Check out Josh’s recap of Episode 19 of Gotham, titled Beasts of Prey, where Gordon is approached by a fellow officer to look into an unsolved murder case. Following the recap, both Josh and Violet share their thoughts about the episode!
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Episode Recap of Gotham, Season 1 Episode 19: Beasts of Prey
So this week’s Gotham, Violet and I had already seen the first 7 minutes at WonderCon this year. You can see our full review of the WonderCon Gotham panel here, but let’s go ahead and start from the beginning.
Fish Mooney Has a Plan
So Fish is still trying to sneakily figure out a way off this island she is stranded on. She sneaks off to a section of Dulmacher’s building, and kicks open a door. She only casually steps outside, clearly not making her attempt to escape yet. She waits for a group of men to approach, who are armed with automatic rifles. Turns out these are the people in charge of keeping Fish and the rest of the prisoners inside the building. But Fish’s cunning has her play this meeting cool. She seems to be getting a lay of the land, and spots a chopper in the distance, and boat at the dock. She plays this encounter with these men as an accident, and she returns inside. She is warned about being outside again though, and she will be in some deep trouble if that happens.
Back inside, Mooney tells the prisoners she has a plan to get off the island. There is something that she is not telling people though, as she tells her sidekick first, but then tells some big guys that she will be escaping with them. The big guys seem skeptical at first, but Mooney makes a good argument—if things so south, she wants to have some muscle to help her out.
Mooney gets her plan underway, which first involves stealing some keys to the boat. She sneaks into Dulmacher’s office, and rummages through his desk for the keys. She tries to make a break for it, but doesn’t quite make it out in time. Dulmacher is of course suspicious, so Mooney goes over the options in her head—she snatches a letter opener sneakily from Dulmacher’s desk, but the Doctor pulls a gun on her. He seems certain she is trying to make an escape, but Mooney breaks down crying, and shows the letter opener she stole. She lies, telling Dulmacher that she wanted to kill herself to prevent herself from turning into the Frankenstein-esce monster she had seen a few episodes ago. Dulmacher seems unconvinced, but lets her go.
Fish then gets her plan in action, getting the big guys out a door, and tells them to make for the boat while she goes back for her friend. They decide to move on without her, which is a big mistake. They get to the gate just before where the boat is docked, and it is locked. The men are quickly surrounded by the guards, and shot to death.
Mooney, meanwhile, uses this time to free the rest of the prisoners, and after a brief confrontation with Dulmacher, they make for the chopper. Luckily, Fish is able to fly it, so they take off. The guards have figured out what Mooney is up to though, and one of them grabs a scoped rifle and takes aim at the chopper. Mooney is hit in the stomach. She is still alive, and the chopper makes for the mainland.
Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle
Alfred seems to be recovering from his stab wound, and seems bent on finding Reggie, the army friend who stabbed him. Bruce insists to go with him, but in their arguing Alfred realizes he is in no shape to go out yet—his wound opens up. Alfred takes a rest, which gives Bruce the opportunity to sneak out of the house and look for this nefarious man. Alfred mentioned that Reggie would be at a “shooting gallery,” so Bruce looks some up and heads out looking at local shooting ranges. He doesn’t find his target, but runs into Selina Kyle.
Bruce tells Selina what’s going on, and Selina gives him a hard time about not knowing what a “shooting gallery” is. Turns out it is nothing about guns, but more about a place to shoot drugs. After a little more looking, Selina and Bruce find Reggie in an abandoned warehouse space, on the second floor, passed out.
Selina grabs his drug stash, and Bruce wakes up Reggie. Bruce begins his questions as Selina threatens to drop the stash out the window. Reggie finally tells Bruce about the board of directors for Wayne Enterprises trying to figure out what Bruce knows. Reggie then demands his drug stash back, but Selina decides against it and drops it. The bag only lands on a ledge though, and Reggie frantically grabs for it. Bruce contemplates shoving the man out the window as payback for what happened to Alfred, but decides against it. Selina, on the other hand, seems alright with it, and gives him a good shove. He tumbles out the window, and lands on the ground below, dead.
Cobblepot
So, we see Cobblepot bent on buying a bar, but for what reason, no one seems to know other than himself. The owner of the bar refuses to sell, but Cobblepot finds a way to get to her. The owner wants her niece to come home, and leave her good for nothing boyfriend. Cobblepot promises to make this happen.
And Cobblepot does. He kidnaps this boyfriend, ties him to a pole, and cuts his fingers off until he agrees. The niece returns home, which then opens up the woman to sell the bar. Then the reveal comes—Cobblepot plans to kill Maroni in this very bar.
Gordon and Bullock Get in Over Their Head
So this episode, Gordon is approached by a uniformed officer, and he asks Gordon to look into an old murder of a woman. When Gordon asks why, the man says he wants to see the city change too, and this case isn’t going anywhere. Gordon agrees, and the investigation begins.
So Gordon begins by examining the body, and looking for the bar that the woman was last seen at. After interviewing a bartender, they figure out which bar it was, and that the woman was with a man when she left.
Then, we get a flashback, showing us the woman’s interaction with this mystery man. He was a pretty good-looking guy, and seemed to be a nice guy, one looking for “unconditional love.” This seems to be just the right thing to say, as the woman ends up back at this guys apartment—which is extremely nice, and huge. But we get a glimpse of what is to come. Apparently this man has a hidden torture chamber in his house. Something tells me this is a lot worse than Fifty Shades of Grey.
Later, we see that this woman had stayed the night, and the next morning she is getting ready to go home so that she can get ready for work. This mystery man isn’t happy to see her go, and things escalate to him grabbing her forcibly, not letting her go.
Then later, we see this woman scared, and cuffed, making lamb for her “boyfriend.” She warns him that she may have accidentally overcooked the lamb. Well, this causes a freak out, and the man tells this woman that things aren’t working out. She is taken to the torture chamber, and this is where the woman’s story ends.
All the while Gordon is doing some investigating, Gordon has Nygma looking for a missing piece of evidence pertaining to the case. Nygma is able to find a picture of the piece of evidence, which turns out to be a broken heart. Bullock freaks out upon seeing this evidence. Gordon doesn’t understand why, and Bullock explains: This heart is the trinket left behind by a serial killer. More importantly, this killer targets the loved ones of cops that investigate his case.
Gordon and Bullock look for the initial officer to see why he pushed this case onto Gordon. Turns out this guy isn’t all that concerned about Gotham at all, but was coerced by Commissioner Loeb to push this case onto Gordon to hopefully get Gordon out of the picture. Bullock pleads for Gordon to drop this case to keep themselves safe, but stubborn as Gordon is, he won’t. Gordon does confront Loeb though, and tells him that after this case is solved, he is coming for Loeb. Looks like we have a war coming.
Josh’s Thoughts: Gotham, Season 1 Episode 19: Beasts of Prey
Well, starting off with Fish Mooney, it looks like she has done her heroic duty, which kind of lessens her villainous side I guess. I have a feeling Fish is not going to make it after this gunshot wound to her stomach. We know from Jada herself that she will not be back for season two, so this would make sense as a way to get rid of her character. One thing to note though—Dulmacher is still alive, so I have a feeling this isn’t the last we have seen of this guy. He probably will end up a case for Gordon soon. Should be a pretty easy case given that this guy is on an island all by himself, and there are about 20 witnesses on a chopper coming to Gotham right now.
I am curious if we will see another big villain die though—Don Maroni. It looks like Penguin has it in for him, and we haven’t seen Maroni a whole lot lately.
One scene I really did not like on this episode was when Selina Kyle just shoves Reggie out of the window. Bruce was half tempted to do it himself, which is good that he restrained himself, but him not doing a whole lot about stopping Selina is kind of bothersome. Maybe this is part of the reason that they end up enemies in this universe? I guess we will have to see how this plays out next episode.
The main story is this new serial killer that Gordon has to deal with. I have a feeling one of the two women in Gordon’s life is going to be in trouble, given this guy’s MO and the scenes we are seeing for next week. I have a feeling we might lose Dr. Thompkins though. She can’t hang around forever, since we know (if this stays true to Batman stories) that Barbara does become his wife eventually. It would be sort of weird that because Thompkins gets murdered, Gordon goes back to Barbara. The other theory could be that maybe Barbara is the one in peril, and Gordon saves her, which then rekindles that relationship, and Thompkins eventually just leaves given that relationship is renewed.
Anyway, this guy seems pretty creepy, so I look forward to the confrontation between him and Gordon. I also really like the confrontation between Loeb and Gordon. I am pretty excited to see how Gordon plans to handle that punk.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 1 Episode 19 of Gotham: Beasts of Prey
I had begun to not be into Gotham very much as of late, but I think with this episode that it’s starting to bring me back around. I mean, Peter Petrelli, come on! Any Heroes fans out there? It was nice to see Milo Ventimiglia back on my TV screen again, even if he is playing the villain this time around. And a very creepy one at that. I also fell for the ruse of the cop that went to Gordon saying that he wanted to clean up Gotham. But apparently it was just Loeb trying to stroke Gordon’s ego. I guess I should have learned by now that all members of the GCPD are corrupt. I thought that maybe Gordon had actually inspired someone to see things his way, but nope. I can’t wait until Gordon takes Commissioner Loeb down and starts to turn the city around. Will it happen this season? Not sure, considering there are only 3 episodes left, but we’ll see.
I did see Fish’s ruse coming though. It was pretty obvious that her plan was to take the chopper, even though she made it look like no one knew how to fly it, so I could guess that either she or her friend knew how. It also seemed pretty obvious that she wasn’t really planning on leaving with those big guys. But now she’s been shot in the gut. Those are often death sentences, which makes it seem like this is how she will exit the show by the end of this season. But what shape will she be in when she gets back to Gotham?
It was also a bit of a shock to see Selina push Reggie out of the window. We know that she has some criminal elements to her, but mostly just stealing things. We haven’t seen her do anything so bad as to murder someone. We did see Bruce Wayne struggle with the decision of whether or not to push Reggie, but you just knew he would end up not following through. I guess Selina probably sees it as doing him a favor, since he really wanted to do it anyway.
That leads us to Cobblepot, who had a small storyline this episode, mainly leading up to what is sure to be a big storyline soon: his plan to kill Maroni. Will he succeed? I’m guessing we’ll see the result of that by the end of the season.
Scenes from Gotham, Season 1 Episode 20: Under the Knife
Here are scenes from the next episode of Gotham,titled Under the Knife:
