Spoiler: show
We open on good ol' comatose Butch being wheeled out of the hospital into a van by two mugging buffoons straight out of the 60s Batman show, who loudly exposit to themselves that the hospital wants to "move some bodies upstate" to clear space while repeatedly reminding the audience that Butch's real name is Cyrus Gold. We then see them pull up to the toxic, irradiated sludge of Slaughter Swamp and dump Butch right in, cackling maniacally for the benefit of any passing wildlife as he floats away. However, he happens to float by an ominous barrel bearing the two words I couldn't be more exhausted of at this point: "Indian Hill." Time for Solomon Grundy, everybody. Will Butch be another success like pre-Riddler post-Kringle Ed, or a monumental letdown like so many others? Time will tell.
Abrupt cut to the GCPD, and to Jim marching into Bullock's office to request information on Ra's' case in order to make sure his status as a foreign dignitary doesn't let him weasel out of the murder charge. Bullock, unfortunately, is a little preoccupied -- when Jim rips away what he's writing, he sees that Bullock has been writing release forms for every criminal Jim has busted carrying Penguin's crime licenses. They get into a little spat about the usual moral shit and Bullock mentions the commissioner riding his ass to follow Penguin's orders, and end scene.
We then make a pit stop at Safest Manor(TM), where Alfred walks into Bruce's study to find him painstakingly examining the knife and scribbling things down, and they get into a brief argument over Bruce's lack of sleep and obsessive focus on Precocious Museum Kid's death. Bruce feels solely responsible, of course, and feels the need to decipher the knife's purpose completely before Ra's inevitably breaks out of Blackgate. He determines from the passage Winthrop deciphered that the knife is intended for the one who has bathed in the Lazarus Pit, meaning Ra's, but that it might be to kill that individual rather than empower him. Bruce believes Ra's is trying to destroy the dagger and that something needs to be done before then, and Alfred has to remind him of his no-kill oath, as well as the fact that he needs to get dressed for Museum Boy's wake.
Cut to said wake, where Bruce sulks and stoically rests his hand on the casket to siphon Museum Boy's spiritual energy into his Batmanning. Jim walks in and motions Alfred into the hallway, as both men are evidently disturbed by Bruce's sudden soul sucking ability. What Jim actually wants to discuss, however, is the awful but inevitable news: Ra's brushed up on his late-80s action movies before enacting his scheme, and he's due to be released soon on diplomatic immunity after a demand from the Nanda Parbat embassy (I do like that Nanda Parbat appears to be an actual recognized country with a government here, rather than the usual remote cultist hidey-hole). Jim demands that Alfred keep the news from Bruce for as long as possible, but surprise surprise, Bruce was listening the whole time! As night subsequently falls, he dons his weird shitty Batsuit and wields the knife, ready for murderous action. Cue title card, finally.
Somehow I doubt that Bruce is actually going to kill Ra's, since Ra's is the second-most important Batman villain after the Joker, and Bruce couldn't even muster up the cojones to put a bullet in his parents' killer. Then again, Alexander Siddig is a relatively prolific actor who might cost more money than they're willing to scrape up, and it would be perfectly in character for this show to get rid of an element that's working wonderfully for no other reason than shock value. So it could go either way here, much like the question of Butch Grundy being terrible or awesome.
Oh, joy. What should grace my screen next but Barbara walking into Blackgate? She's here to see Ra's, who has been placed in a sprawling Hannibal Lecter glass-cube cell like Hugo Strange before him because that's lazy visual shorthand for a criminal you don't want to fuck with (excepting for the fact that Strange was often easier to fuck with than a blind toddler). When pressed, Ra's denies that this is part of any longer con, and apologizes to Barbara for letting her down when she had become the love of his life somehow. Barb, being Barb, ultimately just wants to know where the reward she was promised is that she was told could be used to do cool shit, and Ra's responds by pressing his hand flat against the glass. For a moment I was afraid he was signaling that she would get his ring and ownership over the League of Assassins, because that's exactly what Heller would let Barbara have, but the reality is almost as grotesque: she matches her hand to his and a nebulous glowing energy passes through the glass into her body. After promising that she'll see what it's useful for, he bids her goodbye, only to give her a faintly sinister stare as she turns and leaves. Is he playing her, and the energy is just going to make her into a magic suicide bomb? Or did he actually just grant her ninja powers? I have a feeling I know which it's gonna be...
And now back to Slaughter Swamp, where the big man himself finally rises with some ominous bubbles and... it's literally just Butch with bleached white hair and some pale Frankenstein's Monster-esque face makeup, wearing a tattered loincloth for whatever reason. Not a splotch of decay effects or moss or much of anything visually interesting to latch onto, which is rather disappointing for a character defined by being a giant disgusting invulnerable zombie. Our hulking great letdown shambles and grunts his way up to a campfire, around which three drunks are singing along to a record player-cross-phonograph playing the Solomon Grundy nursery rhyme, because zuuuuh. Responding to their startled questions with only silly grunts and forceful bitch slaps, he eventually finds himself alone with the record player, which conveniently starts skipping and repeating "Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday" despite not being jostled. Because zuuuuuh. Donning one of the drunks' patchy coats, he repeats the name to himself and walks off into the distance.
As is usually the case when a long-running character becomes a supervillain, I will hitherto be addressing him by his proper name. However, since it's still Butch, I want to prevent too much confusion. I hereby dub thee Solomutch Bundy.
Following this detour, we come to the Iceberg Lounge, where Penguin is in his office being told by Mr. Penn that 86% of crime is now accounted for under his licensing system, which only frenzies him because of the missing 14% not being committed in his name. Right on cue, Sofia strides in with an offer to dinner, and when Penguin questions her motives, she points out that she has the one thing he doesn't: the Falcone name, under which it used to be that 100% of crime was accounted for and the organization was a tightly run ship. Again, this is hilarious retconning for someone who still has a basic memory of what Season 1 was like, but fine, fine, fine. In response, Penguin has Penn refer to Item #4 on his agenda (which Penn clarifies is "Kill Sofia Falcone") and has him add a question mark to it, which Sofia takes as an acceptance of the invitation and which got a genuine laugh out of me. When all else fails as it so often does, I can at least count on Robin Lord Taylor to lighten my spirits.
Also quite funny is the following check-in with Nygma, in which we catch up to him robbing a pharmacy in a fevered attempt to find a remedy for his cognitive impairment. The tied-up pharmacist he's holding at gunpoint desperately suggests an experimental drug said to boost cognitive function, which Ed stoops over to look for in the counter cabinet, only for the pharmacist to execute his cunning ploy and jam a rose pen straight through Ed's hand, causing him to drop the gun, which turns out to be a squeaky rubber toy. The suddenly fearless pharmacist marches right past him to trigger the alarm while Ed escapes before the police can be called, but as Ed stumbles out into a trash can, he happens to alert Bundy, who shambles at him as he panics and tries to assure him that all of his ire was toward Barbara and Tabitha. Bundy, unconcerned with his attempts to make amends, conks him on the head and heaves him over his shoulder for purposes unknown.
Back at the GCPD, Alfred rushes in to tell Jim that Bruce is gone, and that they have to get to Blackgate before Bruce does something he'll never come back from. This is a brief scene, but Sean Pertwee does a damn fine job here, putting way more breath and anxiety into Alfred's dialogue than normal and genuinely selling the moment despite Jim's stoic douchehattery. Good job, Sean.
Meanwhile, Bruce has grappled himself straight into Blackgate, because all of the best prisons can be broken into or out of with a rudimentary grappling hook. After he bypasses whatever security stands between him and the main building offscreen, we see a guard open up a security barrier and then just fucking leaves it open and unattended as he walks away, so that Bruce doesn't run into an insurmountable obstacle and the episode can lazily move forward. Conveniently, the monitors are right there on the desk and he immediately picks out Ra's, also finding an unattended security keycard to assist him. Blackgate Penitentiary is evidently run by piles of baby chimps loosely fitted into flesh suits and guard uniforms. But regardless, Bruce makes it to the big glass cube without a spot of trouble and unlocks it, approaching the sleeping Ra's and drawing the dagger... only to quickly sheathe it again and turn to flee. Of course, Ra's was awake the whole time and he ninja-stands to kick Bruce's ass, calling him weak and foolish before tossing him out to the waiting guards -- and the guards bow to their master and take Bruce away. If I'm being asked to believe that the guards in that wing are Assassins and this was all one over-elaborate plan, fine. If I'm being asked to believe that there wasn't a single independent employee or working security system in Bruce's way in the largest prison in the area, fuck off.
Next we come to Jim and Alfred making their way into the wing, asking whether Bruce might have come through here. The guards, being Assassins, proceed to act incredibly shifty in order to tip Jim off that something's up, but they give up their weapons regardless in order to pass through. As they do, one of the guards pulls up his radio and loudly says "They're here." Wonderful.
We then rejoin Ed, knocked out on the back of a flatbed truck parked in an alley. As he awakens, Solomutch Bundy startles him and implores him in belabored Hulk-speak to help him since he apparently knows who he is. Ed retorts that he doesn't even know himself anymore so he can't help him, and... sigh. Last season it was the supervillains finding a special deep connection by being freaks, now it's the identity-less idiot supervillains finding a special deep connection from being identity-less idiots. Bundy offering Ed a mangled hot dog with a puppy dog look in his eyes is fairly sweet, but I just... don't care.
Is this...? Oh, okay. For a second I thought the silhouette of the woman in the long coat striding into a restaurant full of mobsters was going to be the as-yet-absentee Poison Ivy, and was busily trying to determine which of my kitchen knives would most efficiently cut my wrists, but it's just Sofia stopping in to say hi to some old mobster buddies and basically insinuating that they should poison Penguin's lunch or something. Snore.
Bruce promptly awakens in the sex dungeon beneath Blackgate, whereupon Ra's strides out of the shadows waving the dagger. It's funny how this Ra's looks way more menacing emerging from the darkness in a button-up prison jacket than he did doing the same in his fancy robes back in the third season finale. Dagger in hand, he explains that he saw a vision of Bruce when he first emerged from the Lazarus Pit, and that this means Bruce is the only one who can wield the dagger and -- as he hands it over -- end his suffering. Great, so I was right about Ra's being a suicidal cursed guy who just wants his "heir" to come along and kill him already. That's actually super stupid, and makes the entire plotline building up to this point (take a minute to reflect on how Ra's, through the Court of Owls, is responsible for virtually every major event across three seasons) pretty much pointless. Though I suppose it's rather fitting that the guy at the very core of Gotham's tangled web is just a guy begging for the sweet release of death. I've only had to sit through 70 hours of this crap, Ra's here has put up with it since before the first millennium was capped off! Jesus, suddenly I want him to succeed.
More Nygma and Bundy bonding. It's pleasant enough, but very insubstantial, and so I have little to say about it.
Back at the restaurant, Penguin sits down to eat with Sofia, after first testing for poisons with his escort. He doesn't like it initially, but after comparing one of the courses to his late mother's recipe in disdain, he takes a bite of it and finds that it is the same recipe -- Sofia's plan wasn't poison-based, but intending to genuinely woo him with the hard-tracked recipe. Almost in tears, though, Penguin storms out, leaving Sofia confused and me vaguely amused.
Back at Blackgate, Jim and Alfred finally speak up about their suspicious escorts when Jim notices that one of the guards is wearing the nametag of a guard he personally knows (on a more reliable show I would guess this was a callback to his brief stint in the prison, but I'm making no wagers with this show), and gets a half-assed excuse that you'd think a trained assassin would know better than to use. Inevitably, a fistfight / gunfight breaks out, and every Assassin gets taken out like chumps save for their leader, because even the most highly skilled mooks are still just mooks before our mighty Jimbo. The leader, holding Jim at gunpoint in a Mexican standoff position, sneers that Ra's has great plans for the boy ("great plans" here meaning "please, please murder me") and refuses to let slip where they are, so Alfred coldly shoots him in the head because Alfred doesn't fuck around. Not perturbed, possibly even a little amused that Alfred can't match his cold-blooded kill count, Jim runs up and the duo speculate where Bruce might be. This being a Gotham episode with almost ten minutes left, they obviously guess correctly.
Back at the Lounge, Penguin is sulking and starts to go into an impotent rage when Sofia walks in, only to be reduced to sputtering and near-tears when Sofia claims that she genuinely just wanted to let him have a nice time so they could make peace, launching into a tirade about how the only person who ever truly treated him well without expecting something in return was his mother. Oh... oh, please tell me this isn't going where I think it's going. He moves to sit down in a leather seat and she kneels down in front of him oooooooh nooooo. Moved to examine Penguin's old injury that gives him his trademark limp, she tenderly rolls up his pant leg to find the grotesque bruise lump thing, and relates a story about how her leg was broken when she was young and while her father told her to ice it and tough it out, her mother revealed that you need WARMTH AAAAAAAAGH. And Penguin tells her his mother used to sing for him so she sings while she tenderly cares for his injury someone shove the magic blade into my heart and release me from my curse. OF COURSE THEY MOVE IT TO FUCKING ROMANCE BECAUSE THEY NEVER LEARNED THEIR LESSON. I want this to be a long con for Sofia but that just makes Penguin look like even more of an emotional fucking dumbass! And if it's for real, then Sofia's character is pointless and she'll probably just get fridged later! Whoever wins, we lose!
Speaking of BORN TO DIE WORLD IS A FUCK, we return to Bruce as Ra's pleads with him to strike him down, reiterating how long he has been suffering and showing him a reflection of his true form: a decrepit walking corpse with thin strands of white hair, rendered in decent CGI for the brief time it has to be onscreen. When Bruce tells him that he deserves all of his suffering for being such a monster for no reason, Ra's first tells him that he'll never have true closure if he just leaves without killing him, and then viciously taunts him with the knowledge that after disappearing, he'll come back years down the line to kill all of Bruce's loved ones -- including his wife and children should he have any.
And then... Bruce does it.
He kills Ra's. He plunges the blade into his heart and it causes him to rot from the inside until he's nothing but an ashen skeleton slumped on the floor. That's Ra's al Ghul, everybody. All of that buildup to this, just an excuse for Bruce to break his no-kill rule in the fifth episode of the season. And just when Siddig was really sinking his teeth into the role, too, becoming one more among the ever-shrinking pile of villains I actually enjoy watching. It's like I always say, and like I'm always reassured by my viewing experience: Gotham wouldn't be Gotham if it wasn't constantly sabotaging itself. Goddamn it.
Anyway, Jim and Alfred rush in and lock eyes with Bruce, and everyone is mutually horrified. Cut to everyone standing outside while the police swarm the area, and Jim denies that Bruce should be arrested because he doesn't really know what he saw and Bruce is a good person deep down and the Wayne murders still hurt him and blah blah blah I've heard all of these lessons and pep talks before. This is supposed to be a critical moment and it feels less impactful than when Bruce first instated his no-kill rule by almost killing Jerome. Fuck this.
With five minutes to go, Bruce is standing in front of the fireplace preparing to burn his Batsuit when Alfred comes in for another pep talk. It's the same stuff, Batman foreshadowing, so on and so forth. Bruce doesn't burn the Batsuit. Big shocker.
As the clock winds down, we meet up with Ed and Bundy again just in time for Ed to lie that he and Bundy were already best friends and that their goal should be using his muscles to make money to help restore his intellect and I don't care. They walk into a kooky underground fight club, where Ed pretends to be Bundy's manager and signs him up as a fighter... and then we pan over to where the ringside doc is fixing up fighters and it's FUCKING LEE. Somehow. I... I don't... I just... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Abrupt cut to the GCPD, and to Jim marching into Bullock's office to request information on Ra's' case in order to make sure his status as a foreign dignitary doesn't let him weasel out of the murder charge. Bullock, unfortunately, is a little preoccupied -- when Jim rips away what he's writing, he sees that Bullock has been writing release forms for every criminal Jim has busted carrying Penguin's crime licenses. They get into a little spat about the usual moral shit and Bullock mentions the commissioner riding his ass to follow Penguin's orders, and end scene.
We then make a pit stop at Safest Manor(TM), where Alfred walks into Bruce's study to find him painstakingly examining the knife and scribbling things down, and they get into a brief argument over Bruce's lack of sleep and obsessive focus on Precocious Museum Kid's death. Bruce feels solely responsible, of course, and feels the need to decipher the knife's purpose completely before Ra's inevitably breaks out of Blackgate. He determines from the passage Winthrop deciphered that the knife is intended for the one who has bathed in the Lazarus Pit, meaning Ra's, but that it might be to kill that individual rather than empower him. Bruce believes Ra's is trying to destroy the dagger and that something needs to be done before then, and Alfred has to remind him of his no-kill oath, as well as the fact that he needs to get dressed for Museum Boy's wake.
Cut to said wake, where Bruce sulks and stoically rests his hand on the casket to siphon Museum Boy's spiritual energy into his Batmanning. Jim walks in and motions Alfred into the hallway, as both men are evidently disturbed by Bruce's sudden soul sucking ability. What Jim actually wants to discuss, however, is the awful but inevitable news: Ra's brushed up on his late-80s action movies before enacting his scheme, and he's due to be released soon on diplomatic immunity after a demand from the Nanda Parbat embassy (I do like that Nanda Parbat appears to be an actual recognized country with a government here, rather than the usual remote cultist hidey-hole). Jim demands that Alfred keep the news from Bruce for as long as possible, but surprise surprise, Bruce was listening the whole time! As night subsequently falls, he dons his weird shitty Batsuit and wields the knife, ready for murderous action. Cue title card, finally.
Somehow I doubt that Bruce is actually going to kill Ra's, since Ra's is the second-most important Batman villain after the Joker, and Bruce couldn't even muster up the cojones to put a bullet in his parents' killer. Then again, Alexander Siddig is a relatively prolific actor who might cost more money than they're willing to scrape up, and it would be perfectly in character for this show to get rid of an element that's working wonderfully for no other reason than shock value. So it could go either way here, much like the question of Butch Grundy being terrible or awesome.
Oh, joy. What should grace my screen next but Barbara walking into Blackgate? She's here to see Ra's, who has been placed in a sprawling Hannibal Lecter glass-cube cell like Hugo Strange before him because that's lazy visual shorthand for a criminal you don't want to fuck with (excepting for the fact that Strange was often easier to fuck with than a blind toddler). When pressed, Ra's denies that this is part of any longer con, and apologizes to Barbara for letting her down when she had become the love of his life somehow. Barb, being Barb, ultimately just wants to know where the reward she was promised is that she was told could be used to do cool shit, and Ra's responds by pressing his hand flat against the glass. For a moment I was afraid he was signaling that she would get his ring and ownership over the League of Assassins, because that's exactly what Heller would let Barbara have, but the reality is almost as grotesque: she matches her hand to his and a nebulous glowing energy passes through the glass into her body. After promising that she'll see what it's useful for, he bids her goodbye, only to give her a faintly sinister stare as she turns and leaves. Is he playing her, and the energy is just going to make her into a magic suicide bomb? Or did he actually just grant her ninja powers? I have a feeling I know which it's gonna be...
And now back to Slaughter Swamp, where the big man himself finally rises with some ominous bubbles and... it's literally just Butch with bleached white hair and some pale Frankenstein's Monster-esque face makeup, wearing a tattered loincloth for whatever reason. Not a splotch of decay effects or moss or much of anything visually interesting to latch onto, which is rather disappointing for a character defined by being a giant disgusting invulnerable zombie. Our hulking great letdown shambles and grunts his way up to a campfire, around which three drunks are singing along to a record player-cross-phonograph playing the Solomon Grundy nursery rhyme, because zuuuuh. Responding to their startled questions with only silly grunts and forceful bitch slaps, he eventually finds himself alone with the record player, which conveniently starts skipping and repeating "Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday" despite not being jostled. Because zuuuuuh. Donning one of the drunks' patchy coats, he repeats the name to himself and walks off into the distance.
As is usually the case when a long-running character becomes a supervillain, I will hitherto be addressing him by his proper name. However, since it's still Butch, I want to prevent too much confusion. I hereby dub thee Solomutch Bundy.
Following this detour, we come to the Iceberg Lounge, where Penguin is in his office being told by Mr. Penn that 86% of crime is now accounted for under his licensing system, which only frenzies him because of the missing 14% not being committed in his name. Right on cue, Sofia strides in with an offer to dinner, and when Penguin questions her motives, she points out that she has the one thing he doesn't: the Falcone name, under which it used to be that 100% of crime was accounted for and the organization was a tightly run ship. Again, this is hilarious retconning for someone who still has a basic memory of what Season 1 was like, but fine, fine, fine. In response, Penguin has Penn refer to Item #4 on his agenda (which Penn clarifies is "Kill Sofia Falcone") and has him add a question mark to it, which Sofia takes as an acceptance of the invitation and which got a genuine laugh out of me. When all else fails as it so often does, I can at least count on Robin Lord Taylor to lighten my spirits.
Also quite funny is the following check-in with Nygma, in which we catch up to him robbing a pharmacy in a fevered attempt to find a remedy for his cognitive impairment. The tied-up pharmacist he's holding at gunpoint desperately suggests an experimental drug said to boost cognitive function, which Ed stoops over to look for in the counter cabinet, only for the pharmacist to execute his cunning ploy and jam a rose pen straight through Ed's hand, causing him to drop the gun, which turns out to be a squeaky rubber toy. The suddenly fearless pharmacist marches right past him to trigger the alarm while Ed escapes before the police can be called, but as Ed stumbles out into a trash can, he happens to alert Bundy, who shambles at him as he panics and tries to assure him that all of his ire was toward Barbara and Tabitha. Bundy, unconcerned with his attempts to make amends, conks him on the head and heaves him over his shoulder for purposes unknown.
Back at the GCPD, Alfred rushes in to tell Jim that Bruce is gone, and that they have to get to Blackgate before Bruce does something he'll never come back from. This is a brief scene, but Sean Pertwee does a damn fine job here, putting way more breath and anxiety into Alfred's dialogue than normal and genuinely selling the moment despite Jim's stoic douchehattery. Good job, Sean.
Meanwhile, Bruce has grappled himself straight into Blackgate, because all of the best prisons can be broken into or out of with a rudimentary grappling hook. After he bypasses whatever security stands between him and the main building offscreen, we see a guard open up a security barrier and then just fucking leaves it open and unattended as he walks away, so that Bruce doesn't run into an insurmountable obstacle and the episode can lazily move forward. Conveniently, the monitors are right there on the desk and he immediately picks out Ra's, also finding an unattended security keycard to assist him. Blackgate Penitentiary is evidently run by piles of baby chimps loosely fitted into flesh suits and guard uniforms. But regardless, Bruce makes it to the big glass cube without a spot of trouble and unlocks it, approaching the sleeping Ra's and drawing the dagger... only to quickly sheathe it again and turn to flee. Of course, Ra's was awake the whole time and he ninja-stands to kick Bruce's ass, calling him weak and foolish before tossing him out to the waiting guards -- and the guards bow to their master and take Bruce away. If I'm being asked to believe that the guards in that wing are Assassins and this was all one over-elaborate plan, fine. If I'm being asked to believe that there wasn't a single independent employee or working security system in Bruce's way in the largest prison in the area, fuck off.
Next we come to Jim and Alfred making their way into the wing, asking whether Bruce might have come through here. The guards, being Assassins, proceed to act incredibly shifty in order to tip Jim off that something's up, but they give up their weapons regardless in order to pass through. As they do, one of the guards pulls up his radio and loudly says "They're here." Wonderful.
We then rejoin Ed, knocked out on the back of a flatbed truck parked in an alley. As he awakens, Solomutch Bundy startles him and implores him in belabored Hulk-speak to help him since he apparently knows who he is. Ed retorts that he doesn't even know himself anymore so he can't help him, and... sigh. Last season it was the supervillains finding a special deep connection by being freaks, now it's the identity-less idiot supervillains finding a special deep connection from being identity-less idiots. Bundy offering Ed a mangled hot dog with a puppy dog look in his eyes is fairly sweet, but I just... don't care.
Is this...? Oh, okay. For a second I thought the silhouette of the woman in the long coat striding into a restaurant full of mobsters was going to be the as-yet-absentee Poison Ivy, and was busily trying to determine which of my kitchen knives would most efficiently cut my wrists, but it's just Sofia stopping in to say hi to some old mobster buddies and basically insinuating that they should poison Penguin's lunch or something. Snore.
Bruce promptly awakens in the sex dungeon beneath Blackgate, whereupon Ra's strides out of the shadows waving the dagger. It's funny how this Ra's looks way more menacing emerging from the darkness in a button-up prison jacket than he did doing the same in his fancy robes back in the third season finale. Dagger in hand, he explains that he saw a vision of Bruce when he first emerged from the Lazarus Pit, and that this means Bruce is the only one who can wield the dagger and -- as he hands it over -- end his suffering. Great, so I was right about Ra's being a suicidal cursed guy who just wants his "heir" to come along and kill him already. That's actually super stupid, and makes the entire plotline building up to this point (take a minute to reflect on how Ra's, through the Court of Owls, is responsible for virtually every major event across three seasons) pretty much pointless. Though I suppose it's rather fitting that the guy at the very core of Gotham's tangled web is just a guy begging for the sweet release of death. I've only had to sit through 70 hours of this crap, Ra's here has put up with it since before the first millennium was capped off! Jesus, suddenly I want him to succeed.
More Nygma and Bundy bonding. It's pleasant enough, but very insubstantial, and so I have little to say about it.
Back at the restaurant, Penguin sits down to eat with Sofia, after first testing for poisons with his escort. He doesn't like it initially, but after comparing one of the courses to his late mother's recipe in disdain, he takes a bite of it and finds that it is the same recipe -- Sofia's plan wasn't poison-based, but intending to genuinely woo him with the hard-tracked recipe. Almost in tears, though, Penguin storms out, leaving Sofia confused and me vaguely amused.
Back at Blackgate, Jim and Alfred finally speak up about their suspicious escorts when Jim notices that one of the guards is wearing the nametag of a guard he personally knows (on a more reliable show I would guess this was a callback to his brief stint in the prison, but I'm making no wagers with this show), and gets a half-assed excuse that you'd think a trained assassin would know better than to use. Inevitably, a fistfight / gunfight breaks out, and every Assassin gets taken out like chumps save for their leader, because even the most highly skilled mooks are still just mooks before our mighty Jimbo. The leader, holding Jim at gunpoint in a Mexican standoff position, sneers that Ra's has great plans for the boy ("great plans" here meaning "please, please murder me") and refuses to let slip where they are, so Alfred coldly shoots him in the head because Alfred doesn't fuck around. Not perturbed, possibly even a little amused that Alfred can't match his cold-blooded kill count, Jim runs up and the duo speculate where Bruce might be. This being a Gotham episode with almost ten minutes left, they obviously guess correctly.
Back at the Lounge, Penguin is sulking and starts to go into an impotent rage when Sofia walks in, only to be reduced to sputtering and near-tears when Sofia claims that she genuinely just wanted to let him have a nice time so they could make peace, launching into a tirade about how the only person who ever truly treated him well without expecting something in return was his mother. Oh... oh, please tell me this isn't going where I think it's going. He moves to sit down in a leather seat and she kneels down in front of him oooooooh nooooo. Moved to examine Penguin's old injury that gives him his trademark limp, she tenderly rolls up his pant leg to find the grotesque bruise lump thing, and relates a story about how her leg was broken when she was young and while her father told her to ice it and tough it out, her mother revealed that you need WARMTH AAAAAAAAGH. And Penguin tells her his mother used to sing for him so she sings while she tenderly cares for his injury someone shove the magic blade into my heart and release me from my curse. OF COURSE THEY MOVE IT TO FUCKING ROMANCE BECAUSE THEY NEVER LEARNED THEIR LESSON. I want this to be a long con for Sofia but that just makes Penguin look like even more of an emotional fucking dumbass! And if it's for real, then Sofia's character is pointless and she'll probably just get fridged later! Whoever wins, we lose!
Speaking of BORN TO DIE WORLD IS A FUCK, we return to Bruce as Ra's pleads with him to strike him down, reiterating how long he has been suffering and showing him a reflection of his true form: a decrepit walking corpse with thin strands of white hair, rendered in decent CGI for the brief time it has to be onscreen. When Bruce tells him that he deserves all of his suffering for being such a monster for no reason, Ra's first tells him that he'll never have true closure if he just leaves without killing him, and then viciously taunts him with the knowledge that after disappearing, he'll come back years down the line to kill all of Bruce's loved ones -- including his wife and children should he have any.
And then... Bruce does it.
He kills Ra's. He plunges the blade into his heart and it causes him to rot from the inside until he's nothing but an ashen skeleton slumped on the floor. That's Ra's al Ghul, everybody. All of that buildup to this, just an excuse for Bruce to break his no-kill rule in the fifth episode of the season. And just when Siddig was really sinking his teeth into the role, too, becoming one more among the ever-shrinking pile of villains I actually enjoy watching. It's like I always say, and like I'm always reassured by my viewing experience: Gotham wouldn't be Gotham if it wasn't constantly sabotaging itself. Goddamn it.
Anyway, Jim and Alfred rush in and lock eyes with Bruce, and everyone is mutually horrified. Cut to everyone standing outside while the police swarm the area, and Jim denies that Bruce should be arrested because he doesn't really know what he saw and Bruce is a good person deep down and the Wayne murders still hurt him and blah blah blah I've heard all of these lessons and pep talks before. This is supposed to be a critical moment and it feels less impactful than when Bruce first instated his no-kill rule by almost killing Jerome. Fuck this.
With five minutes to go, Bruce is standing in front of the fireplace preparing to burn his Batsuit when Alfred comes in for another pep talk. It's the same stuff, Batman foreshadowing, so on and so forth. Bruce doesn't burn the Batsuit. Big shocker.
As the clock winds down, we meet up with Ed and Bundy again just in time for Ed to lie that he and Bundy were already best friends and that their goal should be using his muscles to make money to help restore his intellect and I don't care. They walk into a kooky underground fight club, where Ed pretends to be Bundy's manager and signs him up as a fighter... and then we pan over to where the ringside doc is fixing up fighters and it's FUCKING LEE. Somehow. I... I don't... I just... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Okay no I'm not doing a double review this episode was active misery I'm just gonna heal up and do "Hog Day Afternoon" soon
Fuck