Female Fury: Batwoman Episode 105, "Mine is a Long and Sad Tale"

If you haven't been giving BATWOMAN a fair shake, then you've missed out on what is a bone-chilling and disturbing episode, as we get the origin behind the death of Beth Kane -- and her rebirth as Alice. RACHEL SKARSTEN gets a chance to really shine as her character has a clandestine meeting with her sister, Kate Kane (RUBY ROSE), and we are taken back to how Beth survived the car accident -- fished out of the river but then kept captive by a sociopath and his young son with a preternatural gift for vocal mimicry.

The young boy is now a man, of course, and he is the "Mouse" (SAM LITTLEFIELD) that Alice has been looking for, freeing him from Arkham to participate in whatever plan it is she has concocted. They're friends, even though he's partly responsible for her captivity as a child, forced to use his gifts under duress in order to throw Beth's father (DOUGRAY SCOTT) off her trail.

Of course, Alice's soliliquy isn't merely to reconnect with Kate; she has her escape plan already hatched, and naturally gets away. But while she's spilling her guts to Kate, Jake and Sophie (MEAGAN TANDY) are tracking Kate's cell phone signal, and Kate's half-sister Mary (NICOLE KANG) is learning her mother (ELIZABETH ANWEIS) faked the DNA results for the bone fragments that helped convince Jake that Beth was dead. Mary loses her stuff over her mother's confession, gets drunk, and goes looking for Kate, ending up instead being a nuisance to Kate's assistant/associate/partner Luke Fox (CAMRUS JOHNSON) for the remainder of the episode.

While the story of Become Alice is a chilling one, the writers are laying it on a bit thick with the Alice mythos. The fact that one of Alice's henchmen is a former Crow agent named Chuck Dodgson (BRENDON ZUB) is just a touch over the top. (Charles Dodgson was the real name of Lewis Carroll.) Still, it's obviously building to something larger, a mystery designed to bring viewers back for the long haul. And, of course, we get the consistent plot application of introducing a piece of Bat-equipment to see it in action later in the episode, this time being the night vision lenses.

Overall, it's a good sign that BATWOMAN is finally coming into its own.