Gotham 01×06 – The Spirit Of The Goat (SPOILERS)

SPOILERS

 

 

 

We start with a flashback to ten years earlier, where an obviously totally balanced individual rants about being The Spirit Of The Goat.  He puts on a gimp mask, and goes to kidnap someone named Shelley.  We also see Harvey with his old partner, Dix, who is a total drunk (even more than Harvey is now).  It’s the bizarro world where Harvey is Gordon, and Dix is Harvey.  I don’t know if Dix was a minor character in Batman’s world previously, but it makes me think of Picard’s holodeck detective.

Milky (said Spirt Of The Goat), is underneath Dix on a pedestal where Shelley is chained in a white dress, dead.  A trap door is sprung, and Dix is seriously injured.  The Goat ‘always comes back’, according to Milky before he dies.  That’s such a comic book line. Welcome to Gotham, past and present.  God, it looks so grimy and sleazy.  We’re taken to a present day crime scene that’s exactly like the Spirit Of The Goat.  The Spirit Of The CopyGoat.  Nygma keeps trying to tell Harvey riddles, but Harvey is never interested.  He’s pissed because he’s already solved this case, and he’s pissed because he’s on the clock before Gordon.

Gordon’s not there because he’s talking to Barbara about the issues they have with each other right now.  She still wants him to let her in, and to carry half his burden.  He’s very hesitant because of how dangerous it is, but she doesn’t care.  On the other side of that coin, Montoya is still digging around trying to get Gordon in jail.  I dig that she’s doing her job, but she’s really keen on seeing him in jail.  I mean, it’s not like she’d benefit from it in a personal way or anything…

Back at the Goat scene, Harvey is pissed that this shit is happening again, but Gordon says that just means they should find the killer quick so the GCPD doesn’t have to deal with it all.  They try to talk to the parents of Amanda Hastings.  They aren’t any help since they’re totally doped up by the present therapist who is treating Mr. Hastings who has a ‘delicate’ condition.  Harvey’s apparently not a fan of shrinks.  (Is he really a fan of anything besides eating lunch?)

We see a glimpse into the world of Edward Nygma trying to flirt with the Records girl, and it goes really badly.  Kristine Kringle obviously doesn’t find him amusing, and warns him not to mess anything up after he comments on the way the records room is organized.  In true OCD fashion of The Riddler, he’s less worried about striking out HARDCORE with Miss Kringle than with how she organizes the records.  Later, she comes back to find him reorganizing, and she flips out.  She wonders why he’s always coming down to bug her with his stupid riddles and if he wants her job.  He says he wants her, and then has to backpedal in the most adorkable way possible.  I don’t get why she doesn’t like him.  I think he’s cute.  But I also have strange taste, to say the least.

We then stop off with Oswald going to visit his mother.  She’s mad because he didn’t come to see her, and keeps thinking it’s because he was with some hussy.  He keeps insisting there was no woman (not totally true – I bet Oswald’s mom would think Fish was a hussy), and says that he was bullied and hurt.  His mom is immediately sympathetic and tells her dear boy that they’re only resentful of him, and he promises her that he’s going to be a big name in Gotham.

It’s time for the autopsy on Amanda Hastings.  Gordon and Bullock are present, and Harvey asks to check for an incision at the base of the skull.  It’s there, and it has a penny in it, just like Harvey predicts.  It was never talked about in the papers, so a CopyGoat (Harvey even says it!  I totally didn’t know that he was going to say that when I said it the first time!!!!!) wouldn’t have known about it.  The captain suggests going to talk to Dix.  Harvey doesn’t want to, but he doesn’t have much choice.  They have to talk about if Dix told anyone about the penny.  Dix never told anyone, and when Harvey storms out, Dix warns Gordon about him.  That he’s a loose cannon (duh), and that he thinks he’s a white knight riding to the rescue.  (Really?  Gordon is as surprised as we are).  We then see Harvey talking to one of the nurses of the place that Dix is in about the monthly fee, and if Dix is getting the porno mags (she says ‘awful’ magazines, so it’s totally porn).  Awww, Bullock’s heart grew three sizes that day.

Cue the next horrible thing in Gotham – another socialite going missing.  Bruce is still in town, and Alfred wants him to leave but Bruce has work to do.  He also points out that the Goat would never take him, since he has nobody to be taken from.  Awwww. 🙁  So, the Goat goes after another socialite, a blonde who’s pretty in that generic, rich girl kind of way. She’s actually packing to leave town.  Too bad she wasn’t a faster packer, because her and her maid both get a face full of chloroform.

Barbara goes to Montoya to beg her to have an open mind about Gordon, but Montoya’s not hearing any of it.  She tells Barbara to get out of town, because a judge just issued a warrant for Gordon’s arrest, and it’s not going to be safe because the people that Gordon knows could get her killed.  She doesn’t care, and wants to stay by Gordon’s side.

Harvey’s at the scene, and Gordon’s looking at the guys who have keys to both buildings.  He brings Edward into it, and they find an employee who fits the bill, and who also may have called in sick.  Edward’s grinning and drinking coffee from a cup with a question mark on it. (YESSS).  Turns out, the address for Raymond Earl is the place where Milky was killed before so it brings up unpleasant memories for Harvey.  They find Amber the socialite still alive.  The Goat is on one side of the foyer-like place, so Bullock goes after him, and Gordon gets Amber down.  Bullock and the Goat fight, and the Goat says his catchphrase again, which makes Bullock tell him to shut up.  They fall down a set of stairs together, and then Gordon comes to the rescue and kicks the guy’s ass.  And then tells him he’s under arrest while he’s unconscious.  I’m pretty certain that doesn’t constitute reading a suspect their Miranda rights.

At the Wayne house, they have an uninvited visitor.  But it’s no goat – it’s a cat.  Selina breaks into the house, and looks around Bruce’s Bat Cave Jr., seeing his board ‘o research.  She steals a silver box of some kind and ditches the place before Alfred can show up.

We then stop by at the Kapulput place, where Oswald is taking a bath (ooo), and it’s in a deep-ass tub that I WANT SO DAMN BAD.  His mother wants to make sure that he’s not doing anything dangerous, and he assures her that everything is okay, and that he found someone he can trust.  A policeman.  So, he thinks about Gordon when he’s in the tub, does he?  I like this turn of events.  I like it a lot.

So, they have Raymond in shackles, but Harvey doesn’t like it.  He doesn’t like that Raymond and Milky both had no record beforehand, both were mentally ill, both did the penny thing, but they had no connection.  Gordon leaves, and Harvey sees him sitting there starting to get upset, clenching and unclenching his fist. “Holy Ghost On A Bicycle” is I think my fave line of the episode so far (take THAT “The Goat Always Comes Back”1), and is out of there in a flash.  Hmm, just like Mr. Hastings.  I guess he was right not to trust that shrink, right?  Harvey goes to visit her, and talks about hypnotism.  The clenching of the fist is a physical reaction to unpleasant thoughts.  She congratulates him on his smarts as he unravels the fact that she wants the rich to pay for eating Gotham alive with their greed.  She then has Mr. Hastings, who was in a session, attack Harvey and try to kill him as she calmly goes down the stairs.  Harvey knocks out the next ‘Goat’ though, and shoots her in the leg.

Gordon is also arrested in the meantime, before he can even tell Barbara the truth about Oswald.  If they show Oswald’s picture on the news, I think the jig will be up, though.  As the Captain is WTF-ing Harvey about why he shot the psychiatrist, Gordon’s brought in by the MCU on the charge of killing Oswald Cobblepot.  The Captain is pissed at the MCU for overstepping their bounds, and Harvey’s also arrested as an accessory, since the witness that pegged Gordon also pegged Bullock.  Gordon insists that he didn’t do it, both literally and as a subtext.  Then Oswald walks into the station and announces himself.  Well, I knew that the jig would be up somehow, but I really wasn’t expecting it that way.  Everyone is slack-jawed, but not Bullock.  He says “you son of a bitch”, so the jig is probably up in several ways.  Oh Oswald, you shit disturber, you…