TV Review: GOTHAM: Season 1, Episode 18: Everyone Has a Cobblepot [Fox]

Fox‘s Gotham Everyone Has a Cobblepot TV Show Review. Gotham: Season 1, Episode 18: Everyone Has a Cobblepot is a filler episode, but a pretty good one. This show generally misses its chance to deliver fast resolutions to its own cliffhangers, but it often shines at giving new depth to old

franchise characters. That’s the form it’s in here; we don’t get much development on the Wayne front, as it’s mostly just restated through hospital dialogue that Reggie stabbed Alfred (Sean Pertwee) and is part of a company-wide conspiracy to murder Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz), but the side-story it deals in here, wherein Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) goes up against the corrupt Commissioner Loeb (Peter Scolari) is entertaining.

As with Batman in the future, and has been the case here from Episode One, Jim Gordon struggles with ethics in a corrupt society, and when he puts his foot down about lows he won’t sink to, he pays for it in other ways. In fact, the episode title refers to a speech Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) gives to Gordon, explaining that in the past, he, too, was ordered by corrupt superiors to murder someone, and unlike Jim Gordon’s order to kill Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor), Bullock actually did it instead of hoaxing it. This, it turns out, proves to be one of many damning skeletons in the closets of police, which Loeb uses for blackmail; threatening to blow the whistle on them if they cross him. So with Loeb posed to take it out on Gordon’s partner if he gets uppity, Gordon once again must turn to his shady ally, Penguin, to dig up some dirt of Loeb’s own.

The ensuing adventure that Gordon, Bullock and Cobblepot embark upon is dark in nature, but it elicits some nervous laughs. An aside with Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), and her new captor, Dr. Francis Dulmacher (Colm Feore) also grants a good laugh. To say much more would venture too far into spoiler territory, but one safe thing to say is that for once, an episode’s ending feels like an ending; not a lead in to a further story. Given those lead ins tend to take too long to be delivered upon, that’s not such a bad thing.

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