It's hard being an optimist in Gotham. Crime's at an all-time high, Jim is struggling with his demons and Penguin became mayor, making a mockery of democracy.
But even the jokes at the expense of the presidential candidates couldn't lighten heavy subject matters such as suicide and incest in "Mad City: New Day Rising." (Yeah, it's one of those episodes. Oof.) Tie that into a beloved childhood story playing in the background, and it's enough to make your stomach implode.
In Monday night's episode, Jim is still carrying the burden of all his failures, namely his failed relationship with Lee. He can hear his mistakes on repeat to the tune of the Mad Hatter's spell, coaxing him to end his life.
"He made you a prisoner in your own skin," Alice says sadly, knowingly.
Not that she knows he's suffering from suicidal ideations, but she has been the victim of her brother's hypnosis before. But we'll save that for later.
As for Jim's pains, he's at odds with admitting them to himself, let alone saying them out loud to other people. Who can blame him, really? Suicide is a topic few know how to discuss with tact and compassion.
Barnes is in denial, Harvey avoids it and the only person who can address it directly is Lee — and that's mainly because she has him handcuffed to a chair for 48 hours after he puts a gun to his head. Let's not forget she's a trained professional who actually knows how to express her feelings.
"I don't know what I would do if something happened to you," she admits.
Jim brushes off her genuine concern, because just like every hyper-masculine trope out there (whether it's on screen or in real life), he thinks admitting he has emotions makes him weak. Funny thing is, the opposite is true. Not only does it make him more relatable, but it actually makes him stronger emotionally.
"Everything you said today … you were right," he confesses to Lee. "And after everything that happened today… I'm happy for you."
"You are?" she says surprised. "Trying to be," he says with a smile and a shrug.
Someone call Valerie Vale, because we have a breakthrough! Jim Gordon opened up about his feelings! It took three seasons, but we're finally seeing some depth to Gotham's favorite cop.
Back to our regularly scheduled snarkfest. Haha, nope. I wish. Now we're going to go into how creepy — and I mean, really creepy — the Mad Hatter is. He has a case of the Cobblepots for Alice. Translation: He has the hots for his sister and used his hypnosis to put thoughts in her head. Barf.
He'll go at any length to win, err, get her back, starting with rescuing her from GCPD. Armed with his pocketwatch, he infiltrates the precinct with the Tweed brothers, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum re-envisioned as a gang of lucha libre fighters.
When Jim faces the Mad Hatter, he points his gun directly at him. But once the Mad Hatter opens his ticking pocket watch, the spell is triggered. Jim's hand begins shaking and he slowly brings the gun to his temple.
Jim is put on suicide watch while the Mad Hatter takes Alice to an abandoned carnival he stole for her. (How sweet?) He dressed her to look the part of Alice in Wonderland, in the signature pale blue frock and white pinafore, and tied to the only seat at the world's loneliest tea party.
Soon Jim and Harvey arrive to rescue Alice, but the Mad Hatter stops him dead in his tracks. He turns on a metronome, triggering Jim's suicidal spell.
"You want to be free — free from the pain. And you can be. Let go!" the Mad Hatter promises him.
That reminds him of what Lee said when he was on suicide watch: "There's a difference between moving on and letting go."
After a flashing montage of Lee, symbolizing his coming to terms with her engagement, he shoots the metronome and the incantation is broken.
Then Alice breaks free from her brother's clutches, pushing him away. Down she falls, not into a rabbit hole, but out of a window and impaled on rusty scaffolding. No longer does she have to face the torment of her brother or the toxicity of her blood. The nightmare is over for her.
But it's just beginning for Captain Barnes. As he's inspecting the crime scene, he sees a pool of Alice's infected blood pooling under where her body was dangling earlier. He looks up to see a blood drop falling from the pipe and splatter right into his eye.
"Oh no," he mutters somberly to himself. "Oh no" is right. As much as Barnes warns Harvey that Jim will be "the death of him someday," Jim will likely be the death of Barnes.
Sure, Jim didn't directly splatter her toxic blood in his eyes, and he didn't even push Alice out the window, but she wouldn't have been in that carnival of horrors if Jim didn't try to find her for her whackjob brother.
And while we don't know how Alice's tainted blood will affect Barnes, it's not like it will make him more patient or even-keeled. Instead, it's probably going to make him go off the rails and die either from a heart attack or a shootout from going into a fit of rage.
Regardless, his time as GCPD captain is running out. At least that's what I'm hoping. I'm tired of Jim storming into the precinct and brusquely saying, "I'm just here for my paycheck." He needs his regular job back.
Jim is natural police, and GCPD is where he belongs, but that's not happening while Barnes is captain. That's why it's time for Barnes to move on to the big precinct in the sky and bring in new talent as captain. Fingers crossed it's Harvey.
Now on to Penguin. Election day is upon us (don't get your hopes up — we still have four more weeks in real life), and Penguin is working ferociously at his campaign to become Gotham's next mayor. As tired of the 2016 presidential election as I am, there are a few fleeting moments in "Gotham's" political commentary that make it worthwhile. The satire, not the real-life election.
Case in point, the makeup department deserves a round of applause for Penguin's physical transformation into Drumpf, I mean, Trump. I literally laughed out loud at the fake orange glow on Penguin, who usually sports the "SPF 90+ in the dead of winter" look. It's a shame they couldn't style his sleek, jet-black hair into a wisp of asbestos-ridden insulation. But, hey, guess they can't be too on the nose.
And to show that they're poking fun at both sides, last night's storyline involves a rigged — rigged, I tell ya! — election conspiracy theory. Only this scandal wasn't done at the behest of both Democratic National Committee chiefs. (Just four more weeks, just four more weeks.) Penguin delegates his goon Butch to pay off the election board to ensure that he'll win.
But Ed, Penguin's right-hand man, won't have any of that chicanery. He knows that Penguin can win based on merit. So, in his slicked hair and dapper pinstripe suit, he walks the straight and narrow and takes the money back from every district official so it's a clean election.
"They love me," Penguin says, almost in tears, when realizing he won in a landslide victory. "If you would have bought the election, you never would have known that. And now you do," Ed replies.
Aww, if only all politicians had moral compasses like Ed. Yes, I just said that Edward "kills people for fun" Nygma has better ethics than real-life politicians. Oy. What has this election done to my conscious? Sigh, just four more weeks.