Gotham 2×18 Review: ‘Pinewood’

Gotham picked up from last week’s episode and revealed the main antagonist to Bruce and Jim in ‘Pinewood’. Even though our heroes now know who to attack, I don’t think they can do much harm to a villain who always seems to be steps ahead of them.

‘Pinewood’ was all about Baby Bruce investigating his father’s suspicions regarding some projects under Wayne Enterprises and Jim Gordon trying to find out who was paid for the Waynes’ murder. Both storylines converged in the end and allowed Jim and Baby Bruce to work as a team from here on.

We got to know that Hugo Strange’s experiments have been going on for years, but he only started to see success quite recently. We got introduced to one of his past experiments named Karen Jennings. Thomas Wayne helped protect her and a few others after he found out about the dangerous experiments and sent them all into hiding. I liked Karen’s willingness to help Baby Bruce and repay her debt to his father. Her bio-engineered hand reminded me of Killer Croc, who I think will show up in Gotham soon.

While I enjoyed seeing Baby Bruce and Jim getting to know the identity of the real villain of the story, the best part of ‘Pinewood’ was definitely Barbara Kean. She went to see Gordon in hopes that he would forgive her. She also helped him track down ‘The Lady’ who told them about ‘The Philosopher’ who ended up being Dr. Hugo Strange. Barbara is clearly going through some serious psychological issues, and Jim not offering to help her might make her go crazy again. Penguin went back to being a psychotic killer after being released from Arkham, and Barbara becoming the same wouldn’t come as a surprise. The last scenes of the episode showed her going back to Tabitha. I don’t know if she went there to be comforted or she has a plan to help Gordon in some way. Whatever the case, I’m looking forward to seeing more of her in Gotham.

With Baby Bruce and Jim after Hugo Strange, it doesn’t mean that the doctor is without his unique weapons. He already has Victor Fries under his control. He also found great success after bringing Theo Galavan back to life. So, is Theo immortal now or can reanimated beings be killed again?

Theo kept saying the name Azrael. I think the writers are going to transform him into another major Batman villain to terrorize Gotham. I also think Azrael will help connect Penguin and Tabitha to the main storyline, because those two have been away doing their own thing for the past couple episodes.

What did you think of Gotham this week? Did you enjoy the events that took place in ‘Pinewood’? Let us know.

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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