Gotham "By Fire" (REVIEW)
written by Omar Castillon (omar_castillon)
The madness continues as storylines from the previous episode continue to develop in this week’s Gotham. Let’s start off with Butch infiltrating the Galavan clan after having to sacrifice a piece of himself in order to get in. Galavan is somewhat convinced by Butch’s story since he did witness Penguin get a little bit touched by the idea of his mother being in Galavan’s hands. We see a brief moment of Barbara being crazy with Galavan’s sister trying to come up with ideas of how to replace Butch’s hand. Thankfully it’s brief and we move on from the scene but it is something to note that the writers have subdued Barbara’s role a lot more compared to last season.
Moving on to other topics, Gordon is now dead set on trying to find Firefly after one of his strike force members was killed in the previous episode. He does get a little out of hand and eventually gets disciplined by Captain Barnes. We all know now that Bridgit Pike aka Firefly is to blame and after the rather explosive end last episode she is now in hiding with the help of Selina. Selina keeps suggesting to Bridgit that she is free to do what she wants now that her brothers don’t know where she is. It’s a bit awkward for Bridgit since she is just so traumatized from having led an abusive lifestyle with the Pike clan. In order for Bridgit to really go off the radar, she and Selina gather some money from a local human trafficking warehouse. That’s right, women being sold off for implied sex slavery. Seems a bit dark but that’s the whole point of the scene and eventually Bridgit and Selina steal the trafficker’s money with a surprising amount of submission on the trafficker’s part. One would assume that a place like that would have more armed guards but that’s just me.
Switching over to the Galavan/Penguin feud, Butch dives deeper into the whereabouts of Penguin’s mother. Of course he does get caught by Galavan and is beaten up by Galavan’s sister with a whip. Galavan in the meantime lures Bruce Wayne for a dinner at his place with Silver St. Cloud whom you may remember was in a past episode after Bruce and Galavan have lunch together. The entire time it’s more of a, “IT’S A TRAP,” sort of situation but thankfully it didn’t result into anything that extreme. Instead this was more of Galavan setting his pieces together for his mayoral campaign and helping Bruce clean up some of the dirty business Wayne Enterprises has been doing behind his back.
Back to the Firefly storyline, Bridgit eventually gets caught by her brothers and is forced back into their grasp. After some threatening words Bridgit agrees to stay with them only to fight back with her Firefly outfit and murder her brothers by burning them beyond recognition. Selina is on the prowl as she realizes what happened to Bridgit and gets into a mini standoff with Gordon only to submit and tell about Bridgit’s potential whereabouts. Soon enough Bridgit goes back to the human trafficking warehouse and releases the women in captivity. At first she looks like the hero but then she is in a standoff with police and Gordon’s strike force only for things to go south and Bridgit making a big mistake.
A few other extra snippets to consider is the continuing tragedy of Nygma and his love life. He finally confesses to Kristen that he killed her previous abusive boyfriend brutally. Earlier in the episode Kristen was all about wanting a guy with a little bit of edge to him but not too much…sigh… Nygma obviously overhears this and he gains the courage to explain his actions when he killed her ex. She is then horrified by the news and rejects Nygma completely. Well…this doesn’t end well for anyone after the fact. Let’s just say that Nygma is slowly going to the darker persona he keeps fighting away. One final thing to take note is the end scene showing a division of Wayne Enterprises doing experiments with people. Maybe this is the deep dark secret everyone keeps away from Bruce. This is probably for the best but we all know he’ll find out eventually. Hopefully sometime soon.
