This week on Gotham, Mr. Freeze’s original story was completed, and a terrifying new threat emerged in Dr. Hugo Strange – let’s take a look at “A Dead Man Feels No Cold.”
SPOILERS AHEAD
Last night, we heard a phrase that, I think, is a very important theme of this season: “Death is not an ending. Death is a new beginning.” It has huge implications for Gotham, because we have seen so many characters already come and go – Fish Mooney, Jerome, Theo Galivan – and some seemed to go before their story was allowed to come to a satisfying conclusion (Jerome as Joker, anyone?). Now, with Hugo Strange discovering a way to revive the dead, we see the show opening up some very interesting possibilities. You have to hand it the show’s writers; they clearly have had a long-term vision all along, and now it is really paying off.
But back to the actual episode, the theme of death and rebirth specifically applies to Victor Fries, aka “Mr. Freeze,” an iconic DC character whose blue-eyed, white-haired appearance at the end of the episode literally gave me chills of excitement. Victor’s story of obsessive love and desperation, trying to save the dying woman he loves, was somewhat compelling but a tad too predictable; it was really just your garden-variety “origin story” so common in comics. It really didn’t matter to me how Mr. Freeze came about – he could have been a student who dropped some freezing formula on himself, or an explorer who had been frozen in the arctic but was revived by alien DNA, or whatever – what matters now is Mr. Freeze is born, and the show has an amazing new villain to work with.
Actually, it has two: Hugo Strange has quickly come onto the scene as perhaps an even more formidable bad guy. And he seemingly has accumulated a veritable Rogues Gallery of potential minions at his disposal – Victor Fries, Galavan, Penguin, Firefly, even Barbara Kean. We can also assume that Jerome and Fish Mooney are in there somewhere too. Hugo Strange has the potential to be a great long-term villain for the show, and I as a viewer am liking this second half of the season much more. Because no matter what the writers do with Strange and Freeze, they are both millions of times more interesting to me as a viewer than Theo Galavan ever was.
Gotham has always emphasized the idea that “everyone has a dark side,” but so far, there seemed to be a few exceptions. One of those was the relationship of Gordon and Lee. Gordon was always good, but he sometimes had to “bend the rules” to achieve a good result. Lee, Gordon’s girlfriend, seemed to be a rare bright spot of kindness and positivity in the show. But in the last couple of episodes, even this seems to have changed. Gordon and Lee clash over Lee’s insistence on being a part of the plan to lure Fries to Arkham. Being pregnant, she is putting herself and her child in potentially a lot of danger, something that Gordon obviously feels but does not say directly.
That is, until the end of the episode, when Gordon accuses Lee of “putting our child in danger.” Wow. It’s an unusually pointed and bitter remark from Gordon toward Lee, and make no mistake, she notices. She fires back with some choice words of her own. The whole thing was shocking to witness as a viewer, as this seemingly-perfect couple did real damage to their relationship. Their rift is growing, and might not end well, which is something I never thought I would say about Gordon and Lee.
I have always said that if Gotham has a hero, it would ironically be Penguin, in my opinion. If you look at what he has done over the course of the show, it has rarely been truly “evil.” At worst, he has killed people who pretty much deserved it. But on the other side, he has had to undergo horrible pain, suffering and indignity, usually undeserved. This week was just the latest scene in the carnival of pain that is Oswald Cobblepot’s life, as he is now a “patient” at Akham Asylum – which actually means he is Hugo Strange’s slave. But as always, I feel that Penguin is actually the key to bringing down Strange and Mr. Freeze, just as he was with Galavan. Penguin is, first and foremost, the ultimate survivor, and no matter how down he seems (and boy does he ever get low down at points in this show) Penguin has always won in the end. It’s the Golden Rule of Gotham: never bet against Cobblepot.
Lastly, Bruce Wayne is another character going down a seemingly-darker road this week. He now knows the identity of his parents’ killer, and he has decided to kill him. He has a new coldness about him that, were he not the future Batman, would seem to predict a villainous future. But Batman has always embodied the Yin and Yang of light and dark, and now the show is moving Bruce to his inevitable destiny. Bruce is losing some of his innocence, but gaining a more mature, pragmatic attitude that he will need as Gotham’s future Dark Knight. It might just be me, but he is also looking physically a bit older too – but maybe it is just the cold, creepy stare he has adopted now.
Gotham is already much better in this second half of the season than it was in the Galavan portion. We have some really interesting villains to look forward to in future episodes, and the story is moving forward at a furious pace. Let’s just hope that all the new characters make for a great end to this season.
Patrick Anderson will review each week’s episode of Gotham – also check out our reviews of 11/22/63 and The X-Files !