S02.E10: Time Off For Good Behavior

[Trini]

As Batwoman focuses even more effort on taking down Black Mask (guest star Peter Outerbridge), a new foe emerges, diverting the Bat team's attention to a distressing issue in Gotham. Continually haunted by the mistakes of his past, Jacob travels down a dangerous path in an attempt to eradicate them. Alice and Julia (guest star Christina Wolfe) discover they have an enemy in common.

Eric Dean Seaton directed the episode written by James Stoteraux and Chad Fiveash (#210).

Airdate: 4/11/21

[scarynikki12]

“All we have in common is that we both miss Kate.” You also have being blonde in common Julia.

I’m sure it was just a dressed up warehouse that we’ve been seeing since Arrow season 1 but the community center was a nice change.

Enigma and Jake have some nice chemistry. Maybe they could have a hate sex type of affair.

Roman amuses me. He practically has a sign saying “I’m a bad guy!” when going about his daily routine but is so obvious no one catches on.

Mary and Spence had some nice chemistry as well. Wouldn’t object to something happening there.

Mary my love take the money and reopen the clinic. Take your anger at Jake and turn it into something good. No shock Jake’s now a Snakebit junkie but he didn’t need an angry Mary to push him there.

Whenever Sophie and Ryan have a scene together Sophie seems so much older while Ryan seems so much younger. If the show wants to go with a Big Sis/Little Sis angle I think it could work.

[BeautifulFlower]

Mary just pissed me off. I love her, but I'm not on her side. Your clinic is ILLEGAL. You could go to JAIL. Jacob just offered you his help to make your clinic legal, yet you REJECT IT?!!!! This drama between them is forced.

[Diapason Untuned]

It's always good when TV shows how point out how inherently horrible for profit prisons are, as well as how vulnerable places like community centers and the people who advocate for them are.

Black Mask is such a piece of work. Gets Jacob hooked on Snakebite and then brings him his next hit right to his office without him suspecting a thing. Damn.

Alice has gone from Gotham's most feared woman to the newest member of it's Lonely Hearts Club. Just about everyone can see through her bullshit now though, which is nice.

Crows fail at even the basics of law enforcement yet again. 🙄 Angelique has a point not trusting those bozos.

5 hours ago, scarynikki12 said:

“All we have in common is that we both miss Kate.” You also have being blonde in common Julia.

Alice gets her blonde out of a bottle.

 

5 hours ago, BeautifulFlower said:

Mary just pissed me off. I love her, but I'm not on her side. Your clinic is ILLEGAL. You could go to JAIL. Jacob just offered you his help to make your clinic legal, yet you REJECT IT?!!!! This drama between them is forced.

I can understand her reticence at wanting Jacob's help, since she's just afraid he'll turn it into a place that does all the things that made made her start a clinic in the first place.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Diapason Untuned

[cambridgeguy]

Hmm, the doctor's last name is Rhyme and she carries around a cane with a ridiculously ornate head.  Yeah, pretty obvious she was Enigma. 

And maybe everyone should just start driving cars without a back seat since they seem to be such a popular place for the bad guys to hide out.

Looks like Ms. Self Righteous (aka yet another potential love interest?) owes Spence an apology.  Yeah, he was kind of a dick just shouting it out like that and coming across as saying place in rough neighborhood = guaranteed crime scene but he ended up being right.

 

[Primal Slayer]

It was a decent episode. I wish they would stop sending Julia away, she's probably one of my favorites and want to see more of her. THough she'll probably be back AGAIN once she finds out her mind has been erased.

The Crows suck at security. Like really. How many times do these people need to be in the driver seat and pounced on by someone hiding in the back seat? It's happened like 3/4 times this season. It's time to retire the trick. 

We have these high tech guns that magically know to separate into two beams to hit people but all it does it knock them on their feet? But they can blow up cars? 

The writers, like Charmed writers, like writers for the shows in general, please just learn to feed me things inadvertently and not directly to my face. I understand where the world is right now but I need it weaved in better.

[Lantern7]

Roman plays dirty with or without his black mask. "Hey, Jacob. You look a little down. Listen . . . someone at my work had some Snakebite. I want going to throw it in the toilet, but then I thought, 'Maybe the Crows need it for analysis.' Wow, you're licking your lips and your hand is trembling. Have I come at a bad time?"

As far as episodic plots go, springing assholes to blow up spots for at-risk youths is clever. Sure, you dump a psychopath or two onto the streets of Gotham, but you can also boost the number of folks in your prison. That's some "outside the box" thinking.

I was dreading things when Angelique was getting her last phone call with Alex, and the camera was angled to show the car window next to her. What were the chances she'd actually make it into hiding?

[Chicago Redshirt]

3 hours ago, BeautifulFlower said:

Mary just pissed me off. I love her, but I'm not on her side. Your clinic is ILLEGAL. You could go to JAIL. Jacob just offered you his help to make your clinic legal, yet you REJECT IT?!!!! This drama between them is forced.

I think Mary did a better-than-usual job of explaining what her issue is with it. If the clinic is completely above-board, it's going to have to follow the rules. That includes complying with requirements to report gunshot victims and other particular cases, and doing what the board of directors/money wants done instead of just using their own best judgment. Also, part of the problem the clinic is trying to address is that there are people who don't trust the system. Getting to be part of the system would undermine what it's going for. And although Mary didn't explicitly say it, the clinic would not be a good front for Batwoman-adjacent activities if Jacob has his prying eyes and pocketbook involved.

[Trini]

I kinda feel Angelique is not worth all this trouble.

Okay; they're sending off Julia again?

Wow, so Jake getting addicted to Snakebite was a twist I didn't see coming; but it seems appropriately nefarious for someone like Black Mask, so points to the bad guy, I guess.

Nice of them to let Luke out in the field for a second! Still think they need to give him more to do outside the Batcave, though. Spence seems like he could be an interesting recurring character.

Alice really seems pointless and aimless at the moment; although I'm sure that Safiyah and Ocean will come back into play a some point. Also, there's still no one trying to arrest her! Now would be the perfect time as she's all mopey.

 

On 4/11/2021 at 10:02 PM, cambridgeguy said:

And maybe everyone should just start driving cars without a back seat since they seem to be such a popular place for the bad guys to hide out.

 

On 4/11/2021 at 10:04 PM, Primal Slayer said:

The Crows suck at security. Like really. How many times do these people need to be in the driver seat and pounced on by someone hiding in the back seat? It's happened like 3/4 times this season. It's time to retire the trick.

I find this trope generally unrealistic, but it's especially annoying when it keeps happening to people it should never happen to.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Trini

[Chicago Redshirt]

Miscellaneous thoughts:

Overall, I kinda liked  this one. Still had its flaws but what can you do:

The Good

1. I kinda liked the intro of Gotham Gazette guy as a potential love interest for Mary. 

2. It was good to have Dougray Scott look like he wasn't just phoning in his performance for once. Might as well face it, you're addicted to Snakebite!

3. Luke gets to help save the day! 

4. Batwoman's bad-ass level seemed to go up a notch in general this episode.

5. I hope it doesn't come off the wrong way, but I like that the community center person doesn't fit the traditional Hollywood stereotype of what it means to be beautiful and Black.

The Not-quite-so-good

1. This is the third or fourth time this season someone has pulled off the ambush-from-the-back-seat-of-the-car scenario. And in this one Jake wasn't even just getting in the car only to discover someone in the back seat. He had apparently been sitting in the car for a while listening to his radio. I literally was like, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

2. Now that we are in the same universe with Black Lightning, guns that fire lightning aren't commonplace, but they clearly exist in numbers enough to equip Freeland PD and at least some of Freeland's gang community. So it's unclear why Kilovolt deserves his own superhero nickname since it's not like the weapon is unique. 

3. It's also unclear why the for-profit prison guy would go through all the trouble of allowing bad guys to get out of prison to stop community centers and then give them parole when they can just as easily use the infinite bad guys or minions out on the free world to do the same thing. Like if there was a particular reason to, say, need to use Mr. Freeze's cold gun for a job, that would make sense. But there were at least three lightning guns that the prison folks have (presumably more) and anybody can do a robbery or arson. Don't have to worry so much about the bad guys flipping on you or people tracing the bad guys to your parole efforts. I suppose for profit prison guy should have covered his tracks better. 

4. Doesn't this ep involve a retcon on what Snakebite does? Before they said that it was a mix of Scarecrow's fear toxin and other stuff. So the rush meant you'd get scared while high. Now it's giving you a riff on the Black Mercy thing (granting you your fondest wish but leaving you locked in a death spiral. I guess they didn't want Jake to be THAT kind of junkie, or they wanted to try to work in Alice. I kind of hope that they actually kill Jake off. He and Sophie are kind of redundant when Kate's not Batwoman and if Alice is less central to the mythos. 

5. Not a fan of the Alice redemption arc still. 

6. Julia should probably know better than to confront a suspected memory eraser without having a backup to make sure that her memory isn't erased. But happy trials, Julia. I don't know if I will miss you. 

7. Had Enigma been established as working for the Crows for a while, or was that just this episode? It seems like the Crows HR probably could use some fine-tuning. 

8. Angelique is apparently STILL clueless about Ryan being Batwoman. But hey at least BW broke new ground in the love interest being jealous that the secret identity is dating the hero, instead of the usual "Why can't you be more like the Hero?"

9. The writers continue to do Sophie no favors. She sucks as an investigator (and ex) to not know that Julia probably didn't get blackout drunk on multiple days when she was pursuing Kate's whereabouts and turning in expense accounts. I mean, very few people have that much alcohol that they literally remember nothing. [Julia sucks for accepting that as a possible explanation, when she knows at least one time someone claimed that she had talked to him but that she had absolutely no memory of it]. The writers easily could have had her be like, "Thank you, Ryan, for getting Angelique to talk. We're one step closer to finding the Commissioner's murderers" Or they could have even if they wanted to worked it so that Sophie got Angelique to talk, either with or without Ryan. But they go out of their way to have Sophie be utterly indifferent to this major break in the case. Ryan shouldn't have to leave six voice mails about the new tip. And she shouldn't have to start investigating the leads herself. You've got an army to do that, Sophie! Even if they want to suggest that Sophie is too busy for some reason to call back about what is still probably the biggest crime in recent Gotham history, they could again have her be proactive. "I'm glad Angelique flipped. I'll work on getting the D.A. to write her a deal!" instead of how nonchalant she was. I don't know if Sophie was supposed to be channeling David Caruso when she found the suspects hanging and said that Black Mask was "tying up loose ends," but that didn't work for me. I guess I will not lay the Crows' failure to safeguard Angelique at Sophie's feet. 

10. So we're really supposed to believe that the FFS ran out of people who could manufacture Snakebite?

11. A downside to the introduction of the Gotham Gazette guy is there's already too many people who are supposed to be fulfilling the "investigate stuff role." When you already have Team Bat and Team Crow and Alice, I think that doesn't leave much daylight for Gotham Gazette guy to function. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Chicago Redshirt

[cambridgeguy]

6 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I think Mary did a better-than-usual job of explaining what her issue is with it. If the clinic is completely above-board, it's going to have to follow the rules. That includes complying with requirements to report gunshot victims and other particular cases, and doing what the board of directors/money wants done instead of just using their own best judgment. Also, part of the problem the clinic is trying to address is that there are people who don't trust the system. Getting to be part of the system would undermine what it's going for. And although Mary didn't explicitly say it, the clinic would not be a good front for Batwoman-adjacent activities if Jacob has his prying eyes and pocketbook involved.

Unfortunately for Mary her clinic has also been attacked multiple times and her last coworker was killed by Zsasz. so her way of doing things had more than its fair share of flaws too.

[Chicago Redshirt]

28 minutes ago, cambridgeguy said:

Unfortunately for Mary her clinic has also been attacked multiple times and her last coworker was killed by Zsasz. so her way of doing things had more than its fair share of flaws too.

Yeah, but those attacks would still have happened if her clinic was above-board, because the people attacking were looking for Mary, Batwoman, the desert rose or whatever. Jale could beef up security for the clinic, but considering the Crows can't seem to protect their own parking garage, if I were Mary, I would take my chances with my under-the-table firearm and Batwoman.

[BeautifulFlower]

7 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I think Mary did a better-than-usual job of explaining what her issue is with it. If the clinic is completely above-board, it's going to have to follow the rules. That includes complying with requirements to report gunshot victims and other particular cases, and doing what the board of directors/money wants done instead of just using their own best judgment. Also, part of the problem the clinic is trying to address is that there are people who don't trust the system. Getting to be part of the system would undermine what it's going for. And although Mary didn't explicitly say it, the clinic would not be a good front for Batwoman-adjacent activities if Jacob has his prying eyes and pocketbook involved.

I get that, but her clinic is still illegal. They brought that up once again this episode, especially with Mary saying Jacob would just have to arrest her to stop her. Considering her clinic is pretty much getting more known, who knows when a cop will go undercover there just to get her arrested. I just feel like they are leading up to this or something. And now I feel like if she does get arrested, she'll get mad at him again for letting it happen.

This whole plotline is just infuriating to me because how forced it is.

[Chicago Redshirt]

48 minutes ago, BeautifulFlower said:

I get that, but her clinic is still illegal. They brought that up once again this episode, especially with Mary saying Jacob would just have to arrest her to stop her. Considering her clinic is pretty much getting more known, who knows when a cop will go undercover there just to get her arrested. I just feel like they are leading up to this or something. And now I feel like if she does get arrested, she'll get mad at him again for letting it happen.

This whole plotline is just infuriating to me because how forced it is.

Considering this is Gotham, where the cops and Crows are generally a combination of corrupt, harried and incompetent, Mary can sleep peacefully at night without worrying about the possibility that the authorities are going to find out about her clinic and shut her down. 

Going aboveboard also comes with its set of risks. In a crazy world where for-profit prison CEOs hire crooks to take out community centers to preserve their profits, it wouldn't be unexpected if some hospital did something similar to preserve theirs. Or crooks would start to shake them down for protection money. Or the corruption or incompetence elsewhere in Gotham would spread to the do-gooding of the clinic. 

I don't see it as a forced plotline or conflict where both sides have reasons for acting and feeling the way they do. If I were Mary, I of course would take the money and run. Of course, Mary has literal billions in her own right and Mary could run a clinic with actual licensed doctors and just be in an administrative role herself. But that she wants to be hands on prematurely is understandable if not advisable. 

[tennisgurl]

They really need to figure out what to do with Alice, it seems like they have no clue what to do with her now that Kate isn't around. I would like to see her interact more with Mary or Jacob if they want to keep her relevant, or maybe have her leave Gotham for awhile to give us a break from her until they can find something new for her to do. They seem to be edging towards giving her a redemption arc, but she is mostly just kind of...around. 

Pretty good episode, although I do still find the whole "we have to make a community center to save the youth of Gotham!" stuff to be really strange and misplaced in a Batfam story. Gotham has many problems that make it such a delightful hive of scum and villainy, many of which you can pretty easily use to talk about real world issues, especially corruption in the police and mental health, but more "normal" big city stuff like for profit prisons and trying to keep the young people out of gangs with basketball teams and community outreach? If you want to help Gotham, pour a ton of money into mental health resources and close down all of the toxic waste plants that people keep falling into, I don't know if saving the community center like this is a Disney Channel show is really going to do much. This show has always been a bit more of a generic Gotham than the more gothic version that I prefer, but this season even more so. 

The reporter guy seems like a decent possible love interest for Mary, although I am not sure I am really a fan. He couldn't have found a better way to recommend they beef up security at the community center then getting on their case during their opening night speech in the smuggest way possible in front of their donors? I also caught some sparks between Ryan and the community center lady, she seemed really cool and actually not a drug dealer, so an upgrade from her last love interest. I don't want Angelique to die or anything and I do think she loves Ryan, but I think its time Ryan moves on after this Black Mask thing is sorted. Their values are just too different now, and Angelique just cant stop making these awful life choices. 

Black Mask is pretty promising as a villain, he has some real bad guy swagger. He's a real tricky asshole, having one of his mooks inject Jacob with Snakebite then ever so casually leaving some in his office. I also liked when he was killing his mooks for not making more Snakebite and one of them was like "No matter how much you kill us, it wont change the fact that we cant make more stuff, your just depleting your workforce for nothing." Points for the random henchwoman, and Black Mask even seemed to take what she said seriously. I do continue to side eye the Crows level of competence, these guys really cant figure a single crime out can they or find one solitary bad guy can they? No wonder Gotham is still a mess even with two law enforcement agencies and a superhero. 

Nice to see Luke out in the field, even for just a minute. The new Bat team seems to be gelling really well, Kate being declared dead has allowed them to really commit to each other and this new team. I wonder what will happen when they find out she's still around, just with a face lift? 

Why do they keep writing Julia off and then bringing her back over and over again? Sophie also still has little to do besides work for the incompetent Crows, which never allowed her much time to shine. 

I do actually get both Mary and Jacob's sides here, although I do mostly side with Mary. Jacob isn't wrong that she could get in trouble legally if she was caught running an underground clinic, let alone the risks she takes of violent villains attacking (which has happened) and, as much as I love Mary and her medical brilliance, in the real world she probably would struggle giving all of her patients the care they need, being a medical student and not a licensed doctor. Mary isn't wrong though that if her clinic was legit, she would have to deal with the things that legit hospitals deal with, like insurance and reporting patients to the cops which makes people less likely to go get help, which is why she opened her clinic to begin with. Plus she needs it for Batwoman assistance of course, but she cant tell Jacob that. I do hope that they can make up soon, I was hoping that with Kate gone we could focus a bit more on their relationship, but they pretty quickly started fighting.

Edited April 12, 2021 by tennisgurl

[thuganomics85]

An episode that both addresses the idea of community centers (and the problems they have to deal with, sadly) and the corruption of "for profit" prisons.  Batwoman swinging in hard with the social commentary!

He ended up being in the right, but I really didn't understand why Spence was being so confrontational when asking about the center's protection, because it really did come off like he was just trying to pick a fight, instead of actually wanting real answers for a real threat.  It just felt overdramatic for the sake of it.  I won't blame the actor since I suspect it was written/directed to be that way, but that aspect of the story was so eye-rolling.

Continuing to enjoy Black Mask/Roman as the villain and hope he sticks around as the main baddie this season.  Although major props to the henchwoman who called him out on all of the killings that really weren't getting anything done.  I have a feeling that he probably actually respected that.  That henchwoman is going places!

Jacob being addicted to Snakebite might be the first time I've ever actually got invested in this character.

Julia is being shipped off again?  I guess they only contracted Christina Wolfe for a certain amount of episodes.  Won't be surprised though if she shows back up at the end of the season.

Nice for Luke to get a heroic moment.

Jordan might have already found herself another love interest!

Right now, it does feel like they aren't quite sure what to do with Alice right now, and she's kind of just hanging around.  Granted, the same could be same for Sophie as well.

I love Mary and I totally get why she doesn't want her clinic to be put in a position where she would have to turn down patients who tend to get overlooked, but she has to realize on some levels that running an underground, illegal clinic could definitely lead to some danger, and Jacob isn't completely wrong to be concerned about it.  I'm not sure what the best solution will be right now, but it will have to be addressed at some point.

I swear, it felt like Rachel Maddow was barely suppressing a snicker during some of Vesper's puns this time.

[Quark]

Enjoyable episode.

What is it about Jacob Kane, that makes so many people, particularly women, lie to him about who they are and what they do? It's just crazy.

[Proteus]

Yeah, this show sucks. I waited months for Julia to come back just to be written out again automatically.

I've gotten to the point where I can't even stand looking at Sophie.

Ryan's annoying me as well.

Oh well. This show had promise. Now I just feel like giving up on it.

[yourmomiseasy]

Why was Jacob's arm tied off when he was injected?  With two needles being injected horizontally, it would seem Snakebite is an IM injection, not IV.  Which, also seems far fetched, but I guess they wanted the track marks to look like a snake bite. 

 

[BeautifulFlower]

On 4/14/2021 at 1:39 PM, yourmomiseasy said:

Why was Jacob's arm tied off when he was injected?  With two needles being injected horizontally, it would seem Snakebite is an IM injection, not IV.  Which, also seems far fetched, but I guess they wanted the track marks to look like a snake bite. 

 

I guess they're treating it like heroin. Injecting it in the veins makes them the feel the effect of the drug faster.

[yourmomiseasy]

But the delivery mechanism as shown would make it impossible to use the drug intravenously unless one needle is IV and one is IM or one is empty and just there for show.  You'd have to be really fucking precise to get both those needles into veins at the same time horizontally (as they are shown using it) .  I don't know that IV drug users are known for their precision. 

Edited April 21, 2021 by yourmomiseasy

[John Potts]

Does nobody check their car before getting in? In Gotham, you'd think it would be like making sure you had enough petrol (gas) to get home!

Given Julia tricked Enigma into going into the interview room, did she not also run the cameras? Dumb mistake on her part if not. I guess she might have been hypnotised into not checking them (and/or deleting the footage, if Enigma considered that) but there was no indication that was the case.

How did Jacob know it was Snakebite? It was a liquid in a syringe! How hard would it have been to say, "Looks like it, but I'll have our lab check it"? Sure, he was right, but it’s not like he sniffed it or anything (obviously, until he injected it into himself!)

Why were Mary & co surprised the Community Centre was attacked? The point of setting it up was to give kids an alternative to running with the gangs – did she not think the gangs might prefer it to not exist?

On 4/12/2021 at 2:51 AM, Diapason Untuned said:

Black Mask is such a piece of work. Gets Jacob hooked on Snakebite and then brings him his next hit right to his office without him suspecting a thing. Damn.

I do love to see a truly competent (as well as utterly ruthless) villain.

[legaleagle53]

8 hours ago, John Potts said:

Why were Mary & co surprised the Community Centre was attacked? The point of setting it up was to give kids an alternative to running with the gangs – did she not think the gangs might prefer it to not exist?

On 4/11/2021 at 6:51 PM, Diapason Untuned said:

 

Spoiler

The gangs aren't the ones who attacked it, as will be made clear later on.

 

Edited July 2, 2021 by legaleagle53