Bridgit is crashing with Selina, but she is antsy. She can’t go home; she can’t afford to get out of town. Selina agrees to help Bridgit get some cash. The girls go to an underground auction, where scared girls are being sold to the highest bidder. Selina moves in first, taking out one of the guards and firing warning shots with his gun. Bridgit, fully dressed as the Firefly, joins with a huge blast of fire. This scares the degenerates into handing over all their cash. Bridgit wants to free the girls in cages, but Selina maintains her theory of always looking out for herself. For the record, though, she tells the human traffickers “Y’all suck.” Bridgit and Selina make off with a ton of money. Selina takes a cut, then sends Bridgit off with $6,000. As the girls say their goodbyes, a van squeals up and the Pike brothers kidnap their own sister.
Jim has had no luck shaking down arsonists to find out about Firefly, and he gets a note in his file about using extreme force. Barnes has surveillance video of the girls leaving the auction house, and Jim recognizes Selina. Harvey gets some intel from Ivy, and Jim pays Selina a visit. Selina is readying her stash of firearms when Jim arrives. Jim lowers his weapon first, after Selina insists Bridgit was abused by her brothers and forced to set those fires. Jim promises to do everything he can to keep Bridgit safe, but Selina must stay out of it.
Back at the Pike home, the boys have Bridgit chained up again. They toss lit firecrackers at her until she agrees to be part of the family. Then they unlock her and make her make dinner. She goes into the other room and returns in her Firefly suit. “What are you gonna do, kill us?” one of the brothers asks smartly. “Yup,” responds Bridgit and she flames them dead. When Jim and Harvey show up later, they find the place empty save for the two crispy bodies. “I hate that it smells like good BBQ,” remarks Harvey, before one of the brothers, still rare done, grabs his ankle. Harvey kicks him away, and the Pike dies. Jim is mad at Harvey for “killing him,” but it seems pretty clear they were dead before the cops arrived.
Selina finds Bridgit on a rooftop, where they used to hang out as kids. Bridgit is going to go after the rest of them, the “pervs and bullies who go after people like us.” Selina is worried – Bridgit is starting to sound psychotic. She warns her to be careful or she’ll get herself killed, then returns to her tough girl demeanor. “I don’t care, I just think you’re being dumb.” She leaves, but she returns after a moment and gives Bridgit a big hug. She then calls Jim. “Remember your promise? I think I know where she is going.”
Naturally, Bridgit goes back to the auction house and releases the girls from their cages. The cops are outside, and Jim insists his team hold their fire. When Firefly comes out of the warehouse, Jim approaches, unarmed, and tries to get her to put her weapon down, promising they can help her. One of the rookies fires, and both Barnes and Jim chastise him. Firefly is unharmed, but the bullet nicked her fuel tank. Enraged, she turns her flamethrower on a cop car and everyone backs up. The fire is out of control, and quickly spreads to Firefly, now doused in fuel.
Jim returns home to find Selina holding Lee at gunpoint. She isn’t scared, and neither is Jim. He tells her Bridgit isn’t going to make it, and promises he tried to help. “I think she wanted it to end like this,” he says and tries to hug Selina. Selina pulls away and is mad at Jim, mad at herself for trusting a cop. She won’t answer who hired the Pikes. “It’s not like you are going to go after your little friend,” she challenges. Jim needs nothing more. “Penguin?” Selina bails.
But Bridgit isn’t quite dead. In the final scenes of the episode, we see a couple orderlies wheeling her “downstairs with the rest of the monsters,” for testing. Her suit melted to her, making her nearly fireproof. While she is badly burned, she did not die.
Meanwhile, Butch goes to Theo, hat in hand, asking for a place in his organization. Theo is unsure, but Tabitha thinks he is cute and wants to put cool things on his stump, like a knife. Barbara joins in and suggests a chainsaw. Theo agrees to let Butch in, and the girls eventually put a mallet in his stump. Penguin is frustrated that Butch isn’t pushing hard enough for answers, so Butch sneaks into Theo’s office and checks out the CCTV stream of Mrs. Kapelput. Theo catches him and realizes that he is spying on him for Penguin, but then it becomes clear that Butch has been brainwashed. He brings Tabitha in and lets her get to work on breaking Butch’s brainwashing. Butch later returns to Penguin, promising that he found his mom in a warehouse down by the docks. Penguin immediately mobilizes his goons and they get ready to hit it hard. Obviously this is going to be a setup.
Ed and Kristen’s relationship is going very well. She is smitten with him, how sweet he is, though she feels like he might be hiding something from her. Kristen comes over for dinner one night, and Ed attempts to clear the air, but instead Kristen steers the evening into the bedroom. After, she compliments him on being so sweet and tender to her, but admits she is worried that when Dougherty comes back to town, he will kill her, as he promised to do if he saw her with another man. Ed admits to the altercation he had that night with Dougherty, and Kristen is initially flattered and turned on. But then Ed admits he killed Dougherty, and Kristen thinks he is joking – until he reveals Dougherty’s badge. Then Kristen freaks out and tries to leave, screaming about how he is a freak, a weirdo, a psycho. Ed becomes furious and grabs her. He won’t let her leave, promises he loves her and will never hurt her. Of course, as he is insisting this, he ends up smothering her. When he releases her, he finds she is dead and slips limply to the floor. He drops and sobs over her. I have to say, while I thought that Ed’s storyline occasionally felt like it was crammed into an episode here and there, the slow, careful unspooling of the storyline really made me feel for Kristen and ultimately made this one of the most satisfying plots of the series.
Also: Theo, Tabitha, and Silver have welcomed Bruce into their home. Bruce is totally smitten with Silver, and Theo wants him to think of them as family. After dinner, Theo sits with Bruce and tells him of the missing Bunderslaw. He tells Bruce what a wonderful man his father was, but even still, it seems that bad things were going down behind the scenes at Wayne Enterprises. He offers his help to clear out the bad apples, which to me seems like he is hinting that he wants a chair on the board – Bunderslaw’s, I assume. Bruce shakes on it.
Check out the preview for next week’s episode, titled “Mommy’s Little Monster.”
