Shady cops, mob bosses, the Penguin and Cat Woman, welcome to Gotham!
The episode titled, Selina Kyle, is strangely void of the purse-snatching feline, towards the beginning anyway. While Cat Woman is hardly in the episode, Cobblepot (The Penguin) shines once again. While Gotham appears to be going the route of throwing various villains at us, it’s certainly leaning toward using The Penguin as the frontrunner. Focusing on an overarching villain throughout a season has done wonders for other superhero shows; hopefully, Gotham follows suit.
Picking up where the last episode left off, Cobblepot is seen getting picked up by two guys, and they make the mistake of making fun of his gait. As you’d expect, he takes care of them quite viciously, and slowly at that. Â Cobblepot is such an interesting character because where almost all shows give their characters some form of remorse, Cobblepot is completely void of that emotion. When he is bullied, he will kill. Further molding the character is his very deranged mother, reinforcing his up-bringing and his transformation into the Penguin. The show really needs to focus on Cobblepot as he is easily the most interesting, disturbing character in Gotham.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sLG5lqzk00&
While being the basis for this episode, Selina Kyle takes over the second half of the episode. Kids of Gotham are being taken, poisoned with the mysterious drug ADT and taken by the aptly name syndicate, The Snatchers. Included in the abductions is Selina Kyle. She’s portrayed as the silent leader of the transient outcasts, and she’s the only one that realizes something isn’t quite right with the bus that was supposed to save them from The Snatchers. We get a peak into the svelte moments of Kyle, and she rears her claws for the first time. Cat Woman has always been a unique character, not only because she is a strong female villain, but because she easily outsmarts her targets and has this sense of innocence in her personality.
While we were provided some nice characterization with these two characters, which allowed us to delve deeper into the mind of these two villains of Gotham, the mob boss standoff between Falcone and Fish felt a little strange. The tension was definitely there, but I feel it’s just a bit too early to understand the back story of the two crime bosses to actually care for these two characters. While it is possible that this standoff could provide some fireworks, if the show’s going to go that route, it needs to start giving some reason behind all the tension.
Score:Â
” Selina Kyle,” has proven to be a great follow-up to the Pilot. While it is quite a bit slower than most shows these days, mainly because it’s not a procedural, great characterization for The Penguin and Cat Woman give the sense that Gotham is just about ready to gain its footing.
+ Cobblepots is such a great character already
+ Cat Woman is the snarky character we’ve come to love
+ Small teases of more characters is far better than giving them too much dialogue/screentime
+ The episode felt a bit more slimmed down than its pilot
– Crime bosses are pretty unknown at the time
– Fish’s delivery seemed overly dramatic
