5 Takeaways from Gotham Season 3 Episode 5: “Mad City: Anything for You”

These are the 5 things that kicked us in the gall bladder (and sometimes in a good way) as we watched Gotham Season 3 Episode 5: “Mad City: Anything for You.”
And, our observations are a little “spoilery,” so…if you’re catching this tonight, I would bookmark this article and join us tomorrow morning. Still with us? Good, we’re always glad to have ya’.

1. Poor Butch

I crapped on the Butch love triangle earlier in the season, but I’ll be darned if Butch’s relationship with Tabitha Galavan hasn’t taken an interesting turn. Poor Butch tries to prove his loyalty to Penguin, but gets taken in by one of Nygma’s schemes, and now Butch just seems like a patsy and a traitor.

(Buy his fine t-shirt HERE)

He gets shot, humiliated, and now, has no boss to flunky for (yeah, I used flunky as a verb). I thought maybe Butch was being written out of Gotham until Tabitha stepped up and made the save late in the episode. There seems to still be a spark between ‘ol Butch and Tabby, and despite myself, I want to see where this goes.

2. Rogues Gallery

Yeah, Gotham has its moments of utter crap. Like what was with the priest and the grenade this week? Is that sort of thing really necessary? At what point did Denny O’Neil or Len Wein ever write, “And then the Red Hood Gang places a grenade in the priest’s hands, and laugh while the holy man explodes?” Stupid. But for every one of those moments, we get an iconic mind-blowing moment, like Riddler, Penguin, Poison Ivy, Mr. Zsasz and Catwoman all gathered in the same club, watching Penguin become mayor. I mean, that’s decades of awesome Bat characters that somehow fit together into a prequel narrative. These sort of scenes are when the show is at its best because despite the Gotham’s overstuffed nature, the fact that all these classic characters can sort of fit into a single story is nothing short of amazing.

3. Face to Face

How did you like that moonlight kiss between Bruce and Selena? The kitten and baby bat have grown into a fun little couple and those two zany kids have more chemistry than most TV actors these days. The young romance between Bruce and Selena adds an element never explored in a Batman story — the idea that Selena is Batman’s first love. That’s pretty mythic stuff right there.

4. What Is Green and Will Make Gotham Great Again?

Power broker Nygma is awesome. He’s like a manic Littlefinger manipulating all the power players of Gotham to his own ends. This week, I had no idea if he was going to side with Penguin, with Butch, or with someone else altogether. Seeing ‘ol Eddie waltz into the GCPD and arrogantly bark orders at the gathered officers and detectives spoke to just how much Nygma has grown from the love-struck police scientist of the first season. And you gotta love that green blazer.

5. Born on a Monday

I’m going to stick with the idea that Captain Nathaniel Barnes is going to become Solomon Grundy. Gotham seems to be very taken with Long Halloween and Dark Victory, what with the constant use of the Falcone family, and we all know that those stories got lots of use out of Grundy. But for real, Grundy is one of DC’s most classic villains, and the psycho swamp zombie deserves some live action love somewhere.