This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for, or so Gotham’s led us to believe on, well, whatever ride this season’s been. The mob war, Fish’s revenge, Barbara’s “issues,” Wayne Manor’s big secret – you’d think that Gotham‘s season finale would be where all the show’s juicy questions got finally laid to rest. And they do. Oh, they do. Well, most of them and then some, possibly at the cost of this writer’s very sanity.
A Few Spoilers Follow
In reference to Leo Tolstoy, All Happy Families Are Alike begs to ask just what Gotham has and doesn’t have. What it does have is a great cast, but what it doesn’t seem to have is any direction at all for any one of them. “Screw Jim Gordon, screw Penguin, screw Falcone, but eh, keep Harvey, because he’s cool” if I should paraphrase the finale’s climax and maybe that’s just it. Gotham has no idea what to do with its characters, though not for want of ideas, but too many…weird ones.
It’s on that note that (of course!) our episode opens with a bejeweled and very much alive Fish Mooney pulls ashore in Gotham City once more Jack Sparrow-style, free from Jeffrey Combs’ Potato-Head Island. Wasn’t she shot and unconscious last time we saw her? Yes. Wasn’t she trapped with no way to get back home? Yes. But I was also led to believe that teens still had the internet and video games in this universe, and that all of their mothers raised them not to hook up with strange women atop the bows of stranger boats. I also hoped that they didn’t include Selina either. But would you look at Fish’s mohawk?! Whoa. What girl wouldn’t dig on that?
I’d play twenty questions with Gotham all day long if I could if I thought I’d get an answer untouched by 50s hipster lingo, but some part of me really doesn’t want to know and maybe it doesn’t really care. Far and wide, Happy Families seems like the overdue conclusion the show’s predictably built up to. On the eve of Gotham’s gang war, our one and only bazooka-proof Don Falcone’s in the hospital with Don Maroni about to knock on his door. Enter Gordon and Harvey to save his life and Gotham’s one chance at keeping unlawful order, because since when has Gordon ever been a good cop?
Amidst Fish’s (triumphant?) return and our two dons now officially “in a shooting war,” it’s a series of mad dashes across the city that doom our detectives to death in a warehouse showdown. This includes possibly the most gif-worthy face Ben McKenzie’s ever had the pleasure of having on the show and the modestly satisfying conclusion to Gotham‘s mafioso rivalries, if not the most scripted one on television. The ruder they are, the harder they fall and in Maroni’s case, prodding a gun-toting woman. May I repeat that, a GUN-TOTING woman, Maroni. Sheesh. Sometimes, karma’s you know what, right “babes”?
If all happy families are alike, then I’d like to think that whatever Gotham’s dysfunctional family of misfits is, it’s anything but. I’d have said the warehouse scene made for some of the most out-of-character transitions I’ve ever seen on Gotham if I knew at all who these people were anymore. I’ll have to theorize on my own just who did Selina’s 80s punk-rock do, but I’d forgive the cat puns this season in return for unthinking her rubbing against Fish’s neck. Then again, maybe our little Ms. Austin Powers didn’t wanna go blowing “the coolest gig ever.” Who writes this stuff and when did executions become shindigs?
Ironically, it’s Barbara who’s unwittingly become the show’s most inanely interesting character and it’s perplexing how far of a tangent her arc goes off on. I had resigned myself to believing her whole Ogre affair was the most I could expect from her. Like the rest of this series, I’ll admit that I was dead wrong though. Not as dead wrong as Leslie. If evolving Barbara’s character from victim, to accomplice, to straight-up psycho was a stretch in just three episodes, then getting grief counseling alone in apartment with her (ex?) fiancé’s current doctor girlfriend’s something else entirely. The deafening lesbian subtext that seems to follow Barbara’s scenes is nothing new, but the creepy part of me almost thinks Leslie almost enjoyed their chic fight all too much. Are both of them Jokers? And what actual psycho parodies The Shining?
Strangely, I’m glad that it’s Penguin who finally gets his time in the moonlight after all this time and his showdown with Fish is probably the one you’ve been waiting for…with a little help from a brainwashed friend. A man can’t serve two masters and neither can Butch. Yes, our tap-dancing monkey boy’s back and it’s nice that Gotham give him something to do here as part of a surprisingly dilemma with a comically industrious solution. Needless to say, it looks like Jada Pinkett Smith’s contract is probably not going to be renewed unless her character lives up to her namesake. That the end result should see a seriously wounded Penguin ape Titanic while perched on a ledge is, dare I say it, worth it.
For the man adorning so much of Gotham‘s initial marketing, it’s still a pity that Gordon’s done basically nothing to prove himself, either to his dirty cop brethren or viewers. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a cheesy thrill to see Gordon go all John Wick on some goons’ asses and the Gotham mob’s Stormtrooper-level shots are just icing on the cake. Given Gordon’s amazing detective work this season, I’m finding it more and more plausible why old Gordon’s turned on the Bat-Signal so many times. As for our presently-old Falcone? Retired to Florida, I suppose, because retirement just washes away all that crime stuff.
As for Nygma? Nygma, Nygma, Nygma – just can’t help leave incriminating riddles in your murder alibi, huh? Happens to the best of us. An entire season of watching him pick onions out of his Chinese food and passing notes around was…exhilarating, but I’ll admit that his panic crazy attack was amusing. I’m not sure that I buy Kringle stumbling upon his secret as something that would send him off his rocker, but kudos to Gotham‘s Hitchcockian Vertigo effects.
It’s probably on no ceremonious note that Bruce somehow enters the picture thanks to the “Next week on Gotham” teasers that’ve spoiled the big reveal by now, but hey, if the show’s just got that one Wayne Manor room to use, it’s going to use it, by gum. Without the guarantee of a time-jump, I can’t imagine what’ll come of the big room behind the fireplace tease. Yes, we know Bruce Wayne is BATMAN, Gotham. We just Googled it. Give. Him. To. Us.
So finally, Gotham‘s come to the fateful, twisted end I never would’ve expected from the show that gave us. Its eventful, if not downright looney season finale dished out thrills, chills, and spills that I already asked for episodes ago and arguably could’ve lived without. Some parts terrible and all parts fascinating, All Happy Families Are Alike‘s naturally overstated antics make for a raucous experiment in the bizarre, but genuinely overwhelm and dilute everything and anything else. I could only hope that another six months of soul-searching can set the series straight, but as Gotham tells me,”hope is for losers.”