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At Gotham’s start, Barbara Kean (Erin Richards) appears to be a fairly stable character: her relationship with police detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is solid, along with her career in the art world. However, things quickly change for Barbara once she implores Jim to start bringing his work home, allowing her to help take some of the darker burden off his shoulders. She hardly realizes the ramifications of this request, and it sends her on a downward spiral. Barbara is a recovering addict, and with the pressures of Jim’s job and the dangers that go along with it, she’s already falling into bad patterns again. As if Barbara’s fragile mental state couldn’t suffer any more, she is kidnapped by brutal serial killer Jason Lennon aka the Ogre (Milo Ventimiglia). After being rescued by Jim, Dr. Leslie Thompkins (Morena Baccarin), Jim’s new girlfriend, wants to help her work through her trauma. Barbara makes the shocking confession to Dr. Thompkins that she actually murdered her parents, and it wasn’t the Ogre’s doing. But did Barbara really do this? Or is her trauma so overwhelming that she just thinks she did? And if she did murder her parents, did all the psychological trauma drive her to do it, along with the Ogre’s bidding?

In Barbara’s defense, she does endure much distress and danger before finally breaking down and succumbing to it. With Jim giving Barbara half of his work drama, her swank apartment now has an open-door policy for gangsters, Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor), and even young vagrants Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova) and Ivy Pepper (Clare Foley). And then there’s Carmine Falcone (John Doman), who holds Barbara hostage when she tries to appeal to him for Jim’s life. Unable to handle the dark side of Jim’s new world, Barbara turns to drugs in order to cope. She also briefly rekindles a past romance with police detective Renee Montoya (Victoria Cartagena), which only sends her into more of a tailspin since Montoya, a previous user, is doing her best to stay clean. When Barbara is finally able to see that she needs help, she ends up going back home to her parents. There’s a lot of tension here, and viewers aren’t exactly sure why. It’s clear that she hasn’t seen her parents for some time, and there’s probably good reason for that. It could be the typical wealthy parents disapproving of rebellious daughter’s lifestyle and choices, or something a bit more pressing. Either way, with Jim Gordon in her life, she’s always going to have a target on her back, and it looks like she’s running low on escape routes.

When Barbara first meets and is wooed by the Ogre, they oddly seem to connect. In some dark, insidious way, he seems to understand her and even wants her to be “the one.” Part of Barbara is won over by him, that is until his killer charm takes over, and he demands she select someone for him to murder. She picks her parents. Even though this is being forced upon her, it seems as if the Ogre is allowing Barbara to act out some deeply buried secret fantasy. The Ogre is forcing her hand but also giving her choices. Why does she hate her parents so? Did they do something to her, or is it what they failed to do? Judging by Barbara’s clear hatred of her parents, it’s very possible the Ogre forced her to kill her parents, or he awakened something in her that made her do it willingly. After committing such a foul and brutal crime, it’s understandable that she’d lose it and could explain why she “attempt[s] to make the good doctor her next victim” (Kevin Fitzpatrick, ScreenCrush.com).

So if “Barbara has officially gone cuckoo-pants,” how will Gotham manage “to shoehorn her back” (Kevin Fitzpatrick, ScreenCrush.com) into the series? Well, Barbara’s definitely going to need some psychological help, and preferably not from Dr. Thompkins. Even then, she has a lot to come back from, as it’s not going to be easy to forgive her crimes, even if they were committed under duress. This does at least make her character a lot more interesting than being a mere damsel in distress, waiting around in her fancy loft for Jim to return home safely. But is she too far gone, too far past redemption at this point?

In Batman lore, Barbara is often married to Jim Gordon for some years, even though they do divorce. With that in mind, she must achieve some stability in order for Jim to commit to her. Then again, Gotham could take Barbara in a completely different and untraveled direction like it’s been doing so far. Some viewers “feel like [there’s] a different Barbara every episode,” and that her “knife-wielding psycho” act does not constitute “legitimate character development” (Vinnie Mancuso, Observer.com). There’s a valid point there, but considering the importance of Barbara’s character to Jim and his story arc, she shouldn’t be abandoned just yet.