‘Gotham’ season 3, episode 5 review: Butch’s near-death experience; Bruce’s love story

We admit that for the final twenty minutes or so of Monday night’s “Gotham,” there was a pit in our stomach that we were going to be witnessing something most unpleasant: The death of a beloved character in Butch Gilzean. We love the guy. He’s not a strategist, but he’s a bruiser who has this comic edge to him and he really just wants some essence of love and respect.

Coming out of this episode, though, he should be lucky to have his life. He flew too close to the sun due to his jealousy of Edward Nygma, and as a result of that, formed a new Red Hood Gang with the intention of allowing himself to be the hero. It was almost as though he took a page out of the Theo Galavan playbook from last season, when he made this sort of move to take down Jerome to appear like the hero Gotham needed and the perfect candidate to be Mayor.

Butch’s resurrection-of-sorts (he wasn’t technically dead, but still) came at the hands of ironically, Theo’s sister Tabitha. After Nygma set him up to be discovered as the Red Hood leader, using Tabitha as bait, she returned the favor in doing what she could to save him. We certainly are thrilled to see the guy’s not dead, but it’s hard to know where this story is going from here. We do want to see Barbara be more than the enthusiastic / crazy owner of the Sirens soon, though.

One other captivating thing that the Sirens bash (the site of Butch’s beating and Oswald’s Mayoral celebration) was seeing Bruce Wayne finally make a move on Selina Kyle, one she sort-of reciprocated. Also, seeing Ivy there, but having her not own up to being Selina’s friend in a more-mature body, proved to be an interesting way to use her. It showed further that this side of Ivy is far more manipulative than the one we knew previously.

All of this story proved itself to be very entertaining, though we did of course wonder throughout why someone didn’t just arrest Nygma for his cockiness. Sure, the Penguin controls the city, but are you really going to be that afraid of him? If you’re Captain Barnes and you’re clinging to your sanity because of Alice’s poisoned blood, how much do you really have to lose? (Best GCPD moment of the day: Lee striking Nygma across the face, reminding him that she is engaged to a Falcone and Mario’s father can have him disappear in the blink of an eye.)

While all of this madness unfolded, Jim meandered about, trying to figure out how much he wanted to tell Valerie Vale about Alice’s blood. This was hardly the best Jim episode in the world, given that so much of the action tonight was centered around the Butch / Oswald / Nygma dynamic that was an odd, but interesting, sort of love triangle. That’s something we want to get more into in the coming days.

Episode Grade: B. We do still think the Mayor plotline was rushed and a little too ripped-from-the-headlines for “Gotham,” but it was entertaining to see Butch get some time in the spotlight. Also, we do totally ‘ship Penguin and Nygma now.