Saturday 5 March 2016

TV Review No. 14: Gotham: Mommy's Little Monster (S2, Ep7)

Strong Points:
Fast paced
Penguin March 
Poor Penguin
Riddles for The Riddler 
Split personality conversations 
'Not even a mother could love' - Galavan quip against Penguin
Harvey Dent was back

Weak Points:
Police fire machine guns through a building into a street where there could've been civilians 
Innocent party goers seem to just keep dying
Selina and Silver fighting over Bruce, exaggerated high school style
Galavan just leaves Butch alive 
Some gore (Miss Kringle) was a bit in your face
No one can just be happy in this show

Spoilers ahead:
In-depth Review: 

Another week, another few characters have been exiled to death. This time it was Penguin's mother (hence the title) who faced the axe (or knife in this case) after a daring rescue attempt by Penguin and Butch, who just happened to be free of his constraints from Penguin and is a tad annoyed by him, goes somewhat wrong. Butch is ordered to shoot 'them', and by them he chose to shoot Penguins guards (but not Penguin, as they can never seem to just shoot the guy they are going after). Penguin barters with Galavan, who has appeared by now, and pleads with him for his mother, saying he will do anything. His mother is released, ready and waiting for a nice warm... knife to the back as we start to see Galavan's true colours. Of course, this doesn't really bode well for Penguin's sanity and he swears his revenge after some particularly poor shooting by Galavan's sister (I mean, Penguin can't exactly run away can he?). 

This is of course, all a part of Galavan's master plan as he now has enough evidence against Penguin to start a man-hunt for him with the police. Penguin, on the other hand, makes a plan to kill Galavan, using some really loyal henchman as bait. The plan: step 1: get a group of people to dress up as Penguin and copy his actions. Step 2: make sure there is enough people so as to stop the sniper from shooting them all down. Step 3: barge in through the windows of the newly appointed Mayor Galavan's party and start gunning down anyone who opposes you. Optional step: have Penguin not be there at all, so that when the police have captured everyone and are congratulating themselves, the real Penguin can kidnap the mayor and dispose of him. Not part of the plan: have James Gordon get in the way, constantly switch sides and then get shot in the shoulder by a sniper. The episode ends with Gordon saying that he will take Galavan down, because the best way to survive in the city of Gotham is to anger the mayor.


But I'm getting ahead of myself here, so will backtrack a bit to Nygma and his new found desire to be on the edge of getting caught. His alter ego has hidden Miss Kringle's body somewhere and it is now his job to find her before anyone else does. To do this he will need a hand, Miss Kringle's to be precise, which is in a candy vending machine at the GCPD. I wonder what the candy tastes like now. *shudders*... 


In other news, Bullock and Gordon found Butch held up in an abandoned part of the city, just before Zsasz arrives to kill Butch. Needing his information, Gordon protects Butch by grabbing a machine gun and going full Rambo on the outside street, just like any cop would do. While Zsasz's quip at the end 'I'll take that as a no' was funny, this has got to be one of the seasons' sillier moments. 


This review could not be complete without a mention of Bruce, who is getting played by Silver and not trusting Selina (to be honest, she also played him before) and the both of them getting into a cat (excuse the pun) fight which could've been taken straight out of a high school flick. While getting children to act as the characters we know and love is good on paper, the emotional range isn't always there, especially with Bruce and Silver who seem to have one emotion shared between them sometimes.


Conclusion: overall, this was a great episode and it will be interesting to see how long Gordon lasts now that the mayor is after him. And we can't not mention Martinez, another Strike Force member who got the boot (heel) this episode.


Rating: 81%

Thanks for reading, Satamer.

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