What are you scared of?
That's what "Gotham's" newest villain Dr. Crane wants to know. So, be ready to list every single one of your fears in excruciating detail, and go over each one in your head again and again as you watch the latest episode.
Just me? I was afraid of that.
What an agonizingly good episode. Even if you're not afraid of heights, drowning or anything else (uh huh, liar), "Gotham's" writers make his victim's terrors so palpable you feel their adrenaline race through your heart and creep into your brain.
And that's precisely what Dr. Crane is looking for: a spike of adrenaline. He pushes his victims to their highest threshold of fear, kills them, then harvests their adrenaline glands for his "research" study.
He hoists his first victim to the ledge of a skyscraper then wraps a noose around his neck. After the victim becomes justifiably freaked out, he pushes him from his teetering chair, lets the noose do its job, then reels him back in.
The second victim, whom we only see for a split second, is tied to a chair and surrounded by squealing pigs and a man in a pig mask wielding a knife. Yeah, it's a bit overkill, but he manages to survive.
His final victim (for now) is bound and gagged as she lays next to the edge of a pool that she almost drowned in as a child, before he tosses her into the water. Harvey comes to her rescue, and I'm sure there's a dinner in it for him.
Notice how these are all tangible fears that a villain like Dr. Crane can exploit, and not your typical "I'm scared of rejection" or "I hate social settings" type fears. You can't reject or socialize someone to death, otherwise Ed Nygma wouldn't still be here.
The only abstract fear mentioned was "Todd," aka Dr. Crane's admission that he was afraid of failure and, worse, that he was passing it onto his son.
This confession seems like a wolf's shoddy attempt to blend in with the rest of the sheep at group therapy, where he found all of his victims.
But after seeing Dr. Crane's tense interaction with his son, pressuring him to feed the car's meter while he torments and murders a helpless victim for the "greater good for humanity," it's clear that is his fear is real and it's coming to fruition.
Will we see his anxiety used against him in next week's episode?
All this talk about phobias makes me wonder when we'll discover the backstory of Bruce's biggest fear: bats. Aside from his tireless pursuit for justice, overcoming his fear is what propels him to fight crime. It's what makes Bruce Wayne Batman.
Will they build up to the pivotal moment into the storyline for a midseason or regular season finale or just subtly throw it randomly into the mix?
One thing's for sure, Bruce's biggest fear isn't confrontation or authority. For being so young, Bruce has an awful lot of guts to tell a Jim to stop working on "an oath he can't fulfill." Snap!
Let that set in. Bruce bosses a cop around. How many adults, let alone tweeners, do you know that can do that without getting cuffed?
Exactly, he's the one who calls the shots. That's why he gets the Batmobile, while the cops roll in Crown Vics.