GOTHAM Season 3 Episode 17 Review: The Primal Riddle


Tabitha was revived in this episode! I know that she wasn’t dead before this, but she has been so quiet and obedient in this past few episodes, and that’s not her style. She wants Nygma dead, and she’s tired of waiting. Considering he is the reason she lost a hand, I’m surprised she waited this long to kill him. She doesn’t want to betray Barbara, even though Butch thinks that’s stupid. Butch really just seems tired of all this ambitious villain nonsense at this point; Nygma really did do a number on him too. 

However, Barbara wants to keep Nygma alive to solve the puzzle of the Court of Owls. She wants to be the true leader of Gotham, and I love her ambition. The Riddler is currently thriving as he makes a name for himself, and Barbara visits his new disco ball lit room to interest him in solving the riddle. It gives him the opportunity to both solve a riddle that he first heard of awhile ago from Professor Strange and make a huge show of it in order to make a name for himself, so really it seems like the perfect thing for him. 

He is killing and kidnapping people left and right, which seems to be the mark of a good villain in this town. He kills some theater actors to take their place in a production to get the attention of the elite of Gotham (killing someone on stage seemed to get the reaction he wanted). He also leaves a riddle (I feel bad for the people who write those riddles because I can tell you right now that I never listen to a word of them, I just wait for them to tell me the answer to it). The riddle alluded to a “two-faced politician,” as if that isn’t every single politician in this town. Eventually Harvey and Jim (where is Lucius to solve riddles when you need him?) that he must be talking about the former and recently reinstated mayor. 

Nygma assumes that the mayor probably knows about the Court of Owls since he ran this town for so long. Yet, Jim and Harvey still don’t even know what information Nygma is trying to get out of the mayor. Understandable, considering that the mayor seems like an idiot as he scarfs down all these danishes. Maybe that is what Gotham should focus on, exporting danishes. Maybe that could help their economy and turn it into a livable town. If the mayor doesn’t eat them all himself, of course. In his careless eating, the mayor finds that Nygma has stolen his blood sugar pills, and he must be taken to the hospital. 

When they transfer the mayor to the hospital, that is when Nygma lets Jim know that he is trying to find out who the Court of Owls are. He says it all over the intercom, and despite the fact that everyone else in the hospital can hear it, the only person with a reaction to it is Jim. Nurses and doctors really don’t care at all. They’re probably used to being busy in the Gotham hospital anyway, must be gunshot and stab wounds daily. 

That puts Jim in an awkward place. Since the Court believes that Jim killed his uncle and now wants to join the Court, he needs to prove his loyalty to them (since killing his uncle was a personal battle, apparently this is the evil villain equivalent of taking a personal day from work). He can prove his loyalty to the Court by capturing Nygma and taking him to them. Gordon argues that Nygma is a cop killer and should be in jail, but it’s really half-hearted argument. We all know that he will easily go against his moral compass these days anyway. 

Lee would definitely agree with that statement at least. She shows Harvey and Gordon pictures from the discovery of Uncle Frank’s death. Jim doesn’t have much of a reaction, and Lee knows that he is hiding something. When she tells him she suspects a trick done to the body to cover up a murder, Jim tells her to chill out (not exactly in those words, but it’s what he meant). That only motivates Lee to investigate more to find the truth, and to make sure Gordon pays for what he did instead of leaving the destruction in his path (I’m not sure there is anything in this situation that Lee could make him pay for, though, he has been pretty passive recently as he continually hears shitty information). 

Anyway, Nygma kidnaps the mayor from the hospital with the help of some thugs down the street (did the mayor even get the chance to fix that blood sugar issue in that time?). The mayor is very afraid of the Court, but he is also afraid of Barbara, so he admits that the Court exists. It’s not much, but it’s enough for Nygma to keep pushing. He goes live on TV to get the Court to talk to him, and the mayor seems to have accepted that they are both just going to die for this. Nygma gets a call from Gordon probably assuming it is the GCPD’s attempt to bring him in, but to his surprise, Gordon is working on behalf of the Court. 

Gordon gets him to agree to meet alone, with the bomb laden mayor as leverage. Once the GCPD is totally empty(why did they agree to the GCPD as their meeting spot? Aren’t they cameras recording in there or something?), Nygma shows up with a panicked mayor (how is he not used to this type of thing by now?). Gordon pisses off Nygma, he has a way of doing that, so Nygma threatens to set off the bomb, but the bomb detonation doesn’t work because Tabitha told Gordon how to disarm the bomb (that’s my girl!). However, he still has a gun to the mayor’s head, so that doesn’t change much. 

In the end, the Riddler’s curiosity is what is going to kill him. Despite the fact that Nygma has all the leverage is this situation, he gives it all up on the off chance that he will find out the truth about the Court from Gordon. He agrees to go on a car ride with Gordon, where Gordon reminiscies on when they had dinner together with Lee and Kristen. He mentions that he considered Nygma a friend. Nygma replies that every friendship ends with betrayal. Excuse me, Mr. Riddler, but you seem to be the one always doing the betraying though. You killed your last best friend at least, so I don’t think you are allowed to sound so bitter about this. 

Nygma gets out of the car to introduce himself to Kathryn, and he has to make sure he is wearing the hat to complete his look, of course (the hat is a little much, isn’t it?). He is told to get in, and all his questions will be answered. Now, while Gordon essentially told him the same thing earlier, and he got away with that, doesn’t mean that he should take that chance again. And then Nygma gets rid of his gun, so I truly think that all hope is lost for this guy. 

On the plus side, the Court of Owls is proud of Gordon and make him an official member with a mask (maybe if he is lucky he will get a voting feather too!). A man with Nygma’s intellect will be useful to them so he probably won’t be killed but be used for something. Yet, many people are pissed that Nygma is now missing. Barbara is pissed off that Nygma was taken before he could figure out the riddle. Tabitha is pissed that she wasn’t allowed to kill Nygma like she was promised (with a kiss, but let me tell you now Tabitha, according to every guy that I’ve met, a kiss really doesn’t mean much). Moreover, the person the most pissed is Penguin. When he hears that Nygma is out of his reach, he is ready to storm with his army, yet I don’t really think that a group of 4 people can really be counted as an army. 

Penguin spent the episode with Ivy trying to build their army of freaks. They recruit Mr. Freeze and Firefly (which is an interesting combination considering their powers are the opposite of one another). Maybe if they had kept walking in the mountains where they found Mr. Freeze, they would have stumbled upon Bruce. Penguin entices Mr. Freeze to join by giving him his suit (how did he have that?) and resources to reverse his condition, but all that he can offer Firefly is his services as a murderer; Penguin as a very specific skill set of money and murder, and it’s a good thing he has Ivy around to recruit people with words. 

Another person good with their words is Bruce, well clone Bruce at least. Alfred can tell that he hasn’t been himself lately, but he quickly covers that up with a lie about Selena. After all, girls is usually a pretty good excuse for a teenager to give. Alfred assures him that time has a way of sorting these things out, but I would argue that puberty helps in their case too. It seems that the clone is really appreciative of Alfred’s kindness, and Kathryn worries that he may be getting attached. 

However, when he visits the Court to get a doctor’s checkup (he’s getting nose bleeds, he’s dying, surprise surprise an Indian hill creation is dying), he assures the Court that he isn’t attached to Alfred. While it seems like a lie at the time, we soon find out that he was telling the truth – it is Selena that he is attached to. Maybe he was telling the truth earlier when he told Alfred that thoughts about Selena were affecting him. 

Clone Bruce goes to visit Selena, and he tells her that he is not Bruce, but she is probably not really surprised at that considering how weird he is acting. She’s met clone Bruce before, anyway. And he tells her the entire story of the Court of Owls taking him and telling him “you can be so much more.” She’s stunned at his stupidity, but we were taught stranger danger as kids, Selena, he wasn’t. 

He wants Selena to get out before she is destroyed with the city. I’m not sure why he would pick her over Alfred when Alfred has been so kind taking care of him these past few days, but I guess that his past memories with Selena are enough to make up for how mean she is being now. She yells at him, telling him that the real Bruce would try to save everyone, telling him “you don’t matter.” And despite the fact that he initially came there to save her, he then knocks her through the window. 

She looks straight up dead, but cats have surrounded her body, so we will see how this contributes to her Cat Lady origins. After all, it seems Bruce is currently being prepared to come back to Gotham as the Batman with the old guy training him, so it seems apt time for Cat Lady to join him as well.

Written by Nicole Teeters, GOTHAM Beat Writer -- Click to read Nicole's posts


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