“And everything was going so well...” remarked Dwight McCarthy right before his plans got well and truly derailed. Sometimes, problems or failures feel worse for their timing rather than their actual effect. Sometimes, we can get so used to things going our way that even the slightest upset feels like a disaster. This week, Gotham delivers an imperfect episode instead of the thrilling mid-season finale it promised. It’s still an enjoyable enough episode but after so much success these last 10 weeks, it can’t help feel like a letdown for not meeting our expectations.
Worse Than A Crime – As Theo Galavan and the rest of the Order of St Dumas ready to sacrifice Bruce Wayne at midnight, Jim Gordon, Penguin, and many others unite in one final effort to take him down. When the time comes, will Jim be able to arrest Theo or will he need to kill him?
As an individual episode, this has a lot going for it. It utilises the extended cast of the show in very good ways in the anti-Theo alliance with various known hero and villain characters combine forces and interacting well. Despite their common enemy, there’s a good central conflict of Jim torn between being the man of vengeance and the man of the law, in keeping with the growing themes of Jim getting too in touch with his dark side. He has the righteous alignment of Captain Daniels pulling him in one direction (Daniels even makes Jim a wanted man following his disappearance despite believing in Jim’s innocence and Theo’s guilt)). In the other corner, Penguin is dragging him down to his single-minded level vengeance as he reminds Jim of Theo’s manipulation of Barbara and almost killing Lee. It builds up well into a climactic dilemma of whether or not Jim will pull the trigger or pull out the badge with each side getting fair arguments and in some cases we see Jim actually being baited towards the drastic option. His scene with Theo is brilliant as the man itself looks relieved and even jubilant when confident that Jim will only be arresting him, like the threats of police and legal system worry him less than which tie to wear in the court room. Another good result is Bruce’s calm embrace of the impending events. It’s another great piece of Batman foreshadowing as we see him feeling alive by embracing his fear to give him the advantage of composure even when the knife comes out.
However, in terms of Worse Than A Crime being a payoff worthy mid-season finale, it’s not entirely successful. The play out of the St. Dumas storyline is ultimately quite disappointing in that while the ritual sacrifice is a nice visual set piece it’s utterly devoid of peril and this the drama suffers. The only character under threat is Bruce Wayne, the single safest character in the entire Batman prequel setup so there’s never a even moments doubt over the outcome. It would be like making The Walking Dead’s recent Glenn cliff-hanger about Rick Grimes. It would have been received with straight unimpressed faces and a few blunt remarks “Well they’re never going to kill off Rick”. The further attempts to put some stakes on the fate of Silver St. Cloud does not improve this either. Despite being initially dull, their scenes do become quite enjoyable in the speculation of whether or not Silver is still playing Bruce but their plot still feels more like filler. The end story result of the episode feels much to like Gotham hitting the rest button on the series just when it doing so well. If this is meant to be the culmination of a Court of Owls storyline, it was not the anticipation but certain events imply this might simply have been a decoy, and that we’ll see that storyline starting up properly after Christmas (we even get an “owls are cool” Easter Egg). The end moments villain teasers, while cool (quite literally), feel more like cheaper hype tricks, especially a certain frosty fellow who’s shown with no apparent story context. At least the new Doctor in the house gets name-dropped via connection to the episode's aftermath, and the manner of his new patient and promises of improvements are definitely the best end of year tease.
The episode does see several smaller characters getting good moments in the spotlight. Lucius Fox quite literally comes out from his cave and back into proceedings after a good 2 months and fits in well to the overall dynamic. Following last week’s awesome fight with Tabitha, Sean Pertwee has another great week as Alfred in both the aftermath of his escape and gear up with the rest of the guys. In fact, his ever so polite attempt at car theft is the episode’s funniest moment. Tigress herself gets some interesting material as relationships fracture in the Galavan household. Seeing her defending Silver is quite a U-turn from her prior ruthlessness by the script bridges it well. Edward Nigma turns into great supporting fun as he slips people riddle based clues to his apartment staging area; plus, Jim waking up to he and Penguin on the piano is just delightful.
If this was any regular episode, it would be received much more kindly, but the simple fact is that hyped episodes should deliver, and we just don’t get enough of that here. Hopefully, this is all part of master plan rather than a sharp change direction because despite showing so much promise this autumn, Gotham is going into Christmas in danger of appearing on the naughty list.