Gotham: "A Day in the Narrows" Review

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March of the Pygs.

By Matt Fowler

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

Heh. Hi, Headhunter.

Aaaand bye, Headhunter.

The GCPD were the absolute worst they've ever been this week on "A Day in the Narrows" while they openly beat citizens to a pulp looking for a witness to Pyg's cop kidnappings. It was full-tilt lunacy from the worst police department on TV, on a show that's now retro-acknowledged its flaws by openly owning the fact that its cops are so terrible.

I can't really decide here if things, basically, needed to get this out of hand in order for real change to occur - since, by the end, the cops (we assume all of them) sided with Gordon over Penguin - but what I do know is you can't get away with having stupid things happen on a show just because you have other characters talk about how stupid they are. Like the delivery guys who went into the precinct with 44 blood-soaked boxes of mystery meat. Having Jim call out how dumb they were doesn't make up for...how dumb they were.

Likewise, we're still missing something here, story-wise, that allows us to fully accept Jim as the "white knight" super cop given his deeply dirty past. Penguin (nicely) called out the fact that Jim was a crooked cop himself not too long ago, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the show is trying to creatively circumvent this hypocrisy. Jim needs to talk to Harvey about how conflicted he is. Connect with Harvey, who was just revealed to be dirty himself last week, about making bad choices and dark decisions. They could both bond over it and decide to go forward with the best of intentions. Instead, they just have Jim running around on a self-righteous kick and Harvey doubling down on the GCPD's inherent awfulness.

And Pyg? Well, he wasn't even Pyg this week. In his debut chapter last week, he was barely the Pyg we know from the comics. Aside from his garb, voice, and love of opera, he'd been morphed into a way-less scarier madman and shoe-horned into the show's corruption plot. This week, he was just laying out traps for people like any other old standard supervillain, with barely a Pyg-ness to him. This was also one of the cases where knowing who the actor playing Pyg was (Fringe and The Tick's Michael Cerveris) ruined a twist. Not that anyone couldn't have figured out that the cop who miraculously lived was Pyg just from the lengthy, telling conversation he had with Jim, but actively being able to recognize Cerveris just gave it away immediately.

So is Pyg working for Sofia? That's the standing question right now. This crazy goose chase was all designed to not only take out the cops, but make Penguin look like a chump. Granted, Sofia would have to have psychic powers for her to be behind it all - able to anticipate that Penguin would ask her about the using the cops so that she could pull some easy reverse psychology on him, but I wouldn't put it past Gotham to slide in a scheme this shaky.

Not to dwell too long on a hypothetical, but if Pyg is working for her then that's also another strange non-Pyg-ism. This incarnation of Pyg obviously has a huge message to spread about police corruption but having him be a hired gun for the actual mob would create some weird mixed messaging about how it's okay for criminals to be criminals but not cops to be criminals. This Pyg, if you follow the logic, should hate all elements of the criminal world.

The Selina/Tabitha/Barbara side plot was a little flat since it basically just steered them all back to the point they were at a few episodes ago, which was the same spot they were in last season (just minus Selina). Mostly, the story just spoke to the fact that there was no real reason to keep Barbara alive (or bring her back) other than the fact that maybe she's a character fans liked. The Ra's al Ghul story could have easily been told without her and now that it's over she's just been slotted right back in where she was last season.

More effective than it should have been, honestly, was the "Bad Boy Bruce" arc that took place this week, featuring the return of Tommy "Hush" Elliot and the debut of some chick named Grace Blomdahl (Samia Finnerty). The end of the story, which involved Bruce impassively buying a nightclub and then entering a night full of drinking, dancing, and douchebaggery, seemed to hone in on, briefly, Bruce's inner chaos and sadness - but am I the only one who thought blowing off some steam like that was good for him? Making out with a nice girl, having a bunch of drinks, laughing (for once in his life) - this felt kind of necessary. Granted, it's Gotham so it'll probably get turned into an ongoing issue that Alfred will need to try and rein in.

The Verdict

Bruce blowing off some steam was the highlight of this week's clunky cop-straightening episode, "A Day in the Narrows," as Pyg became even less Pyg-like, the GCPD became a terror squad, and Penguin's hair rose to new, absurd heights.

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