Gotham started well enough, then just disintegrated. The collapse could have been attributed to anything from writing difficulties in navigating the first season of a prequel to a tremendously successful genre property (Batman), to perhaps network interference. Unless someone is behind the scenes giving answers, we'll never really know.  

The season hasn't really recovered from what went wrong early. The story was all over the place, and when the initials didn't quite work the way the writers liked it, the story's focus then changed. More often than not, that kind of course correction isn't very successful. I personally thought the show would deal with the kind of institutional chaos and rot that would slowly seep its way into the city. The police force would eventually be so overwhelmed that its citizens would beg for someone, anyone, to save them. Since it wasn't going to be the Caped Crusader (because he was a kid), the nominal hero would be Detective Jim Gordon. Only, the series has strangely stuck with its guns all season long, playing the weekly procedural case game that adds little depth to what's happening in Gotham City. Gotham is, in essence, a show that seems to shy away from being about the city that bears its very title.


The season finale is not all that different from the course the season has set. It's all over the place. It tries to tidy up all of the running threads as much as it can, and leaves in a place that, at first pass, feels somewhat puzzling. Fish, for example, has been absent for the past three episodes as the show went through its Ogre serial killer arc and so her return had to be grandiose. It turned out to rather defy any logic or convention. She was last seen shot in the gut and may have been dying. With the news that actress Jada Pinkett Smith was not to return next season, this gave off all the indications of a death arc that would be worthy of the show's most colorful, outlandish character. 


No, Fish's gunshot wound completely disappears, the result of a magical title card indicating that two weeks' time had passed in the series proper. No fallout from what happened on the island. No one even bothered to ask Fish where she had been all that time. She's just re-inserted into the mob narrative so that she can function as the agitator again. And for the most part, it works. The speed of the betrayals during the meeting with the Falcone and Maroni families (and Penguin and Jim) goes by like lightning. There's very little time to settle its impacts.

The show is going for rapid fire shocks in the hopes of manufacturing tension and drama. It hasn't worked all season, and so it doesn't really stick here. Penguin goes into his default begging mode whenever his life is threatened. Things work out so that he can finally have that triumphant moment at the end when he declares that he's "the king of Gotham", although one wonders how exactly he would see himself as the top of the mountain. It's supremely convenient that Falcone would "retire" from the mob scene, and with Maroni dead and Fish "eliminated" (no body, no death), the Penguin does look like the only major player left in town. 




It's saddening that the writers have to resort to doing this to clear the board, mainly because I have fully enjoyed each of Falcone's appearances on the series. He was an under-utilized player throughout this season precisely because it seemed that the writers didn't know how to properly deploy him. The writers could never be able to prioritize the kind of story they wanted to tell, and then stick to their guns. If Falcone is to be a diminished presence next season, there is a very good chance that I won't stick with the series.







The other parts of the episode were inconsequential flotsam, really. Barbara and Leslie have a long conversation that plays as an extension of their roles within the narrative. They both function as the classic damsel in distress (Barbara more than Leslie) that Detective Gordon must save. There's nothing new that is revealed through their little therapy session. I'm thinking that, given its rather violent ending, it was a ploy by Barbara to get Leslie to admit to how far she went with Jim while they were dating. If that was the true case, Barbara really is one to talk. 



Her own relationship with Jim was rather slim and all but forgotten once the first half of the season concluded. The series had decided to go in a different direction with both characters by then. The conversation is supposed to build tension to the point where Barbara snaps and attacks Leslie in a fit of rage. Only, there's nothing to base that outrage on. It could have been post-traumatic stress of being in the Ogre's clutches or female jealousy, but we won't know the answer until next season, assuming the writers don't do some kind of wholesale change with the series.







Barbara's character change is just as sudden as Nygma's change. The writers seem determined to commit to the Riddler character next season so they speed up the transformation in the form of a psychotic break. It's jarring, in part because that's how the series normally operates and in part the odd directorial choices to rapidly cut and jerk the camera during the transformation. There's no real resolution to the plot choice of having Nygma commit murder in order to gain the notices of Miss Kringle (also never acknowledging Nygma's creepy stalker tendencies either) and everything is just left hanging there. 



Just like the "revelation" of Bruce Wayne discovering the Batcave within Wayne Manor. The show functions as rote much of the time, hardly ever establishing a base in which to build compelling storylines. The discovery of Thomas Wayne's secret should have more power to it, but often it plays as something that will get the series to adhere that much closer to the Batman canon. On the whole, it hardly ever works.