Gotham
Episode Title: “Beasts of
Prey”
Channel: Fox
Director: Eagle
Egilsson
Writer: Ken Woodruff
Genre: Crime,
Drama, Thriller
Runtime: 42 min
Rated: TV-14
Original Air Date: April 13,
2015
Gotham
is the latest show to return from its March break. With four
episodes remaining in season one, this is the point where the show
should be ramping up for its season finale. Instead I have no idea
where the season is going to end up or what the big moments are going
to be. This stems from things being poorly built up and there being
too many things going on. In “Beasts of Prey” there are four
separate stories being told, and the lack of time to develop any one
of them makes it hard to predict what the viewer is supposed to care
about.
Gordon
had a case brought to his attention, an unsolved murder that a
seemingly sincere patrolman asked him to look in to. After spinning
their wheels for a bit Gordon and Bullock discover that the murderer
is a serial killer that targets the loved ones of the detectives that
investigate him. Further investigation into the matter revealed that
Commissioner Loeb had to case taken to Gordon in order to set him up
in a convoluted revenge plot. It's hinted that Leslie will be the
killer's next target, with a plethora of clues and comments pointing
to that possibility. It's so obviously what the writers want the
audience to think that there seems little chance of it happening.
That's the kind of thing that is supposed to come out of nowhere to
surprise the viewer, not something we're supposed to see from a mile
away. The best thing about these sequences were the flashbacks.
They allowed the villain to be more fully realized than most of the
case of the week culprits that we've become accustomed to.
After
Alfred suffered a setback in his recovery, Bruce set out to discover
the motivations behind Reggie Payne's infiltration into their home.
After some bumbling about he meets up with Cat and they find Reggie
in a drug house. Following their interrogation of Payne, when he
admitted to who had him go after Bruce's evidence and Alfred, Cat
dropped Payne's drugs from an open window. Reggie's desperate
attempt to recover his drugs saw him hanging out the window. Bruce
briefly considered pushing the man from the open window, follow
Reggie's threats of exposing just how much Bruce knows about Wayne
Enterprise's dealing, when he lost his nerve Cat stepped in and
pushed Reggie out the window. It was pretty shocking to see a
murder committed by a child, although I found myself feeling that
Cat's motivation to do such a thing wasn't strong enough for me to
buy the whole thing.
Fish
is still on the Dollmaker's island, and planning an escape. Every
time scenes with Fish come up I find myself just wishing they'd be
over. We definitely didn't need to spend so much time with Fish away
from Gotham. It seems like Fish's glorious return to Gotham could
have been handled very differently. Perhaps a single Fish-centric
episode would have been better than the bits and pieces we've been
subjected to over the course of the past several episodes. It would
have helped with the pacing of the episodes that her story interrupts
if nothing else. The other out of place scenes in “Beasts of Prey”
were the ones featuring Penguin's storyline. It's another plot line
that should have had one big episode devoted to it, instead of the
small pieces we've been given so far. Penguin wants to own a rundown
bar, has the fingers cut off of a musician in order to make it
happen, and then reveals that it's all part of a plan to bring down
Maroni. How? Who knows, we were only given four or five minutes to
find out that much. It just highlights the fact that there is too
much going on for an episode to contain everyone's story. The desire
to hit upon every character is really hurting the storytelling in
general.
Conclusion:
This was a lackluster return from hiatus. There are just too many
threads and not enough time to adequately cover them all in every
episode. The lack of focus in the storytelling is hurting the
individual stories, as there isn't enough time devoted to any one
thing to make it seem significant. With only three episodes
remaining there doesn't seem like a good way to bring it all into
focus in time for the finale.
Rating:
6/10
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