Gotham: Season 1 Episode 2 "Selina Kyle" (REVIEW)
written by Omar Castillon (@omar_castillon)
It’s only the second episode and I am already hooked to this show. Right off the bat (no pun intended) we are placed in a somewhat eerie situation involving some generous people trying to help out the homeless on the streets of Gotham. Of course this is Gotham and everything gets out of control when these “good Samaritans” start drugging the young homeless and killing a war veteran who was living with them. Selina Kyle or “Cat” escapes from the crazies and the episode just goes into a running start.
The next big thing to progress in the second episode is Oswald Cobblepot’s journey to go back to Gotham City. Previously, the audience saw Cobblepot wash upon the shores outside of Gotham and he is now in a vengeful mood. Right before the title sequence started, Cobblepot gets picked up by two rich kids driving to who knows where when they make the mistake of picking up Cobblepot and teasing his penguinlike walk. He breaks a bottle of beer that he was handed to and just kills one of the passengers.
Holy crap on a crazy stick this is now getting into territories similar to things like the TV show “Hannibal” and that’s not a bad thing. The two themes to get out of this episode are child abductions and a wee bit of vengeance but mostly child abductions. Lili Taylor played Patti and Frank Whaley played Doug; these two are the child traffickers in the episode and man were they a force to be reckoned with. From their happy/charitable nature at first, to illegal medical drugs and abducting homeless children in the streets of Gotham was pretty damn dark. And yet I was ok with the episode going to these lengths.
If it wasn’t for the fact that the general audience is used to the universe presented in the films, we would not have such a surprising and somewhat realistic approach to problems such as the child trafficking presented in this episode. Instead of being repulsed by the subject, I was more in the light of wanting Gordon and Bullock trying to find these scumbags and putting an end to that branch of crime. One thing lingers until the end of the episode and that is what were these two nutcases going to do with the abducted children? Take from it what you will by the unsettling nature of where they would go or what these victims could be used for, but this is what keeps people hooked.
There is also a brief encounter with Cobblepot’s mother Gertrud Kapelput (Carol Kane) as Montoya (Victoria Cartagena) and Allen (Andrew Stewart-Jones) investigate the sudden disappearance of Oswald. Kapelput is as much of a nutcase as Oswald since she sees that her boy wouldn’t be involved in such criminal activities. Someone open Arkham Asylum and let this woman be the first one in many years to be a patient. (Right? No? Ok…moving on)
We also see Bruce and Alfred in this episode as he tries to conquer his fear…by burning his hand to resist pain and listening to heavy metal… the assumption is that Bruce interacting with Gordon will build some form of foundational allegiance for when he becomes Batman in the future. It’s fine keeping this scenario more or less a small segment of every episode and not being the main focus. Thankfully this isn’t such a big deal since the child trafficking themed episode was enough to keep me and potentially the rest of the audience from changing the channel. There is a nice little tease at the end of the episode as well that involves a deal Selina Kyle (Cat) does with Gordon involving the murder of Bruce’s parents.
Again, the Wayne murder is the driving force of the series but not the main focus of the individual episodes. Just keep this in mind for next week’s episode. One more thing to add from this week’s episode is the potential bloody war between Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Falcone (John Doman.) The two crime lords have confronted each other and it does look like there is going to be a crazy couple of episodes involving some gangland violence in the streets of Gotham. I say BRING IT ON!
