[Header Image: Andrew Sellon as Mr Penn, Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot, and Cory Michael Smith as Edward Nygma | Fox]
This new episode of Gotham sees the return of Harvey’s old partner, Dix. When we first see him, he’s no longer in a wheelchair as he shows up to Sirens to talk to two retired cops, Boggs and Lewis, who worked around the same time he did. He asks if they ever think about what they all did to the girl and once Dix leaves the two end up dead on the floor.
Barbara calls Harvey and Jim as a courtesy to check it out and it leads them to go and talk to Dix. However, when they show up Dix is in his wheelchair and he shoots the door when they knock, claiming it’s because he’s so vulnerable and anyone could come in, kill him, and take his things. While he and Harvey talk, Jim finds a packed bag but Dix continues to deny everything and it turns out he’s telling the truth. With the three of them still in the apartment, a knock comes at the door. When Harvey answers, Dix is stood at the door (the one from Sirens) and, during a struggle, Harvey ends up pulling this new Dix’s face off.
When they all get back to the GCPD, Harvey and Dix tell Jim about the case they, Boggs, and Lewis worked together. The case involved a woman who shot her husband. She was convicted based purely on the statement of her daughter Jane who was seven at the time (twenty-seven now). Jim wants to go and find her but Harvey is pretty determined that it is a dead end.
While Jim’s gone, Harvey and Dix talk. It’s so clear how guilty Harvey feels over not seeing him for a long time but while the two do talk about how Dix has been. Harvey has changed so much over the course of this show and it’s so good to see that in the little details, in this episode it’s the different emotions he displays. Eventually, the conversation swiftly moves over to talk about the case. Dix reveals that Jane is dead so she couldn’t be involved but he also drops the information that she was supposedly an Arkham inmate a couple of years ago which, based on its history, can’t be a good thing.
That turns out to be true because when Jim, Harper, and another officer show up to an abandoned house, the officer finds a girl who attacks him and then steals his face by touching him. When Jim punches her in the face, it goes back to normal but she pleads for him not to look at her. When they’re in the GCPD again, Jim interrogates her and we discover that she is Jane Doe. She talks to him so that she won’t have to take her mask on but she says that Jim will have to talk to Harvey if he wants to know why the cops died.
They don’t seem to talk straight away, instead we see Harvey take Dix somewhere quiet so they can talk only to discover that it’s actually Jane impersonating Harvey. No one seems to be suspicious at this point and Barbara shows up, delaying things slightly. She reveals that the killer said, “the kid’s guilty, too.” The real Harvey then shows up and they realise that it was Jane who took Dix. They’re too late and when they find him, he’s already dead. Honestly, this episode is just blow after blow for Harvey at this point and I don’t like it.
As Jim tries to put the GCPD on lockdown, two Barbara’s show up. It doesn’t take too long to determine which was which but Jane gets away. Prior to his, Barbara and Jim had been avoiding talking about what happens with the baby and how involved they both are, I wonder if that will change now.
It’s Harvey that tracks Jane back to her house. She tells him that Hugo destroyed her face but Harvey and the other cops destroyed her soul. They made Jane into a killer so they have to die. Harvey starts to put down his gun and says that he wants to see her real face. When she lifts up her mask her face is perfectly fine. Harvey tries to convince her to put the gun down but she declares that it only ends with one of them dead. As she raises her gun, Harvey is quicker and shoots her in the chest, leaving him shaky and looking a little sick. You can tell this broke Harvey a little, even before he talks to Jim about it back at the GCPD. Again, the old Harvey never would have reacted quite like this and it really does show how much he’s changed.
Anyway, during his conversation with Jim, Harvey reveals that during the old case they knew the woman was guilty but there was no evidence so they leaned on Jane for a statement. While the woman was guilty of killing her husband, Harvey discovered much later than she and Jane were beaten by him. When Jane said “the kid’s guilty, too.” she was talking about Harvey who was a young, new cop at the time. I mean, none of this behaviour from Harvey is too surprising. As he said, he wasn’t the nicest person or cop when we first met him, it was only as he got to know and work with Jim that things changed for him.
While this is all happening, Bruce and Alfred come across a woman in hospital who says she, her husband Hank, and various other people heard about something underneath the building, living in the sewers, and that people have been going missing. When she and her husband went to investigate, she bumped her head and woke up to find him missing. After talking with her, Bruce and Alfred decide to go and investigate themselves, at the very least to find her husband.
While they investigate, they find Hank but something is following him. It growls and makes other similar noises and when Bruce’s light goes out, it attacks. It seems to be a human man who has been affected by the chemicals that were dumped into the river which is later confirmed. Bruce and Alfred manage to knock the man down who keeps saying “stop” over and over as Alfred beats him. I’m actually curious to see if the toxin have had any other effect now that they’re in the water and if everyone will react the same way.
They manage to get both Hank and the man back to the hospital. While Hank is reunited with his wife, we discover that the man will never recover from the damage of the toxins. Bruce thinks that him and Alfred going off like that was reckless and the conversation turns to reveal that Alfred feels guilty/responsible for Wayne manor being destroyed but Bruce continues to reassure him that he’s got nothing to feel guilty about leading to one of the most soft and genuine between these two.
In this episode, Ed and Oswald are still together and their bickering was honestly hilarious. I love how the former was angry because he’s been doing all the work on the submarine to get them off the island while Oswald has done nothing towards it which of course, Oswald doesn’t agree with that at all. Regardless, it was fun to see them occupying the same space again but not exactly getting on quite as well as they used to it.
That being said, they are interrupted when Penn shows up. Firstly, why is anyone ever shocked when they see a dead person again? The list of people who have been brought back to life is pretty extensive at this point. We don’t really get much explanation for Penn but he does introduce Oswald and Ed (and us) to Scarface. Ed’s “wonderful” when they first meet him was hilarious especially when paired with Oswald’s facial expressions.
Penn says that Scarface is incredibly persuasive and got him to come to Oswald’s place but Oswald finds the whole thing hilarious and doesn’t believe Scarface to be anything other than a doll. Apparently Scarface made Penn tell him about Oswald’s treasures. This gets Ed’s attention and more so when Scarface begins to talk, however, they both still think that things are fine and want Penn and Scarface to leave but before that can happen, Scarface wants to prove they’re serious so Penn shoots Dale (Oswald’s new guard). Honestly, by this point, every interaction between these four was already golden but it just kept getting better as the episode went on.
Penn explains that he woke up in the GCPD, patched himself up, and then took refuge in an abandoned toy shop where Scarface found him. Scarface says that Penn revealed that Oswald used to use him to which Ed agrees that that’s what Oswald does. It doesn’t help that he’s gotten Penn’s name wrong twice so far in the episode.Regardless, it turns out that Scarface wants Oswald’s treasure but also to be the ruler of Gotham. At this point, Ed steps in. Firstly, I loved seeing him call out Oswald on his behaviour. Secondly, he manages to stump Scarface by asking what he’s going to do after he gets the treasure because everyone will be coming after him. That’s when Ed offers up the use of the submarine.
Scarface decides to accept the offer and decides to let Ed live, however, he wants Oswald dead. Penn apologises and Oswald tries to convince him that everything they went through wasn’t all bad, that they did a lot together and what Scarface is doing to him is worse but it doesn’t work. Scarface starts talking about the things Oswald did to Penn but the rant ends with Penn saying the words and not Scarface. As things escalate, Ed uses a machine to make a high pitched noise giving Oswald the chance to tackle Penn and Scarface. He gets a hold of the gun and decides to shoot Scarface, freeing Penn who wants to make it up to Oswald but before he can, Ed shoots and kills him. Honestly, the back and forth between whether Penn was talking or Scarface was a nice little bit. It made the whole thing extra creepy and much more intriguing.
Introducing the Ventriloquist was pretty great. They did a pretty fantastic job of brining him to life and I did like how it was never confirmed how Penn came back to life, how he and Scarface became one, or even if Scarface was legitimate.
This episode was pretty separate. None of the three stories overlapped. While I did like everything they did and it was all done very well, it seems to stick out a little bit. Other than Alfred feeling bad about Wayne manor, the toxins in the river playing a part, and the mentions of the submarine it doesn’t overly connect to what’s been going on and didn’t do much to push the plot forward. That being said, it was an entertaining enough episode.
I will say this though, this episode reminded me a lot of the early days of Gotham, particularly season 1.
wonderoes 