| Season 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 "Pilot" | 09 "Harvey Dent" | 17 "Red Hood" | ||
| 02 "Selina Kyle" | 10 "Lovecraft" | 18 "Everyone Has a Cobblepot" | ||
| 03 "The Balloonman" | 11 "Rogues' Gallery" | 19 "Beasts of Prey" | ||
| 04 "Arkham" | 12 "What The Little Bird Told Him" | 20 "Under the Knife" | ||
| 05 "Viper" | 13 "Welcome Back, Jim Gordon" | 21 "The Anvil or the Hammer" | ||
| 06 "Spirit of the Goat" | 14 "The Fearsome Dr. Crane" | 22 "All Happy Families Are Alike" | ||
| 07 "Penguin's Umbrella" | 15 "The Scarecrow" | |||
| 08 "The Mask" | 16 "The Blind Fortune Teller" | |||
| Episode | Cast | Crew |
- "No. Gotham needs a lawman now. Not a criminal like me. A strong lawman."
- —Carmine Falcone to Jim Gordon
"All Happy Families Are Alike" is the twenty-second episode of the first season of Gotham. It aired May 4, 2015.
Synopsis[]
As Gotham City’s gang war reaches its boiling point, Fish Mooney goes head-to-head with Maroni and Penguin in an attempt to re-stake her claim on the city. Meanwhile, Barbara Kean and Leslie Thompkins are brought together after recent events, and Bruce searches Wayne Manor for any clues that his father might have left behind.[1]
Plot[]
Near the bay, Selina Kyle and several other homeless youth crowd around a fire, and watch a boat arrive carrying a group of people. The boat reaches the shore, and the group joins the young, with the leader, Fish Mooney, stopping briefly to warm her hands and tell Selina that it would soon be a new day for the city. Two weeks later at Wayne Manor, Bruce watches the news of the ongoing gang war between the Falcone and Maroni crime families. After looking at a picture of his father, Thomas Wayne, Bruce breaks it in search of the secrets his father had been hiding. When Alfred arrives in the room, Bruce tells him such, and Alfred informs him that if Thomas had a secret life he would have known about it. After going over his father's regular routine, Bruce is convinced that his father's secrets must be hidden in the study because he used to play classical music in the room for hours while working, and nobody had been allowed to disturb him.
Meanwhile at the dock, Falcone checks on his chickens in their cages, when suddenly two men arrive on a motorcycle and shoot a rocket launcher on at car, destroying it. At the GCPD, the facility is overrun by underlings of both Falcone and Maroni participating in the gang war. In the medical examiner's room, Gordon visits Barbara, who was being examined by Leslie Thompkins. After concluding that Barbara had healed physically after her encounter with the Ogre, Dr. Thompkins recommends that Barbara receive trauma therapy, to the discomfort of Jim. Barbara keeps asking Leslie to be her therapist, and the doctor reluctantly agrees to do so. Leaving the room, Bullock informs Gordon about the attack on Falcone and how almost all the politicians in the city, including the GCPD, had decided to switch their support over to Maroni. Meanwhile, Falcone wakes up at a hospital with some injuries and completely strapped to a gurney. The Penguin and Butch Gilzean arrive, and Falcone requests that Penguin release him. Penguin refuses and takes the opportunity to reveal that he started the gang war in his quest to become the king of Gotham.
Penguin takes a scalpel and, after thanking Falcone for his friendship and being a wise mentor, he attempts to kill him, but fortunately Gordon arrives in time to stop Penguin, arresting both him and Gilzean for attempted murder. Jim comes to free Falcone, knowing that if he died and Maroni took control, the city would collapse into civil war. In exchange for his help, Falcone promises that it would only take two days to re-gain control at his safe house. Jim called Bullock at the hospital asking his help in getting Falcone out of the hospital. At that moment, Tommy Bones arrives and is surprised to see Gordon there, as he thought the GCPD was on board with the death of Falcone. When he leaves, he comes back with Commissioner Loeb who orders him to leave. When Jim refuses to obey his orders, Loeb turns around and leaves the thugs to open fire on the detective.
Eventually Jim manages to subdue all of his attackers and Bullock arrives to help him, Falcone, Penguin, and Gilzean escape from the hospital in an ambulance. Outside, they drive through a blockade of Maroni and his men, and finally manage to escape from their gunfire. At Wayne Manor, Bruce takes all the books from their shelves, hoping to find his father's secret. Later, Gordon and Bullock take Falcone to his safe house, where he tells them that anyone who knew about it was dead. However, to everyone's surprise, Fish Mooney enters the room with Selina and gang of her very own. At Barbara Kean's penthouse, Barbara meets with Leslie for therapy, where she confesses her fear of one day waking up and discovering that Jason is still alive.
At the warehouse, Fish takes them all as prisoners and calls Don Maroni to negotiate a deal in her favor. There, Falcone tells Gordon that he still has his knife in his sock, as they hadn't found it, but are interrupted by Selina, who refuses to help them because she enjoyed working for Fish. After announcing to them that she had talked to Don Maroni who had promised her all her territories back, Butch excused himself and Fish then tells Penguin that he will die in a slow, painful death on account of Butch. She tells this to Falcone as well, but with Gordon she will keep it simple, and she tells Harvey that the two of them are cool. At her penthouse, Barbara confesses to some of the things that had happened while she was with Jason. At one point, she confesses to Leslie having felt more frightened by Jim during their first date than she was of Jason. She surprisingly asks if Jim ever hit Leslie, though the latter denied him doing so. Barbara reveals that she was aware of their relationship, and was happy for the both of them. She then goes to prepare something to eat for the both of them.
Later, Don Maroni reaches the safe house, and embraces Fish happily. The mobster takes the opportunity to tell Falcone that he was hard to kill, but Falcone replied that was because Maroni's people were second rate. Penguin soon after begins begging Fish for Falcone's life, pointing out that once Falcone was dead, Maroni would kill her as well, as to not to have any competition for the control of the city. This leads to a argument between Fish and Maroni because she wanted them to be equal partners, while Maroni saw her more as an under boss. This situation became heated after Maroni kept referring to Fish as "babe". Finally when Maroni continued to taunt her with the term, Fish pulled out a gun and killed Maroni shooting him in the head and sparking a shootout between the two groups. Bullock takes advantage of the confusion to untie Jim and Falcone, while Penguin escapes himself.
At her penthouse, Leslie continues asking about Barbara's experience with the Ogre. Under the guise that she had told Leslie some of her secrets, Barbara asks Leslie if Jim had told her that he had loved her. Leslie says no, and Barbara tries to get more details of their relationship, but Leslie refocuses on the matter at hand. Elsewhere, Gordon, Bullock, and Falcone try to escape without being seen by Fish Mooney's people, during which Falcone confesses to the Detective that he had thought about it, and after it was all over, he planned on retiring to his place down south. Though Gordon is disappointed, Bullock asks if Falcone had any room for the two of them. The trio is quickly recaptured by Selina and the rest of Fish's men. They are escorted back to Fish, but the Penguin unexpectedly reappears, carrying a machine gun and opens fire against Fish's gang. After killing many of those present, he picks up a gun and begins to chase Fish while the Detectives and Falcone take the opportunity to escape in a car.
At Barbara's penthouse, Barbara finally confesses what happened the night of her parent's murder. She reveals herself to be the real killer, not Jason as everyone believed. She then grabs the knife on the table and starts chasing Leslie around the house, forcing her to seek refuge in the bathroom where she tries to make an emergency call. Meanwhile, Gordon, Bullock, and Falcone go up in the elevator in the same building. At that moment, Barbara manages to break open the bathroom door and lashes out furiously against Leslie. Both engage each other in battle, throwing each other until Leslie finally manages to knock Barbara unconscious after hitting her head against the floor. Gordon, Bullock, and Falcone then enter the penthouse, with Leslie and Jim embracing while Leslie explains what had happened.
On the roof of the safe house, the Penguin continues searching for Fish in an attempt to kill her, but she surprises him, knocking the gun out his hand. Both start fighting until eventually Butch appears with a gun in hand. Immediately, they begin to order him shoot the other and because of the conditioning that been performed on him by Zsasz, Butch ends up shooting both. After apologizing to Fish, who he had great love for, Penguin knocks Butch out and he pushes Fish off the safe house roof, hurling her into the deep waters below. With his biggest rival gone, Oswald stands on the ledge of the building and with great happiness starts screaming that he is the king of Gotham. At the GCPD, Kristin went to Nygma to tell him that she had found his name spelled out in the first letter of the first words in the sentences. He tells her it's a fluke, and after she leaves he begins to talk to himself, fearing that she might have discovered his crime.
After dealing with the situation with Barbara, Gordon meets with Falcone on the balcony to see if he had changed his mind about leaving, but Don says no. Falcone knew that Gotham needed a lawman like Gordon, and not a criminal such as himself. He then gives Jim his knife which Gordon's father had given him as a birthday present many years ago. Before leaving, Falcone tells Jim that his father was the most honest man he ever met and yet he still carried a knife. At Wayne Manor, Bruce continues his search for his father's secret. In the midst of giving up, Bruce remembers that Lucius Fox had referred to his father as a stoic, bringing Marcus Aurelius to mind. He a Roman Emperor who also had been a stoic. Opening a book about him, Bruce discovers a remote in the back of the book, and after a quick debate with Alfred on whether or not to press the button on it, Bruce does so. This reveals a secret passageway behind the fireplace, to Bruce and Alfred's surprise.
Tracks[]
- Dance of the Knights - Sergei Prokofiev
Trivia[]
- As well as appearing in his main role as Gillian Loeb, Peter Scolari also makes a non-speaking appearance as an old lady in the elevator that Jim Gordon, Harvey Bullock and Carmine Falcone enter near the end of the episode.
- The episode's title refers to the first lines from Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, usually translated from the original Russian as: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way".
- Selina Kyle meets Fish Mooney, Oswald Cobblepot, Carmine Falcone and Sal Maroni in this episode.
- The classical music that starts to play when Bruce unlocks the entrance to Thomas Wayne's lair is called Montagues and Capulets, better known as Dance of the Knights, by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev.