The eighth episode of Gotham’s bobbing second season lives up to the show’s history of broken promises. “Tonight’s the Night,” as a title, was derived from more than a line of Theo Galavan dialogue. With the hour centering on the series’ most vilified character, Barbara Kean, it had to be. Her grand hope for the evening is the death of former love James Gordon. The viewers’ grand hope, this one included, was for a far different outcome.
Despite the episode’s cowardice in putting a lame horse to rest, “Tonight’s the Night” is one of the Gotham’s best efforts, of either season. Though the serialization format has not brought sweeping change like I’d hoped, it has allowed for more focused entries, nothing short of revolutionary for a show that spent its first season burdened by the weight of too many stories. That has not been an issue this year, and it was not so last night. The hour has three distinct storylines: Gordon vs. Barbara, Theo attempting to extort Bruce and Ed racing headlong into supervillainy, all of which is well organized and exists within a clear hierarchy.
The episode’s main storyline dragged at times, and by the halfway point I was begging for something to happen. Thankfully, just as I cast my wish, it was granted and out came the guns. Barbara and Gordon bring expected fireworks, and the ambush sequence is one of the drama’s better executed action scenes, though it’s too brief. What I like most about the showdown, though, is what it brought out of our gruff police detective. I have become frustrated with Gordon’s terse, one-dimensional persona in which anger is his primary emotion and when it isn’t, it’s something close to melancholic fury. It is heartbreaking for anyone who knows the kind of character he can be. In the pages of DC’s most popular book, the detective-turned-commissioner is complex, a man fighting for justice in a broken world moving ever closer to becoming a madhouse. Gotham has accomplished the madhouse aspect, but its hero lacks any of the humanity that distinguishes him from the capes in Batman tales. In “Tonight’s the Night,” however, we are given a small glimpse at a softer Gordon. Sure, he is doing it to illude Barbara, but the early scene in the interrogation room is perhaps Ben Mckenzie’s best in the show’s run—a promising example of what he can do when given a scene with legs. McKenzie isn’t the only effective performer in the hour, either. Save for Michael Chiklis, who has thus far been wasted and, in most scenes, appears bewildered as to how he ended up in this farce, much of Gotham’s actors looked at ease. Credit goes to Jim Barnes, who penned a solid episode that, not without its blemishes, stands among the season’s best.