Gotham Recap ‘Beasts of Prey’: Lonely Hearts Club

In the latest Gotham recap, Jim goes searching for a serial killer who has avoided capture for many years, Fish plots an escape and Bruce looks for revenge…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

There was never a clear reason given why ‘Gotham’ went on a five week hiatus but the momentum that the show built up over a couple of months really solid episodes definitely dulled as the series returned on Monday night with the new installment titled ‘Beasts of Prey’. Just when it looked like ‘Gotham’ found itself as one part future hero story and one part cop drama, the show just went away and the episode coming back was nothing if not sloppy.

Too many characters running around with multiple plots just left tonight’s episode feeling overstuffed without any kind of real resolution. While it appears this was really a two-episode arc to set up a new villain known as ‘The Ogre’, what it felt like was 60-minutes of set up with no real payoff.

Hopefully now that ‘Gotham’ has returned with just a few episodes to go in season one, the series will find its footing again because before the break this was quickly turning into one of the best new shows on television.

Unfortunately, Monday’s episode didn’t exactly strengthen ‘Gotham’s chances of winning any awards, but there were still a few standout moments. Without further ado, let’s recap this week’s episode of ‘Gotham’ titled ‘Beasts of Prey’.

The Lonely Hearts Club

The ‘crime of the week’ for this episode was set up by a beat cop who asks Jim to investigate a murder that popped up a few nights ago after the detective assigned the case realized he had no more leads and the crime would likely go unsolved. See since Jim showed strength by standing up to Commissioner Loeb and became the new president of the policeman’s union, he’s a popular guy around the precinct (or so it seems).

So Captain Marvelous finally gives in to all the compliments and decides to use his keen detection skills on the case. The case is this — a young woman named Grace went missing about four months ago and just turned up on the docks, stabbed to death with multiple wounds to her throat and heart. Jim enlists Leslie to help him investigate and when she performs a thorough exam of the body she finds something strange. While her stab wounds are fresh, the victim had no other marks or contusions of any kind, which leads her to believe that maybe this girl ran away and just recently got killed. In other words, she wasn’t kidnapped, held hostage and then killed after four months because there were no signs of struggle and no visible signs she was being held against her will.

Jim doesn’t agree and decides to dig a little deeper. He starts by visiting some speak easy’s around the neighborhood where the girl was from, which is the same area where Leslie lives. Jim finally finds the one bar where someone recognizes the girl and says the night she was there last, she didn’t leave alone.

Through a series of flashbacks we find her with a man named Jason (played by ‘Heroes’ star Milo Ventimiglia) and he’s a smooth pickup artist with all right lines. He even tells the girl that the only thing he wants in life is to find true, unconditional love. They eventually end up back at his place for a drink and then in bed because that’s where they were ACTUALLY going when they went to his apartment. The next morning as Grace is ready to leave and go to work she finds out that Jason’s idea of unconditional love means never leaving his side and devoting every second of every day to him.

Months later, we find that Grace has been living with Jason against her will, with every day and night as another chance to ‘prove’ her love. She’s bound by leather cuffs so maybe that’s why no marks on her, but that soon changes when Jason finds out that she’s overcooked the lamb they were having for dinner. Burnt lamb really is the sign of the end, I guess, because a moment later Jason is carving her up and adding her dead Polaroid to a case full of knives like a trophy he keeps for all the women he’s killed over the years.

Gordon starts to think he might have some ideas on the case when Edward finds a missing piece of evidence that was left at the scene of the crime when they found Grace’s body by the docks. It’s a picture of a broken heart and as soon as he sees it Harvey turns pale white and knows that something is terribly wrong with this murder.

Escape from Doll Island

So one episode after Fish Mooney gets a job as Dr. Francis Dulmacher’s new assistant she’s already trying to plot her escape. She tests the hospital’s defenses by ‘breaking out’ of a locked door just to see how long it takes security to respond. Once she has it figured out, Fish goes back down to the dungeons to begin securing her ‘team’ to help with the escape. There are her people and then there’s another group made up of hardened killers that will help them steal a boat so they can get away from the island.

First things first, Fish needs the keys to the boat and after sneaking into Dulmacher’s office to snag them, she gets busted by the creepy surgeon who wastes no time pulling a gun on her after she lies and says she was there to ask about extra supplies. Finally Fish comes clean when he busts her taking a letter opener from his desk.

Fish confesses that after seeing Dr. Dulmacher’s last assistant all sewn together and made up of a ton of different body parts she was frightened that he might do the same thing to her one day. So she was taking the letter opener as a precaution just in case she has to take her own life. Dulmacher buys that lie and allows her to go.

Fish quickly gathers the troops and sends the hardened killers through the back door with a mission to procure the boat so they can all escape. The ‘twist’ was about as obvious as anything that’s been done on the show because Fish was actually using them as bait to distract security while she gathered her real people down in the basement and made a run for the helicopter.

The only problem is Dulmacher anticipated that Fish was up to something and now he’s going to make her nightmares come true. What he doesn’t predict, however, is that Fish has already unlocked the gates and the prisoners are free. They beat him within an inch of his life, but before the inmates can finish the job, they have to go before security catches up with them.

Outside, Fish and her group make the helicopter as a broken and beaten Dr. Dulmacher lays in a pool of his own blood on the floor. Security guns down the decoys and realizes that the real target was the chopper.

Fish gets the bird in the air, but not before Dulmacher’s lead security guard gets off one shot that goes through the glass and directly into her gut. Fish is bleeding bad but at least she found a way to escape. How far away they are from a safe place and how much longer Fish has to stay alive are the real questions as her story ends this week.

The Big Payback

Before Jim goes after a serial killer he figures out that Bruce and Alfred lied to him about the person who was in their house and stabbed the butler a few weeks ago. Why Jim was there in the first place I have no clue because he disappeared after that and Bruce just went about his business. Maybe there’s a ‘Jim and Bruce have to be in this amount of scenes’ clause in each of their contracts?

Either way, Alfred wants to investigate where his old pal Reggie slithered off to after stabbing him, but he’s not ready to get out into the world yet. Especially not after his stitches open up and he starts bleeding again. Bruce puts him on the couch and decides to follow up on Alfred’s lead — Reggie will be laying low in a shooting gallery.

Bruce takes that to mean a gun range, but not until he runs into his old pal Selina ‘Call Me Cat’ Kyle (thankfully that nonsense has actually ended), she informs young money bags that a shooting gallery isn’t the same thing as a place where people go for target practice. A shooting gallery is a place where homeless people go to lay their heads and sure enough Selina leads him directly to the one where Reggie is staying, currently three sheets to the wind.

At first, Reggie tries to warn Bruce away that this isn’t a place for him, much less something he should be digging into. It should be left for Alfred.

It only angers Bruce even more so finally Selina steals Reggie’s ‘medicine’ and threatens to toss it out the window if he doesn’t come clean. Reggie tells Bruce that a woman named Mathis and a man named Bunderslaw paid him to find out how much he knew about them and what exactly the young billionaire was investigating. Bruce has his info but Selina drops the ‘medicine’ out the window anyways.

Reggie decides to threaten Bruce and says he’s going to tell Bunderslaw all about this conversation and then he’s going to be in some real trouble. But just then he notices his medicine isn’t gone — it’s dangling by a ledge. He reaches out to grab it and Bruce looks like he’s about to push him out to ensure no one will be telling anyone, anything. The problem is he just can’t do it.

But Selina sure can.

She shoves old Reggie out the window, he falls to his death and the secret is safe with Bruce and Selina. Well you know except the part where they murdered someone in front of a room full of people! It was interesting to see Bruce’s desire to drop the guy off the ledge but even as a child he’s not willing to cross that line just as he will one day uphold when he becomes Batman. Selina Kyle on the other hand has walked a fine line between hero and villain and this was just further proof of the person she’ll become later in life.

Setting the Bar

Oswald Cobblepot has been by far the most interesting character on ‘Gotham’ during season one although you wouldn’t know it by the latest episode where he spends the entire hour trying to buy a percentage of a bar from an owner who isn’t willing to sell.

Eventually, Oswald completes a task for the owner — getting her daughter’s asshole musician boyfriend to leave her — so she will sell to him. He gets the job done and she sells. When he finally explains why he was buying this rat hole, Oswald explains that this is the place where he will kill Don Maroni.

Why there needed to be an entire segment of tonight’s episode dedicated to this, I have no idea.

On the Case

The picture that Harvey saw of the broken heart put him into a panic because it was a sign of a serial killer who has been stalking Gotham for several years. He kidnaps pretty girls, keeps them hostage sometimes for days, other times for months and eventually they turn up dead with his signature broken heart picture accompanying the body. The reason why the case has never been solved is any cop who started to investigate the ‘Don Juan Killer’ as he’s described is the man behind the murders somehow finds out which cop is looking into him and that police officer’s family and friends start turning up dead as well.

Basically, the Gotham police department lives in fear of this guy and I assume they believe the city can always use a few less 20-something women strolling around?

When Jim finds out about the case he realizes he’s been set up. The beat cop who handed him the file wasn’t admiring him or hoping to stand arm and arm with him as they cleaned up the city. He was just another stooge.

Jim and Harvey confront the cop and he confirms what we probably already knew — it was Commissioner Loeb who put him up to it. Jim snaps and runs out into the precinct where he spots Loeb leaving for a meeting. He grabs the commissioner and unloads a rather ominous warning. No more favors, no more compromises. The gloves are off and he’s going to catch ‘The Ogre’ and then come after the commissioner with guns blazing.

He was just a few words short of ‘and you telling them I’m coming — and hell’s coming with me!‘.

Only three weeks to go so make sure to tune into ‘Gotham’ one week from tonight for a brand new episode at 8pm ET on FOX.