Directed by Wendey Stanzler
Written by Megan Mostyn Brown
When the key witness in a homicide ends up dead while being held for questioning by the police, Gordon suspects that it's an inside job and looks to an old friend for information.
Tropes:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Fish and Butch surprise Oswald at the club, he reduces himself to kissing her feet and pleading with her.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Oswald's mother flirts with Jim and Gabe while drunk.
- Break His Heart to Save Him: Selina tells Bruce to stop hassling her, trying to keep him from falling for her. Bruce says he thought they were friends, clearly holding back the emotion he feels.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: After his few party guests leave the club, Oswald immediately gets drunk on one bottle of alcohol. He proceeds to indulge in drunken antics, from spitting on the property to addressing an imaginary audience on the mic.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: "Bob" threatens Fish with this. He also beats her and asphyxiates her while she is imprisoned.
- The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Leon Winkler's death is ruled a suicide by Internal Affairs to cover up the fact he was stabbed in the back with an ice pick for being a witness in a public homicide.
- Dating Catwoman: Bullock and Fish meet up at the end of the episode. She asks him to help Butch and he advises her to lay low for a while. They kiss and part ways.
- Dramatic Irony: Jim probably won't know that Oswald had been grovelling at Fish's feet in the same way that Flass' partner had just been reduced to doing to him - and at the meta level, this is precisely the sort of fear Batman will use to finish Jim's work.
- Godzilla Threshold: A moral one. Jim Gordon willingly goes to his mobster "friend" in the Penguin to take down Detective Flass.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
- Bob has two daughters and a wife, apparently. He punches Fish when she insults his children.
- Butch and Fish are shown to genuinely care about one another as Butch puts himself in danger to save her and she doesn't abandon him when she has the chance.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Jim Gordon knows he's surrounded by Dirty Cop associates from top to bottom but Flass crosses the
Moral Event Horizon even by their standards, serving as a mob hitman in addition to his job as a cop. - Heroic Sacrifice: Butch helps Fish escape when Victor ambushes them at the club, leaving himself behind.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Jim Gordon has this when he finds out the Penguin waterboarded Flass' partner's wife to get him to turn on him.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Fish wants revenge on Oswald for his betrayal, but as well as telling Falcone about Liza and thus playing a hand in her murder.
- Pet the Dog:Penguin helps Jim get the information he needs without asking for anything in return.
- Robbing the Dead: Mrs. Kapelput picks up Liza's scarf and Oswald lets her keep it, knowing well that it belonged to a murdered girl.
- Think Nothing of It: Gordon shows up at Oswald's club to ask him if he knows anything about Arnold Flass. When Oswald promises to help, Gordon asks what's in it for him. Oswald replies nothing, because "friends don't owe friends."
- Too Kinky to Torture: Fish pretends to be this while she faces torture, but this is quickly shown to be a brave act.
- Torture Is Ineffective: "Bob" tortures Fish, but she doesn't give him the confession that he's been ordered to take.
- Torture Technician: Bob, the man in charge of torturing Fish Mooney and extracting a confession.
- Villainous Rescue: Butch busts into the torture room where Fish is about to be beaten with a hammer and quickly knocks out Bob. Also, when Victor shows up at the club to rescue Oswald from Fish and Butch.
