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GOTHAM Review: Worse Than The Crime

Warning: This review contains spoilers.

With a teaser trailer for the film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice attached to the fall finale of Gotham, this episode was front and center in the geek community. After all of the hype from the teaser we can finally look at the episode and see that it was one of the best of the season.
We have Bruce is Galavan’s custody and is about to be killed by the Order of St Dumas. We also find out that Silver still has feelings for Bruce. With Bruce being held in a cell hours before the ceremony Silver asks Galavan to reconsider killing Bruce, but he wants her to make Bruce fall in love with all over again just before he’s killed, and if she doesn’t he’ll have her killed.
This episode showed how ruthless Galavan (or Dumas?) really is, threatening to kill his niece is pretty twisted. This doesn’t sit well with Tabitha as she finds him acting to harshly towards the girl. As Silver tries to gain Bruce’s trust she starts to open up to him, and of course Bruce sees right through her act, but he sympathises with her.
The way Bruce stayed strong even when facing death showed just how fearless he is, and we have seen his growth leading to this moment from the begin of the season.

Alfred decides to look for Bruce, and the first place he looks is Galavan’s penthouse. This leads into a run in with Tabitha as Alfred barely escapes with his life. This leads to Al riding inside of a dump-truck all the way to the dump. Tabitha is hot on his trail, and he is wounded after being stabbed in the shoulder earlier, I guess this was supposed to be the comic relief in the episode? Just as Alfred finds a get away car he’s tased in the face by a cop! This kind of felt out of place in this episode simply because there was so many important things going on, and if felt like they were just killing time.

After last weeks episode Jim is staying with Eddie and Penguin. Oswald thinks this is a chance for him and Gordon to team up and take down Galavan once and for all. Jim is struggling with his dark side and is sometimes not the best at making decisions. Just as he is about to work with Cobblepot Leslie comes to stop him. She tries to talk out of it, but he is not having it, until she drops bombshell and says that she is pregnant. Jim is shocked, as is Penguin. This leads to Jim and Leslie leaving the Gotham to start a new life somewhere else. This all ends quickly as Lucius goes to the police station because Bruce and Alfred have been missing for twelve hours. Just as they start looking for Bruce, Alfred is brought in for trying to steal the car earlier.
Having Lucius is this episode was a nice change of pace, but him being able to help beyond finding seeing that Bruce and Alfred were missing was a missed opportunity. The big thing is that he fixed the hard drive on the computer in the cave. This should be a big plot line in the second half of the season.

Alfred believes that Jim is the only one that can help rescue Bruce from Galavan, but they don’t know where he is. Eddie accidentally spills the beans with a riddle. They find Jim and Leslie outside of Ed’s apartment and he Jim’s then in the search for Bruce. Leslie drives off and tells Jim to call her when it’s all over. Lucius, Alfred, Bullock, and Jim team up with Penguin to arrest Galavan. The only problem is that they don’t know where to find him, but Selina just so happens to know where they’re keeping Bruce. This episode felt like a season finale. With almost every major character involved in the story, and with finally catching Galavan, it really felt like the season was ending!
They easily take down the Order of St Dumas but Galavan, Tabitha and Silver escape. Just as our villains make there getaway Tabitha sees that they only have to parachutes. Galavan was going to leave Silver to die. Tabitha beats Galavan and gives Silver the parachute, leaving Galavan behind. Jim comes in and arrests Galavan (again), until Penguin talks him out of it. Penguin tells Jim that Galavan will just break out again, which is something Jim already thought about. Jim and Penguin takes Galavan to the lake and Penguin almost beats him  to death. Jim puts Galavan out of his misery and shoots him in the head.
This was Jim going too far. Instead of arresting Galavan he lets Penguin torture him and then ends up killing him! Will this be something that haunts Jim into the second half of the season? I certainly can’t wait to find out.

Overall this was a solid ending, but I do feel like they wrapped up all loose ends for the second half of the season. They killed Jerome, Barbara and Galavan so I wonder who will be the villain in the second half. We get a glimpse of Mr. Freeze at the end, but will he be the main antagonist for the next eleven episodes? We also need to see what happens to Jim and Leslie. They are having a baby and he proposed to her! We certainly have some things to look forward to when the show returns, but that will be in another three months! With such a long wait for the series to come back, it was nice that they gave us a sense of closure.

   ‘Gotham’ returns to FOX in February.
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