Prisoners – When Jim’s protective custody ends, he’s moved into the general prison population and given a low life expectancy by fellow inmates. Penguin’s new family life continues to go swimmingly until his position of inheritance sees his step siblings trying to drown him out.
One of several big cliff-hangers last week was Jim Gordon being convicted and sent to Blackgate Prison for murder, and the main story of this episode sees jailbird Jim adjusting the life inside the big house. There’s an excellent visual contrast to opening the prison routine montage within the protective custody wing to the “hell with cells” approach of F-Wing. Jim transitions from fighting off boredom for spending his every day doing the same series of mundane events to a fun new world of unpredictability.... because people are trying to kill him. A real case of being careful what you wish for. However, the episode struggles to sell Jim’s peril because although one key fellow and his flunkies have it in for him, no one else seems overly bothered. The idea of a hero/law enforcer being thrown into jail with those they put behind bars is classic but Gotham just doesn’t seem to deliver on it. You’ll watch it thinking it’s okay but fully aware that you’ve seen this story done better by other shows and various films.
In fact, some aspects of Jim’s porridge spell will be very familiar to those that watched Arrow last season. The prison scenes oddly find their strength form dipping into a very different classic, The Shawshank Redemption, via Jim’s well meaning friend Puck (who mentions Jim saving his sister from the child abductions of early season one). Puck represents Jim’s hope, which is the only thing keeping him alive inside.... and of course, gets beaten down like hell but doesn’t give up. His character particularly pays off in the climax.
The Penguin’s new family story takes an unexpected but simple and very entertaining new direction by becoming very self-contained. There’s no grand scheme/Court of Owls in play, just some good old fashioned gold-digging from Elijah’s new wife and her kids. Penguin being referred to as he only true blood relative (and therefore likely to now inherit his father’s vast fortune) immediately sets off their alarm bells. Both their reactions to Penguin leap-frogging them in priority and their subsequent scheming come with great dark humour. It’s made the better as they’re forced to keep up happy smiling appearances in the group scenes before sharpening their knives behind Elijah’s back. Though their crowning glory has to be their “Cruel Intentions long shot” ploy. When a confused Penguin wakes up to an overly-friendly step-sister, the results are utterly hilarious. The downside here is predictability with the outcome quickly becoming rather obvious and thus losing much of its impact upon arrival. However, Melinda Clarke (The OC, Nikita) keeps things going well as step mom Grace,, and it looks like she’ll be squaring off against Penguin in weeks to come. Penguin’s nightmares/flashbacks to his past are handled well to show that he still aware of all his former King of Gotham glory and every life he took (but never raped) along the way. It’s almost like cracks are starting to form within the mental walls of Hugo Strange’s mental programming. It’s reassuring in telling us that the lovable waddler will be reverting back to his old self before the end of the season, it’s just a case of when. If he does win the war for Daddy’s fortune, that will put him a great position to take back Gotham with a vengeance next season.
While many faces are absent this week (no Bruce & Selina, no Arkham), a few minor characters get good shining moments. Although it appears Edward Nigma has not carried out any further illicit activities since crow-barring Jim into a conviction, he still gets a good sub-textual gloat in when Bullock talks about the man behind it all. Harvey himself gets a nice little subplot as the only man in the GCPD that hasn’t given up on Jim, including the welcome return of a very familiar face. Although a similar teased return, it sadly just ends in disappointment. When the warden tells Jim that, “Ex Commissioner Loab says 'Hi!'”, that immediately sets the stakes for one hell of a reunion confrontation with Jim made to suffer for taking Loab down, and we get absolutely none of it! Maybe Peter Scolari wasn’t available for the episode but in that case, just cut out the name-drop rather than making a promise that cannot be delivered.
Prisoners is a good episode that some clear problems holding it back, but despite concluding with another Gotham classic quick change-up, it does feel surprising by sticking to the two core stories they were given enough time for. It might not be case of jailbird rocks but neither is it singing the blues.