Warning: Spoiler Alert
Now this was fun! The new FOX series “Gotham,” reached a new level in the sixth episode of its freshmen campaign, with one of the most entertaining episodes from any show in this still young television season. The episodes main storyline had viewers guessing, until the final few minutes, and interspersed throughout the show, we got some brief but telling glimpses into some characters relationships. The story concluded with an ending that’s got deep ramifications as the season proceeds, that might change the dynamic of power in Gotham City.
We open with a graphic informing us, that the scene we’re watching took place ten years previously. An unmarked police car, drives up to this dilapidated old building and Detectives Harvey Bullock and his partner Detective Dix, (Dan Hedaya) call in for back-up. The Bullock of ten-years-earlier still maintains his idealism and pride of working for the GCPD and wants to attempt to stop a serial killer from taking his third life. Dix, however tells his partner that the “GCPD Golden Rule: No Heroes,” Bullock nods, then runs into the building, causing his older partner to give chase.
Entering the building, they realize it’s too late for the killer’s latest victim, whom like the others came from one of Gotham City’s wealthiest families and was the first-born child. The man they’re looking for, Randall Milkie’s a maintenance worker whose got keys from his job for all the victims’ houses. He’s also got a history of mental illness, now believing he’s possessed by the “Spirit Of The Goat.”
The two detectives hear stirrings and Dix goes around to check the perimeter, while Harvey maintains his position, seconds later we hear a crash and a scream, Milkie pulled a trap door and Dix fell through, crashing to the ground and lying unconscious. Bullock then confronts wearing a full head mask with horns protruding through the top, who tells him that Milkie’s body might perish but the “Spirit Of The Goat,” carries on. Harvey empties his pistol into the man’s chest, then removes the mask, verifying its Randall Milkie. He calls out for Dix, finds his unconscious body just as back-up arrives, and tells them there’s an officer down.
Back in the present Bullock drives to a crime scene, horrified to see that there’s a copycat killer, emulating the murders of the “Spirit Of The Goat,” down at the waterfront. Harvey’s trying to obtain information from GCPD forensic scientist Ed Nygma and as always, he’s annoyed with the conversation and Nygma’s new riddle, which he ignores. One thing that the scientist tells him, however does interest the veteran detective, that he’s arrived before his by the book partner, Jim Gordon.
Gordon’s involved with his fiancée Barbara Kean, over the future of their relationship, after she left him for not sharing his job concerns. Kean tells Jim that unless he’s willing to trust her and confide in her, they’ve got nothing and should head their separate ways, but she wants to be with him, so she begs the detective to let him in. His phone rings, for the third time in their conversation, he tells her he needs to go, but will share everything with her.
Elsewhere at the waterfront, Detectives Renee Montoya and her partner Crispus Allen, interview a disabled man on the docks, on whether he witnessed the shooting of Oswald Cobblepot, ten weeks earlier. The man replies, he saw it perfectly and pulls out a small telescope, the detectives show him a picture of Gordon and ask if he was the shooter. The man replies that’s the man he saw and says he has ice water in his veins as he showed no mercy. Allen and Montoya will now charge Gordon with murder.
As we’re aware, Cobblepot’s alive and well, now managing Sal Maroni’s restaurant and finally heads back to his mother’s house after staying out of contact for the last ten weeks. His mother accuses him of being with a woman, but her son replies he doesn’t even date. He tells her that he got betrayed and almost killed, but he’s on the way back and will become a big figure in Gotham City one day. His mother responds, she always knew he would be.
Gordon arrives at the crime scene, Harvey busts his chops for being late. The Coroner arrives shortly later and Bullock asks the doctor, to check the base of the skull for an incision stitched up and as Bullock predicted the stitches are there, over a foreign object in the victim’s neck. Harvey then says the objects a penny, before the Coroner removes a stitch and Bullock’s proven correct again, which troubles the detective greatly. Bullock asks if the victim came from a wealthy family and the first-born and he receives positive responses to both questions. Harvey tells Jim they’re heading to interview the victim’s family.
The pair head to the woman’s parents home and find the mother so sedated, she can’t talk and the father’s beside himself with grief and keeps making a gripping motion with his left hand. The woman with them, the man’s psychiatrist, Dr. Marks, tells the detectives her patients too distraught to talk. Bullock and her exchange words and she asks the detective, if he thinks psychiatric treatment’s ineffective. Bullock replies that he’d gladly take some of the tranquilizers she gave to the mother and Gordon breaks up the scrum, as the pair head back to the station.
Barbara Kean heads to police headquarters to try to convince Renee Montoya to give Gordon a chance. Montoya tells her they’ve got a witness and will charge Gordon with murder that evening. She tells her former lover to leave Gotham City, until the arrest and trial are over. Kean tells her she’ll do just the opposite and stay and support her fiancée.
Bullock tells Gordon and Captain Sarah Essen, that the murder’s not a copycat, as nobody knew about the coin in the victim’s neck. Milkie planted an 1813 liberty penny in each of the victim’s necks, but the police kept that fact hidden, to discourage copycat killers. The only two people alive that knew that, Harvey and his former partner Dix, now crippled in a wheelchair and resident of a nursing home due to his fall that night. Essen tells the pair to talk with Dix.
When they enter the facility, Gordon tries to talk to Bullock about the emotions churning inside him as he prepares to see his former partner, but Harvey shuts him down saying nobody invades the “black-box,” otherwise known as the detective’s brain. When they enter the room, Dix gives his former partner a hard time, calling him the boy detective, whose honoring the poor broken down man with a bad liver. Bullock responds that, he just ruined his partner’s legs, he ruined his liver with his rotgut booze.
He then tells Dix that the killer who copied Milkie, put the penny in the victim’s neck and the older man says he never told a soul. He then says it’s a conspiracy, that there’s a ring of the “Spirit Of The Goat,” killers and they’ve been dormant for ten years. Bullock tells him that’s crazy and Dix says to Gordon that Harvey always believes he’s the smartest man in the room, which Jim agrees with. Bullock says that’s because he’s constantly surrounded by idiots and leaves the room. As Gordon starts to leave, Dix tells him to watch out for his partner, that Bullock pictures himself the White Knight and tries to save the day. Gordon’s flabbergasted and looks at Dix and asks Bullock and the retired detective says it like Jim’s dumb, yeah Bullock, Gordon then says Harvey Bullock, and this time Dix just mouths the words back. We find out in the hallway, that Harvey’s paying for his former partner’s care and supplying him with what the administrator calls the most horrible magazines. We see the shock on Jim’s face, but he knows better than to go there and remains silent.
We get our first view of Ed Nygma, interacting with someone other than Gordon or Bullock and it doesn’t go well. Nygma enters the quarters of the woman who keeps the case files for the department, Kristen Kringle, whose got a bit of the hot, repressed woman, hiding behind a lab coat and glasses. At first it seems she’s just a bit shy, but we soon realize, that Kringle finds Ed rather creepy. He berates her filing system and she suddenly grows a spine, telling Nygma that she knows where everything is and for him to leave it alone, then leaves her office. Nygma, thinks he’ll impress her and redo the system.
When she returns her files cover the floor and she freaks out, but Ed tells her his way’s far more effective. She then asks why he hates her, why he wants her to quit and he blurts out that he wants her, which makes her look more freaked out. He tries to cover saying he wants her to keep her job and stay right in her office. She looks at him and tells him he’s odd, and we see his face sag. He says he’ll leave but gives her a strange look as he passes her.
A second young woman’s been kidnapped, who fits the victims descriptions, first-born child of a wealthy family. Gordon starts cross-referencing suspects that have access to both homes and Bullock tells him to get Nygma involved as he’s amazing at puzzles.
It really had nothing to do with the rest of the episode, but we see the curtains billowing in the library of the Wayne mansion, and Selina Kyle sneaks in through a window, but gets startled by a noise. She regains her composure as she realizes, it’s the snoring of Bruce Wayne, asleep as normally in the room. She looks at his evidence board, smiles then just looks at Bruce and smiles brighter. She grabs a jewel encrusted box off the desk, then sneaks back out of the room, unheard.
Nygma and Gordon have narrowed it down to four suspects, but two have alibis. When Ed mentions the third guy, Raymond Earle’s address, Harvey says that’s the man and he and Jim head out trying to avert a murder. They wind up at the same building that Bullock killed Milkie in ten-years earlier and run inside. They find the woman’s tied up but she’s unhurt, Gordon rescues her while Harvey goes in search of Earle. He finds the maintenance worker, wearing the same mask that Milkie wore ten-years earlier and Earle says the Goat will never die and he and Bullock grapple, falling down a flight of stairs. Harvey gets tangled up in plastic, but Earle’s standing over him, the two grapple again and Bullock goes down, but Gordon knocks Earle out with a right to the jaw.
Watching Earle in lockdown once they have him in custody, Bullock compares the similarities between Earle and Milkie, same profession, both having mental problems, but all nonviolent, before the “Spirit Of The Goat,” crimes. He says it’s almost like it came looking for them. Essen tells him to enjoy the victory and leaves the room. Gordon talks about investigations they can do, but Harvey says tomorrow and tells his partner to head home. As Bullock watches Earle, he notices the killer’s also gripping and releasing his left hand, just as Dr. Marks patient, Robert Hastings did. Bullock’s solved the crime.
He heads back to the Hastings home to speak with the psychiatrist and tells her he found out she’s a hypnotist, she corrects him and tells Bullock, she’s a hypnotherapist. Bullock also says he realizes she does Pro Bono work and that she treated Raymond Earle and Randall Milkie and accuses her of hypnotizing both men to carry out the murders. She admits to it, then says you can’t hypnotize a victim to commit an act their against deep down, but deep down, everybody hates the rich. She then uses a code phrase and tells Hastings to kill Bullock.
Hastings’ attempts to kill Harvey, but the detective quickly subdues the old man, then shoots Dr. Marks’ attempting to escape in the leg. He takes her down to the station and attempts to explain to Essen, what the doctor did, but the Captain’s confused. Confusion increases as Montoya and Allen bring Gordon handcuffed into the precinct telling his Captain, he murdered Cobblepot, then start to put Bullock in cuffs as an accomplice, while Gordon keeps yelling he didn’t kill the Penguin. The station doors open, and guess who arrives but Cobblepot, and Bullock attempts to go after Gordon for the double-cross.
The Story Continues Next Monday At 9:00 pm on FOX.
