Gotham Recap ‘Viper’: The Venom Within Him

On this week’s Gotham recap, Gordon and Bullock investigate a strange drug, which induces super human strength with disastrous results and Oswald makes his move to get even closer to Sal Maroni….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

There are a few things abundantly clear through the first few weeks of Gotham.

First off, the show is definitely going to run its course through the debut season as a series hell bent on playing a procedural drama. Through five episodes, each one has been highlighted by a crime or criminal of the week and it doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon. Second, the writers for Gotham are struggling to find room for all the characters they desperately had to introduce in the pilot episode. Was there ever really a chance this show wouldn’t get picked up? Did Gotham need to show EVERY Batman character short of Batman himself in the first hour on TV?

While Gotham has shown some strength in storytelling over the last month, however, this week’s episode titled ‘Viper’ was a tattered mess of pieces strung together trying to disguise itself as a cohesive unit. The bad guy was a disgruntled biochemist, who decided to unleash a deadly toxin on Gotham to show the world how his former employers were doing awful things behind closed doors. The problem is once again the ‘bad guy’ is foiled inside of 45 minutes and usually doesn’t have the long range planning to go much further anyways.

In the midst of this strewn together plot, Jim Gordon continues to deal with the fallout from not killing Oswald Cobblepot, finding himself under the thumb of another mobster while Fish Mooney’s grand plan unfolds after a total of about five minutes of execution. Oh and Catwoman is back. Sort of. Not really.

And where the hell is Barbara after breaking up with Jim last week?

Let’s just get into the recap to touch on all those things.

A Venom Within Him

The criminal mastermind this week is named Stan Patolski (menacing right?) — a former biochemist at WellZyn, a chemical company owned by Wayne Enterprises. It seems during the course of his tenure of employment, Stan was put on a project to build a super serum that would enhance the muscles and power of soldiers to a limitless level. The initial batch he built was called ‘viper’, which would have all required effects but it was very short term. It would only last a few hours while quietly chomping away at a person’s calcium supply to gain the required strength. After the body had no more calcium to produce, the bones would just turn brittle and break apart and the person would die. Eventually, Stan built a more stable version of the drug called ‘venom’ that successfully passed all industry standards. Venom for those curious is the drug that eventually becomes the fuel for a villain by the name of Bane (from the comics, not so much the one in Dark Knight Rises).

But Stan grew a conscious during all this and decided that no chemical company should be able to play God with the human body the way they had been manipulating things so he strikes out on his own with the previous version called viper to show what people are capable of on the drug while they all flame out in a matter of hours. His first victim trashes a convenience store and steals an ATM. As Stan starts handing out more and more of these samples, the entire city goes nuts with power as the cops try mightily to contend with the madness.

Of course, Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock are on the scene to investigate. Jim is ready to dive nose deep into any crime despite the fact that he’s a homicide detective while Bullock is just dreaming of cheeseburgers with lots of pickles and a chocolate malted milkshake.

Gordon traces Stan back to the chemical company, but a funny thing — when the public relations rep shows up to give him answers, they are all wrong. She say Stan was a low level employee who got tired of designing new shampoos and soaps and decided viper would be a lot more fun. It doesn’t take long for Gordon to see through their ruse, but the more important job is to find Stan before he does much more damage to the city with his killer drug.

An Inquisitive Mind

Bruce Wayne has gone from bad art obsessed emo tween to a mini-detective lately as he starts to piece together all the different threads that made up the final deal for the Arkham project. How could his parents have allowed gangsters like Carmine Falcone and Salvatore Maroni to get a piece of the pie in the first place? In the midst of his investigation, Alfred tries to get Bruce to just be a kid again, even for a few hours, but it’s clear that he’s no longer concerned with childish things.

It’s a problem Bruce continues to encounter when he attempts to question the mid-level employees at Wayne Enterprises about the mysterious board members, who don’t have time to show up to charity functions he’s attending. They treat him like a kid while Bruce’s inquisitive mind is racing with much more adult things.

When the notorious viper dealer shows up and tries to poison the entire Wayne Foundation charity function, it’s Gordon and Bullock who rush to the scene of the crime to stop Stan from killing everyone in the room — including Bruce Wayne.

They foil the crime (of course) and the viper man jumps off the side of the building after ingesting an ultra dose of his drug when Gordon shoots the pipe he had feeding into the air duct system. After Stan plumets to his death, Bullock chimes in with his well placed dialogue

“You really can have too much of a good thing”
~ Bullock

With the criminal dead and the viper neutralized, Bruce goes back to work trying to figure out all the ins and outs of the Arkham project, but this time he has some help. Alfred is on board now to help his young ward investigate the project that seemingly got his parents killed. Alfred knows Bruce is still just a boy, but better to engage him on any level right now and give him someone he will keep nearby as opposed to shutting himself off from the world and just internalizing every emotion he’s feeling right now.

Coup D’etat

Carmine Falcone tries to explain to his fellow underworld bosses about why allowing Maroni to have a piece of the Arkham project was better for the overall peace he’s trying to keep on the streets of Gotham right now. A Russian gangster named Nikolai speaks up in protest, to which Fish Mooney then defends her beloved Don Falcone. It’s clear the underbosses see Falcone’s willingness to share his territory as a sign of weakness and Fish sitting beside her boss is just giving him a false sense of security.

As it turns out, Fish’s ‘secret weapon’ aka Liza (the singing girl from last week) is being trained in all the ways to seduce Don Falcone. She sings the song that reminds him of his childhood. She says the things he’d want to hear in the way he’d want to hear them. It doesn’t hurt that she’s in that special gap in age between creepy and kept, which seems like Falcone’s cup of tea. When Fish finally lets her loose after a whole day of training, she meets up with Falcone and within seconds has him sharing some music with her on an iPod.

To compound Falcone’s misery, Fish is actually sleeping with Nikolai and quietly plotting behind the boss’ back. It’s clear the writers are setting up Fish Mooney to eventually take over the crime syndicate of Gotham or at least Falcone’s territory. The only problem is the show is five episodes in thus far and Fish’s hand has already been played twice. Some of these plots need a bit more time to breathe, like her training a seductress to send after Falcone. It was hatched and executed in two episodes. Why not build her up into a lethal weapon of flirtation and lust over the course of at least half the season to watch Liza get molded into Falcone’s perfect woman as opposed to one episode we meet her, the next episode she’s on his front doorstep like a lost little puppy.

The Penguin

While Falcone is toiling away with mistresses who play his favorite opera tunes, Maroni is plotting a bit of revenge after last week’s restaurant strike against him. He believes Falcone is at fault (it was really Oswald), so he wants to get back at him with a tactical robbery against one of his casinos. The only problem is casinos are notoriously hard to take down and Maroni’s No. 2 guy is hesitant to go in without the proper planning.

At that moment, Oswald speaks up and offers his two cents. He finally comes clean about who he is and his former role in Fish and Falcone’s operation. Instead of being greeted with a handshake and a smile, Oswald gets his face slammed to the table before his real loyalty is put to the test.

Maroni sends his No. 2 to fetch Gordon, who he brings back to the restaurant to confirm Oswald’s crazy story about nearly dying, being resurrected and now finding himself in the other crime family in town. Gordon is hesitant to participate, but with the looming threat that Cobblepot could be exposed, thus killing the good will he received after offering the mob informant several weeks back. Gordon knows backing up Oswald’s story is the only way to ensure both of them stay alive.

Maroni gets the exact same story from Gordon that he gets from Oswald, and he’s a satisfied customer. Maroni also reminds Gordon he knows his secret and he might be calling on the good detective for a favor in the future. With Oswald on his side now, Maroni is able to execute the casino heist with no problem and he’s got another leg up on Falcone’s turf.

The biggest issue I have with this story is the continued corruption of Jim Gordon by his association with Oswald and now two different mob families. Playing both sides of the fence gets things done, that’s no secret for anybody that’s ever investigated how real police detectives have to work to get convictions. It’s doing a little big of bad for a lot of good. But so far, Gordon has been anything but impressive when it comes to his ability to get out from under the boot heel of each mob boss in town. He can solve a crime of the week, no problem, but when it comes to actually out smarting or out maneuvering a real crime boss, it’s as if Gordon is playing with a Rubik’s cube while blindfolded. Sure there’s a chance he could eventually get it right, but not without years and years of painstaking error.

I’m beginning to wonder if Gotham will survive Gordon’s blunders while thriving on his small achievements.

Thankfully, David Zayas is thriving as mob boss Salvatore Maroni.  It’s a delicious change from his cop role on ‘Dexter’.  Robin Lord Taylor still shines as Oswald, although this week he took a backseat to Zayas, who stole the show.

One final note, following what I believed was the best episode of Gotham to date last week, which saw Barbara finally get fed up with Jim’s secrets and walk away from him, she was nowhere to be found this week. To make matters worse, Jim didn’t even seem like he missed her all that much. He went about his business eating at food trucks and chasing down the random appearance of Selina Kyle this week, but never even mentioned the fact that he just lost his fiancée. If she’s so forgettable, why keep her around at all?

Gotham has been hit and miss all season long. For every standout episode, the series has followed that up with a colossal failure. This was definitely the most comic book feeling episode yet (and that really has nothing to do with the mention of the venom drug) but overall the criminals showing up week-to-week are just that — weak. The random character appearances such as Edward Nygma popping to give forensic analysis or Selina Kyle picking a pocket right across the street from where Jim Gordon stands just feels heavy handed and out of place.

If Gotham can’t find a home for each piece of the puzzle, maybe they should have started building from the inside out instead forming the edges and leaving no heart to the series.

Gotham returns next Monday night with a new episode at 8pm ET/PT on FOX.