The Ogre is on the loose, and Jim is on the clock to find him before he finds Leigh.
But Leigh isn't the loved one the Ogre has chosen to use as retaliation against Jim. That would be Barbara.
Social media doesn't exist in "Gotham," so he can't go based off a Facebook relationship status to see who Jim's with.
Instead, the Ogre discovers an old picture in the newspaper of Jim with Barbara at a charity event.
The Ogre finds Barbara at a bar and seduces her. She invites him back to her place, and he's ready to kill her until he discovers she tells him she doesn't have a boyfriend.
"If a bus hit me tomorrow, no one would care." Sheesh. Breakups suck, but it does get better, Barb.
Even with if she's unwittingly giving him the green light to kill her, the Ogre realizes that killing her would have no impact on Jim. So, he hides his knife and leaves — for now.
But there's something she says that sticks with him: "Once you see the real me, you would run screaming like everyone else."
At first we assume he relates to that because his victims are terrified when they realize he's a serial killer.
But when Jim and Harvey go to the Ogre's dad's house, they discover his face has been scratched out of every picture. Not out of anger or disgust from what he's become, but out of shame of what he once was.
The Ogre used to have a face deformity until he went under the knife (hey, that's the title of the episode!) to transform into a suave, handsome Ted Bundy-esque serial killer.
"The person I am now, I created him," he tells Barbara as they're dancing at the charity ball the following night.
He spins that into something she can relate to. "Aren't you tired of playing games? Of hiding?" he asks her intently. "Yes," she replies.
He brings her back to his S&M cave and she likes what she sees. Next week will be a different story.
I don't expect the Ogre to kill off Barbara in next week's episode. In fact, quite the opposite: Jim rushing to her rescue will probably rekindle his past romance with her.
It would be a seamless way to reintroduce her into his life as a love interest. After all, the comic books have them destined to be together in the long run.
Jim's love life and professional life are the least interesting thing to me on "Gotham" right now.
Instead, I liked how "Under the Knife" discussed how people create alter egos to protect themselves. It plays into the Batman mythos masterfully.
Sure, not everyone wears a mask like Batman or gets an entirely new face from surgery like the Ogre. But everyday characters like Barbara know the importance of putting on a façade to fit in or even just to get through the day.
That's why these stories have resonated with readers and viewers for several generations.
"Gotham" is more entertaining when they focus on relatable themes like this, rather than Jim's incessant march toward justice in GCPD. It gets tiresome after a while.
I never thought I'd say this, but I'm hoping we'll see more of Barbara and less of Jim.