‘Gotham’ episode 19 review: Enter the Ogre; Fish Mooney’s escape

Oh “Gotham,” how we’ve missed you! The truth here is that “Beasts of Prey” felt almost like a midseason premiere for the show, and one that we would’ve preferred to the actual midseason premiere earlier this year. It finally laid to waste that whole Fish Mooney – island prison story, and also introduced a new, formidable opponent in the Ogre. Here is someone who means serious business, and by that we mean that he is probably going to do something terrible to one of our familiar characters by the end of the season.

Basically, the Ogre’s M.O. is that he forces women to stay with him, and then eventually does terrible things to them. Pretty simple, and also pretty terrible. He’s one of the more interesting opponents on the show nonetheless, and Milo Ventimiglia does a good job of not coming across like Peter Petrelli from “Heroes” … though he will probably always be Peter Petrelli to us in some shape or form.

What the episode did well is mostly establish what the final few stories are going to be, in between Gordon’s investigation and Oswald trying to use the restaurant as a way to play out the death of his new nemesis Maroni … which we’d really prefer not to happen, since David Zayas and Robin Lord Taylor work together really well. They may be our favorite dysfunctional duo on the entire show.

As a whole, this episode feels really like the result of the show listening more to its fans than they have the past several installments (maybe having some time to listen is part of it), and coming up with a pretty cool story as a result that is more serialized, suspenseful, and in the end exciting. Episode Grade: B+.