Tear Jerker / Gotham Season Five

Season Five

5x 01 Year Zero

• Selina's so depressed over her injury that she can't even bring herself to be angry when she's telling Bruce that she only got shot because Jeremiah wanted to get to him. All her scenes in the episode focus on the fact she's given up and Bruce has no idea how to help her. Her last scene has her doctor's stopping a suicide attempt and as they're drugging her, she's crying out that she can't live like this.
• Right after Penguin stabs Tabitha through the heart, an anguished scream rents the air - it's revealed to be Barbara who has arrived just in time to see her best friend/girlfriend killed. Tabby manages to whisper one last thing as she sees Barbara, before she falls over slowly and dies. All the while, Barbara is screaming bloody murder and retribution.
  • not only that, the last thing Tabitha whispered was Barbara's name

5x 02 Trespassers

• Just how heartbroken Barbara is over Tabitha's death. Aside from the angry ranting she does when confronting Gordon, once she's alone, she breaks down in tears.

5x 03 Penguin, Our Hero

• Upon learning that everyone has abandoned him, Penguin is most upset that his beloved dog is gone too, more when Olga implies that it went willingly. Knowing who the pet is named after, this is yet another time an "Edward" has betrayed him.
• The tragic death of Mr. Penn, Penguin's long-suffering minion. Their relationship was mostly professional, but Penguin did have an honest fondness for him and he's clearly broken up about it.
• Then there's the fact that Mr Penn uses his last breath to tell Penguin that he hates him. Penguin just looks stunned and hurt by this revelation, as if he actually didn't realize just how much he's disliked. Even his most trusted minion hated his guts.
  • Another way of looking at it, the way Mr. Penn words what he says, that "everyone hated you" and not "we hated you" makes it sound like he's trying to let Penguin know why his people abandoned him but not himself. Looking back, you can see the only reason he left at all is because Penguin did the one thing he'd never done before: directly threaten Mr. Penn's life.
    • With the above in mind, the fact Mr. Penn dies in Penguin's arms, just like the other people in his life who truly cared for him.
  • It's also a sad Call-Back to an earlier episode when Oswald questioned one of his trusted mob lieutenants under a truth serum, and the underling truthfully told him that everyone in Penguin's organization thinks he's a freak. Two times now, Oswald's had his followers' disdain and resentment rubbed in his face.
• The episode's Downer Ending. Everything that Jim and his people have worked so hard for in the previous episode and here, gone.
• Jim looks around at the destruction in utter horror.
  • What really sells it is Barbara and Penguin's reactions in the following episode; both of them look as devastated as Jim. Sure, they're criminals, but they're still horrified by acts of mass murder. Heck, Barbara looks like she's about to start crying.

5x 04 Ruin

• Jim getting mentally beaten down over the course of the episode. He has to deal with the aftermath of the Haven attack and the anger of the survivors who question his ability to protect them. When Victor Zsasz is put on trial for the attack, Jim presents evidence showing the assassin didn't do it and tries to appeal to the good nature of the people to not let their anger cloud their judgement and sense of justice but is ignored because they would rather have revenge and proclaim Zsasz as guilty, more than happy to have the man executed. By the end of the episode, with several of his men having defected and the citizens siding with Penguin, Jim is so broken down by the events that when Barbara shows up she notes that the spotlight isn't on. Given that Jim has been using the light to act as a beacon of hope, it's a clear indicator that he's hit rock bottom.
  • The desperate way Jim grabs Barbara as the two start to make out, as if she's the only thing keeping him from completely falling apart.
• When the burning remains of Haven are hosed down, Harvey finds Gordon's badge in the wreckage and promptly returns it to him. It's the same badge that Gordon gave to the boy in the previous episode, signifying that he was killed in the explosion.

5x 05 Pena Dura

• Selina's attempt to Shoo the Dog with Bruce is her tearful admission that she was there in the alley when his parents were murdered. Like Bruce, she didn't do anything to stop it, but unlike Bruce, it wasn't because she was a scared kid. It was because she didn't care. They're Not So Similar after all, she says, and Bruce needs to stop thinking that and leave her alone.
• Riddler blaming Penguin for the destruction of Haven is a huge tearjerker in how incredibly disturbed Ed seems. We've seen the "good" Ed personality cry before, but this is the first time we've ever seen the Riddler so emotional, to the point that he's tearing up.

  Riddler: You are the reason I killed those people! How could you?!...Of all you have put me through, this...(voice breaks) this is the most cruel...You didn't "fix" me! You broke me!

5 X 07 Ace Chemicals

• Imagine having people who were altered to look like your murdered parents brought by a madman. And having that reminder of them in front of you. Then you find out said madman wants to murder them just to recreate the feeling you had when they were murdered. Bruce must going through a lot of emotions when seeing this and it's hard not to feel sorry for him. Not only that, said madman was once Bruce's close friend.
• While he definitely had it coming, it's still kind of sad when Jeremiah falls into the acid vat. Especially the genuinely crushed look on his face when Bruce says he means nothing to him, and you get the sense that he was truly reaching out to Bruce to be loved in his own horribly twisted and insane way. This is made worse by Cameron Monaghan's statement that Jeremiah's love for Bruce is the one element of his pre-spray personality still remaining in Jeremiah's psyche.
  • This one just gets worse when you remember that both the insanity-gas incident that led to him going mad in the first place, and this accident, which transformed him still further, were completely out of his control.

5 X 08 Nothing's Shocking

• Mr. Penn delivering a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Oswald, calling him out for how he treats everyone around him.
  Mr. Scarface: You're a liar and a thief! All you do is take, take-
  Mr. Penn: take! And you never give anything!
  • Oswald admitting that the reason he's alone is because of how he treats people, apologizing to both Mr. Penn and Edward for being a terrible friend.
    • Throughout this whole encounter, Penn is almost completely cowed by Mr. Scarface and expresses relief and gratitude when Oswald manages to destroy the dummy and free him, asking how he could ever thank Oswald only for Edward to kill him.
• Bullock corners Jane Doe and demands she removes her mask. Underneath, she's a just normal young woman. But she's been so messed up psychologically by Strange's experiments that she's convinced that she's a hideous monster. Her anguished cries of, "Do you see what they did?!" are all the more tragic.

5 X 09 The Trial of James Gordon

• Finding out that deep down, Gordon despises himself for all the people he's failed to protect, to the point of thinking he deserves to die.
• While fighting the brainwashed Bruce, Selina starts ranting about his earlier stated plans to leave Gotham, revealing how just upset that idea has left her.

5x 10 I Am Bane

• Selina's terrified and heartbroken reaction when she finds Alfred beaten near to death by Bane. Alfred's survived so much before, but having his back broken might finally be the injury that takes him out of the game for good, relegating him to the non-action butler he is when Batman comes around.

5x 11 They Did What?

• Bruce reminiscing about his old memories at Wayne Tower when he would play with Alfred in the lobby waiting for his parents before he blows it up to stop the army from killing citizens.
  • Not only that but just a few episodes ago Jeremiah blew up his manor with all his memories, family heirloom and pictures of his parents .etc gone forever. Now he has to blow up the only thing left of the Wayne legacy as his looks at a portrait of his parents once more which is probably the only picture he has left of them but sacrifices it all to save Gotham.

• Selina's reaction to the letter Bruce left her. We don't find out exactly what it said, but Selina reads it, heads to the airport, and watches Bruce's plane leave with tears in her eyes.
  • Especially considering that the next episode takes place ten years into the future... Has Selina seen or heard from Bruce at all during that time period? Painful enough to think of them being apart for that long considering everything they have been through together - even more so when you consider just how many people Selina has lost and how alone in the world she is. Bruce was Selina's most precious person - and he left without her even getting to say goodbye or have what she probably hoped was their happy ending together.
  • It makes you wonder... Selina was always an anti-heroine anyway, but she had been doing more and more acts on the side of good, as well as seemingly had reduced her stealing. Did Bruce's departure push her more fully into the role of villainess, or at least a thief who is a lot less repentant?

5x 12 The Beginning

• Near the end of the finale, after ten years apart, Selina finally gets to tell Bruce what she wanted to say the day he left Gotham and the way she pours out her heart and soul in saying it is ultimately heartbreaking.
  Selina: Do you have any idea what you did? Just leaving? You were all I had. I know you wanted to protect me. [short pause] But I didn't want to be protected! I wanted you!
• Oswald's confrontation with Jim on the pier. We never do find out exactly what Oswald did to get locked up for so long, but it's clear that he feels betrayed and is not only furious but deeply hurt; he looks and sounds like he's on the verge of tears as he rants at Jim. It doesn't help that Jim even looks a bit remorseful, indicating that locking Oswald up for a decade had been something he desperately did not want to do.
  Oswald: You and I stood shoulder to shoulder on those barricades, ready to die for this city! Six months later you locked me up like an animal!
• When Barbara is trying to convince Ed that he can turn his life around, he says something along the lines of not getting a choice like she did. While he could be talking about his incarceration while she was free, it almost sounds like he's talking more about how his psychosis won't let him be anything but a criminal.
• In a way, Ecco's apparent death. As awful and complicit as she was, she gave Jeremiah over ten years of Undying Loyalty and got nothing for it but a bullet to the chest. And the fact that she almost seems grateful to die by his hand gives their already twisted relationship some serious Fridge Horror.
  • Compare this cold-bloodedness to the Jeremiah who refused to leave Ecco behind even when she was brainwashed and Jerome's Legion was coming for him. It really drives home the fact that Jeremiah Valeska is dead and the Joker is all that remains.
• The look on Ed's face when he finds out that Oswald wasn't behind his breakout or the plan he had been blindly following. Up until the two of them meet face-to-face, Edward is probably thinking that his friend might have decided to cut ties with him to have a fresh start.