This Is Why You Don't Mess With Don Falcone

I'm still in a state of shock over what happened on Gotham tonight. No, I don't mean Jim Gordon's romantic entanglements. I mean the part of Monday's episode of Gotham where Don Falcone strangled Liza to death with his bare hands. I repeat: Don Falcone strangled Liza to death with his bare hands. I have no idea how Fish Mooney could manage to look so angry while it was happening. If I was her, I might have needed to adjust my dress because I would have just wet myself. Especially considering, with what Falcone knows now, Fish is going to be the next one to die — if Gotham can bare to lose Jada Pinkett Smith, of course.

"What The Little Bird Told Him" might have tried to distract us with the Electrocutioner's antics, but that turned out to be nothing compared to what went down between Falcone and Fish. In the episode, Fish finally decided to make her move against the mafia don, pretending to kidnap Liza and then threatening to kill her if Falcone didn't take Liza and leave town — for good. Falcone was about to do it, too, which really goes to show how good of a trainer Fish is that Liza can have come to mean so much to Falcone so quickly, thanks to Fish's guidance. But then the ever-unstoppable Oswald "Penguin" Cobblepot ripped the rug out from under Fish's feet by telling Falcone the truth about her scheme within a scheme.

Thus, instead of having the Falcone family in her hands, Fish found herself surrounded by guns. But the most poignant moment of the episode came when Falcone asked to see Liza and then apologized to her for how she got caught up in all of this — before strangling her to death for betraying him. Now Falcone is justifiably out for revenge against Fish for using the deeply personal, deeply painful stories he told her about his beloved mother to manipulate and destroy him and, well, if the promos for next week are any indication, then things are about to get really, really rough for Fish.

About the only way I can see her surviving all of this is if she somehow manages to pull a Penguin — getting the help of Jim Gordon to get her out of Falcone's clutches and then clawing her way back to the top, perhaps through the use of an alliance with Marconi. After all, Marconi is heavily suspicious of his dear friend Penguin at the moment, after Penguin desperately tried to leave to "visit his sick mother" (a.k.a. run to Falcone with information), and there's no love lost between Fish and Penguin right now either. Marconi is definitely Fish's best bet for making it out of this alive... if she can escape Falcone first.

Image: Jessica Miglio/FOX