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Gotham 10 - Street Bruce

Legion contributor Christina Janke is recapping and reviewing Gotham for us this season. Follow her on Twitter @IntrotoGeek!

Assassins, youths, Alfred…OH MY! The youngsters take center stage in this episode as they try to outwit a gang of assassins. Some spoilers ahead.

We start off the episode with a mystery woman sneaking up to Wayne Manor. The gardner catches her and she wraps him in a body lock and chokes him to death. A few other men in cyber punk leather show up after her. She orders one to cut open the gardner, and then she wipes his blood over her face. Okay, this is one of the reasons why I could never be a psycho killer. What if that guy had some kind of disease that can transfer to you after touching his blood?! No thank you!

Bruce is at it again with his half-thought-out training session. This time, he’s trying to balance and walk across a bannister several flights up. He’s trying to walk across polished wooden railings, mind you, and he’s wearing socks! For a smart kid, he’s pretty dumb here. That’s okay, because Selina shows up to teach him how not to die. Afterwards, the two talk about why Bruce is so obsessed with finding a reason for his parents’ deaths. Bruce is trying to make sense of it all, and Selina sort of brushes it off as something that happens everyday. Before Bruce can makes sense of that, Selina changes the tone and asks (again) if Bruce wants to kiss her. Surprisingly, the pre-pubescent boy reasons that he would like to but surmises that there’s probably an ulterior motive behind the offer, and so he refuses. He then follows up with “You’re not nice.” Ouch, buddy. A simple no was enough.

Gotham 10 - Selina and Bruce

The doorbell rings and Alfred goes to answer. It’s the crazy lady pretending she’s been in a car crash. He brings her in to investigate exactly where she was hurt. The woman’s helpless look changes as soon as the kids come down to investigate. She’s found her target. Alfred notices this, tells the kids to hightail it out of there, and man-punches the lady assassin to give his charges a head start. Finally! We get to see Alfred fight!

The bad guys eventually slip past Alfred and chase after the kids into the woods. Alfred catches up just in time to kill one of the assassins, but he’s lost everyone else.

The cops are all over this case, including Gordon and Bullock. Alfred argued with Gordon that the trained killers were after Selina and not Bruce. He was proved right after Bullock finds the photo of Selina on the dead guy. Bullock seems rather agitated that this is the same girl who got nabbed by the child snatchers and is now getting chased around by assassins at Wayne Manor. It seems that Gordon didn’t tell his partner about Selina and his deal with Harvey Dent at all. Womp womp.

Bullock and Gordon are in a shouting match until Alfred breaks them up and makes them focus on the more pressing matter: finding Bruce. They would have headed to Gotham to hide among the other street rats. Gordon opts to check with Lovecraft in case he’s the one behind the contract on Selina, while Bullock and Alfred take to the streets to find where Selina and Bruce could be hiding.

At the Falcone Mansion, Don Falcone brings Penguin in for questioning. He’s angry and he wants to know how everyone found out about his vault of money. At first he suspects that Penguin betrayed him and leaked the info to Maroni. Penguin swears up and down that he and Maroni were not responsible for the heist, instead he lets slip the possibility of a mole in their midsts. The shadow of doubt has been cast and no one under Falcone’s thumb is safe.

When asked why he never revealed Liza to Falcone, Penguin explains to his goon that “Timing is everything. And Liza is a time bomb.” Clearly Penguin has something planned for Liza and Fish; he wants to blow it all out of the water his way. How? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Gordon storms into Dent’s office. The young lawyer has already been appraised of the situation and he’s been scrambling to find out who leaked the info on Selina. Wait a sec, but her name was never supposed to come up. Ever. Turns out that Dent had to give a name to establish credibility with some select sources. He gave Gordon’s name, but any clever person with an ax to grind can find out with whom he’s been in contact recently via any crooked or clueless cop in the precinct. All they can do now is find Lovecraft and get him to stop the assassins — that is, assuming he’s the one who called them in the first place.

Gotham 10 - Bullock and Alfred

Kyle Massey is back as Mackey (he’s one of the kids who was almost taken by the child snatchers several episodes ago). Bullock and Alfred are questioning him at the GCPD to find out Selina’s usual spots around Gotham. Mackey wouldn’t talk at first but the calm, collected, and desperate Alfred kept giving him money, much to Bullock’s chagrin. Mackey doesn’t know where she usually hangs out, but he did hear that she got a new fence after her old once was killed, he would know. He doesn’t know the fence’s name, but he does know of someone who would: Fish Mooney. Because of course she would…

Speaking of Fish, she and all of the rest of the Falcone crime family are having a lovely meal with the don. Or, it would have been pleasant if Falcone hadn’t shot the guy in charge of guarding his vault at the table. Falcone is convinced there’s a conspiracy against him within his family, a mole perhaps. To recoup their financial losses, Falcone is raising the tariffs to 25 percent. That’s high, no?

On the streets, the kids find a pay phone (that works!). Bruce makes an attempt to call Alfred but holds off on it when he realizes that Selina is leaving. He still needs her to stay with him and testify later and gives chase. Selina almost loses Bruce by jumping from one rooftop to another, with a huge gap in between. Desperate to keep her around, Bruce attempts the jump. He almost doesn’t make it until Selina grabs and saves him from losing his balance. Gaining a new respect for the pre-teen billionaire, Selina lets him tag along a bit longer.

They make it to some part in the Narrows where all the street youths seem to hang out. There, they run into none other than Ivy Pepper, whom we’ve only seen once during the pilot episode since this series started. After her father was framed and killed, Ivy’s mother committed suicide and she was sent to a foster home. Evidently, Ivy didn’t much care for her new family and ran away. Despite their being close acquaintances, Selina thinks the kid is scary creepy. She’s not wrong. There’s definitely some evidence that Ivy may have become unstable after her ordeal. After a brief conversation, Selina pushes Bruce someplace else to ditch his rich boy clothes and give him a new look.

Gotham 10 - Ivy

Back at Mooney’s club, Butch is getting nervous about Falcone’s actions, but Fish is as cool as a cucumber. Two of Falcone’s men are peeved that he raised the taxes on them. Now’s the time to reach out to them and bring them to her side against Falcone. Fish leaves the room to tend to some business and Butch runs into Bullock and Alfred. Butch won’t let them see Fish. This makes Alfred impatient. The butler puts his rough and tough moves on Butch, holding a knife to his throat until Fish interrupts the scene. Bullock tells her about Selina. Unsurprisingly, she already knew about the girl as well as the plan to lure Lovecraft into revealing his hand in the Wayne murder case. The streets are chatty, aren’t they?

At first Fish is unwilling to help them out. Alfred steps in and mentions that Bruce Wayne is with her. This intrigues Fish to the point of being genuinely concerned. Alfred then puts the smolder on her and pleads for some empathy. After some consideration, she decides to make a few calls. The fence Bullock and Alfred are looking for is named Clyde.

Meanwhile, Gordon finally finds Lovecraft who has been hiding out at his mistress’s flat. Lovecraft maintains that he’s in no way involved in the Wayne murders. In fact, the assassins are after him too. He reveals that right before the Waynes were murdered, there was a run for Wayne Enterprises’ stock, like someone knew something bad was going to happen. Lovecraft thought, “Why not? I deserve a cut too.” So he went digging. Before he could tell Gordon what he found, the lady assassin comes in, knocks Gordon out and uses his gun to kill Lovecraft.

Bruce and Selina visit Clyde, the fence, to sell off some swag Selina lifted from Wayne Manor — they’re trying to get cash so they can disappear. What they don’t know is that the assassins have already made it to Clyde and struck a deal with him. Clyde’s men capture and hold the kids in a storage room until the assassins come. The two try to make a break for it through a skylight but one of the assassins arrive to check on them before they could escape. Instead, hide they make it seem like they’ve already gone. Selina knocks him out and they make a break for it down the stairs to the rest of the warehouse…where all of the other dangerous people are hanging out.

Lucky for them, Bullock and Alfred arrive, followed by Gordon (whom Bullock called for backup). Impatient, Alfred storms ahead and starts searching for Bruce. The usual fire fight ensues with the kids caught in the middle. The women assassin locates Bruce and pins him down. She doesn’t want to kill him, but she will if he doesn’t tell her where Selina is. Just behind the assassin, Selina slips out. Realizing she has lost her target, the assassin leaves Bruce alone and disappears. Seconds later, butler and ward are reunited. It’s a really sweet moment between the two.

Gotham 10 - Gordon and Dent

At the mayor’s office, Dent and Gordon are getting scolded over the death of Lovecraft. The mayor decides to tell the press that it was a suicide instead of a murder, that Gordon’s relentless questioning caused Lovecraft to go mad and kill himself with Gordon’s gun. In a very dickish move, the mayor decides to throw Gordon under the bus to the media and reassigns Gordon to work as a security guard at Arkham Asylum. It’s either that or quit, and Gordon refuses to quit.

Oh my. This is an unprecedented move. I look forward to see who we’ll see when the show comes back from winter break. One name comes to mind: LESLIE THOMPKINS!

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Christina E. Janke

Christina is the co-host of “Intro to Geek” on Shauncastic and Editor-in-Chief at Agents of Geek. Her love of all things Mass Effect knows no bounds. She also carries an obsession with comic books, video games, and quirky television shows. Her heroes are Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Gail Simone. She hopes to be just like them when she grows up.