#also. apparently everyone at this fucking restaurant has a murder related backstory which is. a lot to take in

[gothamslimpestwrist]

s1e2 selina kyle

killcount:

“doug” the childsnatcher: “soldier” (homeless guy)

oswald cobblepot: douchebag college bro from the car, probably the other douchebag college bro as well.

jim gordon: quillan’s janitor

“patti” the childsnatcher: cat scratch fever dude w/ no eyes

episode total: 5 total count: 12

the dark knight rises: shit is clearly fucked in gotham. crime families are ruling the city, yes, but honestly that’s the least of it; look at the police force. we see that bo, the first responder, is late to the scene of the crime because he takes protection money from a local restaurant & gave them first priority (in other words, he’s a crooked bitch demanding a racket, AND it gets in the way of him actually doing his job). the cops are pretty much, explicitly, just an extension of the mob at this point. 

interestingly, we also see the start of an exploration of the wayne’s corruption; falcone refers to “the wayne empire,” mirroring the way they talk about the crime families And Also setting the waynes up as, like, a picture of the wealthy elite taken to a whole ‘nother level. gotham is the last modern vestige of the city state--and that is the wayne empire. who takes the crown now that the emperor and empress are dead? 

in OTHER news, the waynes really fucked bruce over. the murder itself was the lynching pin, causing him to jump over the fucking edge, so to speak, but he is Just A Little Boy! he is so troubled! he’s self harming and alfred yells at him and HITS HIM for being stupid, he’s listening to loud music and drawing fucked up shit, he’s both burned himself and is apparently cutting, and alfred, seeing all of this, refuses to get the boy who saw his parents shot a therapist, because the waynes told him to essentially let bruce raise himself. “the children are thoroughbreds,” basically. 

quoth barbara (thinking about essen shushing the child snatcher case in fear of bad press): “i can’t believe the system is so corrupt.” quoth jim (thinking about how he was yelled at for not beating a perp, thinking about the cop/mob connection that demanded he kill a man to prove his loyalty, thinking...): “you have no idea.” 

oh! and jim tells bruce the kids need more than money to keep them safe.

sliding scale of barbara kean’s sanity: she seems to be doing alright, but she’s troubled by jim’s troubles. also, this episode sets up some shit that will lead to irreparable damage later on; jim, even when he’s telling her things, isn’t telling her everything. she knows it. she hates it. he specifically hasn’t told her about oswald, which gives her reason to believe he’s a murderer pretty soon. plus, what she does w/ the information he does give her about his work (go straight to the press) gives him immediate reason to start trusting her less... and so they spiral.

sliding scale of ed nygma’s sanity: he’s a little bit more of a lurker this episode. creeps outside the captain’s office until someone notices him, lingers inside until everyone in the room makes it obvious he’s not welcome. he’s trying his best, but he’s not... very... “well liked,” shall we say.

continuity: montoya and allen are looking into the murder of oswald cobblepot. he was their snitch, after all. so that’s problems... many things are subtly set up in this episode: falcone and fish discuss maroni and his anticipated power play (adding another piece to the political chessboard of this season), the atp drug the child snatchers use is established to have been developed for arkham asylum, which is also established to have been closed for the past 15 years AND to have recently been in the works for a reopening, specifically by thomas and martha wayne. and that’s all just offhanded discussion. also related to the atp, when ed is listing the only three places that still stock it, it’s quillan pharma, drakatech (?)... and welzyn, which isn’t relevant at all to THIS episode (quillan’s the one dealing with the childsnatchers) but WILL become relevant to everyone in a few episodes, when welzyn manufactures viper. oh, and naturally the identity of the man the childsnatchers are working for: the dollmaker. hm!! on a lighter note, harvey’s ex-white knight tendencies that we explore in spirit of the goat are foreshadowed here; essen accuses him of leaking the child snatchers story to the press, w/ the reasoning that he’d done it before. after jim & barbara established that it was the right thing to do....

parallels: jim & selina meet in this episode. they are... The Same™. (look, i’ll come back to it later, but even tho my parallel in the pilot was btwn selina and oswald, and even tho they’re the two that are the villain counterparts to our heroes, jim and SELINA are the matched set.) also, this is the episode where fish expresses the wish that penguin wasn’t dead (because she wants him to suffer), but also she tells jim & harvey that she knew it was a mistake to order them killed as soon as she did it. so that means something? 

neither here nor there, but gertrud tells montoya & allen how elegant and well dressed oswald is, and bruce comments on the orphans’ scruffy appearances and buys them new clothes... we love a dandy, i guess.

characterization: we meet some irrelevant street kids that selina knew; zeb, smoke, and mackey (corey in the house). i’m basically using the characterization tab as fanfic reference so i might as well record that.

lazlo, fish’s lover, is relevant, in that falcone beats him to get to her. it definitely does affect her, though she says she only keeps him around for exercise. maybe more b/c of falcone’s threat and the fear of what it implies, though. 

and gertrud! ozzie’s mom. everyone connected to oswald, even outside (maybe even especially outside) of his mob connections, is a little twisted. she’s no different; she’s clearly a bit out of her head, she mistrusts the police (which i guess we’re supposed to think is suss, though really...Fair and Just), she’s got that almost creepy codependency with oswald while not really knowing what’s going on there. (other examples: elijah, oswald’s gothic horror father, martin, oswald’s lowkey homicidal son, edward, oswald’s fascist dog, jim, oswald’s corrupt boyfriend...) she also seems to think oswald has run off with some painted lady (actually, she says painted slut), which might be indicative of her experiences w/ van dahl and some unstable jealousy more than it is of oswald, who’s... you know. 

in other news, jim is all over the map here. he stops harvey beating mackey (and later, quillan, after they’ve already gotten info out of him) and protests that they should leak the story to the press, but he also seems content to keep his mouth shut until barbara takes doing good upon herself. he adapts to the mob shit pretty quick, but expresses disgust w/ the corruption in the system. he gets off on the wrong foot w/ mayor james because he disagrees with locking up the kids w/o a trial, but he doesn’t... step in... either. we see this willingness to compromise and bend the knee that means he’ll never be the hero gotham deserves. 

also, not to be a jim apologist on main or anything (ha, ha), but he’s just so... brainwashed. all this, & he still tells alfred that being a cop, which has thus far caused him nothing but pain & misery, is the “best job in the world.” because he thinks he’s helping people. (and he likes getting to feel like a hero... so where do the misguided good intentions stop and the selfish motives begin?) he also kills a man for the first time on screen this episode because for all its examinations of dirty cops... gotham is still, at the end of the day, Copaganda. in an actual moment of me drinking I Love Jim Gordon juice, jim is the one who advocates for bruce going to therapy, and tries to convince him to go personally, even when jim himself is too emotionally stunted for it to help him. 

also, backstory: harvey pegs his love life, saying, “high school sweetheart, then a bunch of hoes (read: eduardo dorrance) overseas only made you sad... and then there’s barbara.” he also calls jim a monkey riding a race horse; jim’s face is really good @ that. i misinterpreted the line about high school sweethearts back in the day to mean that barb was jim’s highschool sweetheart. this is on account of auditory processing disorder and also general dumbassery. anyway, the point is that jim is a boring, predictable bitch! whom i love.

...in terms of characterization from the episode that i don’t agree with, i can’t really see oswald writing all the shit that they had on his conspiracy board, lmfao. “crybaby brucie,” “gordon=STOOGE,” & so forth. i pretend i do not see it.