Come on, we all know the precinct's real power couple...
Nygma coasts around, helping with the case of the week and having a brief interlude with Oswald. The show sets up a situation where Nygma tries to befriend his future fellow villain, to get a freezing cold shoulder from Oswald, who's desperately hoping to see his boy crush, Jim. Jim, of course, spurns Oswald's love and his invitation to his club opening, making the scene like a poignant love triangle.
Jim and Lee are working on getting laid, now that they've officially passed the three date mark. And Jim really has no right to be weirded out by Lee working as ME at the precinct. Jim suggested she apply for the job, despite the fact that her medical experience consists of cuts and bruises at Arkham. In Lee's defense, she's got the autopsy room nicely organized and will settle in nicely. If she can stop kissing Jim at work. They compromise on quick pecks at the office, but no word on whether Jim gets to see her bedroom anytime soon.
Interesting note: Jim is willing to take on the city establishment over his cases, but not kiss his girlfriend in front of his co-workers? Jim's spent a couple episodes openly challenging the precinct's apathy and corruption, but can't handle a few whistles? I guess Jim's deepest fear is appearing soft. Somebody alert Dr. Crane.
Speaking of this week's main villain, Dr. Crane strikes again, this time recruiting his son, Jonathan, to help him kidnap and kill an elderly man for his adrenal gland. As we knew, Crane is looking for lots of cortisone, and he's using it to make something that goes in a syringe.
Science!
Crane quickly unloads the contents into his own veins, and steps into a greenish, dim corridor, lit only by windows behind him that line a staircase. The corridor shakes a bit, as the cortisone messes with his perception, and then Crane hallucinates a fire starting and spreading along the stair, accompanied by a blonde woman slowly engulfed by flames as she scolds Crane into saving her.
Jim and Bullock find Dr. Crane's old workplace, a fancy prep school where he taught biology and seemed to be a well-respected teacher and colleague. A widower, Crane's only flaw is that he was overly protective of little Jonathan Crane. His coworker's only concern about Dr. Crane is the creepy academic paper he asked her to review some time ago; it explains that Crane thought he could innoculate himself against fear by using cortisone. So, now we know what the creepy experiments are. Jim and Bullock find out that, from the paper, that Crane didn't just want to innoculate himself; he had an unnamed second subject all lined up.
Turns out to be teenaged Jonathan Crane. Jonathan, left without a mother after a fire, and left without a dad because of the man's obsession with fear, looks like a dear in headlights most of the time, wondering what new craziness his dad's cooking up next. Unwilling to turn him in, probably not knowing if he could run anywhere, Jonathan's been hanging around with Crane in the dimly lit hideout. Crane quickly starts injecting Jonathan with cortisone shots, despite Jonathan's unwillingness to be experimented on. As it is, Jonathan seems to be scared of scarecrows.
I'm guessing from watching the Wizard of Oz
Jim and Bullock spend some time flailing around the precinct. Bullock tries to goad Jim into using Oswald for information, until Jim decides to predict where Crane will be based on what they've been able to find out about him. By realizing how Crane's wife truly died, they track Crane down and discover his hideout is the house where his wife died in a housefire he was too scared to save her from. Facing arrest and the failure to "cure" his son, Crane quickly shoos Jonathan, at night, into the hay stack where the dreaded scarecrow looks out over a valley beyond. Crane desperately wants to finish "treating" Jonathan, and resorts to injecting him with way too much cortisone, completely against Jonathan's will. While Dr. Crane dies in a shootout with Jim and Bullock, Jonathan writhes in terror among the hay.
Oswald has run back to Falcone, terrified at Maroni's expected retribution. While Falcone surveys Mooney's old club, shot up when Viktor confronted Mooney and First Mate, Falcone doesn't seem to think Oswald's fate is all that important, especially if Oswald's babbling keeps him from fixing up the club, re-opening it and making Falcone money. 'Cause Falcone only protects lieutenants who keep him at the top. The only bright lining is that Falcone is willing to make Oswald his lieutenant officially, and will handle Maroni. His curt exchange with Oswald leaves the impression that he really has come back from his malaise over the summer.
Falcone demonstrates just how much he's his old self when he hosts Maroni for yet another Oswald summit. Maroni and Falcone agree that Oswald makes a good lieutenant; he makes money for his bosses, and has a subservient demeanor that makes him appear to not be a threat. You and I know that his dearest wish is to kill everyone, but he's been able to convince his two bosses that he's a boot-licker, even if he's dishonest from time to time. After all, snitches are usually people without much power, aren't they?
Maroni is still insisting that he's going to kill Oswald when Falcone makes him an offer too good to pass up. Falcone has, somehow, kidnapped the only honest judge in Gotham and has entrapped him in an extravagantly decorated prison, beating him into submission to get compromising photos of the man with a younger man. In pretty kinky photos. Falcone offers to share Judge Stanley Turnbull with Maroni, finally being able to evade justice from him. Maroni happily accepts.
Oswald has successfully gotten the club up and running. Complete with a new, elegant umbrella in lights and a punk band playing something un-danceable. Either Gotham is scared to show up in Falcone's place, or the band scared people away; only a few customers grace Oswald's fancy modern punk club. Maroni is amused at Oswald's less than stellar opening, and assures Oswald that he's not there to kill Oswald, just waste expensive champagne and remind Oswald that he'll only live as long as Falcone does. How will Oswald cope without being able to play these two off each other? What happens the first time he disappoints the only mob boss who will keep him around?
Bruce has his own tough luck this week. He and his father used to have a ritual hike every year, to some hilltop around Wayne Manor, to camp out and watch the next day's sunrise. It's come up again, and Bruce has decided to make the trek again. Himself. Without a grownup, he'll just go to the hill and come back again before dark, and he maturely tells Alfred he'll be fine. He tromps off through the fall leaves, reaching the hilltop as planned with his ritual stones to place on two cairns. One's bigger than the other, meaning that one cairn was his father's, larger after more years of trekking up the hill. It's this cairn that Bruce decides to attack. Has Bruce finally reached the anger phase of grief? The stones are quickly kicked or thrown away, useless markers of a ritual Bruce can never enjoy again.
Before Bruce can make his lonely, angry way back, he topples over something, rolling and falling down the long hill into the valley. He comes to a rest in terrible pain, with an ankle that he's obviously twisted, or worse. Thinking he's stuck there, he doesn't even try moving until long after dark, when it finally occurs to him to fashion a makeshift splint out of sticks and a shoelace. It's pretty crappy as first aid goes, and Bruce is reduced to crawling through the dark, cold, windy rain. Animals are squawking in the distance- bats? As Bruce makes his way back up the hill, hopefully on the side closer to home, the squawking is replaced by owl hoots. Which really doesn't help Bruce.
It's not until he reaches the top, belly crawling among the leaves, that Bruce sees the firelight, and Alfred in his Eddie Bauer sweater on the other side. Alfred's pocket watch sounded the alarm back home, and he decided to almost find Bruce and wait and see if he would get himself out of that valley. After all, the kid said he'd be all right on his own. Bruce is astounded at first, but quickly settles in next to the fire and his trusty butler. Alfred wavers between protectiveness and throwing Bruce in the water to sink or swim. Bruce wavers between pushing Alfred away or hoping he'll show up to save the day. The two never really figure this out, if the future is any guide. But they do enjoy a sunrise in a clear morning sky together.
Fish Mooney is definitely captured by pirates. But, you can't keep a good woman down. Still in her eighties jumpsuit, she's thrown into a dungeon with assorted people also captured by pirates, for reasons unknown. Her most recent buddy is a yuppy named Kelly, who quickly befriends her and gives her little tips on how their captivity works. It's Kelly who tells her their captors' double team strategy, and Kelly who teaches her who gets first dibs on the food. When Fish approaches the prisoner who's at the top of this very unfortunate food chain, she offers him her "services" in exchange for protection. They make googly eyes at each other off and on while Mace shows her the knife that gives him what little power he has in the dungeon.
When Mace wants some of Mooney's "services", she seems willing to provide. Until she suddenly stabs Mace in the neck with his own knife. Holding it out so all can see, she declares herself the new Dungeon Queen, and says she's here to bring a little order. Kelly is all to happy to offer his allegiance, and the others don't care as long as they don't get killed. But it's a prisoner being returned to the dungeon that changes the game for everyone. She has bloody, gaping holes where he eyes were. She's crying, but she's also pissed. And, so is Mooney. Can she turn this anger into a full-fledged rebellion against their captors?
Before seeing the circus with Lee, Jim wants to visit Jonathan Crane, who's had a real bad day as Dr. Crane's last victim. He's in the hospital, and he's physically stable. But his nervous system isn't. The doctor pessimistically informs Jim that even though the cortisone injected into Jonathan has dissipated in his system, it's effects on the nervous system are still going extremely strong. Basically, Jonathan Crane is going to be terrified indefinitely. As Jim watches in sadness, Jonathan struggles with his horror of being attacked in his bed by a scarecrow. With a flaming head.
Jonathan Crane has the distinction of being the only Gotham future-villain who would have been happy to have a normal life. Oswald is already planning killing the mob for his own dominion over the city. Selina Kyle can't wait to become Catwoman. Ivy runs away from her foster home to develop her own demons. Nygma pursues his love of the gruesome and riddles. He's on the cops' side, for now- but will Kris Kringle eventually spurning him persuade him to pursue crime? Only Jonathan just wanted to be left alone to be a normal kid. And while other future villains develop and embrace what makes them different, Jonathan may spend his life paralyzed with fear. Will it really be entertaining to watch Jonathan turn to crime to deal with demons that were foisted on him?
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