Gotham Recap “The Fearsome Dr. Crane”: Fight or Flight

In the latest Gotham recap, a murderer stalks a victim’s greatest fears while Oswald comes face to face with Maroni after deceiving him for months…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

It was always going to be a hard sell to set up ‘Gotham’ as a procedural drama where each episode more or less stands on its own with a story encapsulated within a single 45-minutes on Monday night. On one hand it made sense — ‘Gotham’ wasn’t going to be as hard boiled as Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy and felt more like a live action cartoon set in the world before Batman was Batman. Then again, the strongest parts of ‘Gotham’ all season long have been the times when characters and stories stretched from one episode to the next, creating long strings of consciousness throughout the entire season.

The latest episode ‘The Fearsome Dr. Crane’ was billed from the onset as a two-episode arc (although there really wasn’t a cliffhanger this week, per se) with the not so subtle introduction of famed Batman villain The Scarecrow (or in this case his father) — but the end result was an outstanding effort as ‘Gotham’ started to hit its stride by staying mostly focused on the key elements of the series that work, while spending very little time with the parts that don’t.

Sure there were some forgettable parts (hello, Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne!) but overall the plot development worked and the ‘criminal of the week’ plot was solid because the villain was somebody with a purpose familiar to any fan of Batman and not some guy floating people to their deaths on weather balloons or setting up fights to the death for the chance to work in an office job.

With that, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘Gotham’

Fear Itself

The episode kicks off this week with a man strapped to a chair before he’s tied up on a pulley system and dangled over the side of a building. A large noose is placed around his head as he wakes up and starts shaking with fear. Moments later, the culprit cuts the rope holding the man loose and he falls down the side of the building until the other roped tied around his neck draws tight and presumably snaps his neck in half.

The next morning our detectives are on the scene looking for answers. The victim was found on top of the roof with puncture wounds in his abdomen. Whoever committed the crime not only killed the man, but the dragged him back onto the roof, cut him open and then left him to be found the next day. A strange murder indeed, but one that will make sense soon enough.

Some context that carries over this week from previous episodes — Harvey feels the watchful eyes of his fellow officers as he walks near the edge of the roof as the captain warns him that there are still a lot of bitter cops not happy that he helped take down Arnold Flass a week ago. Harvey more or less dares them to make a move and while they sneer and snarl, nobody dares make a move. We also discover that Edward Nygma has been going above and beyond his call of duty from forensics and actually investigating victim bodies like a medical examiner. Unfortunately there is a real medical examiner, who doesn’t take too kindly to a lab rat cutting into his corpses.

Things get so heated this week that Nygma ends up suspended after he’s busted going near this latest murder victim, but there’s one problem — just as he’s been caught, it seems Edward found out what the killer was going after when he or she cut into the midsection postmortem.

Bullock’s first move in the case is calling in a young woman named Scottie Mullens, who was the ‘sponsor’ of the man who died from a local support group they both attended. It seems this support group isn’t helping with alcohol or drug addiction, but instead focuses on people with extreme phobias. She’s mortified of pools. Our victim was terrified of heights, which made his death finally make some sense because he was taken to the top of a really tall building before being tossed off the side. In other words, somebody was tapping into his worst fears before killing him. A clue is revealed.

The other interesting aspect of this conversation is Bullock’s immediate attraction to the witness who might help out with the crime. He’s drawn to her and makes just about the most obvious hints that he wants to ask her out. He even offers up dinner after he attends the next phobia meeting to scout out potential criminals who might have had a hand in forcing our victim to live out his greatest fear. It’s nice to see Harvey fumble over himself when it comes to a woman, but didn’t he just kiss Fish Mooney a week ago? Did he truly believe that was a kiss goodbye?

Meanwhile, Bullock leads the charge on this latest investigation after they identify the victim. He finds out that the chair the victim was tied to, was from an old Gotham company that went out of business years ago. It’s a small lead but it’s a lead. So he drags Jim to the abandoned factory (of course) to investigate and when they arrive, the small lead turns into something real. Inside they find a man strapped to another chair with a few pigs roaming around as well as a man dressed in a butcher’s apron with a knife and wearing a pig mask. When Gordon and Bullock tell him to freeze, the man starts to charge and they put him down. The killer’s motives seem pretty clear — he’s tapping into a victim’s worst possible fear by making them face it before finishing them off.

Gordon’s part in the investigation requires a call to Dr. Leslie Tompkins, who showed up again this week after being missing in action for the last episode. Jim invites her to dinner after leaving the last remnants of his previous relationship in Barbara’s old apartment when he dropped by there to leave the keys. He also happened upon Selina Kyle, who informed him that she really didn’t see the Wayne murders before hopping out the window and back to the outskirts of the show. Bruce also sends Gordon packing because the one witness he did find was a liar and it’s clear the Gotham police detective wasn’t getting any closer to solving the case. So it’s been a rough day for Jimbo.

Things are looking up when he invites Leslie out except it wasn’t just a friendly date he was looking for, but instead hoped to pick her brain about the victim discovered earlier in the day. He tried to get Nygma to do it, but with him on suspension and Jim not trusting the current medical examiner — you know the one who last week said a witness stabbed himself multiple times in the back of the head with an ice pick — he had to call on a new friend. Leslie of course believes this is an actual date with a guy she made out with just a few days ago. Jim is really, really bad at this.

Finally he stumbles through admitting he wanted to see her but also needed her expertise. Nice save. Just as she’s getting into the file, Jim gets called away because the second victim they saved has just woken up and they need answers.

Two Can Keep a Secret If One of Them is Dead

As it’s been revealed in recent episodes, The Penguin aka Oswald Cobblepot has been playing both sides against each other in the escalating mob war inside Gotham City as he’s found a home in Salvatore Maroni’s camp while secretly acting as a mole for Carmine Falcone. He’s had a number of close calls being nearly discovered in the past few weeks, but everything comes to a head in this episode after he assures Maroni that Fish Mooney has been dispatched and he’s taking over her club to help the Don extend his reach in Gotham City.

Unfortunately, Fish — who is tucked away on a steam ship sailing away from Gotham — places a call to Maroni and warns him about his new best friend. She says that not only is she alive but Penguin was the one who tried to get her killed in the first place after it was revealed that he was working for Falcone this entire time. Maroni has had suspicions, but this seemed to seal the deal so he invites Oswald to go on a little road trip with him. He has to go meet a man about a thing that takes him deep into the woods at a small cabin in the middle of nowhere, and this is where he’ll finally have it out with Penguin.

The two banter back and forth over some oatmeal and coffee, but it’s clear Maroni is setting Penguin up for the final downfall. Oswald sees through the rouse and opts to pull the Don’s own gun on him in a pre-emptive strike. One thing ‘Gotham’ has done so well this freshman season is turn Penguin into the must see character on the show, but not make him a complete criminal mastermind just yet. He may not be a kid (like every other would be villain on the show) but he’s not the leader of Gotham’s underworld either. So he doesn’t bother to check the gun to see if the bullets are real or blanks.

Take a guess which one they were?

Maroni now knows for a fact that his right hand man has been snitching to Falcone all along. But in classic Scooby Doo villain form, Maroni decides the best way to punish Oswald is to put him inside a car and have it crushed at a scrap yard because just putting a bullet in his head wouldn’t be poetic enough in this world. Needless to say, Oswald figures a way out by threatening the scrap yard operator with retribution from Don Falcone and he skates away from Maroni before the mobster can find him again. Oswald will now scoot back to his real master, but how will Falcone feel knowing his inside man has been exposed?

One more note — during his attempts to get back into Maroni’s good graces, Oswald reveals that the piece of property that he gave up in the Arkham exchange is very valuable to Falcone and the man who controls that land along with Arkham will be the one to rule Gotham City. Here’s hoping there’s a really good long term payoff with this story because if executed correctly it shows some really slick storytelling. If it’s just a tease and the writers will figure it out later, well that would just be disappointing to say the least.

As far as Fish Mooney goes — her day really goes to hell with some pirates hijack her boat and kill all the men taking her away from Gotham. She’s last seen standing toe to toe with an assailant about to throw down in her living quarters. Something tells me the people there to find her aren’t actually enemies.

Fight or Flight

Before we solve the case, Edward has to get back on the force so he can spend some more time with Miss Kringle, who is finally giving him the time of day. To ingratiate himself to the captain and the rest of the force, Edward breaks into the medical examiner’s locker and hides a stash of random body parts. When he shows up the next time to open the door, a barrage of arms, legs, feet and hands fall out on top of him and it takes the boss about two seconds to send him packing. Edward is back and can flirt/creep away with Miss Kringle again.

Bullock takes it upon himself to go to the next session of the phobia group so he can try to see who’s behind these crimes. He even confesses his own fear of being killed on the job but the real interesting part happens when the next guy in line introduces himself as Todd and begins a diatribe about his pursuit of perfection in everything he does and now he’s worried he’s passing along this stigma to his son as well. Of course the man in question is our murderer and when he gets up and runs out of the room, Scottie gives chase and then neither of them return.

Bullock finally figures out that this was the guy and now only was he the perpetrator behind one murder and another attempted murder, but he was so brazen that he kidnapped Scottie knowing full well there was a cop three feet away. Either he had no fear or he was so obsessed with completing his task that nothing was going to stand in his way.

The cops make a call to Scottie’s mother, who informs them that her daughter’s fear of pools started when she nearly drowned at one particular swimming area while she was a kid. Gordon and Bullock take the clue and run across town to see if the tip pays off.

Sure enough there’s Mr. Crane with Scottie tied up and about to get tossed into the pool. He talks about the ‘Crane scale’ — an elevating number scale that measures a person’s fear. His son Jonathan (aka Scarecrow) shows up in the middle of the exercise, but his father tells him to get out right away. I guess we had to meet him this episode just to hammer home the point that this will all one day lead to the birth of The Scarecrow.

Scottie gets dumped in the pool, but Bullock and Gordon show up in the nick of time to rescue her. Bullock gives her CPR to bring her back to life while Gordon chases after the Cranes. He nearly catches him but gets locked outside a door while they make their escape. Considering this is a two part episode, we will sear the Fearsome Dr. Crane again next week.

Back at the precinct, Dr. Tompkins shows up with some final information about the first victim in the crime. What Edward nearly revealed before he was booted off the case and what she just discovered was the criminal wasn’t just stabbing away at his victim’s insides. He was cutting out the adrenal glands — which in the human body carries the hormones for fight or flight instinct, in other words the fear center and by achieving a person’s worst possible fears, he was capturing the cortisol levels at their highest. But for what purpose does he need the adrenal glands at this peak performance of fear? Tune into Gotham next week to find out.

Before she leaves, Leslie and Jim share another moment and he even talks to her about possibly taking over as the new medical examiner for the police since the job is open now. She is willing to go to dinner and listen, but first she wants a public display of affection to know Jim is serious about their relationship going forward. He’s mortified at the prospect of showing any kind of physical act with 50 cops standing around, staring at him. She insists on at least a kiss on the cheek, but Gordon says fuck it and goes right in for the makeout session. Good for you, Jim.

In three episodes and about 15 minutes of total airtime, Dr. Leslie Tompkins has proven to be an asset and an equal to Gordon, not to mention showing her worth both inside and outside of the workplace. I wonder if the writers just completely gave up on Barbara and decided to put all their efforts into Leslie instead because she’s the far superior character and someone you’d hope Jim ends up with versus his erstwhile girlfriend, who served no other purpose than to cry, complain and fall into bed with her ex-lover because she had no job besides playing eye candy.

Overall, a very good episode that once again showed ‘Gotham’ is at its strongest when playing one, long nuanced story with elements of a procedural drama stuck in the middle. My advice is to drop the crime of the week, give some of these investigations life over the course of two or three episodes minimum and continue to play the mob angle for all it’s worth.

‘Gotham’ returns next Monday night at 8pm ET on FOX.