Barnes (Michael Chiklis) feels the effects of a recent incident and begins to go mad. Meanwhile, Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) is out of his depth in his relationship with Isabella (guest star Chelsea Spack) and Carmine Falcone (guest star John Doman) throws Lee (Morena Baccarin) and Mario (guest star James Carpinello) an engagement party.

Gotham doubles down on Barnes going all the Thing in this episode which has a plastic surgeon being at the center of things. It’s a weird episode where the “villain” is just a foil to for Barnes to rage out and whatever is infecting him to get played out more.

That’s a big part of the episode and we start getting the first steps of how Gordon will eventually become Commissioner, because lets face it, after what Barnes does in this episode he won’t be in that position very long.

It’s an interesting direction for the series but still feels like it’s still not clicking especially when we’ve seen the series do really well when it focused on the mob war. Whenever it gets into the weird powers the series slips a bit and this episode is not an exception. I don’t know what it is, but this entire plotline just feels like a means to the end, getting Barnes out of his job.

There’s also lots of relationship things going on in the episode. Of course, there’s Lee and Mario and Gordon being a third wheel, but the majority of the drama is Nygma/Isabella/Penguin which is still playing out and I still don’t know what to think. The idea is really interesting but the whole Nygma killing the last girl he was interested in and Isabella having no issues with that is just bizarre to me. Plus her looking like his murder victim is even weirder.

And weird I think sums up a lot of this season. From Barnes being infected to the Nygma relationship, to Mad Hatter being just insane, the series has taken a strange dark turn somewhere. It’s better than the beginning of the season, but it’s still not good and nowhere near how good it should be.

The episode is a bit of a transition one taking us from the previous story arc and moving us into the next one and I’m not really sure as to what we can expect other than Hulking Barnes. There’s more of a focus on Gordon and a series focused on how he finds redemption and becomes the Commissioner we know would be good. This could be the start of that, but with so much that’s happened, it’s a struggle to find out.

Overall Rating: 7.05