Gotham S4 Ep 13: ”A Beautiful Darkness”

Hello Gothamites!

And welcome back to another episode of your favourite show Gotham! We start this episode with Selina and Ivy who visit a house in the uptown part of Gotham. The lady of the house invites them in after a little sniff of Ivy’s perfume and the rest of the family follows. The perfume turns them into some sort of superfans, doing everything Ivy asks them to do. Selina thinks they are there to rob the place, but what she doesn’t know is that Ivy has plans of her own. The man of the house is a scientist who works at Wayne enterprises where, to put it into Ivy’s words, tortures plants. You can imagine, with Ivy being the crazy plant lover she is, that she is not happy about it. So she uses her own toxin with the scratch of her nails to kill the man. The gruesome part is that his whole family is forced to watch. A little later Harper and Gordon arrive at the crime scene. There they meet Fox who tells them that the symptoms of the man look a lot like the way the guy in The Narrows died ín the last episode. After Harper and Gordon leave, Fox leaves a very mysterious voicemail on Bruce his phone.

Selina can’t deal with Ivy killing people, so she stops working with her. It doesn’t really bother Ivy because she is busy trying to find everyone responsible for killing her plants, called Project M. Because the man she killed worked for Wayne Enterprise, she decides to pay a visit to Bruce. Bruce has a hangover from the previous night and somehow came home with a talking bird. Just before Bruce recognizes her, she kisses him which puts him under the superfan perfume. And she demands that he tells her all about Project M. After Bruce gives Ivy all the info she needs, she needs to get rid of him. Instead of making his dead quick, she decides to make it slow and painfully. After all, it’s his name on the company that murders her beloved plants. She scratches him, to which he starts to hallucinate due to her poison. Bruce starts to dream that Raz al Ghul is back and that he is a surgeon who removes Bruce’s face.

Jim pays a visit to the Sirens club to find Selina because the family of the poisoned man has told the GCPD that two women entered their house. One redhead and a brunette with a whip; Selina. In the Sirens club, Jim sees Sofia, who reminds him again of the deal they have, so that Sofia can remain queen of Gotham’s underworld. Then Selina walks in, so Gordon goes after her. When he catches her she tells him that it was Ivy who killed the scientist. Meanwhile, Ivy is at the GCPD to let Fox take her to the location of Project M.

Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce is still in his hallucinated state. In his mind, he is attending a party, still as the boy who has no face and he meets a ton of familiar faces: Jim, Barbara, Selina, Lee, Penguin, Bullock and himself. Upon seeing the young man who looks just like him, he gets angry. All because he believes that the guy stole his face and is now pretending to be him. The two young men nearly start to fight, but when the other Bruce pushes the faceless Bruce, faceless Bruce just disappears in thin air only leaving his clothes behind.

Back in the real world, Selina and Gordon are at the GCPD HQ where Ivy has poisoned everyone with her superfan perfume before getting out with Fox. By mistake, Gordon calls Ivy a psycho, not knowing about their sudden and heavy affection for Ivy. They can get away to search in Fox his office for clues to where Fox and Ivy went. They find a tape recorder that Fox turned on when Ivy stepped foot in his office and get the needed information. Before they can leave, Gordon and Selina are stopped by Harper and two cops who didn’t like the way Gordon talked about Ivy. Both he and Selina try to sell that they love Ivy very much and that they are also under her spell. Unfortunately, Harper doesn’t believe them, so they have to run.

The face stealing Bruce is still at the party impressing his guests. But when he turns around all his guests are suddenly gone and it’s just him and Gordon now. Gordon asks him how long he thinks he can still hide before Special Agent Pennyworth crashes and comes in through the window and takes Bruce with him. Pennyworth brings Bruce to the same alley where his parents were killed. Here he meets a man in the shadows with a cape (a.k.a., Batman).

Meanwhile, Ivy and Fox are in some greenhouses where Project M, some of the Lazarus water is being kept. Ivy takes the entire bottle and they walk out of there. Jim arrives at the greenhouse a fraction too late to stop Ivy from taking the Lazarus water and he is faced with a choice: to let Ivy go in order to get the antidote to save Bruce dying from the poison. When Ivy has left, it’s only Gordon and Fox, with the latter still being under Ivy’s superfan perfume. Fox tries to stop Gordon from taking the antidote from him before Ivy is at a safe distance claiming he has a black belt in jujitsu. Gordon just punches him in the face after which Fox awakes from his superfan state.

Bruce awakens in a cave where he meets the man with the cape again. Somehow Bruce figures out that the man with the cape is a future version of himself, after which the man turns into a couple of thousand bats. Then Bruce wakes up due to the antidote given to him by Gordon and Fox. After Bruce is calmed down a bit, he and Gordon talk about what Bruce saw in his dreams. Bruce saw who he really is, but Gordon assures him that he doesn’t need to fight it alone, after all, he also has a dark side. When Gordon and Fox have left the house, Bruce calls Alfred for help. When Gordon arrives at the GCPD, everyone is back to normal, except that they are very embarrassed over what happened. Gordon puts them back to work by making the search for Ivy the top priority. Then Gordon gets a call from Sofia who has found other ways to hurt/blackmail him than via Pyg’s death: Lee. In the fancy house that Ivy had broken into in the previous episode, she has made a plant heaven, but the real owners come home. With the help of a new flower deadly at the touch, she created with the Lazarus water and her own blood, she kills them.

Penguin has already been in Arkham Asylum for the past 6 weeks where he kept himself quite quiet. This is to the discontent of Jerome who expected a murder or two or even a prison break from Penguin in that period of time. Now Penguin just bores him, which is not a good thing considering the last guy who bored Jerome now looks more like a statue than a living person. Jerome makes it his mission to find the crazy part in Penguin again. He lets his men drag Penguin to a homemade stage on which he needs to do a clowns act to make Jerome laugh. Jerome tries to sell it as help to get Penguin out of the prison of this mind, but Penguin refuses. He tries to attack Jerome but is kicked down and beaten by Jerome’s men.

Sometime later, Penguin is alone in his cell. He nearly gets a heart attack because his door opens and he is scared that Jerome is behind it. But to his relieve it’s only a guard who tells him that he has a visitor. It’s Nygma who says that he is only there to see how miserable Penguin is and to show Penguin how good he is doing. Before Penguin has the chance to sit down, Nygma is already gone, but not without leaving an origami penguin behind. Its Nygma’s visiting card with a riddle scribbled on the back:

“I’m held captive all day
My brilliance locked away
This prison must be broken
The key my name which must be spoken”

Penguin immediately understands that The Riddler is still somewhere inside of Nygma, ready to come out and help Penguin escape. This gives Penguin the motivation he needs to go up against Jerome. He already starts that evening. Some of Jerome’s men try to take Penguin to the main area, where Jerome hangs a strop around his neck as a way to make Penguin extra motivated. Because there is a bag over his head, they firstly don’t realize that it’s not Penguin they took, but the statue guy. Then Penguin tries to electrocute Jerome but fails, because Jerome jumps off the table on time. However, the statue-like guy is electrocuted. Then Penguin tries to impress Jerome with a spork and then with a mime act. The latter seems to work because Jerome is playing along, ending up in Penguins little imaginary box where Penguin can beat him up. This whole act seems to work because Jerome keeps on laughing throughout it all. Jerome feels like he ‘cured’ Penguin because his evil side is back and therefore Jerome won’t kill him. Later that day, Jerome pays a visit to Penguin’s cell. Penguin confronts him with the fact that Jerome has everyone from Arkham under his thumb, but that he still hasn’t escaped. Jerome tells him that he is, in fact, planning his escape with something spectacular. He asks Penguin to join him and the crème de la crazy. Penguin refuses because he has a plan of his own including Nygma as he drops a letter to him on the mailcart.

And that’s it! Check out The Game Of Nerds same place, same time next week for more Gotham!