Mr. Freeze Ices Out The Competition On GOTHAM

Episode 212: “Wrath of the Villains: Mr. Freeze”
Directed by: Nick Copus
Written by: Ken Woodruff & Megan Mostyn-Brown

Gotham is back and this episode starts off with a recap of what happened in the last few episodes with Penguin’s mom dying, Butch becoming the criminal king of Gotham, Dr. Thompkins announcing to Jim that she is pregnant, and of course the death of Theo Galavant at the hands of Penguin.

Our episode begins with a court hearing interrogating Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) about his involvement in the events that led up to Theo Galavan’s (James Frain) death. Gordon stands firm and doesn’t quite tell the whole truth when talking to the court. The police find the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) and bring him in to be interrogated by Captain Barnes (Michael Chiklis). Captain Barnes tells Gordon that Penguin backed up his story and Penguin is sent to Arkham Asylum after saying that he killed Theo Galavan.

When Penguin gets to Arkham, he tries to establish himself as the King of Arkham Aslyum, but the inmates don’t take too kindly to that, making fun of him.

Penguin gets to meet with Dr. Hugo Strange (B.D. Wong) and talk about himself and the treatments, the acting in the scenes with the two of them is top notch, some of the best I have seen in the whole series. You really feel the terror and sadness in Penguin’s eyes and body language as the two talk, I am still very impressed with his work on the show and from him being in Arkham now and with the dark and ominous vibe the Aslyum gives it really gives you a Batman Returns feel. I feel like you could see this version of Penguin evolve into Danny Devito’s Penguin after a few treatments from Dr. Strange. B.D. Wong gives a creepy performance that makes your skin crawl and I think he’s going to be a very welcome addition to the show.

People are getting abducted in Gotham by Victor Fries (Nathan Darrow); he is freezing people and taking them to his lab in his basement to work on a formula to see if reanimation after cryo freezing is possible so he can freeze his wife Nora (Kristen Hager) and save her from her disease and then reanimate her. The first subject we see him work on starts to warm up just fine and shows no signs of failure until completely meltimg and turnimg into a puddle. The effects in that scene were very convincing and creepy. Fries keeps abducting people for his experiments and tweaking his formula, while his wife is running low on medicine. Fries finds out that she needs more medicine, but when he isn’t allowed a refill, he leaves and comes back with his freeze gun and freezes some people and gives the other people at the pharmacy free medicine.

Gordon and Bullock (Donal Logue) run into the guard from the store — literally, their car slamming into the frozen body as they go to inspect the drug store robbery. The duo discovers a pill bottle that belongs to Nora Fries and go to interrogate her. They find Nora in Victor’s basement lab and discover the experiments that he had been conducting on the people. Victor goes to the station to give himself up but then one of the subjects from his lab defrosts and comes back to life and he walks out into the police station, so he sees his experiments have been working so he leaves.

In the end, we get a reveal that Strange is running the Indian Hill facility under Arkham, and with the latest newspaper he learns of the existence of “Mr. Freeze” and is immediately intrigued…

Butch also appears in the episode, looking like a James Bond villain with his drill for a hand. Butch is now the criminal king of Gotham and he looks really menacing.  This episode is full to the brim with characters and is overall a great episode to start the second half of season two.

 

Gotham airs Mondays at 8/7c on Fox.