Gotham Season Finale Recap ‘All Happy Families Are Alike’: Brand New Day

In the Gotham season finale recap, Fish Mooney arrives back in her old stomping grounds as a mob war between Falcone and Maroni erupts on the streets….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

The first season of ‘Gotham’ came to an end on Monday night with the freshman campaign of the Batman show without Batman going on a rollercoaster ride mixed with several strong episodes and plenty of forgettable ones as well.

‘Gotham’ excelled when the focus became Jim Gordon’s battle with the mob while a one time henchman named Oswald Cobblepot slowly ascended from goon to boss. The lower points were the episodes spent as procedural nonsense as Jim chased all manner of one-week and done criminals around the city. Remember The Balloon man? I’d rather forget him as well.

Thankfully, the finale of the first season of ‘Gotham’ focused mostly on the mafia battle that’s been brewing all year long although if there was one complaint, it all happened in a really big hurry and maybe this should have gotten a two episode treatment instead of Jason Lennon aka The Ogre occupying our TV screens for the past three weeks.

So how did it all end and are the fans who can’t stop harping about finally seeing Batman going to be any happier after the finale?

Let’s recap the last episode of ‘Gotham’ until the fall titled ‘All Happy Families Are Alike’ to find out!

A Hit is a Hit

On the heels of the final few minutes of last week’s episode of ‘Gotham’ where Sal Maroni declared war on Carmine Falcone, the streets are still rather bloody as we pick up with the finale as the cops scramble to try and put every wiseguy and no neck in jail before they can kill anybody else. Falcone apparently believes this is the perfect time to go shopping for a new chicken (huh?) and that’s when Maroni makes his move with a freaking rocket launcher! And guess what?

It still didn’t kill him!

But Falcone is in the hospital and with his final breaths expected to happen at any moment, Commissioner Loeb and the rest of the police force decide to switch allegiances and make Maroni the new crime boss of Gotham City.

While all of this is happening, Jim is tending to his wounded ex-girlfriend Barbara whose doctor just happens to be his new squeeze, Leslie Thompkins. Physically Barbara is just fine, but mentally she hasn’t seen a psychiatrist to help her deal with the trauma of nearly being sliced and diced by a serial killer, not to mention he butchered her parents in the process. Somehow, Barbara decides that Leslie would be the best person to talk to because they’ve bonded in the past couple of weeks since Jim saved her life. It makes no sense at all that a medical doctor would give psychological counseling, but this is a show based on a comic book — just suspend disbelief.

Harvey has to break up Jim’s twisted love triangle to tell him that Falcone is on his death bed and the city is about to shift into Maroni’s hands. Jim doesn’t like that idea so he rushes off to the hospital to save Falcone because as bad guys go, he’s not all that bad.

Before Jim arrives, Penguin shows up with Butch to finish off Falcone himself before doing the typical villain thing — he tells him his entire plan to take over the city after offing him. Shocker — Jim shows up just in the nick of time and stops him from opening a vein in Falcone’s neck and he places the Penguin and his henchman under arrest.

Unfortunately, Jim’s got bigger problems with Maroni’s crew with Commissioner Loeb in tow show up to finish the hit on Falcone.

Don’t Hate the Players, Hate the Game

With Maroni’s hitmen bearing down on them, Jim has to fight through a hail of gunfire to get them out of the building. Harvey shows up just in time and they take the whole crew — Falcone, Penguin and Butch — to an abandoned warehouse. It’s the only safe place Falcone knows he can go to buy some time until he can get to a safe house to regroup and plan his counter attack. Jim would rather stick with the devil he knows so keeping Falcone is power is the only option he sees right now.

What they don’t know when they arrive at the warehouse is Fish Mooney is also back in town. She shows up in the middle of the night on a boat (what happened to the helicopter and her getting shot?!?) and recruits Selina Kyle to be part of her gang because why the hell not?

They show up at Falcone’s secret warehouse, put everybody in chains and call Maroni to finish the job.

Does it make any sense whatsoever that Fish arrived looking like she just got out of a concert at CBGB’s 10 minutes ago or that they never address her getting shot or what exactly happened to Dr. Dulmacher? No, not at all but let’s go with it.

When Maroni arrives he makes the cardinal mistake of talking to Fish as an underling instead of a partner and when he can’t stop condescending to her by using any number of sexist terms, she finally snaps and puts a bullet in his head. Jim and the others take this time to escape but Selina finds them and brings the whole crew back to Fish so she can finish them.

Once again, I’m not really sure why Selina decided to just go with Fish and become her pet project, but I guess she had to do something in the finale so why not this?

Fish is trying to decide what to do with everyone but it seems Falcone is ready to concede — all this violence and bloodshed has made him realize life’s too short and he’s getting out of the mob game. He’s ready to turn the keys to the kingdom over to her, but out of nowhere Penguin opens fire with a machine gun. He’s tired of being a pawn and he’s either going to be a king when this day is over or he’s going to be dead.

Gordon, Harvey and Falcone (once again) escape and make a run for it while Penguin chases Fish for one final encounter for control of Gotham’s underworld.

Crazy Is As Crazy Does

Over at Barbara’s apartment, she’s having her first therapy session with Leslie. They discuss a lot of things, most notably the fact that Barbara is already aware that her new therapist is dating her ex-boyfriend.

Barbara asks a lot of inappropriate questions about their relationship — does Jim hit her? Has he told her he loves her yet? And from there progresses to talk about how he will eventually leave her in her time of need.

The one thing she never talks about, however, are the awful things that happened when she was trapped with The Ogre for days on end with no chance of escape.

Leslie finally pushes her to discuss the final hours she spent with Jason before Jim finally found them and put him down for good.

But there are signs that Barbara isn’t quite telling the truth when she explains how she was in the car with Jason and didn’t realize until on the road that they were going to her parents house. Barbara then explains the kind of cold, cruel upbringing she had with her parents before she finally had to kill them.

Leslie pauses and says no, Jason Lennon killed your parents.

Barbara corrects her again — she’s the one who stabbed them a bunch of times before slitting their throats. It seems Jason was correct when he saw something inside of her that matched his own twisted soul. Barbara’s nearly bi-polar behavior all season long has finally morphed into a vengeful sociopath who didn’t choose this doctor because she was the right candidate — she wanted to get Leslie alone to kill her!

After some chasing around the apartment and a chop through the bathroom door straight out of ‘The Shining’, Leslie finally charges Barbara and gets the upper hand. She smashes Barbara’s head into the floor until she’s knocked out unconscious. At that moment, Jim, Bullock and Falcone enter the room. Leslie runs into Jim’s arms and declares that Barbara just snapped and went crazy.

As a reader noted last week — it appears ‘Gotham’ isn’t done with Arkham Asylum just yet because Barbara is going to be occupying a padded cell there soon enough.

Barbara was a highly frustrating character all season long and it was mostly because actress Erin Richards seemed like a real talent that was being wasted by bad writers and terrible stories. In the end, however, Barbara finally got something good work with and her crazy ‘get away from my man’ face should send chills down your spine.

How Many Riddlers?

In nearly a throwaway scene towards the end of tonight’s episode, Edward Nygma has a strange encounter with Ms. Kringle after she discovers that the ‘Dear John’ letter she received from Officer Daugherty last week isn’t quite normal. She noticed that if you look at the first letter of each sentence from the letter, it spells N-Y-G-M-A.

Of course, Edward denies having anything to do it or have any knowledge where the not came from and after a few inquisitive looks, Ms. Kringle accepts and walks away.

But then for the first time, The Riddler comes out to play as we find out that Edward Nygma isn’t just psychopathic — he has a split personality.

While doing his best Aaron Stampler into Roy routine, Nygma chastises himself for letting Ms. Kringle go because she might figure out that he’s a murderer while also trying to fight the urge that he has a monster crush on her.

Short but effective ending for the man who will become Riddler although again it seems this could have been given a bit more context than turning him into half a stalker for the first season without a single hint given about there being two Edward Nygma’s hiding inside the same body.

A New King of Gotham

Penguin finally chases Fish down to the top of the warehouse where the gun battle took place and they begin to battle, but it’s not long before Butch shows up with a gun on both of them. Since the mind control operation took hold, Butch can’t quite decide who he should shoot so he puts a bullet into both of them, but immediately apologizes to Fish, who was the person he was most loyal to in this world.

Before he gets a chance to reconnect with his old boss, Penguin rises from the ground and grabs Fish and tosses her over the side to her watery grave (or at least we assume she’s dead). Penguin jumps on top of the ledge and screams to anyone who can hear him (no one can) that he’s finally the king of Gotham!

It took a season and a lot of posturing but Penguin is finally the new boss of Gotham’s underworld, just like he was always meant to be.

The Stoic

Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce has become obsessed with finding out the secrets that his father kept from him before his death. When Alfred explains to Bruce that when Thomas Wayne was still alive, he would often times lock himself in his study with explicit instructions to never be disturbed. It only peaks Bruce’s interest that much more because now he believes the secret has to lie inside that room.

Back at crazy girl’s apartment, Jim is saying his final goodbyes to Falcone, who passes him a knife as a present before he leaves. He explains that the knife was a gift from Jim’s father and now he’s passing it along to his son. Falcone believes that his exit from Gotham City should mean that a place once ruled by crime should now find a lawman to bring order instead. Jim should be that lawman — but just like his father, he should know that even the good guys have to carry guns and knives at all times. Mafia wisdom, gotta love it.

After a day full of searching, Bruce and Alfred have torn the Wayne study apart and found nothing. But a brief conversation with Alfred reminds Bruce of something Lucius Fox said to him back at Wayne Enterprises — he said Thomas Wayne was a stoic.

Bruce takes that to mean a kind of philosophy and not his father’s disposition and then he remembers that Marcus Aurelius was also a stoic and he searches for the book Thomas had on the former Roman emperor. Inside the book is a remote of some kind with a single button.

Alfred asks Bruce not to press it, but we all know he’s going to press it.

When he does, classical music starts blaring over the speakers — the same music Thomas used to listen to when he was alone in his study doing work for all those years. Finally after a few moments, the fireplace cracks open and shifts aside.

Bruce and Alfred step close and look down a great cavernous shaft with a set of stairs leading down into a deep, dank hole. The flapping of wings can be heard from the darkness. Bruce and Alfred peek in and it appears in the final moments of season one of ‘Gotham’ we’ve finally discovered the secret entrance to the Batcave!

Was Thomas Wayne secretly a vigilante himself (as it’s been suggested in many alternate universe Batman stories) or was he building something down there that couldn’t be seen by the prying eyes of the business world? Whatever is down there, Bruce will discover it in about five months time when ‘Gotham’ returns for season two!

Make sure to come back in September when ‘Gotham’ returns and stay tuned in July for our extensive coverage of ‘Gotham’ from San Diego Comic Con 2015!