“I don’t want to be a product of my environment – I want my environment to be a product of me.” On the surface, the opening words to Jack Nicholson’s monologue as Frank Costello might not mean much, but as he keeps talking, and as Martin Scorsese uses clips from the street riots of the late 60’s and 70’s, the message becomes clear, and it matches up what the late Roger Ebert had to say about the Oscar-winning crime drama, but more on that later.
There’s much going on in episode three: there’s a mysterious vigilante running around, hooded and masked, dispensing his own brand of justice towards the criminals and the corrupt of Gotham. He has the powerful scared about who is next, and the fearful believing there is hope on these mean streets; that someone is looking out for them. No, it isn’t the Dark Knight – he’s too busy being 11 years old and getting into arguments with Alfred Pennyworth over searching for evidence that may lead to the capture of the culprit responsible for the death of his parents. The vigilante is really someone named “the Balloonman” and his stunt of having a cop on the Gotham PD payroll killed has Bullock and Gordon assigned to bring him down.
Elsewhere, Gordon’s past returns to haunt him as Oswald Cobblepot comes back to the city to start sowing oats within the crime syndicate by becoming a dish-washing boy at an Italian mafia-owned eatery (This show might be a cut above the standard cop drama, but some clichés never go out of style!), and staying clear of alerting his re-emergence to Fish Mooney. A note on the use of the characters, for a moment: If there’s one aspect of the show I’ll just have to get used to, it’s the fact that some characters, depending on the script, will mean more or less to the plot during that week. Some nights, I’ll see Jada Pinkett Smith have an absolute ball playing the up-and-coming power player in the Gotham crime syndicate, and other days, she’ll be regulated to one or two scenes where it’s just her doing her thing, whether it’s her flirting with Gordon, or her ordering hits on cops and former lovers for being too soft and protecting herself from Don Falcone’s wrath. Like last week, we saw Camren Bicondova’s Selena Kyle take center stage in the middle of a kidnapping ring, and this week, it’s just her leading Gordon to the spot where the person behind the murder of the Wayne’s took place. If the character matters to the plot, they’ll be featured more, and that’s just going to be the end of it.
I keep harping on how good the acting is on this show, and Monday night’s contrast between Donal Logue’s Bullock and Ben McKenzie’s Gordon on how they go about doing their jobs is no exception. On the surface, it really is the standard good cop-bad cop routine. Jim Gordon is a straight-laced idealist who firmly believes in the law. Harvey Bullock sees this city for what it is, and adapts to it like a second skin – if he has to beat the snot out of a suspect to get answers, so be it. And if Falcone asks him to whack Gordon if he doesn’t put a bullet in Cobblepot’s head, he’ll do it without question. Watching these two constantly argue and debate about their jobs is really good stuff to watch, and McKenzie has really convinced me that he is Gordon three episodes in.
But it’s the climax of the episode that has me really jazzed, and where my comparison to Scorsese’s The Departed comes in. Hell, I go one further and add Taxi Driver. You think I’m insane, right? Allow me to explain: Thought the long and rich career of the legendary filmmaker, you can see that he explore similar themes of moral decay, the existential nature of one’s identity, and finding the saints in sinners, and the sinners in saints, just to name a few. When I see the Balloonman explaining his actions to Gordon, I couldn’t help but hear Travis Bickle’s statement bow how he stood up to the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth and the shit that’s infected New York City. Bickle kills pimps and thugs because, in his (warped) mind, no one else chooses to stand up and protect the innocent, so he takes it upon himself to do the job no one else will face. The Balloonman kills crooked cops and men of the cloth who take advantage of young boys because he can; because someone, anyone, needs to make an example of those who prey on the fearful; to show that there’s at least one person in this town who won’t take it anymore.
But I also hear Nicholson’s Frank Costello, and his monologue about warping society to fit his image, and how he succeeds in making it a reality. His influence took root in young Collin Sullivan when he first paid for his groceries and recruited him to work in his garage. The toxic seeds bloomed when he rose through the ranks in the Massachusetts State Police, eventually making to SIU as a way for Costello to cover his tracks and keep in out of prison. Gordon confesses to his girlfriend, Barbra, that the city is sick, not just from the inside as he originally believes, but sick from the roots down. In the past three episodes, the creators paint a Gotham city as one where the devils and the disciples rule, where the cops and the mayor are doing deals with the mob to keep the lifestyle going, out of fear of getting on their bad side. The wealthiest ignore the plight of the downtrodden, leaving the rest to look out for no.1 and survive by any means necessary, like Selena Kyle. The environment of dog-eat-dog and looking out for number one is a product of the mob, and not the other way around. Good guys don’t exist in this town, and if they do, they’ll have their eyes opened and soon get with the program, or end up in jail or buried six feet under. Gordon saw the actions of a vigilante who needed to answer for his crimes, because that’s what the law requires. For the Balloonman, he understands his choices are damned if you, damned if you don’t, and he’d rather take the former than continue to side with the latter.
Allow me to sum up this excellent episode by paraphrasing the late Roger Ebert: “This episode of Gotham is like an examination of conscious, when you stay up all night trying to figure out a way to tell the priest: I know I done wrong, but, oh, Father, what else was I gonna do?”
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