Recap: Mr. Freeze Puts GOTHAM On Ice!

Episode 213 “A Dead Man Feels No Cold”
Written by Seth Boston & Megan Mostyn-Brown, directed by: Eagle Egilsson

Mr. Freeze is still on the loose looking for Nora, his wife, so Gordon and Bullock decide to set a trap to lure Freeze out so they can capture him. Nora is getting progressively worse, so they move her to Arkham Asylum, where they have a secure medical wing. Thus, they can stabilize her condition and also lure Freeze to them without endangering citizens.

Gordon, Bullock, and Dr. Thompkins move Nora into the medical wing of Arkham. They put her in the bed next to an unconscious Barbara, which made no sense to me when I watched the episode because there were at least seven other beds in that room where they could put Nora. I would not have put Nora in the bed right next to Barbara in case she woke up and goes crazy.

Alfred shows Bruce a file that shows the man who killed Bruce’s parents was Matches Malone. This is different than pretty much every version of Batman’s origin, where it was Joe Chill who killed the Waynes. Some people won’t like this change, but I think that since this show hasn’t been sticking straight to comic continuity it’s a welcome change. Bruce decides that he wants to find Malone and kill him but Alfred disapproves and says that when the time comes he will not let Bruce kill Malone.

Cat is disappointed that Bruce left and was gone for a while. Bruce then reveals his plan to Cat about how he wants to kill Malone so he asks her to get a gun for him.

At Arkham, Dr. Strange and Nurse Peabody continue to operate on the Penguin and give him shock treatments to “help” him. He slowly gives in to the madness and starts acting like the other patients and playing Duck, Duck, Goose with the others. His will is still strong as the treatments still go on, but it is slowly being broken. The Penguin confronts Gordon outside of Arkham and tries to convince Gordon to help him escape because the treatments aren’t ethical and it’s torture. Gordon says that the reason Penguin is in there is because he said he was crazy.

Mr. Freeze figures out that they are taking Nora to Arkham and he gets mad and freezes the lake with an ice bomb. The cops who are stationed at Arkham use a bus to block of the entrance when all of the sudden a truck crashes into the bus, but the driver had no choice but to drive because he was frozen to the controls. With this diversion, Mr. Freeze sneaks in to Arkham to find Nora, freeze her, and then turn himself in.

Mr. Freeze navigates his way through Arkham followed by Gordon, Bullock, and a few other cops, while Dr. Strange is controlling the gates in Arkham to let Freeze keep going through but keeping the cops at bay. Freeze finds a room with car keys in it and Dr. Strange tells him that he can have the car keys and escape but only if he leaves a canister of the finished formula that Freeze made, so Freeze takes the offer and Strange leads Freeze to find Nora so they can escape. Gordon and Freeze arrive in the room at the same time and Freeze decides to take Nora and Dr. Thompkins with him and traps Gordon in a closet. Bullock and the rest of the cops are stuck in the Asylum somewhere, and Freeze escapes with his wife and Dr. Thompkins and takes them to his house. He freezes the cops outside of his house and goes down in to the basement gets Nora ready to be frozen.

Then comes the Romeo and Juliet scene as I call it where Nora, who is laying on the bed, asks Freeze to go up and get her necklace from upstairs, so he goes upstairs and she asks Dr. Thompkins for a drink of water. While Dr. Thompkins was getting the water, Nora switched vials of the formula from the finished product to one of the very first formulas. Nora drinks the water and Freeze gives her the necklace and puts the old vile into his freeze gun and starts freezing her. He freezes her all the way and then she starts to crack immediately and dies. Freeze realizes that she switched the vials, and doesn’t want to go on with life without her, telling Dr. Thompkins he did all this for Nora because he loves her so much and wanted to do be a great husband. He then uses the rest of the vial and freezes himself and he dies……. Or does he?

This scene reminded me of the scene of “Romeo and Juliet” where Juliet wakes up and finds Romeo dead because he thought she was dead, so she kills herself because her love was dead. I really like how they humanized Mr. Freeze. I can understand his motivations and really feel for him. I feel that he is a good husband who truly loves his wife and would do anything for her. The way Nora defended Freeze’s actions was very noble and I could tell she really loved him until the very end when she didn’t like what he became. The Fries’ are the Romeo and Juliet of Gotham City.

We then see Mr. Freeze wake up with white hair and bright blue eyes in a room in Indian Hill under Arkham. Dr. Strange explains to Freeze that his body apparently absorbed traces of his various formluae over the past few months, that he went through a cellular change that protected him when he injected himself. Mr. Freeze can now only survive and live in temperatures below the freezing point or else he will die.

 

Gotham airs Monday nights at 8/7c on Fox.