Piece of the Puzzle: Gotham S1 E7 - Penguin's Umbrella

In which I review the most recent episode of Gotham.

Since the Penguin's dramatic coming out to the people of Gotham as being decidedly alive, hostilities between the Maroni and Falcone crime families have escalated to the breaking point.  Falcone takes out Maroni's gun running, Maroni takes out Falcone's drug operations.  If Fish gets her way, the streets of Gotham will erupt in open war over her precious little Penguin.  Fearing for his and Barbara's life, Gordan takes one defiant last stand against the criminals of Gotham, executing warrants on the mayor, Falcone, Maroni and all of their close associates.

The die is cast.  The pieces in Gotham's back-and-forth game between law and disorder have been laid bare for all to see.  And, sadly, everything's just a little less interesting as a result.  Falcone chose Gordan to kill the snitching Penguin - who he was reasonably certain wouldn't murder a man on his authority - so that Penguin could insert himself as a double agent in Maroni's organization: feeding Falcone invaluable information and guiding Maroni to making increasingly unfavorable business decisions.  Knowing all along that Fish was conspiring against him within his own organization, he allowed her to continue her disloyal scheming until he could quietly take her legs out from under her.

So there you have it.  Penguin - although still an ambitious third party who won't be satisfied until he's single-handedly running all of Gotham - is a Falcone-employed informant.  Maroni is increasingly a non-entity in Gotham's underworld politics.  Fish is a known traitor who only has the pretence of importance at this stage of the game.  Gordan, along with his newfound MCU allies, remains an uncompromising bastion of truth, justice and the American way.

Even the episode's title is a misnomer: a metaphor referring to the Penguin's spheres of influence, rather than a herald for his iconic weaponized rain gear.  For all of its promise of drawing a line in the sand and progressing the ongoing conspiracy between the mob, the police and Wayne Enterprises, nothing all that essential really happened. It ultimately feels like the series simply reset to square one: Penguin being awesomely Penguin, Gordan indebted to Falcone, Bullock entrenching himself in the moral low ground and Fish's strategic impotence prominently displayed.

That's not to say that Penguin's Umbrella was a bad episode.  It was entertaining, the female characters range from good too passably written and the Penguin satisfyingly returns to form as the character that the series' plot hinges upon.  It's just to say that the only lasting implications for the series happened during episode one and were told through flashback.  I can only hope that this marks an end to Gotham's failed attempts to keep Penguin's actions covert and stand as the death knell to Fish's supposed importance on the show (as any reasonable crime lord would have her at the bottom of the river now that her ambitions have come to light).

Despite the episode's definite lack of importance, it was a good episode for all of the reasons listed above.  Barbara Kean, although thoroughly misguided in doing so, found herself outside of her domestic sphere, actively participating in the plot and doing what she - not Gordan - thought was the best course of action (even if it did ultimately result in her being a damsel in distress to disarm Gordan during his moment of triumph).  I give the episode a 7.5 out of 10.

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