‘Gotham’ season 3, episode 10 review: Mario the monster
There should be a new drinking game associated with “Gotham”: Every time that someone on the show proclaims Mario Falcone to be a “good man,” have a drink. Odds are, you’ll be passed out somewhere by the end of watching Monday night’s new episode.
Jokes aside, episode 3×10 was a reminder of what this show does well, but also what is insanely frustrating. The love triangle between Jim Gordon, Lee Thompkins, and Mario fits into the latter. Why go through this whole charade, and have Jim and Lee talk to one another like they are characters transplanted in from a 1930’s noir? “Gotham” is a show that struggles with romance, mostly because it’s hard at times to get into these characters heads. For example, but in the world would Lee want to say a proper goodbye to Jim with a kiss unless she still had some serious feelings for him? Why would she be spending any time around him at all unless there was a part of her that liked to danger? Everyone spends so much time on this show lying to themselves, and they really should just try to wake up.
Maybe this is why Tabitha and Butch is one of the best romances we’ve seen on the show through three seasons, given that they are honest really to the point where they can hurt one another in the blink of an eye. These two characters had a bit of “confession time” when they were each trapped within torture devices at the hands of Edward Nygma, who wanted to use the two of them as a means to get precisely what he wanted: Information, and a lot of it related to what happened to Isabella. It still remained hard to believe that a man as smart as Ed wouldn’t even suspect Oswald of killing her, but we’ll just rolls with it At least there was a pretty smart way in which he learned that Butch and Tabitha didn’t do it — right before he was about to kill Butch, the guy started rambling on as if he did kill her, and Ed realized that he didn’t actually know how Isabella died.
It’s too bad that before that happened, Tabitha had already agreed to chop her own hand off for the sake of Butch’s survival. Go ahead and consider this the most gory moment on “Gotham” this season. Barbara Kean, who had herself a heck of an episode playing detective, showed up to free the two and get Tabitha to the hospital. Why didn’t she just shoot Nygma when she had a chance? Another moment that doesn’t make a ton of sense.
With Barbara now realizing that it was Oswald who was responsible for the death of Isabella, she’s now got leverage. Whether or not she opts to tell Nygma about this remains to be seen, but she could easily use this to get herself a further position of power within the world. We gotta say that we’re all for that — the more you can put a complete crazy person in charge of the asylum, the better.
Bruce Wayne searches for answers – All of the stuff with Bruce, Selina, Ivy, and the Court of Owls tonight was interesting enough, but we do admit that we wish that this past a little bit more hastily-paced since we know there’s some more good stuff coming. We just wish it was here now. What we learned through this is that the Court has numerous other organizations working under them, and they are operating within the city in ways that even some power players cannot comprehend. For example, Carmine Falcone was shocked to learn that the Court was involved in what was going on with his son and the attacks on his life, but it was information that they weren’t quite going to hand over to him. Little does anyone seem to know that Mario seems to have something now in common with one Nathaniel Barnes … so much for being a “good man” anymore.
Also, if Selina Kyle isn’t going to enjoy Alfred’s breakfast cuisine, can we have it instead?
Overall – A really entertaining episode despite some of our critiques above. “Gotham” is playing a little too fast and loose with the rules, and while we know they’re not going to kill off someone like Nygma, you gotta at least justify him surviving somehow unless Barbara really had enough foresight in that moment to realize she could use him to seize power from the Penguin. Grade: B.
Next week – The virus is spreading, and there’s a wedding!