As Gotham City's gang war reaches its boiling point, Fish Mooney goes head-to-head with Maroni and Oswald in an attempt to re-stake her claim on the city. Meanwhile, Barbara and Leslie are brought together after recent events, and Bruce searches Wayne Manor for any hints that his father might have left behind.
Interestingly, Gotham believes the arc of its first season has been the escalating gang war between Falcone, Oswald, Fish and Maroni. To an extent that has been the case. The episode that focused entirely on this conflict and found a compelling way to bring Jim and Harvey into the mix was the season's most successful up to this point. And yet, it was still just a supporting element of the season that never came together in an exciting way that made all the various pieces of the show unify in an exciting and meaningful way. Gotham has chosen quantity over quality this season. Every single character needs to have a moment in this finale. And yet, those moments don't entirely feel earned because the season preceding them had to cater to so many different stories.Gotham started with the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne. That was the inciting incident that propelled Jim Gordon into the world of Gotham's organized crime. He vowed to Bruce that he would catch his parents' killer. And yet, he stopped caring about the investigation about 10 episodes into the season. So the mystery surrounding the inciting incident hasn't even been addressed in a long time. That feels like a mistake. Neither Jim nor Bruce is any closer to solving who killed the Wayne's. That's a huge problem because it shows just how easily the show can get distracted by some new entertaining story. Ultimately, this season is about the chaos that erupts on the streets of Gotham following the Wayne murders. It's not about solving that case - even though the basic structure of each episode this season was focused on Jim and Harvey solving a case-of-the-week. It was too problematic in the overall scope of the show.
So instead, Gotham's finale ends in a similar way as the premiere did - with Jim and Falcone discussing what the city needs right now as its leadership. Falcone has been such a nonexistent character in the second half of the season. He was important when Fish was plotting to take him out as head of organized crime in Gotham. He thwarted her power play and sent her running away from Gotham. Since then, his presence hasn't been felt at all - which is a huge problem considering how much Oswald and Maroni were still crucial characters in the narrative. Falcone controlled the crime and the police. But now, everything is in free fall because there's been an ongoing shooting war on the streets for the past two weeks.
"All Happy Families Are Alike" is able to keep propelling its plot forward by having Jim declare that Falcone is the least worst option when it comes to the head of organized crime in his city. Jim coming to that realization isn't as big a deal as it should be. Jim has always been aspirational about the future of Gotham. He has always wanted to make the city a better place. Him accepting that he needs Falcone in power right now in order to ease into that future should have been a big moment. It's not simply because the hour needs its requisite amount of action and shootouts. Jim wants to keep Falcone in power while everyone else wants to take it away. The police aren't free thinkers. They side with Maroni solely because the tide has started to turn in his favor during this war. Jim is the only one who knows just how chaotic the city would become under Maroni's leadership.
All warring sides of this gang debate do have their own point-of-view. Oswald started all of this latest conflict so that he could emerge as the last man standing. Fish and Maroni both desperately crave this power and now have the ability to act on those urges. Falcone is willing to fight back and rebuild the empire he had until the weight of the day starts getting to him. He has become resigned about his vision for the city. Gotham has embraced even more chaos in the last few weeks. He can't bring the city the stability it desperately needs. All he can do is get out of the person's way who can make that happen. Falcone is now ready to admit that Jim is the hero the city needs right now. Their final conversation does offer nice symmetry with the season premiere. However, it's a completely unearned moment as well. It simply doesn't make any sense to have Falcone come to that realization because the show didn't put enough time and effort into showing his state of mind throughout the season. The creative team was so distracted by serving everyone else in the cast that they forget to keep doing stuff with Falcone.
That's ultimately why this finale is so lackluster. Yes, the gang conflicts are the most entertaining aspect of the show because they are so all-inclusive of the entire cast. Sure, Barbara and Nygma are too busy having psychotic breaks. But everyone else is focused on bringing an end to this conflict in a way that has the least amount of turmoil for the city. The action set pieces are fun and tense. If nothing else, the finale proves that director Danny Cannon has a very strong sense of this world. It's exciting when Oswald enters the scene firing his weapon and creating more chaos. It's fun to see just how poorly Maroni treats and respects his new partnership with Fish - which ultimately gets him killed. Gotham obtains a level of excitement within the chaos. That's not a stylistic choice that can be sustained across multiple hours of television. But it does give genuine urgency to a series that desperately wanted it but rarely achieved it.
This season has been so messy since the very beginning. The fallout of this shooting war means that Oswald truly is the last man standing amongst Gotham's elite criminals. That's a scary prospect because he wants all this power and was able to manipulate all of these events into occurring. However, he's not really prepared for longevity and stability within the city. Jim chooses to protect Falcone because he knows the other options only bring about more chaos. Oswald is no different than that. While he is victorious in his physical fight with Fish, he's still not the king of Gotham that makes the city a better place. With Maroni dead, Fish presumably not surviving her fall and Falcone leaving town, that opens up narrative opportunities for other characters on the show. The gang war has ended with only one figure left standing in Oswald. That means next season will have to find a new approach to continue telling stories. Hopefully, it's able to be a more concise and simple story with an actual understanding of genuine stakes for the characters.
Some more thoughts:
- "All Happy Families Are Alike" was written by Bruno Heller and directed by Danny Cannon.
- Fish and Selina were an effective and fun pairing. And yet, so much of it felt like a rushed development simply to give Selina a purpose in the final episode of the season. And now, she's probably just going to return to life on the streets after Oswald "kills" her boss. Also, Selina's hair was amazing while Fish's was horrible.
- I don't believe this is the last the audience has seen of Fish Mooney. Jada Pinkett Smith isn't under contract for next season. And yet, the way her character ends the finale has some finality to it while also playing into the TV cliche of the character not being dead if there's not a body shown onscreen.
- I really hope Barbara is dead too. She was such a pointless character all season long. This was a violent and sudden twist for the character that occurred solely to give her scenes with Lee the same kind of urgency as the other plots of the hour. Plus, her death would mean Gotham would be breaking from the Batman canon - which will always be a good thing in helping establishing the show as its own thing.
- Nygma's psychotic break was such a weird sequence that cut into the middle of the climatic action of the episode. It was one scene and that was it. He didn't appear anywhere else. And it largely just established that this man is much more crazy and demented than was originally suggested.
- Maroni's men are so stupid for not aiming at the wheels of the ambulance Jim and Harvey used to break Falcone out of the hospital. Sparks were flying off the top and sides of the vehicle when all of them should have been aiming at the wheels.
- Like much of the season, Bruce and Alfred appear solely in the one room of Wayne Manor. It also happens that that one room he was spent so much time in is also where Bruce's father kept his secret compartment that revealed his hidden room behind the fireplace. It's the conclusion that was expected of the story following Bruce's conversation with Lucius Fox last week. However, it plays too much into the iconic moment in Batman's history of revealing his secret Batman room in Wayne Manor.
