Recap / Gotham S 4 E 20 That Old Corpse

Directed by Louis Shaw Milito

Written by Chalie Huston

At Gotham Cemetery, Jerome's followers have come to celebrate him in their usual misanthropic, anarchistic fashion. Their celebrations are brought to a halt at the arrival of a woman in a harlequin costume, who plays a tape recording into a megaphone - gotta get the message out. The voice on the tape is Jerome's, and he wants his followers to do something for him from beyond the grave.

At the GCPD, Jim Gordon is psyching himself up to interrogate Lee, but he can't bring himself to do it. Exes and all that. Harvey goads him into it with a reminder of his own wrongdoings. After a short interrogation session in which Jim learns nothing, but gets a nice heart to heart with Lee about their differing approaches to justice, Lucius arrives with a tape from Jerome Valeska. He's siccing his fanbase on GCPD headquarters, as the tape reveals, but Gordon quickly figures out it's a distraction. He creates a plan to get the officers out of the building and trap the followers inside, giving them time to figure out the true target. He's done with Jerome's tricks. Jim lets Alfred know about what Jerome's followers are about to do, and what with Jerome's history of targeting Bruce, figures he should be taken to a safe place. Alfred informs him that he is meeting Jeremiah Valeska in his bunker.

In the bunker, Jeremiah is demonstrating his new clean energy solution. Bruce gets a call from Alfred, letting him know what he was told by Gordon, and that he's on his way. Bruce tries to hide the nature of the call from Jeremiah, whose mental health he has concerns about, but he easily sees the lie. On learning what Jerome has planned, he freaks out, and shows Bruce Jerome's childhood journal, which is full of drawings of his brother being tortured in myriad creative ways. Jeremiah reveals that he was gassed with Jerome's Joker toxin, and is struggling to fight its effects. Bruce has none of it, and offers to take Jeremiah to Gotham Cemetery to see Jerome's body and prove to him that he can't hurt him anymore.

Back at GCPD, Jerome's followers have broken into the building and are swarming the bullpen. Jim orders the force to fall back and runs for the rear exit, but is stopped by the leader of the followers, Jongleur. Jim pulls the old 'not talking to you' gag, and seconds later Bullock's knocked the dude out cold. Back in the bullpen, as the officers are pulling back towards the exits, Lee is pushed by the crowd into a fire extinguisher and knocked out. At Wayne Manor, Alfred is preparing to go when he hears a disturbance coming from the kitchen. He readies his gun, and enters the room; through the gap between the door and the floor, we see gunfire and multiple shadows fighting. Alfred's gunfire fades away, and silence falls.

Meanwhile, at Gotham Cemetery, Bruce and Jeremiah make it to Jerome's grave and find it dug up. Jeremiah freaks out even more, and runs off, leaving Bruce to chase after him. Bruce soon catches him inside a dimly lit crypt, where Jeremiah seems to turn, and accuses Bruce of being Jerome in disguise. Bruce tries to get closer to him, to help him get over the delusion, but two bullets in the floor puts a stop to that. Jeremiah grabs Bruce and starts taking him to Jerome's grave so he can put him back inside it.

Gordon and Bullock have Jongleur inside the trunk of their car, and are tasing him to reveal what Jerome's true plan is. Jim calls Bullock out on how openly he is doing this, with reporters mere feet away, and then proceeds to do the same with the trunk slightly more closed. The leader breaks quickly - Jerome is after Jeremiah and Bruce again. Jim sets a course for Jeremiah's Bunker, and Bullock takes their captive to the prisoners' van. Inside the GCPD, Lee awakens and sneaks into the ME's lab to hide out. Riddler arrives on scene and sees that, with the GCPD filled with Jerome's followers and soon to be tear-gassed, he's going to have to improvise to get Lee out. Spying the transport van, he opens it and learns from the prisoners inside that the old service door can be used to get inside. He goes to a nearby costume shop and gets a generic clown costume, fitting in so well that once inside he's even offered a cold brew from Jerome's casket. Such fun. He checks out the ME's lab, and is summarily knocked out by Lee. Meanwhile, Penguin and Butch open the transport van and take the leader for themselves, to torture him for information.

At the Cemetery, Jeremiah and Bruce arrive at Jerome's grave and... something's changed. There's a body slumped against the headstone, and it's none other than Jerome, looking dapper as ever. Jeremiah freaks out again, and figures that it's really Bruce under Jerome's face. Meanwhile, at Jeremiah's bunker, Gordon finds Jeremiah's room. All is still, and then a monitor turns on, revealing Jerome, who divulges that he knew Jim would suss the distraction and would follow the trail to the bunker. He wanted Gordon to come. Then, as hands reach out to strangle Jerome, the harlequin appears and tries to kill Gordon. Never a dull moment. He bests her, barely, just as another monitor flicks on to reveal the person strangling Jerome is, in fact, Jerome. Gordon takes the mask off his attacker, and finds it is none other than Jeremiah's assistant, Ecco. She wakes and bolts from the room, sealing it behind her.

In the Cemetery, Jeremiah and Bruce are fighting when Jerome's followers turn up and split them apart, chanting about Jerome's post-mortem success. Bruce pleads with Jeremiah to see clearly. Back at the bunker, in the video, Jerome starts peeling off his face, and pulls a towel up to cover it. At the cemetery, Jeremiah takes one of the followers by the arm and shoots him under the chin, complaining about their celebration of his brother over him. He takes a cloth, wipes the natural-tone make-up off his face to reveal the unmistakeable blanched skin and blood-red lips of the Joker. In the bunker, 'Jerome' does the same, and reveals that he is in fact Jeremiah, and that he set the whole thing up to get Gordon and Bruce to those two places. The clean energy source he was demonstrating to Bruce is actually a bomb, and he's set it to go off with Gordon inside. Devious. A scheme worthy of the clown prince of crime himself, if the show was allowed to use that moniker. Gordon finds the trip switch to open the rear door of the room and gets out with seconds to spare, but did he escape the blast radius?

At the cemetery, the present company look at the mushroom cloud shooting out from the explosion of Jeremiah's little bomb. The man in purple reveals what he's done to Gordon, and then reveals he has many more bombs ready to go off in Gotham proper. His brother was mad, he says, but he is a smarter breed of criminal. "To rebuild, you must first destroy". And with that, he kicks Bruce into Jerome's grave and departs for Gotham.

Tropes

• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Jerome's followers storm the GCPD.
• Ambiguous Situation: Whether or not the toxin had any effect on Jeremiah's mind; he claims that the toxin did nothing more than bleach his skin, but that wouldn't account for his initial reaction when he was gassed. When he is meeting Bruce to test his new energy source, he acts no different to how he did before being gassed. Not to mention that self-delusion is a symptom of insanity. Further, there were hints in S4 E18, "Mandatory Brunch Meeting", that Jeremiah has always been psychopathic at least to a degree, from setting Jerome up as a kid to living in a maze only he knows the exit from.
• Blade Enthusiast: The Jongleur juggles knives and uses them as ranged weapons. He throws one at Ecco when she intrudes on their impromptu graveside service, but she deflects it with her quick reflexes.
• Cliffhanger: Gordon is last seen trying to escape from Jeremiah's bunker before it blows up. We're also left hanging as to what happened to Alfred after he was attacked (presumably by Jerome's followers). Jeremiah collects his warehouse full of bombs and leaves for Gotham to use them.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Jeremiah poses as his recently-deceased brother Jerome in a series of supposed Video Wills.
• Due to the Dead: The episode opens with a twisted version of this, as Jerome's followers hold a wake at his grave. Which includes gargling and spitting on said grave.
• Eviler than Thou: Despite now being just as insane as his brother, Jeremiah is more lucid than Jerome was, and feels that his ability to plan things out is better than Jerome's random violence was. To demonstrate his perceived superiority, he (apparently) kills Gordon.
• Evil All Along: Jeremiah tells Bruce that Jerome’s toxin transformed his face but failed to infect his mind - he’s always been like this, although Bruce doesn’t believe him, so it’s unknown if Jeremiah was just made to believe that by the chemicals or if he really was planning all of this from day one before he even arrived in Gotham.
• Evil Former Friend: Jeremiah to Bruce, though in the former's twisted mind, they're still friends.
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": What the Video Will states that Jerome's followers should do by having his wake inside the GCPD.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: As Butch points out, Penguin's plans to retake control of Gotham haven't panned out, leaving the two of them squatting in Falcone's mansion and having to knock over liquor stores for money to buy groceries.
• Internal Reveal: Bruce and Gordon learn about Jeremiah being driven insane by Jerome's last gambit.
• Kansas City Shuffle: "Jerome's" posthumous instructions to his followers to invade and terrorize the police station are just part of Jeremiah's plan to get Gordon out of the station and in Jeremiah's bunker, where he's trapped alone with the bomb.
• Logo Joke: The title card at the end of the show is made up of glowing blue bombs, implying Gotham is about to explode.
• MacGyvering: Riddler's initial plan to break out Lee apparently involved this, though the Neo-Maniax assault on the GCPD preempts him from ever carrying this out.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The costume that Jeremiah's assistant/girlfriend Echo wears as part of their plan looks a lot like Harley Quinn's.
  • Near the end of the episode, Jeremiah dons a purple suit, just like the classic look of the Joker.
  • Jeremiah wiping away his face to reveal his true face is a callback to Jack Napier doing the same thing most of the time.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Jeremiah flips through Jerome's old diary, which is full of detailed sketches of Jeremiah, Gordon, and Bruce being gruesomely tortured to death.
• Noodle Implements: Riddler instructs his Narrows followers to bring an improbable assortment of items along to break Lee out of GCPD lockup. Said items are never used, because with Jerome's fanboys partying inside the precinct house, all he ends up needing is a clown costume.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Played with. Jeremiah is insane, but he's much more lucid in his insanity than he initially leads Bruce to believe.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Jeremiah states that Jerome's insanity was the only thing preventing him from successfully killing the protagonists.
• Shout-Out: At one point, Penguin and Butch are watching Bimbo's Initiation while eating at the dinner table, putting the pun on "TV dinner".
• Undying Loyalty: Ecco to Jeremiah, since she's still doing his bidding even now, assuming he hasn't done something to her.
• Video Will: Jerome left a series of these behind to guide his followers. Subverted, as they were actually made by Jeremiah impersonating Jerome after his death.
• Wham Shot: As the Video Will of Jerome is finishing, he is shown pulling off his face to reveal Jeremiah in his altered skin tone, fully cementing himself as the Joker. All the while, Jeremiah is wiping his face and revealing himself to Bruce as The Joker.