A few hours later, Ra’s Al Ghul comes looking for his knife, and kills the old man. Hopefully, Bruce will learn from this and be able to keep the kid alive from now on. Maybe the first step in this would be telling Gordon exactly what is going on so they can catch and cage Ra’s Al Ghul before he can do anymore damage (however, it does seem like Harper would be able to help too, even in the brief moments we saw her in this episode). Yet, all he tells him that Barbara Keen wanted the knife.
Barbara is harboring Ra’s Al Ghul, a Dog Boy, and what seems to be a Viking Guy. Dog Boy is frightening. Just the noises he makes is enough to be unsettling. How does one become a Dog Boy? They never address this, but I’m not sure if I really want to know the answer anyway. Apparently, he is trained to sniff out the location of old knives though.
Barbara is being tightlipped about all these people that she is hiding (I use the word “people” lightly). But Gordon wants to know who is giving her all this money, and Barbara wants to know if Gordon likes her better now. Bruce appears from the shadows to keep things on track and ask her if it is Ra’s Al Ghul. How Gordon can call himself a great detective when he doesn’t even notice a teenager tailing him. Clearly, they need to team up before more kids sneak up on Gordon.
Bruce and Gordon go to find the kid who watched his grandfather die earlier. This poor kid is terrified. He hid the knife, but since Ra’s Al Ghul probably wants to kill him out of fear that he saw something, this kid just got rid of his best bargaining chip. After Dog Boy and Viking track down all of them and discover they don’t have the knife, Ra’s Al Ghul thinks that the police station has the knife. He makes it seem as though the knife is his community’s rightful property, as if that justifies getting the criminal underworld involved in this affair. In this process, he explains the story of the knife in a very intimidating way, and Gordon carefully explains that the kid saw nothing and he should be safe.
Their conversation seems to be going well, but then Alfred storms in looking for Bruce. Upon seeing Ra’s Al Ghul, he punches him in the face. It is amazing. The disappearing act that Ra’s Al Ghul pulls is impressive too. However, Gordon doesn’t agree with me on this. He is putting Alfred on timeout until he finds Bruce and can get all the information out of them.
Bruce going with the kid to find the knife. They’re bonding like all teenagers do: by giving a motivational speech about fear. That’s what all the coolest kids do. Unfortunately, Bruce can’t continue his Ted Talk because Dog Boy and Viking are right on their tails. A ridiculous fight scene ensues where Gordon comes to save the day by playing fetch with Dog Boy and stabbing Viking Guy. MVP of the fight is the kid who gets a good shot on Dog Boy, and loser of the fight goes to the dinosaur exhibit they ruined in the process of this fight.
However, I created these statistics before Ra’s Al Ghul held the boy hostage in order to get the knife. Bruce refuses to give the knife over to Ra’s, even with the threat of killing the boy. I suppose Ra’s saw that this was a lost cause, so he slits the boy’s throat right there and then. Bruce feels entirely responsible, but at least Gordon can reasonably imprison the man to prevent some danger for now. Basically, it gives Bruce enough time to get over his grief regarding this situation before Ra’s comes back.
Penguin is also busy in this episode. He welcomed (interrogated) the newest Falcone member to the city. However, they get straight to the point quickly. He worried that Falcone himself was going to come back, and all the criminals that were previously loyal to him would undermine Penguin. It seems like Penguin’s fears were founded, as some underground Falcone fans flock to his daughter soon after. No one really seems to care about her, just about her father, which must sting a little bit.
Once Penguin sees her refuse their support, his paranoia is put to rest, and he killed the loyalists. Now he doesn’t need to worry about those pesky loyalists anymore. She sheds some fake tears, but still tells him that he is doing it all wrong. Overall, it is hard to pin down what her plan is exactly. Gordon certainly has no idea what it is, but he doesn’t really seem to mind either. They love to make that prolonged eye contact. If he likes her the way she is, then he probably is more attracted to Barbara now more than ever too.
However, Penguin should probably worry about Nygma more than Falcone. Nygma is driving himself insane trying to come up with clever riddles. Basically, he is acting just like I do when I am studying for my exams. Yet, after enough time, he has cracked it. He has come up with the perfect riddle. And what is the best way to deliver the riddle to Penguin? Obviously, what we are all thinking, in the form of a rap.
Penguin believes that it is so ridiculous that is must be one of his tricks. That is, until he goes to the pier and Nygma isn’t there. Nygma sends a new rap to Penguin (wasn’t the rhyming element more of Tetch’s thing anyway?), but it is incredibly vague and Penguin realizes that he must have lost it.
Nygma is infuriated that Penguin continues not to show, and comes to the club looking for him. At this point, freezing him again is a matter of procedure and posing for Penguin, as opposed to capturing and torturing the guy. When Nygma accepts his broken brain and being frozen once again, Penguin stops. He is going to let him live as a lesser version of himself instead, since that is more torturous than anything that Penguin could do. Apparently, the idea of people dying and coming back to life is no big deal for people in Gotham to conceptualize, but the idea of a man restoring his brain’s full capacity? Impossible. I’m sure this choice will come back to haunt Penguin later.
Overall, this episode pulls together some of the storylines. While Falcone and Nygma still seem to be separate storylines for now, Bruce and Gordon can work together on the Ra’s Al Ghul situation. Hopefully, Falcone and Nygma’s storylines coincide, because Nygma seems to work well with powerful women to take control of criminal underworlds.
Written by Nicole Teeters, GOTHAM Beat Writer
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