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Gotham Review: Mommy’s Little Monster

By Amanda Chrisman

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Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Gotham episode Mommy’s Little Monster

It’s Tuesday folks, and you know what that means, it’s time for our weekly Gotham review! This week’s episode Mommy’s Little Monster is action packed and full of drama, it was quite exciting to live tweet it with everyone last night! As always my review is in a flow of consciousness style where my readers get a good look at my thoughts on each episode. It’s a lot like a more detailed version of my live tweeting of the show as I start up the episode and just jot down all my thoughts and feelings for you as I watch. There will definitely be plenty of spoilers so if you haven’t seen Mommy’s Little Monster yet just know that I’m about to give away most of the good stuff! So without further ado, here is my review of Gotham season two episode seven, Mommy’s Little Monster!

I can understand the desire for stealth in trying to rescue Penguin’s mother, but I have to wonder if things would have gone differently if Oswald had mobilized more of his men and brought a large group, maybe including Zsasz, when he went to save his momma. Certainly Butch’s betrayal wouldn’t have gone as planned if Penguin had brought more men. His mistake was trusting that Butch’s conditioning was still in place. I’ve always been very close with my mother, so watching the tender and heartbreaking scene between Oswald and his mother is very hard for me, I will have to skip watching this scene in future Gotham viewings. He made her proud to the end though, and she never blamed him, as he is begging her for forgiveness, she says “for what, you’ve always been a good boy”. I whole heartedly believe that Galavan is going to regret turning Penguin into this monster, what little goodness was left in him was snuffed out with his mother’s life, and as a momma’s girl I am really looking forward to seeing Penguin slaughter the Galavans for what they’ve done!

Cory Michael Smith is a charismatic actor, I really love ‘dark Nygma’ or as I have been calling him Big Bad Ed, since he reminds me a bit of Harvey Dent’s Big Bad Harv persona. It’s really quite unique, I think, to have the very first recipient of a Riddler riddle, with the signature question mark on the envelope, be Edward Nygma himself. There are some things about Gotham that I question, certain story lines I’m not overly fond of, but I really really enjoy the way the creative team working on Gotham are developing these characters. I had been suspecting for a long time that the thing that would ultimately push Nygma over the edge and turn him into the Riddler would be outright rejection from Kristen Kringle. I also knew that this was likely to result in her death, although as I said in my last review, I like the two as a couple so much that a small part of me was hoping that she would get a sick thrill from the knowledge that Ed had killed for her, and she could be his little psycho girlfriend. That hope probably stems from my deep love of Harley Quinn.

It quickly becomes clear in this episode that the rumors our esteemed co-editor had heard about little miss Silver St. Cloud were correct, she’s definitely a Galavan to the core, she’s got a little heart of darkness. Which I find to be an interesting take on the character, and honestly since I’m a Bruce and Selina fan, makes me feel better about disliking the little hussy.

It’s great to see Harvey Dent again, though I’m really hoping that his transformation is still a ways off, even though this season is called Rise Of The Villains I don’t want all the transformations happening in the same season. We need to take more time to get to know his character first, we need to see more development from him first. I see the show is still making sure that shadows play across Harvey’s face, this time in stripes instead of splitting his face in half.

Selina and Silver take an instant dislike to each other of course, because Selina has genuine feelings for him and Silver is a little snake in the grass, manipulating him for Theo Galavan. I also have to mention how sweet and cute Carmen Bicondova and David Mazouz are, as I was live tweeting this episode last night I saw a thread on Twitter where someone asked Carmen in an interview if she thought David made a good Bruce Wayne, and she replied with how amazing she thought he was, to which he responded that the same could be said of her, and he called her Ms. Kyle. It was all very flirty and cute, at least from my perspective. I love watching these two kids on screen together, and I hope we’ll see them grow up and really develop their characters’ relationship on Gotham.

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I have to take the time right now, to talk about the music score for this episode, specifically the music that is playing over Edward’s scenes. I didn’t really notice anything different in his first scene, when he wakes up to find that his alter ego has hijacked his body while he slept and hidden Ms. Kringle’s remains. But when he gets to the GCPD to start hunting for her body, following the clues left to him in the riddle Big Bad Ed wrote, the music is perfectly poignant and creepy, I absolutely love it. We get another dose of perfect creepy music at the end of the episode as well, once he has found the body, and as good Ed and bad Ed finally merge.

Robin Lord Taylor does such a good job expressing Oswald’s pain when Galavan calls him a man that not even a mother could love, that I just want to hold him and reassure him that we will get Galavan, that he will pay for killing Mrs. Cobblepot, in a bloody masacre, because a quick death is far more mercy than he deserves. I know, it’s very dark but what can I say, mom killers are one of my biggest issues. Three types of villains I can’t stand to watch on TV, animal abusers, child molesters, and people who kill mothers (their own or someone else’s).

I think I say something to this effect in every review but Harvey Bullock really does seem to have all the best lines on the show. I was not much of a fan of Bullock growing up, because I was most familiar with his Batman TAS (The Animated Series) portrayal, but I absolutely love what they have done with his character on Gotham. I bring this up this time because he has such a funny reaction in this one scene. Bullock and Gordon are in the GCPD, they are about to head out and start shaking down known associates of Penguin’s, specifically they are after Butch Gilzean, when Lee Thompkins shows up to give Jim his keys which he had forgotten at her place. When Gordon notices there’s a new key on his ring and it’s to her apartment, Bullock gets out of there as fast as possible in case it gets awkward, with a quick  “I’ll be in the car!” I can also definitely appreciate how amused Lee is about the whole situation, wanting to make Jim squirm with this significant symbol of commitment, even though he pretty much lives with her anyway. Jim has gotten funnier since he started dating Lee, though Bullock is still the comedian of their partnership.

Once again I find myself cooing at the adorableness that is Bruce and Selina, and to some extent Silver as well. For some reason I just find their little romance and middle school love triangle drama to be really darling and precious! Little miss kitty Cat already has claws, and like a real cat she’s not afraid to hiss and spit, and even take a swipe at someone she dislikes getting around someone she cares about. Now if only she hadn’t lied to Bruce about lying to Jim, she definitely saw his parents murder, and if she hadn’t taken it back and told him she never saw anything he might have trusted her instincts and he could have recognized that she is his friend and is protecting him. Hell, she clearly agrees with Alfred about her not improving Bruce’s life, because after Alfred chased her off she didn’t see Bruce for a month. Poor girl just needed a friend to talk to after everything that happened last episode with Bridget Pike, and Bruce is so hung up on Silver that he didn’t even make time to hear the poor girl out. When Bruce is older and his judgement is no longer being clouded by hormones and young love he will be able to recognize that whatever problems he and Selina go through, he can still trust her opinions of the people around him. Even if Selina doesn’t really know what it means to be a friend, that doesn’t mean she isn’t Bruce’s friend.

Finally, seven episodes into the season Jim is starting to suspect that Theo Galavan isn’t on the up and up. I have been so frustrated watching our supposed hero, the great detective, be completely oblivious even after several encounters with Galavan’s bad acting, it’s a relief to see him finally get a clue. Meanwhile, Jim and Harvey try to question Butch about Penguin’s whereabouts, Zsasz shows up to exact Penguin’s revenge on Butch, who definitely picked the wrong time to betray his boss. And Butch gives them the info they needed to confirm that Galavan is bad news.

Yeah no, Theo Galavan is anything but honorable, they’ve traded a bad mayor for a psychotic killer mayor. I really wish that Gordon had managed to figure this out before Theo managed to become mayor. It seems he is forever trying to take down some corrupt Gotham politician. I thought it was very smart of Penguin, to dress his army up all like himself, vastly increasing his odds of getting close to Galavan. And I knew more cops were going to die during Captain Barnes’ tenure with the GCPD, and I was right. By the end of the season the GCPD is going to be very short handed. I also have to mention just how cool this scene and the mayor’s massacre is, when Gordon tells the cops to all ‘crash’ their location, and the Penguin look-a-likes crash through the windows and start shooting up the place!

As bad as a criminal Penguin is, Gordon really still can’t kill him, not to protect Galavan, not now that he knows what Galavan really is and what he did to Penguin. I really seriously love this scene, but I wish that Penguin had just come out and said that Galavan’s end goal involves killing Bruce Wayne, it might have changed the situation a bit. Hopefully it won’t take long for Gordon to figure out that Galavan is after young Bruce’s life, because if it takes another several episodes its going to frustrate me all over again.

And to close out the show we get a reprisal of the earlier song played while Edward Nygma searched the GCPD for Kristen Kringle’s body, and the good Edward we knew, sweet and quirky and mostly harmless, is gone for good and the Riddler has finally arrived.

Well Batman fans, that’s it for this week, thanks for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it for you! Be sure to follow Caped Crusades on Twitter as we live tweet each episode of Gotham on Mondays and would love the chance to chat with our readers as we watch the show, and you can read our review of each episode the following day!

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