Tuesday 1 December 2015

Gotham S02E06 Review: By Fire Be Purged

Gotham, Season 2, Episode 6: By Fire


We close off the Firefly plot as the character dies, but not really, at the end of the episode. We get some great moments with Selina during her conversations with Gordon and Bridget. It all sounds like things we've already heard from her in season one, though, so it isn't as interesting as it could be. Selina rants do sound a little pouty, though on the other hand Gordon isn't quite as open to her as he could've been.

Firefly (who's actually called that by Bullock this episode instead of them calling her Firebug all the time) gets a fair bit more development, and gets some pretty great scenes with Selina. Her shitty upbringing and emotional abuse under the hands of her brothers, and all of Selina's talks about being 'free' (something that's possible for Selina's own benefit as it is for Bridget's) ends up transforming Bridget Pike into something that's a nice middle-ground between a victimized anti-hero and a full-out villain. Gordon recognizes this, but is helpless to do anything about it. It's a nice, delving deeper into the heads of these characters.

Oh, and apparently Firefly killed Strike Force Member #1 who I can't even remember the name despite watching the episode a couple hours ago. Yeah, these mooks aren't going to get to do much. Barnes, on the other hand, keeps confronting Gordon for his more violent Jack Bauer interrogations, which is nice to see that holier-than-thou Gordon ends up being confronted for how more brutal he's gotten over the first season.

Ivy comes back and sells out Firefly's location for chocolate. She's fun.

We've got some more of the Penguin-Butch-Gallavan plot strand that I honestly don't care about due to how predictable it is. So Tigress's main plot point is to de-brainwash Butch.

Nygma ends up accidentally confessing that he killed Dougherty and absolutely snaps, trying to keep Kringle with him and accidentally choking her. Welp. That's what I honestly expected, really. Maybe next episode we'll have Edward Nygma actually do something instead of just arguing with Evil-Nygma?

Oh, and the wham shot for this episode is Indian Hills, a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises. Firefly's presumed-dead body is brought there, even though she's not really dead, because the fireproof cloth fused to her skin and she's disfigured by burns a la traditional Firefly. We see that Indian Hills is something right out of Agents of SHIELD, though as they're apparently experimenting with powered people. We see someone doused with what seems to be subzero temperatures. Mr. Freeze? Someone reported seeing a baby Killer Croc, though I don't see it myself. There's this lady with a skin-tight uniform that really could be anybody.

A decent, if slightly messy, episode. The Firefly and Selina bits are definitely the highlights of the episode, and Kringle's death, if not entirely unsurprising, was a great moment for Nygma's actor. Unfortunately the stronger plot threads are diluted somewhat by the weaker portions. Like Bruce's. I don't even remember what he did in this episode, just that it annoyed me.

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