There are two sides to every elected politician: The man you vote for in the election and the man that gets elected; the smiling charmer you believe in and the ultimate deceiver undeneath. The trouble is by the time you meet “the real them”, it’s already too late. You’re stuck with them for however many years and just have to live with it. You’ve let the monster into your bed, and now your best option is just to spoon him back. In Gotham this week, the citizens of the city elect themselves a new leader, but little do they know the monster that lurks underneath him.
Mommy’s Little Monster – With the votes cast, Theo Galavan becomes Mayor of Gotham by a landslide but Jim starts to suspect he isn’t everything he seems. A bitter betrayal sees Penguin bloodthirsty for vengeance, Edward Nigma faces a desperate riddle trial set by his other self and despite Selina’s warnings Bruce’s relation with Silver St. Cloud progresses.
After many weeks of behind closed doors secrecy, Gotham delivers a real plot thickens, cards on the table episode as many true colours are shown or discovered. There’s a lot shocks too, right from the get go as we catch up immediately with Penguin rescuing his mother following Butch’s tip. It plays well on the expected twist over Butch’s allegiance by downplaying it and dropping some even bigger bombshells. Suddenly, Penguin has a Pokemon style evolution into his next stage of evil and looks positively psychotic. Yet his anti-hero/sympathetic villain tendencies are still there thanks to greater villain presence of Theo Galavan. At times, we’re even rooting for Penguin despite his murderous intent and this is Robin Lord Taylor’s best episode so far this season. Though Penguin’s biggest villain step comes in this episode’s final act party set piece as in a wonderful Golden Age homage he uses a horde of self-stylized minions seeing the place overrun with Penguins. They even full character commit to doing his waddle walk, and it’s first on Gotham we’ve seen such classic supervillain behaviour. What’s more interesting is how quickly Jim has put two and a few together to place Theo behind the events of recent weeks. In any detective based show, having your main characters go too long without figuring out the obvious can be very damaging so it’s good to see Jim rumbling Theo so early. Of course, in classic comic style, his timing stinks; doing all this just after Theo has become the most powerful man in the city. The episode concludes with the pair established as clear mutually aware enemies but everyone else in the GCPD (except Bullock of course) are still firmly on the Galavan express despite plans for “policing by fear”.
The episode has a lot of fun by quickly answering the question of Silver St. Cloud’s involvement as her presence in an early scheming session confirms she’s indeed deliberately ensnaring young Bruce Wayne as part of Theo’s plans. The end game is even declared: for Bruce to sign over Wayne Enterprises. This really gets fun when Silver meets Selina and wastes no time showing her claws to the cat. Suddenly, Selina ia confirmed a protagonist again as her story now becomes trying to save Bruce before it’s too late. The initial worry is that these three characters would be too young to form an enjoyable on screen romantic triangle (they’re precarious plot elements even for adult characters), but by focusing more on the scheming and manipulative side of it than the affections, it looks like it will work. We understand that Silver’s job is to isolate Bruce (“I’m Bruce’s friend, his only friend”) so that when Theo makes his move Bruce feels he has nobody else to turn to and takes Theo’s bad advice. In that respect, it looks like they’ll soon be a making move against Alfred too which could brilliantly see said British butler and Selina in a reluctant “I told you so” alliance to save Bruce.
Penguin isn’t the only one cranking it up this week. After last episode’s shock post-coitus strangulation (first and last time for that sentence!), we immediately start seeing an escalation in Edward Nigma’s split personality trauma. “Other Ed” is now capable of taking the wheel while “Ed Prime” is asleep as so creates a riddle trail to where he’s hidden Miss Kringle’s body (complete with question mark clues of course). This is a lot of fun from the upbeat soundtrack, to Ed’s under pressure improvisation and of course discovering the “ladyfingers” in the vending machine. His whole story this episode feels like his dark side slowly leading him away from the light. The end result is visually fantastic including some great acting work from Cory Michael Smith. Hopefully, this will now see Nigma’s darker side playing a part in the bigger stories of the show rather than being in his own little bubble in the corner.
Mommy’s Little Monster is an incredible episode with more shocks than last season’s Electrocutioner outing. It delivers some great action from the frantic final act party crashing to Jim and Bullock’s “outnumbered but not outgunned” show down (any Guy Ritche fans will be screaming “The Bring Gun!” at the TV). There are even a couple of really brutal moments like Tabitha/Tigress’s makeshift tracheotomy on the rooftop. It’s worth noting that Nicholas D'Agosto’s Harvey Dent makes a return this week and hopefully we’ll start seeing more of him again. One of Gotham’s biggest problems last season was the way certain larger story elements became overly drawn out. Yet here in just episode 7, season 2 has thrown the whole board up into the air for absolutely entertaining results. We’ve long been told anything can happen it Gotham, but this sophomore season is finally making us believe it.