by Kace

This week’s episode of Gotham featured a plot of the week as well as some advancing of several subplots. The focus here is on further establishing the past relationship between Renee Montoya and Barbara Kean. Here is what we know now.

Renee and Barbara indeed had a past romantic relationship. At the moment, the relationship is teetering on something akin to Bette Porter and Tina Kennard from The L Word with Renee in the Bette role here. In case you are wondering, this would be Season 3 Bette and Tina with Jim Gordon becoming an unwitting Henry Young. The parallels are as follows.

Renee is Bette. While with Barbara, was dishonest to her and not the best girlfriend (what Renee actually did is currently not clear). She regrets the mistakes she made that led to their breakup and does not like Jim one bit.

Barbara is Tina. After falling out of love with Renee, she fell in love with Jim.

Jim is Henry, minus the child from a previous relationship and plus a personality.

It appears the relationship between Renee and Barbara was that to the public they were just roommates while their romantic relationship was probably closeted. If true, then not only is Barbara in the bisexual closet, not having told Jim of this previous relationship (Jim knows Renee, but does not know about Renee and Barbara being together), but also that Renee is still in the homosexual closet.

As a point of reference, Jim’s partner in stopping crime is Harvey Bullock. In the comic books, Harvey is the one ultimately outs Renee’s sexuality and that is still on the table as something that could happen in the Gotham television series.

So Renee still cares about Barbara, appearing to kiss her at one point in the episode before being told to leave. Renee suspects Jim of murdering someone and thus, suspects him of being a corrupt member of the G.C.P.D. which Renee would like cleaned up. She does not trust Jim being with Barbara as a result.

This tangled little web shall continue on, but very slowly. Gotham has so many things going on at the moment and this particular subplot may not be touched on as much, as last episode it was ignored altogether. However, it is definitely there and LesFan will be there to let you know the latest in the legend of Renee Montoya.

Same LesFan time. Same LesFan channel.