Gotham Recap “Red Hood”: The Enemies That Define Us

In the latest Gotham recap, Bruce and Alfred find out just how sinister their enemies truly are in one of the best plot twists of the entire season while Gordon and Bullock tackle the Red Hood gang….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Following a very good run of ‘Gotham’ episodes, the latest offering titled ‘The Red Hood’ returned to the meek ‘criminal of the week’ format at Gordon and Bullock hunted for a group of bank robbers most notably marked by one of them wearing a red hood before handing out thousands in stolen loot, which somehow turns them into modern day Robin Hoods in the public eye.

While that particular story could be summed up in just a few paragraphs (as you’ll see momentarily), the thing that ‘Gotham’ has finally gotten so right is even if one part of the episode is mired in mediocrity, there’s another segment to pick up the slack. This week it was a war torn ex-soldier that served with Alfred in her Majesty’s Special Air Service who shows up unannounced in need of help and we finally get a compelling look at Bruce Wayne and the sinister forces at work who hope to lead to his demise.

There were plenty of missteps in the first half of the season with ‘Gotham’ and there are still a few characters who should just be abandoned at this point (yes, I’m looking at you Barbara) but the strength of this show is proving to be no one piece is greater than the sum of the parts. While the sections with Gordon and Barbara were mundane and largely forgettable, the parts with Bruce and Alfred as well as Fish Mooney were interesting and sometimes even a little disturbing. In a good way.

With that, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘Gotham’ titled The Red Hood.

Robin Red Hood

The criminal of the week involves a gang of bank robbers going on their first heist together, but just before walking in with guns out, one of the members decides to don a red hood and declares himself the leader. When the cops show up just seconds after the gang exits the bank, the Red Hood decides to dip into the money bag and toss thousands of dollars into the air, which of course puts the nearby citizens into a feeding frenzy. The maneuver keeps the cops from apprehending them, but the papers make the gang sound like Robin Hood reborn as they stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

As it turns out the gang wasn’t nearly as noble because the loudmouth with the red hood gets shot dead just after the heist is completed after one of the other members is tired of hearing him speak. The rather portly member decides he’s the new leader and he puts on the red hood instead.

Gordon and Bullock’s investigation is actually fairly easy this week after finding out that the bank alarm was triggered just a couple of weeks earlier when a smoke bomb went off inside the building. The surveillance video shows a man dumping the smoke bomb in the trash can before making his escape. He was getting the alarms to go off so they could get an accurate count on how long it took for the cops to arrive. A brief zoom-in also reveals the moron in the bank wore his work shirt in that day so it leads the cops right to his place of business.

While Gordon and Bullock are searching, the gang hits another bank with four members this time instead of five and again the Red Hood dumps some money before the gang escapes. The only problem is this time there was a witness and he comes forward and identifies the man behind the mask who is later revealed to be an ex-con named Destro. The detective duo decides to trail him instead of arrest him so he can lead them to the gang’s next crime and they can capture them all in one fell swoop.

Unfortunately, Destro has another defector in the group who wants to wear the Red Hood to impress his girlfriends (yes, seriously). He shoots Destro and escapes. When Gordon and Bullock arrive they find out that Destro was targeting banks who turned him down for a business loan because he was trying to open his own bakery. Gordon and Bullock follow the lead to the final bank on his list and foil the Red Hood’s last attempt when they get the jump on the gang before they can even pull off the heist. The Red Hood decides to go out in a blaze of glory, but he doesn’t have Robert De Niro skills and instead mimics more of Jeremy Renner in ‘The Town‘.

The Red Hood gets shot dead and the crime has been foiled once again. Oh one more thing — the red hood itself gets left behind (inexplicably because it’s not like that would be evidence or anything!) and at the end of the episode some new kid picks up the hood, puts it own and makes a gun like motion with his fingers towards the cop. As if the hood itself represented some kind of rebellious anarchy. Really it just looked like sloppy police work to leave it lying in the street where some kid could just pick it up.

The Enemies That Define Us

Over at Oswald’s, business isn’t picking up much these days no thanks in large part to a god awful string of performers starting with The Penguin’s mom and ending with a comedian that apparently dropped out of 1965 and led with ‘I just flew in and boy are my arms tired!’. To make matters worse, the place is out of alcohol and just like the 1960’s apparently one man is powerful enough to run the entire liquor business and his name is Salvatore Maroni and he hates him some Oswald Cobblepot.

Since Maroni can’t kill Oswald per Don Falcone’s orders, he’s going to hurt him in other ways like denying his club any alcohol orders. Thankfully, Oswald has Fish’s former lapdog Butch on his payroll now and he has a few ideas about getting the liquor order filled. Oswald tries his method of hijacking the shipment, but Butch has a better idea.

He sends in some cops on the payroll to bust the shipment and steal it for Oswald. In the end the new pals share a drink (courtesy of Sal Maroni) as The Penguin attempts to bond with his latest employee before eventually evoking the name of Fish Mooney. Oswald admits he misses Fish before dropping the most important line of the entire episode and likely the one most relevant to the future of ‘Gotham’ as a whole.

“Perhaps it’s not our friends, but our enemies that define us”
~ Oswald Cobblepot

In the case of Batman, this might be the best quote to describe the Caped Crusader. As famous as Batman is for a cape and a cowl, some fantastic gadgets or maybe even the Batmobile, the way he’s best known is by the people he faces off with in each movie, television show or comic book. Plus outside of Alfred or Robin, can you name any of Batman’s friends? But I’m guessing you could name off a laundry list of his enemies, because those are the ones who truly define Batman.

War Stories

The best part of ‘Gotham’ this week involved a little back story for Alfred and the evil forces at work to bring Bruce Wayne down.

Out of nowhere on a rainy night in Gotham, a man shows up at Wayne Manor looking for Alfred. His name is Reggie Payne and it’s clear after a brief conversation that he spent time with Alfred in the British military. He tells his old friend that he’s fallen on hard times and didn’t know where else to go. When Bruce meets him and finds out that he knows Alfred from long before he was an employee of the Waynes, he invites the wayward stranger to stay with them.

Following an encounter where Reggie tries to teach Bruce some new (and less noble) fighting arts, it’s clear his past with Alfred was complicated and clearly not a subject the butler wants to broach in front of his young ward.

But a couple of bottles of expensive wine get Alfred and Reggie to open up one night as they start to share stories with Bruce about their time in the military together. When the conversation gets a little too intense, everyone retires to bed but not before Bruce overhears Reggie ask why Alfred is so afraid to talk about what he did in war — specifically all the men he killed while he was in the service.

That night is meant to be Reggie’s last, but before he goes Alfred finds him rummaging around the living room, stuffing items into a sack before making his escape. Reggie is robbing the very people who put a roof over his head and he explains to Alfred that he’s in a bad way with the wrong people and this is just what he has to do. Before Alfred can stop him, Reggie places a blade into the former soldier’s gut and leaves him bleeding on the floor, which is the same place Bruce finds him.

Bruce is panicked because he already witnessed his parents being murdered and now the only real family he has left in the world is dying on the floor in front of him. At the hospital, Bruce calls Jim Gordon, who shows up and offers him some support as Alfred clings to life, tied up to breathing tubes and bound by bandages.

Fashion Show

We’ll keep this second very brief.

Barbara failed at picking Jim up when she saw him making out with Dr. Thompkins so this week she decides to turn her attention to the two runaway girls who are currently sharing her apartment. Selina “Call Me Cat” Kyle attempts to console Barbara, who is distraught after watching Jim kiss another woman. I mean it’s not like she started sleeping with her ex-girlfriend the second she broke up with Jim, but that’s neither here nor there.

Then to make matters worse, Barbara decides to teach Selina and Ivy how to use sex as a weapon. Yes, she told 12 year old girls how to be sexy and use sexuality as a weapon. Thankfully, Selina spurned her advances and tells Barbara that her good looks certainly didn’t get Jim back. Burn.

Barbara is such a mess that it would take an entire season just to put her back on track and find some purpose for her other than obsessed Jim fan. Oh and speaking of Montoya and Crispus Allen — where the hell did they disappear to? If they aren’t coming back is there anyway they could pick up Barbara and take her with them? Please?

You’ll Scoop Your Eye Out

As predicted, Fish Mooney’s dungeon dwelling experience is courtesy of Dr. Francis Dulmacher aka The Dollmaker, who was briefly referenced back in episode two as the person responsible for kidnapping children all over Gotham and using them for some kind of experiment. It seems Dulmacher has graduated to adult experimentation as he amputates body parts of all kinds now to either sell to the highest bidder or use for his own scientific means.

Fish meets his underling while Dr. Dulmacher is out of town and she quickly tries to bluff because she wants to meet the big boss and his No. 2 man doesn’t qualify. He tries to calm her nerves by offering a warm bath and a change of clothes to give Fish some time to come to her senses so they can work out an agreement.

When Fish returns, Dulmacher’s No. 2 has some bad news for the former Gotham mob boss. You see despite her show of power in the basement, Fish really has no actual influence over what they do in the makeshift prison. If she causes a rebellion, they’ll just kill everyone dead and start over new. Sure it will be messy and a little annoying, but it’s an easy solution. He then suggests that Fish’s beautiful eyes will fetch quite an asking price and it seems she will be the next person to offer up a body part for Dr. Dulmacher’s experiments.

Before they can sedate or grab Fish, she elbows one guy and grabs a spoon off the desk before digging into her own eye socket with the dull instrument while shrieking in pain. Fish pops her eyeball out onto the ground and then to everyone’s horror, squashes it with her boot. It appears if Dr. Dulmacher wants to carve up Fish, he’ll have to fight her for the scalpel because she seems more than willing to do the work herself.

The Plot Thickens

The big twist at the end of this episode and maybe one of the best turns all season long are the final moments as it’s revealed Reggie Payne wasn’t a down on his luck former military man, who robbed the Wayne estate and stabbed his friend before making his escape. It seems Reggie is actually a soldier of fortune and mercenary who was paid by members of the Wayne Foundation board of directors to investigate Bruce’s claims that he was investigating wrong doing that led to his parents’ deaths as well as illegal arms being manufactured by the company. It appears Bruce rattled a few cages with his speech because the board put Reggie on his trail and he reported back that the young boy is certainly ambitious, but no serious threat to anyone at Wayne Enterprises.

He divulges, however, that Alfred is hurt and may die and if they are going to strike at Bruce now is the time. Reggie does say that Bruce is just a good kid at heart, but it’s clear the members of the Wayne board of directors aren’t worried about placating the littlest executive in all the land.

They just want him gone.

Make sure to tune into ‘Gotham’ next week as we wind down with the final five episodes of the season starting Monday night at 9pm ET on FOX