At the manor, Bruce is pinning files to a board when Alfred comes in
and tries to get him to take a break. Bruce refuses and Alfred warns
that he may never get revenge for the deaths of his parents. Surprised,
Bruce says that he doesn't want revenge: he wants to understand how
Gotham works. He wonders why no one at Wayne Enterprise stopped Maroni
and Falcone from buying enough shares to take over the Arkham project,
and goes back to work.
At Bamonte's, Maroni orders his
lieutenant Frankie to rob Falcone's casino. Oswald listens as Frankie
warns that the security is too tight, but Maroni insists that he wants
everyone to know that he isn't backing off of Falcone. Frankie has no
choice but to agree and glares at Oswald when he notices that the new
manager is listening in.
Stan Potolsky, a man with a mangled
left ear, walks up to Benny, a street busker performing guitar for
money. He puts a vial of a drug, Vial, in Benny's case and quickly walks
away. Benny decides to try the drug and sniffs it, and his skin turns
pale and his muscles swell. He walks into a nearby bodega and starts
drinking milk out of the carton. The cashier objects and Benny calls him
a mortal, saying not to "vex" him. When the cashier grabs a bat and
swings at Benny, he easily catches it and breaks it with his bare hands.
As Jim and Harvey get lunch at a food truck, Jim spots Selina trying to
pickpocket a man and yells at her. She runs off and before Jim can
pursue, he hears an alarm go off nearby. He insists on investigating,
ignoring Harvey's objections, and they discover that the bodega has been
robbed. The battered cashier tells them that the robber drank his milk
and then hauled away his ATM machine. When the detectives try to get a
description of the vehicle that pulled out the ATM, the cashier explains
that Benny carried it out on his back.
At the club, Fish is
making sure that Liza can sing opera. Liza is bored and Fish slaps her
to get her attention, reminding Liza that she's her secret weapon. She
orders Liza to continue and singer reluctantly joins in.
At the
station, Jim and Harvey show Captain Essen footage from the bodega's
security cameras. They found the empty vial in Benny's guitar case and
have turned it over to Nygma for analysis.
Falcone meets his
underlings at a warehouse and assures them that everyone got a piece of
the Arkham project. One of his lieutenants, Nikolai, doesn't believe it
and insists that they need to push back against Maroni. Fish sides with
Falcone and when Nikolai argues with her, she dares him to try
something. Falcone stops them before things can turn violent, saying
that they're family and that they need each other.
Jim and
Harvey ask around and finally locate Charmagne, a prostitute who can
give them Benny's address at an empty warehouse. They go there and find
dozens of empty milk jugs scattered around. Benny is there, crouched by
the stolen ATM< and begs them to find the man who gave him the drug
so that he can take more of it. When they try to arrest him, Benny
shoves them back with superhuman strength and then prepares to throw the
ATM machine at them. However, his bones suddenly crumple and the ATM
falls on him.
On the streets, Potolsky hands out drugs to everyone he passed in the poor part of town.
The next day, Alfred wakes Bruce up and tells him that he accepted an
invitation on the boy's behalf to a charitable luncheon hosted by Wayne
Enterprises. Bruce immediately agrees to go, and explains that he wants
to question the board members about how Falcone and Maroni took over the
Arkham project. Alfred suggests that Bruce drop the matter now that his
parents are dead, and Bruce asks him if his parents did business with
the mob. The butler assures him that they didn't, and Bruce admits that
the two mobsters may have secretly bought the shares. Once Alfred
leaves, Bruce watches a news report about Viper and how dozens of users
are going berserk from the drug.
At the station, the police try
to control their berserk prisoners. Nygma informs Jim and Harvey that
Viper triggers unused DNA in the human body, using calcium in the
skeleton to fuel the enhanced strength. The users drink milk to
replenish the calcium but can't keep up, and their skeletons dissolve.
Essen notes that there haven't been any new cases in a few hours and
figures that the worst is over, and wonders what the person responsible
hopes to gain by handing out a drug that kills the user in a matter of
hours. Nygma tells them that it would require an experienced biochemist
to create Viper, and that WellZyn has the most sophisticated lab in the
city. Essen points out that they're a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises
and wouldn't be involved in a criminal enterprise. As they talk, a
berserk Charmagne kicks an office through Essen's window and then her
skeleton dissolves.
At Bamonte's Maroni reminds Frankie to
carry out the casino heist, and Oswald speaks up, saying he has a friend
who can let them in through the access tunnel to the boiler room.
Maroni has Oswald sit down and figures that Oswald is more than just a
dishwasher. When Oswald admits that he worked with Fish until she tried
to kill him, Maroni slams his head into the table.
Taylor
Reece, the general counsel for WellZyn, hears that the GCPD are
investing them and comes to the station. She warns that she'll sue
anyone who claims that Viper came from WellZyn will face a law suit, but
recognizes Potolsky's description. She claims that he worked in
cosmetics and then grew unstable, trying to cut off his own ear during a
disagreement. Potolsky left his things behind and disappeared, and
WellZyn hasn't heard from him since. Jim realizes that WellZyn knew all
along that Potolsky was behind Viper, which is why Reece arrived there
so fast. Reece says that Potolsky could have easily built his own
high-tech lab to manufacture the drug, but Jim says that he's going to
get a warrant to search the company. As Harvey puts out an APB on
Potolsky, Frankie comes into the station and approaches Jim. The mobster
tells him that they'll kill Oswald and send his head to Falcone unless
Jim comes with him immediately.
When they get to the
restaurant, Jim finds Maroni eating lobster and a battered Oswald
sitting next to him. Oswald tells Jim to tell the truth and Maroni yells
at him to shut up. The mobster then explains that Oswald has been
telling him a story, and he expects Jim to tell him the same story or
he'll kill them both. Jim tells Maroni the truth, that he was set up to
bring in Pepper as the fall guy in the Waynes' killing. And then Falcone
ordered him to kill Oswald but he faked the snitch's death. Satisfied,
Maroni hugs Oswald, laughing, and congratulates Jim on keeping his cool.
He figures that he has a new weapon against Falcone, and tells Jim that
he'll call if he needs him.
At the club, Fish first gives Liza instructions how to seduce Falcone, and then how to act in a motherly manner toward him.
Jim gets back to the station and avoids telling Harvey where he was.
They go through a box of Potolsky's belongings and Jim finds a photo of
the biochemist with his philosophy professor, Isaac Steiner. The
detectives go to the university and meet with Steiner, who tells them a
different story. Steiner explains that WellZyn was having Potolsky do
weapon research, perfecting Viper as a battlefield steroid for soldiers.
After he perfected a second batch called Venom, Potolsky finally
refused to continue and went to Wayne Enterprises. They shut WellZyn
down, but when the Waynes died, WellZyn started the work back up. Now
Potolsky is going to send a message that the city can't overlook. Jim
realizes that Potolsky worked with Steiner to release Viper in Gotham,
and Steiner takes a dose of Viper and slams Harvey through the door. As
he tries to choke the detective to death with his walker, Jim shoots him
in the back to stop him. Dying, Steiner says that Wayne Enterprises
can't make up for what they did with empty altruism, and Jim realizes
where Potolsky plans to release the drug.
Alfred takes Bruce to
the charity luncheon... unaware that Potolsky has taken a drum of Viper
to the air conditioning unit on the roof. Bruce talks with a friend of
his parents, Molly Mathis, who works at Wayne Enterprises. When he tells
her that he's found financial irregularities and came to speak to a
board member, Molly says that they don't attend the luncheon. However,
she assures Bruce that the company would never do business with
criminals. Potolsky hijacks the video display and announces that he
created Viper for Wayne Enterprises. Molly hastily tells Bruce that the
man is insane.
As Potolsky releases the drug, he says that he
tried to bring attention to his work by handing it out, but that didn't
work so now he's going to dose the rich and powerful. Vapor pours into
the ballroom through the vents and Alfred gets Bruce toward the door.
Harvey arrives and gets everyone out, while Jim confronts Potolsky on
the roof and tells him to surrender, Potolsky says that his work is
done, and Jim shoots the drum of Viper. The vapor bursts into Potolsky's
face and he starts to transform. As Harvey arrives, Potolsky tells them
that there's no need for violence and to look at Warehouse 39. He then
leaps off the edge of the roof to his death.
Later, the
detectives find the warehouse and discover that someone has cleaned out
all of the equipment inside. Outside, Molly watches from her car and
makes a call to her superior. She says that the detectives didn't find
anything, and says that for now they don’t need to eliminate Jim and
Harvey unless they get closer to the truth.
At the manor, Bruce
reviews the files and Alfred, having seen for himself that something is
going on, joins him in his research.
Frankie and Maroni take
Oswald with them to the casino and park outside. As they wait, Maroni
warns Oswald that if his men don't come out with the money, Oswald won't
be leaving. The men run out with the loot and get in the car, and
Maroni tells Frankie that Oswald has a future with them.
Fish
is in bed with Nicolai, having tied him to the bedposts. He's eager to
strike against Maroni, insisting that they have to strike soon.
The next day, Falcone is in the park feeding pigeons when Liza walks
past, listening to an opera on her player and humming along. Falcone
hears her and goes over. Liza says that she likes opera and Falcone
tells her that his mother sang the same aria to him when he was a child.
She invites him to listen with him and the two of them sit down
together.
Written by Gadfly on Jun 26, 2019