This review contains spoilers.
In this episode, James Gordon and Harvey Bullock investigate an attack on a cop who was frozen to death.
Summary
It’s been several weeks since Gordon killed Theo Galavan and he is just now returning to the police station. Captain Barnes and Harvey Dent investigate Gordon to determine if he killed Galavan but Penguin confesses to the crime and is sent to Arkham Asylum.
Meanwhile, a cop is frozen to death by a man attempting to kidnap an already frozen man. Gordon and Bullock investigate the case with Edward Nygma revealing that liquid helium was used to freeze the cop in seconds. The kidnapper is Victor Fries. His wife, Nora, is sick and near death. Fries plans to freeze her using the liquid helium in order to stop her disease and then thaw her when there is a cure. However, he has been unable to find a way to safely thaw her. Fries has been kidnapping people and freezing them so he can experiment with the thawing process. Nora is unaware of this and believes Fries is experimenting on mice.
At Arkham, Penguin meets Dr. Hugo Strange who intends to cure Penguin of his supposed mental illness. Nora discovers Fries’ experiments while the police are able to figure out who Fries is. They take Nora to the GCPD and Fries comes to confess. However, before he can, Fries sees that his final experiment worked. The last victim he froze was successfully thawed. He leaves vowing to save Nora. However, this puts him on the radar of Dr. Strange who is very intrigued by Mr. Freeze.
Positives
The story of Victor and Nora Fries is actually well-handled. This is a period of time that we normally don’t see in their lives. Usually, Nora is comatose when we start this story. It was enjoyable to get to know her and what her relationship with Victor was. Additionally, Nathan Darrow and Kristin Hager are great in their respective roles.
BD Wong is fantastic as Dr. Hugo Strange. Beyond the fact that he looks exactly like the comic, Wong’s performance is spot on. The levels of creepiness are raised to 11 every time he is on screen. He also conveys a calm intelligence that is especially fun in scenes with Robin Lord Taylor’s Penguin.
Negatives
I didn’t mention this in my recap but there are a couple of scenes between Butch and Tabitha deciding to be partners. Butch has become the new king of Gotham, whatever that means, and Tabitha wants to work with him. It’s pretty pointless honestly. I like the actors but it has nothing to do with anything. Maybe it will lead to something interesting in the future but it feels like filler right now.
The debate of how to pronounce Fries is quite irritating. We can pronounce the name as Freeze; sillier things have happened on this show.
Gordon’s secret killing of Galavan already feels tedious. It’s just cheap melodrama and I really don’t want to see that between Gordon and Leslie.
Verdict
There are three terrific additions to the cast in Wong, Darrow and Hager. They are all great in their roles and actually breathe a life into this show that has been missing from it this season. There are tedious and annoying moments but not a lot of them. This is a pretty solid episode. If you gave up on this show, this might be the story to suck you back in.
