Gotham Review: Five Standout Moments From Tonight’s The Night

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Gotham episode Tonight’s The Night

Greetings fellow Batman nerds! I know this review is coming to you quite late and I apologize for that but we’re changing up the format of these reviews and it has taken a bit of time to get it all worked out. From now on my Gotham reviews will be slideshows like this one, where I will pick five standout moments from each episode of Gotham and talk mainly about them. So without further ado here is our first ever slide show Gotham review!

Next: #1:....Barbara's Wedding Nightmare

Standout Moment No. 1: Barbara’s Wedding Nightmare

This is the opening sequence of the show, it starts out like a dream come true for Barbara, she and Jim are rehearsing for their wedding. They in a church with smiling, happy people, Jim is waiting for her at the alter beaming, it’s everything she’s ever wanted. Until the priest asks them to rehearse their vows and he asks Barbara if she will take Jim to be her un-lawfullly wedded husband. When Babs tries to correct the priest Jim gets upset with her and she looks around for help only to see that the priest has turned into Penguin and Theo Galavan is playing the organ. Suddenly her dream has become a nightmare as her wedding guests have turned into Arkham inmates and a bird flies out her mouth. Everyone starts laughing at her and she finds herself tied up and gagged surrounded by the inmates and it is now Lee Thompkins wedding to Jim and not her own. The nightmare ends when the Arkham patients all point guns at Barbara and she jolts awake.

To me, this dream is Barbara’s mind trying to clue her in to how crazy she’s been acting. In a recent interview Erin Richards stated that Barbara is very sane, in an insane way. That she is completely convinced that she is totally sane. So to my way of thinking this nightmare is Barbara’s subconscious mind alerting her conscious mind to how crazy she really is. It clearly didn’t work of course because she still happily goes on with her and Galavan’s plan, but this dream is the final proof that Barbara Kean is cracking up.

Next: #2:....Nygma Kills The Hunter

Standout Moment No. 2: Nygma Kills The Hunter

After cutting up Ms. Kringle’s body and removing it from the morgue, Nygma went out to a secluded spot deep in the woods to say farewell and bury the evidence of his crime. He packed her body in a trunk and took a picnic for her funeral. As he is giving his little farewell speech to the trunk that holds the remains of Kristen Kringle, a hunter approaches Nygma and startles him. When the hunter bends down to examine the trunk, already deep in a hole Nygma dug for it, Edward quickly picks up his shovel and breaks it over the back of the hunter’s neck, killing him.

Edward Nygma’s swift murder of this random hunter is a significant moment in Nygma’s character progression because it indicates that there is no going back. There is no longer any hope of redeeming him. When he murdered Officer Dougherty he did it to protect Kristen Kringle and he was still mostly a good man. It was the wrong thing to do but he was doing it for the right reasons. As for the murder of Ms. Kringle, well that was an accident in a moment of heated panic, not truly an evil act either. When Nygma kills the hunter however, there is no hesitation, he wants to protect his own interests and so he acts. This is his first truly evil murder, done on purpose and to keep anyone from discovering what he did to Kristen.

Next: #3:....Barbara's Fall

Standout Moment No. 3: Barbara’s Fall

Just when it looks like Barbara is finally going to get her revenge on Jim and Lee there in the church where her wedding was supposed to be, Jim breaks loose of his bonds and grabs her shotgun, turning the tables on her. The police then arrive and Jim must shoot a couple of Galavan’s thugs and Tabitha Galavan herself (not that he can tell who she is under the mask). Barbara races upstairs to the cathedral’s loft as the police bust in and Jim goes after her. She makes one last desperate swipe at him with her knife and their scuffle smashes the stained glass window they were fighting in front of, sending Barbara out the window, only hanging on to Jim with one hand. He calls her name and she says she’s been a bad date, and then Babs declares her love for Jim and lets go of his hand, presumably falling to her death. Though she survives the fall she is in critical condition and must be rushed to the hospital, leaving Jim Gordon standing there in shock.

This moment is very reminiscent of the Joker’s final moments in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film. Batman and Joker have their final showdown at the top of the Gotham Cathedral tower, the very same cathedral Barbara and Jim fight in. Both the Joker and Barbara fall out of the window, the main difference being that Barbara’s fall was slowed by hedges and bushes and so she survived while the Joker’s fall terminated on a police car, killing him. This fall puts Barbara out of commission for awhile and will allow the writers to use her return to surprise both Jim and their audience as we won’t know when to expect her back. It is also significant as it may have been the start of a change in Jim, whether he realizes it yet or not, Barbara declaring her love for him just before she let go has had an effect on Jim. It will be interesting to see what this will mean for the two of them in the future.

Next: #4:....Bruce Turns Down Galavan

Standout Moment No. 4: Bruce Turns Down Galavan

In this episode Theo Galavan has offered Bruce the one thing Bruce wants most in the world, the name of his parents’ murderer, in exchange for Bruce’s 51% shares in Wayne Enterprises. Now as far as Bruce knows, Theo Galavan is a good man with the resources to fight the corruption within the company and save the city of Gotham, so it’s a tempting offer and even seems like it might be the right thing to do for the greater good as well. At the last minute Bruce changes his mind and realizes that he can’t sell his family’s company for anything in the world, not even for the name of his parents’ killer. Of course he made that decision under the assumption that Galavan was a good man, one who might be talked into giving Bruce the information he wanted for some other price.

This moment is of course significant because here we see that Bruce has finally resolved himself to fight the corruption in his company himself, no matter how much time it will take him to train and prepare himself, he must do it himself, he cannot rely on others to do this for him. That’s quite a lot of character growth for young Bruce all in one day. As an avid fan of Bruce Wayne as Batman I find myself very proud of our vigilante to be.

Next: #5:....Nygma Discovers Penguin

Standout Moment No. 5: Nygma Discovers Penguin

When Nygma killed the hunter he broke his shovel, and so since he wouldn’t be able to make the hole bigger to fit the addition of the new body he went back to his car to retrieve a pair of bone saws to make the new body fit in the existing hole. Upon returning to his burial site he finds that someone has been there and eaten the picnic he’d brought for himself, now he has a second witness he must hunt down and kill. In the final moments of the episode he comes upon the trailer where his witness is hiding, only to discover that a very injured Oswald Cobblepot was hiding inside. Penguin falls to his knees and begs Nygma to help him just before the credits roll.

Next: Gotham: Synopsis Of Epsiode 10-Son Of Gotham

This is only the second time that Nygma and Penguin have met, and this situation is much different than the first. Last time the two met face to face, they were firmly on opposite sides of the law, and neither man really liked the other as they were sort of both vying to be the odd little friend that Jim Gordon relied on. I have to wonder how this second meeting is going to play out. Nygma and Penguin could attempt to kill each other, making sure there are no witnesses to their crimes, or (and this seems more likely to me) they could choose to work form a mutually beneficial partnership. Nygma could nurse Penguin back to health, knowing that if Penguin tried to hold his knowledge of Nygma’s murders over him, he could hold the knowledge of Penguin’s location over him right back. I’m hoping for a Riddler  and Penguin team up, the likes of which I’m not sure we have seen since the two joined forces with Catwoman and the Joker in the Adam West Batman movie.

We hope you enjoy our new review format for Gotham! What were some of your top moments from “Tonight’s The Night?” Let us know in the comments!