“Fools, they think the walls and guns can stop me! They have no idea,” says Victor Fries (Nathan Darrow) to himself as he overhears that his wife has been moved to Arkham to be treated in its E.R. “They’ll learn,” he says as he throws one of his special cold bombs into the city’s river freezing it in episode 13 of season two of FOX’s gritty comic book-inspired crime thriller series, Gotham.
As the episode begins Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) and his partner Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) lead a police raid to Ace Chemicals which is where Victor went to get more fast-cooling liquid helium for his cryonic formula. When they enter the building and work their way through it, Gordon and Bullock discover to their horror that Victor has already frozen to death seven cops and has gotten away with the liquid helium. The last victim of Victor’s was the poor janitor who Victor encased in a rather large ice block and carved into it the message “Free My Wife.”
When Capt. Barnes (Michael Chiklis) hears about this he’s furious and decides to set a trap for Victor (aka Mr. Freeze) by moving his wife Nora to Arkham. Jim is on board with the plan but Harvey doesn’t like the idea of being around all the mentally ill waiting for Freeze to show up. When Gordon tells Lee (Morena Baccarin) about it, she’s not pleased with the idea of using HER patient as bait. Lee insists on going along saying Nora is her patient and she’s still in charge of her care. Jim tries to talk Lee out of it and is about to bring up the fact that she’s pregnant when she threatens to scream so Gordon drops the argument.
At Arkham, poor Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor) is unwillingly undergoing some sort of weird mental torture treatment at the hands of Dr. Hugo Strange’s (BD Wong) thugs and his assistant Mrs. Peabody. Strange gets word that the GCPD wants to transfer Nora Fries to his facility and realizes the police want to use his Asylum as a trap to catch Mr. Freeze. Having his own plan for Mr. Freeze, he agrees happily.
Gordon and Bullock set up a perimeter inside Arkham’s gates and use a bus to help block a forced entrance into the mental ward. Both Gordon and Bullock see Penguin after his torture treatment playing duck-duck-goose with other disturbed patients and it unnerves them a little. Dr. Strange tries to cover up the behavior by telling them he had to give Oswald a mild drug to keep him from hurting himself.
Later outside in front of Arkham but still inside the gates, Gordon sees Penguin being dragged somewhere by two big orderlies and Penguin, seeing Jim, screams for his friend to help him. Gordon tells the men to bring Oswald over to him and asks Penguin what’s going on. Penguin reveals they are torturing him but Gordon says he doesn’t see any evidence of that. Oswald explains it’s mental torture and Jim says to Penguin it’s called therapy. “Your lawyer said you were insane. Remember?” asks Gordon as the two orderlies drag Penguin away screaming that he lied for Jim and that Jim killed Galavan.
Inside Arkham, Dr. Strange listens via the closed-circuit TV system to Penguin screaming about Jim’s involvement.
At Wayne Manor, Bruce (David Mazouz) is training punching a bag and is annoyed with Alfred (Sean Pertwee) for being late and missing their training session. He’s also still upset about the month-long vacation Alfred made them take away from the city in Switzerland. Alfred reveals that he had a friend do a little digging and discovered the name of the man who killed Bruce’s parents. He has a rap sheet going back to when he was 15 and his name is Patrick M. Malone, known on the street as Matches.
Alfred asks Bruce what the next step is and Bruce says he wants to kill the man. This is exactly what Alfred wants to avoid so he tells young Bruce he’s too young to have the murder of a man on his hands. Bruce begins to argue but Alfred is adamant, telling his young ward that they will find the man but it will be Alfred who kills him – and he makes Bruce agree to it.
Back at Arkham, Nora has been placed in the same room as comatose Barbara which Lee is not thrilled about. Nora is happy for Lee when she sees that she’s pregnant and the two women begin to bond. Nora tells Lee she saw her husband Victor starting to go down a dark and evil path but she chose to ignore it because she loves him. This hits too close to home for Lee who feels she’s doing the same thing with Jim. (Lee knows or suspects Jim actually killed Galavan and has asked for details involving his death because of it.)
Outside, Bullock is concerned about himself, Jim, and the other cops freezing to death just waiting around in the cold for Mr. Freeze to show up. That’s when a truck speeds down the street and bursts through the gates of Arkham right into the big bus. It turns out the driver is an innocent victim of Freeze’s who has had his hands and part of his arms frozen to the wheel.
While that’s going on outside, Victor uses his special freeze gun to blast a hole into the walls of Arkham and just walk in. Freeze uses one of his freeze bombs on two cops coming down the hall and is surprised to find someone buzzing the door open for him. Jim and Harvey, along with a few other cops, are running to try to catch up to Freeze but Dr. Strange closes the gated doors on them, separating Gordon from Harvey and the other cops who are now trapped between two locked gates. Harvey yells for Jim to keep going and tries to get someone on the intercom to unlock and open the gates.
Hugo guides Victor to a set of keys to a vehicle outside Arkham. Hugo wants to trade the keys for one of the vials of Victor’s working formula. Victor takes a minute to think about it and decides to comply, leaving a vial and taking the keys and heading to where Nora is with Lee. Jim has reached Nora and Lee and is trying to get them to leave when Victor walks in wearing his cold suit and holding his quick freeze gun. Jim tries to talk him down but he will not be stopped and he forces Gordon into a closet with Lee telling Jim to do as he says and it will be okay. Victor tells Lee he needs her to push Nora, who is unable to walk, in her wheelchair and attend to her since she’s her doctor.
Victor, Lee, and Nora are able to escape Arkham and after they do, Hugo finally opens the locked gates freeing Harvey and the other officers, blaming it on the extreme cold messing with the system.
Gordon, who did break out of the closet but didn’t reach Lee and Victor in time, is now brainstorming with Harvey on where he would take them. They realize in order to finish his experiment and save his dying wife Freeze would have to take her back to their home where he still has the cryo-chamber.
Back at the Fries home, Nora is pleading with Victor to let her go and finally let it be over but he refuses. He tells her as long as she is alive there is hope and a chance. She asks him to go and get her favorite necklace for her to wear before he freezes her and he complies. Nora distracts Lee by asking for a glass of water and while Lee is getting it, Nora switches the vial in the freeze gun with one that will not keep her alive. When Lee comes back Nora makes her promise to tell the police that Victor isn’t a bad man and that he just wanted to save her. Lee says she will. Freeze comes back and after one last kiss freezes Nora.
Jim and the cops show up and Harvey and the other police start to set a perimeter around the house as Jim heads slowly inside. Victor is just about to try to store his wife’s body in the chamber when he sees her begin to crack and break apart. “No NO NO NO!!” screams Victor as he realizes his beloved Nora switched the vials. He looks at Lee, who is both is shocked and saddened by Nora’s actions, and asks her if she knew about the switch. She says no and tells him how sorry she is. Victor asks Lee for one more show of kindness on her part and asks her to go and tell the police that he will be coming out and giving himself up, to which she agrees. Victor, now alone in the room with his dead wife, uses his own suit and vials to attempt suicide. Gordon enters the room to find Nora in pieces and Victor frozen.
Back at Gordon’s home the next day, he and Lee get into it over her putting their baby at risk. Lee tells Jim he put them all at risk because he’s lying to her. She finally brings up Galvan’s murder and tells Jim she knows he’s lying to her. Jim says nothing and leaves.
Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce is in his father’s study when Selina (Camren Bicondova) slips in through an open window and sneaks up on Bruce to try to playfully startle him. But Bruce smiles and says hello to her before she can get close enough, telling her he felt the breeze from the window change as she entered. Selina plops down on the sofa making herself at home and Bruce tells her he’s happy to see her and that he needs a favor to which Selina becomes a little annoyed. “What, no how’ve you been SORRY I didn’t tell you I’m leaving town for a month to my castle in France,” says the Cat. (Seriously, when is Bruce going to get a clue about not disappearing on Selina for months at a time with no word, nothing not even a postcard. She’s only saved his life, what, four or five times now and she is always, always there for him when he needs her.)
Bruce corrects her and tells her he was at a Chateau in Switzerland but she doesn’t care. He shows her the file on the man who killed his parents and Selina is interested. She asks him what he’s going to do with it and he tells her he needs her to get him a gun. This bothers Selina and she brings up the time they confronted Alfred’s old war buddy who stabbed Alfred and threatened them and she had to push him out a window to save them both, not him. Bruce will not be deterred however and tells Selina she is the only one who can get the gun for him. She asks what Alfred thinks and Bruce tells her that he believes he’s going to kill the man but that Bruce is going to do it. This upsets Selina even more as she moves across the room and turns around behind Bruce to tell him that if he kills the man he will never be the same. It will change who he is. Bruce stands and turns and looks at Selina with cold eyes, answering back, “I hope so.”
Back at Arkham, poor Penguin is going through another torture treatment while Hugo walks down to Indian Wells and visits his new patient, Mr. Freeze. It seems with all the exposure to the different cold vials during his experiments Victor did not die when he tried to kill himself but became almost like a living human frozen popsicle. Hugo has him in a room that’s being kept below freezing. Hugo tells Freeze that he’s making modifications to his suit so that he won’t have to stay in there forever. Victor says he should have died with Nora and that it should have ended with Nora. Dr. Strange just smiles and tells Victor, “Death is not an ending. Death is a new beginning.”
With that, he walks away with the camera panning to another room where Hugo Strange is keeping the bodies of Theo Galavan and other dead villains submerged in tanks of water.
Gotham Season 2 Episode 13 Review
Dark, disturbing, and action-packed, episode 13 of Gotham titled “A Dead Man Feels No Cold” continues the introduction of the two major villains for the second half of season two and brings young Mr. Wayne back to continue his search for the people responsible for killing his parents. The stand-out performance in this episode goes to Morena Baccarin as Lee as she tries to help and look out for her patient, Nora, while struggling with the realization that the man she loves, Jim, might be headed down a dark path that she may not be able to follow. Or even worse, a path that might just destroy them both. Her scenes with both Ben McKenzie are tense and electric. The two actors have true chemistry on screen. But, her best scenes are with Kristen Hager as Nora as she bonds with her patient while trying to protect her and begins to identify with the woman’s inability to act due to her love for her husband. Baccarin’s portrayal of Lee’s shock and sadness over the death of Nora is perfect.
With Bruce back in town working with a concerned but loyal Selina to kill the man who murdered his parents, the next episode of Gotham could just be the best one yet.
GRADE: B-
