Gotham has done a fantastic job of getting through the Tetch storyline, while still leaving him some room to breathe throughout the episodes, as they did in, “Blood Rush.†Alice’s blood was sure to play a huge part in the series going forward ever since we saw Captain Barnes carelessly stand under Alice’s dripping blood. Barnes’ transition has been slow up until this point, but does it ever take an uptick in this episode.
Captain Barnes has always been an interesting character because as much as he loves Gotham, he always wanted to do things by the books. In a dark twisted place like Gotham, there’s some altruism in his attempts to clean it up the right way. However, when Alice’s blood starts to take over, the infected person’s thoughts become perverted. Now, Barnes’ number one priority becomes cleaning up Gotham, no matter the cost. In a twisted way, it’s fun to see Barnes spiral out of control. He was always the one constant in a show of chaos.
The case in this episode revolves around a crime syndicate that kidnaps people and takes their faces so his clients can have new identities. The absurdity of that statement perfectly fits within this Gotham Universe. Think Face-off in a comic book world. Barnes does catch the surgeon, Simon Maxwell, but Simon isn’t charged because of his connections in Gotham. It just so happens that he made his way to Lee and Mario’s engagement party, and Barnes is there too. The whole sequence is full of tension as Barnes begins to hulk out, but he is polite enough to wait to finish it in the bathroom. Barnes pushes the guy through a wall and makes him fly off the building and into a car below, and it was hysterical, albeit a bit strange since no one heard it at the party.
The other strong subplot is the fractured relationship between Nygma/Isabella and Cobblepot. It appeared Cobblepot was at the top of the world during his mayoral run and win, but things just slowly keep trending downward for him. His attempt at removing Isabella from the situation has only emboldened her resolve. She takes her Kris Kringle look one step further by dressing exactly like her all the way down to her glasses. This leads to the first time we get to see Nygma’s psychosis peak through, although it is hard to blame him since she does look exactly like Kris Kringle. Â
The showrunners kept the deviousness of Cobblepot moving forward since there is no way that he would let Nygma slip through his grasp. Him hiring a “Butch-a-like†was too funny and shows that he is grasping at straws for someone to hold onto in Gotham. The henchmen took apart Isabella’s brake lines in her car, and she headed straight for the train crossing as a train was passing by.
It’s amazing that Cobblepot is so smitten by Nygma that he doesn’t see some of the more obvious conclusions that will soon come to fruition. Nygma will have essentially lost two Kris Kringles and, since he is quite cunning, he will put the pieces together and realize that it was indeed Cobblepot who is responsible for her death.
