Son of Gotham Plot:
As Galavan’s (James Frain) trial awaits, Gordon (Ben McKenzie) worries he may have a trick up his sleeve to get off. Bruce (David Mazouz) pursues Silver (Natalie Alyn Lind) about her knowledge of his parent’s killer and both end up in a dire situation.
After consistent high octane episodes, Gotham was bound to deliver a slightly less enthralling story. This was still a solid set up for the Fall finale, but nothing about it wowed me. We do however get a couple big reveals, and while Gordon, Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) were the stars of last week, it was the kid’s time to shine in this one.
The best storyline by far was Bruce and Selina’s (Camren Bicondova) devilish little plot. It’s never a bad idea to put these two together as they scheme to get precious information from Silver, but everyone gets in over their heads. There were a lot of twists and turns, and Mazouz did a great job of carrying this whole fiasco. Bicondova was her usual snarky self, and Lind was flawless as the scared victim and back again to being the manipulative niece. Their three way interplay was definitely the highlight of the episode.
In Gordon’s story, we get a tense first scene between him and Lee (Morena Baccarrin), paying off what happened at the end of last week. Gordon is obviously a mess, and not too receptive on her advice right now. This relationship will come crashing down at some point. While McKenzie delivers another good turn, and we get some quintessential back and forth with him and Bullock (Donal Logue), which was lacking last week, there wasn’t much here to latch onto. The problem were the crazy St. Dumas monks. They aren’t very interesting, and fairly boring. It wasn’t until the end where we put the monks aside and the focus shifted to Gordon and Galavan did it get good. Galavan’s end point was extremely predictable, but Frain fully embraced Galavan in all his villainy and certainly upped his threat level.
The only other minor storyline was literally a quick phone call between Nygma and Penguin, who continue to be roommates. Kind of funny, but I could have done without it. We did get a good Nygman and Lee scene out of it though. While Penguin was essentially absent the entire episode, he comes back in a big way at the end.
That was basically the story of this episode. Solid all the way through, but didn’t really get cooking till the end. It left us with a fantastic set up for the Fall finale, which I have no doubt will deliver in spades. If for nothing else, we got to see an awesome fight between Alfred (Sean Pertwee) and Tabitha (Jessica Lucas), which alone was worth the price of admission.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10 (Very Good)
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Daniel Cohen is the Film Editor for Pop-Break. Aside from reviews, Daniel does a weekly box office predictions column, and also contributes monthly Top Tens and Op-Ed’s on all things film. Daniel is a graduate of Bates College with a degree in English, and also studied Screenwriting at UCLA. He can also be read on www.movieshenanigans.com. His movie crush is Jessica Rabbit. Follow him on Twitter @dcohenwriter.
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