Gotham - Fall Finale - Recap: Kit-Cat and Lil' Wayne

Basically, trained assassins are after Selina, and that ends up putting Bruce (David Mazouz) in harm's way as well. In escaping from Wayne Manor to avoid the killers, Bruce faces a crisis of conscience, since he's once again faced with a scenario where he's powerless to help a parental figure. This ongoing feeling of powerlessness is as much a facet of Bruce's development as Selina's connection to Bruce is a facet of her own development. Selina isn't someone prone to making connections, since those connections are tenuous at best. Not only has her mother abandoned her, but we learn that she doesn't really have any friends either. While being interrogated as to Selina's whereabouts, Macky (Kyle Massey) reveals he doesn't actually know all that much about her. Later, when Selina brings Bruce to a street kid safe haven called The Factory, we're reintroduced to Ivy Pepper, and while she seems friendly enough with the future Poison Ivy, we find out that Selina is seriously creeped out by her and seems more prone to avoiding her than actually hanging out. Then there's Clyde, the only adult influence in her life, who tries to railroad her on a trade, and then threatens her with rape when she tries to stand up for herself. So of course she's going to gravitate towards Bruce, the only person who's shown her any real modicum of respect as a person. And of course she's going to be offended when Bruce implies she doesn't care about people. After all, she's never really had anyone worth caring about in the first place. Well, at least until now.

Credit: FOX

I'm sure the show is angering more than a few longtime comic book readers by doing this storyline between Kit-Cat and Lil' Wayne, but I think it provides Gotham with some of its few earned emotional moments. In this episode alone, we had Bruce risking his own life to jump across a building just so Selina wouldn't leave him. It's then reciprocated later by Selina bringing back all of Bruce's mementos from home that she tried to sell to Clyde, to "keep things honest" between them. And their inevitable kiss at the end was so wonderfully awkward that it felt like an honest moment among all of the artifice surrounding the Dick Lovecraft situation. Bruce and Selina influence each other, and it's easy to see elements of the characters they will become as adults. In a similar way, the show scores big time with Alfred (Sean Pertwee), who goes full-blown Liam Neeson while on the hunt for Bruce, exhibiting an emotional connection that's far more potent than the one the show is attempting to cultivate between Bruce and Jim (Ben McKenzie). After the assassin lets Bruce go in order to chase after Selina, Alfred finally is reunited with his ward, having punched his way through a factory of bad guys, risking a hail of bulletfire at damn near every turn. Their hug is the best moment of the episode, and seals that emotional connection that Bruce alludes to early in the episode, when he stresses to Selina that Alfred isn't a butler, "He's my family."

Credit: FOX

While the rest of the episode holds decent interest, it's not nearly as compelling as the Bruce/Selina stuff. Falcone (John Doman) demands to know who the mole in his organization is, and suspects Oswald (Robin Lord Taylor), who swears the armored truck heist wasn't committed by Maroni. He suggests it was Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), and it's enough to get Falcone to taunt Fish at the dinner table by murdering a longtime associate in cold blood right in front of her eyes. The implication is that if Falcone is willing to do this to one of his best friends, what is he going to do to Fish when he gets proof she's been plotting against him? It's also a cautionary tale on the nature of trust, although Fish certainly doesn't take it that way. She figures Falcone is reeling, his back to the wall. And she's not exactly wrong, since Falcone's retaliatory move of raising the taxes on all his underlings has had the effect of turning them against him and aligning them with Fish. In short, while Falcone and Maroni may hold all the power, Fish and Oswald are the ones who are really playing the game. Oswald could easily just reveal Liza (Makenzie Leigh) is the mole, but explains to one of his henchmen that it's all about timing. Considering how he's managed to survive this long, and rise in the process, I would imagine he has something pretty big up his sleeve.

Credit: FOX

At the very least, Oswald seems to have a better plan than Jim Gordon. Jim tries to tie Lovecraft to the murder of the Waynes with the help of Harvey Dent (Nicholas D'Agosto), but soon finds out that Lovecraft was merely a patsy, and that the real person in power is tying up loose ends. Never mind that Dent's covert leak to several inside sources is what sets the hunt for Selina in motion, it's just not a very well thought-out plan. Jim goes blazing into Lovecraft's apartment alone, and this leaves him vulnerable when the assassins break in. It also leaves him without an alibi when they render him unconscious and use his gun to murder Lovecraft. On the one hand, Mayor James (Richard Kind) believes Jim when he says he didn't kill Lovecraft. However, he still needs someone to go down for this. So not only does he tell the media that Lovecraft committed suicide after overpowering Jim and taking his sidearm, he keeps Jim in line by demoting him. Yes, Jim Gordon will now be a security guard at Arkham Asylum. I could probably complain about how this story will set the show back considerably, since Jim will be out of the field, away from any meaningful investigation, and instead find himself roaming asylum halls like it's Arkham Is the New Black or something. But the notion of having Jim go from a hardened detective to a guard at an asylum for the criminally insane -- Gotham's criminally insane, no less! -- has the potentially to be the most interesting thing the show has done yet. So I'm excited to see what the show does with this plot development.

Credit: FOX

"LoveCraft" is a worthy fall finale to compel interest for the second half of Season 1. Given how strong the past few episodes have been, the show will have a lot to live up to in its second half. But it should be interesting to see Gotham's progression as a series once January comes.