for their crimes.
This convinces Bruce to lock away his mother’s pearls, and he feels nothing when he thinks of his parent’s murder now. Essentially, the process removes all feeling, including physical and emotional. Without the pain, Bruce is just as mindless as all the assassins in the Court and will do whatever the old guy says. It’s not the weirdest thing this show has done.
Gordon is still unaware that Bruce is even missing in the first place. Alfred is unable to contact him as he is tied up by Barnes, who kidnapped him and took him to Kathryn. She is smart enough to realize that Professor Strange was covering for him, but still stupid enough to leave him alone with Barnes. Even though Barnes is determined to kill him, you would think that Kathryn knows Gordon has a knack for getting out of situations like these.
To be fair, it wasn’t Gordon’s efforts that helped his escape. The GCPD knocks down the door and rescues him. Looks like they are only competent when it comes to Gordon. They must realize that they would actually have to do work with him gone. However, the GCPD’s competence ends there, as they don’t catch Barnes.
The GCPD does bring in Kathryn, though. Luckily, before he was kidnapped, Gordon found out that the crystal owls show the locations of the Court when you shine light on it. Alfred still has the broken pieces left of his stolen owl, and Harvey got his best molding guy on it. Now he at least has some sort of leverage over Kathryn. It doesn’t really mean much though, because he also finds out that Kathryn isn’t the leader of the Court.
Alfred loses his mind when he hears that Kathryn is there. He barges into the interrogation room and stabs her hand. Gordon just lets him. That is only the beginning of the craziness in the GCPD, as Barnes enters shortly afterwards. Everyone is as useless as always, shooting his armor instead of his exposed head. I think we all assumed that this is how Kathryn would escape. Instead, he decapitates Kathryn because she calls what he is doing “nonsense.” At least we know his blade hand actually works and isn’t just a threat. However, that doesn’t matter much either, considering Gordon blows it off soon afterwards.
Unfortunately, Gordon and Harvey made the mistake of leaving Barnes in the hands of the GCPD for transportation to his imprisonment. About 5 minutes after Gordon and Harvey begin to relax, Barnes has escaped again and the virus sample is gone again. However, neither Barnes nor the Court have the virus sample.
Earlier in the episode, Lee had a dream that she was drinking Mario’s blood. This was probably the start of a really bad idea. She went to visit Tetch to ask why he infected Mario and not Lee if he wanted to hurt Jim. He said that he saw that Lee still loved Jim, so he turned that love to hate because Gordon did not deserve love. Now she thinks that she is the one to blame for all this.
She goes back to the GCPD to collect some things, and vaguely tells Jim that she is willing to pay for what she has done, unlike him. What she collects happens to be the virus sample, and to relieve her guilt, she infects herself with it. Essentially, this is the equivalent of being suicidal in Gotham. I guess she has learned the rule that no one dies in this town.
Gordon doesn’t have the time to figure out her odd comment to him with the Court of Owls and Barnes at large. He will probably realize his mistake when she comes after him with her newfound strength. Still, Gordon will need to figure out who the leader is. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the old guy Bruce is stuck with. Bruce also needs to get away from him and get back to Alfred, but that will be difficult since Selena isn’t helping (yet, I’m sure she will change her mind eventually). At least we got to see Penguin and Nygma help each other again before they go back to killing each other.
Written by Nicole Teeters, GOTHAM Beat Writer -- Click to read Nicole's posts
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