Gotham, The Ball of Mud and Meanness

Wrath of the Villains

The Ball of Mud and Meanness is the journey of young-detective-Bruce, investigating the past to find out the truth about the killing of his parents.

Bruce, dressing the clothes of a younger Batman, in what could be called a Batman Begins Begins scenario, is on his way to find the name of his parents’ murderer.

The whole episode is soaked in madness and absurdity since when Bruce ditches Alfred to conduct his own investigations by himself. He has a gun, provided by Selina, which he intents to use to kill the persone he’ll judge responsible for his parents’ killing.

That time comes at the end of the narration, when Bruce comes face to face with Thomas and Martha Wayne’s killer Matches Malone.
The conflict between the two is set as top-notch scene at the end of the episode. It arrives when the climax skilfully orchestrated reaches its peak of madness and confusion, throughout the whole episode.

Even if with a bit predictable ending, the scene gives us a lot of feelings and emotions: there’s Bruce confronting his parent’s killer, having the chance to put and end to his life and revenge the legacy of his family. Bruce has his gun pointed at Matches’ head. His hands are lightly shaking, but he is committed to go for it.
Then Bruce waits. He wants to know things from Matches, like why he did it, or he remembers any details from that night.

Matches Malone is a paid seria killer who genuinely does not remember all the people he had been killing in the past. Only when Bruce mentions about the pearls he stole from his mother, Matches slightly flinches.

Matches is already a dead man, tough. During the discussion between him and Bruce, he proves to start hating himself for how he had conducted his life. He wants Bruce to just shoot him in the head and to put an end to his life.
The scene is still a bit predictable, considering how it ends, but it contains so much drama that I think was worth it overall.

Bruce, in a pre-Batman’s ethic moment, decides to spare Matches’ life, judging to easy for him to just die. Bruce wants to make justice and killing him would mean not to.
The second after, Bruce is out of Matches’ room and meet with Jim Gordon. A gunshot is heard from the inside of the room. Matches just shot himself to death.

Breaking Bad’s Michael Bowen is a great actor and it’s such a shame that his life inside the series has already finished: he would have made a great villain, if only he would have been more explored.

Other great moments in the episode were Lori Petty guest starring as Jeri. She’s a Maniax-obsessed rock club who helps Bruce finding Matches. I love how Gotham, no matter the apparent death of Jerome, manages to keep winking at Joker’s legacy.
In Jeri, both Bruce and Jim Gordon collapse. Jim is on the chase of Bruce. Jim ends up getting picked up and crowd-surfed against his will.

Alfred has his moments too, when he ends up winning a street fight against some street-gangster from which he and Bruce need information about their investigations. Alfred survives but he ends up in hospital were is left alone in the sleep by Bruce.

At the end of the episode, we find out Bruce has decided to temporarily leave his house and Alfred to strengthen is body and his spirit in the streets together with Selina. His experience with Matches has made him willing to become stronger. And the only way he can do it is to understand how the bad guys think. To do it, he has to live like them, eat like them and be like them. This appears to be the breeding ground of his future transformation in the Cape Crusader.

A nice addition was the catch up of Nygma’s transformation.
Nygma made steps toward Riddler-dom. Long gone are the days he was somehow a loser and prey of everyone’s inside the GCPD.
He is now stronger than ever and following the investigation of Miss Kringle’s disappearance, Ed thinks Jim Gordon wants to outsmart him.
A great scene is given when we see Nygma drawing a green question mark on a picture of Jim Gordon on a newspaper.
The Riddler is coming.

Elsewhere, Strange keeps messing around with Penguin’s mind. Our dear Oswald is reduce to a dog-like person who obeys blindly to everything he asked to.
Hugo Strange opts to setting him free without any police authorisation. This is something that would never happen in a real life situation and it is made clear on the show.
Penguin is in the hands of Strange and he is set to become Strange’s pawn in a larger scheme.

I really like how Strange’s character is evolving. Gotham has a lot at stake and it will be interesting to see how every little piece will combine together.

Considering Bruce’s evolution, Nygma’s transformation, Jim’s journey and Strange’s villainy course of action, I have never been more excited to see how the story goes on.