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Merchant struggles with his involvement in an Internal Affairs investigation as Charisma is pressured to bring the case to a close; Kit’s drinking problems come to light. 55min.
This episode was the second of two we played at our most recent game day, so we skipped right over the Previously On. However, for those of you watching at home, the Previously On part of the show would have looked like this:
A shot of Killer Croc in the ring as the announcer shouts out his name. Corpses in the morgue with Kit’s voiceover: "All three had huge bites taken out of them." Croc shouting he’s been set up. Big Georgie from last season being shot by Charisma, she returns to Eli. "All right, it’s done." Harvey Dent voiceover as Merchant is arrested last season: "Merchant’s a dirty cop." Dan O’Shea to Charisma: "The Mayor wants a name. He wants it now." Close-up of Charisma, looking conflicted.
Now, on MCU: Gotham
We’re in Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent’s office, a much brighter, sunnier office than the one he had back in GCPD’s Internal Affairs Division. The light outside is blindingly bright, and as always with Harvey, it only strikes him on one side of his face. We wink to the audience that way. Charisma enters. "I think I made a mistake..." in pissing off the Mayor’s lapdog. Harvey also brings the pressure. While Charisma is building a case against Rolland, it’s apparent that he wants her to use this against Merchant. Get Merchant to lie on the stand against Rolland; Rolland goes away and the mayor’s office gets the press off his back. Then when things have cooled down a little bit, we get Merchant for perjury.
But won’t this mean that Rolland goes free?
Harvey is focused on Merchant and dodges her questions.
Ah, crap. Can’t recall what happened next. Logically, it’s got to be a scene with the fallout from the fight in the morgue last episode. I recall a bit about Eli and Merch, crouched over Kit, making sure she’s okay. She accuses them both as acting like they’re in kindergarten. Her assistant Cray brings over the ever-present bottle of vodka.
Because Kit is in the hospital with a concussion, Charisma tries to sort out what’s going on with Eli and Merch, accusing them of acting like they’re in pre-school. (Nice.) But there’s a bigger problem: Jim Gordon is on his way to suspend the both of them. If this happens, they won’t have access to rig the case against Rolland and Charisma will be under even more pressure. When Gordon arrives, Charisma tells him Kit has been drinking on the job and was injured when she fell, implying that’s what the detectives told her. Gordon is furious. If word of this gets out, even a suggestion that the coroner was drunk when processing evidence, do you know how many good, solid convictions would be overturned? Do you know how many criminals would be out there walking the street? Charisma wants her in AA for two months and wants Gordon to shake on it. After dismissing Eli and Merch, he tells her never to talk to him that way in front of his men. Also during this scene, Gordon leaned in to Merch and told him, "You bring stuff like this to me."
We’re going to skip around in the narrative to follow up on this. Gordon goes to see Kit in the coroner’s office to address her drinking problem. She’s ultra defensive, but he shuts her down. It’s not just her job she’s going to lose, it’s her medical license. The only way out is to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for ninety days, starting today. And to make certain she goes, he’s sending Eli Woodard to be her sponsor. There’s another follow-up scene where Kit accuses Eli of selling her out and Kit discovers he’s taking her to AA.
Back to the A plot.
Knowing that the teeth marks don’t match to Killer Croc, and suspecting that the killer was wearing a dental prosthesis, the detectives track down the dentist that could have made the biters. Imagine the doctor’s office that Jack Nicholson’s Joker went to in the 1988 Batman movie. That’s the type of place the mob dentist was in. Was there someone already on the chair being worked on? Of course there was.
I liked my description of the dentist. "He looks like he sweats for exercise."
Anyway, a lot of violence was about to ensue, but the dentist craps his pants and spills: there’s not just one set of teeth, there’s three. One that’s already out there, one that he’s going to be delivering today, and one more on order. He’s to take one over to the Jamaicans this evening. Merch and Eli decide to actually play this one by the book and call it in to MCU.
Charisma is called in to a crime scene. It’s the Jamaicans, all dead, professionally hit. Eli pulls Charisma off into a side room and we get the big spill. They went through academy together and were going to clean up this town, no matter what. She was going to work in the system; he was going to work outside. He’s been undercover as a dirty cop without support, sanction, or even knowledge from the GCPD or any authority. Holy crap, now everything that they’ve done--the hit on Big Georgie, Eli’s mob work, Charisma’s zealous investigations, Eli’s covert investigation of Merch--starts to make sense. But what happened here is bigger and worse than anything that they’ve done. Not five minutes after they called in this connection to the MCU switchboard did the hit take place. It’s someone inside MCU and it can’t be Merch: the way the call was made, he never had time to tip off the hitters. Merch walks in and tells them that this wasn’t just some mob hit: the hit squad knew what they were doing. The points of entry, the grouping of the shots, the minimal number of rounds expended, and the military-grade bullet casing they found all point to a group with military training, definitely a group trained in close quarters tactical combat. "Or SWAT training," Eli says.
Oh crap.
Late that evening, Charisma is at her office when someone arrives. It’s Dan O’Shea with Mayor Cobblepot, and mister mayor is not happy. The Gotham Tribune is making a mockery of his administration, he needs something now. "Just bring whatever evidence you have and put it in front of a judge. It’ll stick," he orders. She wants to build a real, solid case and manages to get three days out of the Penguin. ("Three Days of the Penguin" would be a great episode title.) He leaves, visibly upset, but O’Shea gives her a smile, glad that someone is standing up against the mayor. She completely misreads O’Shea.
One final scene: Kit goes to AA. We’re in a small church in the ‘burbs, far away from anyone that would know her, the meeting starts. Eli stands up, introduces himself, and tells everyone how long it’s been since he last took a drink.
Next Time On
* We didn’t get to Killer Croc jumping out of the shadows, so that’s gotta be in the next episode.
* There’s a nice suburban house with Kit relaxing on the back porch. Eli brings over a glass of orange juice.
* Mayor Cobblepot: "No, he is dangerous. He just doesn’t know it yet."
* Merchant telling Eli "I don’t want you with him." (Slash fans go crazy with this line.)
* Charisma: "I only have three days to put him on the stand or it’s going to be me they’re coming after." (Or some similar threat against her. Damn my notes!)
* Someone saying "Oh my God, we’re all going to die."
* A group of SWAT members approach someone menacingly. Screaming. "No! NO!"
Well now. Next time it’s Kit, but damn this season just ramped up with one scene. All these disparate threads going around are being tied up nicely. My current thought (and as the producer for the show, this is all speculation until it happens at the table) is that the Mayor is using the GCPD SWAT as his own personal hit squad, plus he wants Merchant out of the way putting pressure on ADA Dent and IAD Head Charisma to ruin him. But Merchant has the mayor as a connection and has been using him positively. I’m thinking the mayor is really duplicitous, showing a good fatherly side to Merchant but secretly plotting his downfall. I’m thinking it’s a long standing grudge against Merch’s father, but now that Dad’s dead, he’s going to ruin the son. The others at the table have their own theory about that (see above’s "He is dangerous" bit), and suspect that Merch overheard or found out something about the mayor and doesn’t realize it’s damning. We’ll see how that plays out next month.
See you same bat-time, same bat-channel!
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