THIS WEEK on Fox’s “Gotham,” Bruce Wayne throws his first punch, Jim Gordon starts getting some much-needed (and -earned) respect in the GCPD — and the economy in Gotham is so bad, people are joining an office “fight club” to land a job.  It’s this week’s weekly mystery, which will surely be solved by the end of the episode.  We know these weekly mysteries on “Gotham” don’t go very far, and are normally solved by 9 p.m. each Monday. This week is no different. There is one MAJOR mystery to this show: Who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents? Not only do we still don’t know — it remains to be seen whether that particular mystery will linger into future seasons. This week, we have an interoffice fight club, with participants willing to take lives to get a job. This episode starts off with a fight full of printer toner and staples in an abandoned office. A business-dressed dead body ends up on the streets of Gotham. And Bullock and Gordon are on the case.  Here are Comic Riffs’ 12 Takeaways from the episode titled “The Mask”:  1. A chat among frenemies  Fish and Oswald are having a mob-chat. Oswald has brought a gift to Fish to show he meant no harm by not dying — as he was supposed to when Fish put out a hit on him. Last week, Falcone made it clear that Penguin was off limits and not to be harmed. This is still eating at Fish as she looks at Oswald with disgust. Fish and Oswald are going over the terms of Falcone’s “peace treaty” that is intended to divide the crime-pie fairly among Fish, Maroni and Falcone. The biggest reminder Oswald brings is that no blood is to be spilled. But Fish tells Oswald maybe there will be a few drops of blood. She takes the gift Oswald originally brought to her (which was meant to be pinned on her dress) and stabs Oswald in the hand with it. Oswald is in pain, but not surprised. He used to work for Fish, after all. When Oswald’s Maroni-sponsored goons prepare to defend their guy, Oswald uses his hand that hasn’t been stabbed to wave them off. Deep down, he knew he had that coming; maybe he even deserved it. But Oswald plans on keeping the peace. Let us also not forget that though Oswald appears to be the property of Maroni, Falcone and Oswald have a secret pact — a pact that has Falcone two steps ahead of Fish and Maroni.  Although it would have been easy to presume that young Bruce Wayne (who, up to this point, we’ve seen primarily studying case files of his parents’ murders at Wayne Manor) would just be home-schooled by Alfred, it turns out the time has come for young Master Wayne to return to school. Bruce is not eager to go back — but not for reasons that young kids usually don’t want to go to school. Bruce wants to get back to his detective work, and school will just get in the way of that. But Alfred can teach him the basics, right? Bruce suggests home-schooling to Alfred; Alfred says that Bruce needs to be around kids his own age. Speaking of kids his own age, Bruce is approached by a bullyish-looking kid. The kid starts asking weird questions — he wants to know what it was like for Bruce to see his parents killed, and wants to know whether he saw blood and guts. You get the feeling this kid has envisioned the death of his own parents. The kid’s name? Tommy. Tommy? As in Bruce’s childhood friend Tommy Elliot? The boy who will grow up to be Hush, a major Bat-bad guy. It is indeed Tommy. But what we want to know is: How will this play out? Everything in “Gotham” isn’t going to be loyal to the comic-book pages. And it shouldn’t be. In the comics, Bruce and Tommy had an odd, but strong friendship into adulthood before Tommy turned into one of his greatest foes. Tommy looks pretty bad here to begin with. Will he stay that way?  3. A doctor’s visit and more GCPD drama  Gordon and Bullock are on the trail of whoever it was that left a well-dressed body in the streets. Bullock takes Gordon to an “underground” surgeon — a guy who operates on folks who get into things that need to stay off the books and out of hospital records. Bullock and Gordon want to know whether the “doc” has seen any guys with a missing thumb. (Nygma found a chewed-off thumb in the victim’s mouth.) The doc isn’t talking. Bullock is threatening to shut things down; he lets the doc run his “operation” on the low, keeping him out of trouble. Gordon decides to shut things down when he sees that the clothes of the doc’s patient have the same kind of ink (it ends up being printer toner) that the victim has. Gordon brings in the bad doc. Detective Alvarez (J.W. Cortes) is furious that Gordon brought in the doc. Alvarez says that the doc is under his protection because he squeals frequently and therefore shouldn’t have been brought in to the GCPD. Gordon tells Alvarez where he can go, more or less (nowhere nice), and his isolation with everyone on the police force continues.  4. Honeymoon over before it begins?  Jim heads home after bringing in the bad doc. Barbara is there and is not doing well. She’s recovering from being a kidnapping victim of Falcone and Victor Zsasz’s. She’s been drinking and is walking around her apartment with Jim’s spare gun. When Jim enters, she almost shoots him. Jim tries to convince Barbara that everything will be alright. When she wakes up the next morning, Barbara apologizes to Jim, but it’s not as if he can scold her — she was KIDNAPPED by mobsters. Barbara tells Jim that she wanted into his life and that this is just a part of it she’ll have to get used to. She promises to try harder, but tells Jim to leave his spare gun anyway. After a nice make-up between Jim and Barbara, it seems as if things are getting worse before they can get better between the two.  5. Death becomes him: Nygma in the morgue  Nygma is preparing to examine the dead body found at the beginning of this episode. He seems beyond comfortable in this environment, and seems to take joy in the possibility of finding clues that can help out the case. Really though, he’s probably just thinking of everything as one big riddle. And we know how much Eddie loves riddles. There’s only one problem: He’s not supposed to be in the morgue. The real morgue guy chews out Eddie for once again hanging around the dead bodies (clearly not the first time) and tells Nygma to get out — but not before Nygma discovers a clue that will help Gordon and Bullock solve the case.  6. Checking for the mole  Remember Fish’s secret weapon? The failed singer-turned-seductress/house cleaner/creepy mother-like figure? The one who is now working undercover for Fish while doing – well, we don’t know what exactly her relationship with Falcone is, or if her ruse is working. Fish’s undercover agent wants out. Fish won’t have it and goes so far as to make up a story about losing her mother to one of Falcone’s men to keep her young spy motivated. It works. For now. What we still DON’T know is whether Falcone (who is aware of Fish’s desire to take him down and is secretly working with Penguin and having him spy on Maroni) knows about Fish’s spy. Does he really have feelings for Fish’s secret weapon, or is he just using her as another pawn on his board. One thing is for sure: If Falcone is in on Fish’s secret weapon, Fish has lost the battle before it begins.  7. If you can land a jab, you can land a job  Gordon and Bullock arrive at an office where every employee is bruised, battered and defeated — not mentally, but physically. Looks as if they’ve found their secret, corporate fight club. And the place is run by a guy named Richard Sionis (Todd Stashwick), who seems to have a thing for masks. Especially the black mask he wears when he’s forcing his employees to bash each other’s heads in, with the promise of promotion to the victors. And just like that, another Bat-villain from the comics pops up: the Black Mask. A little more corporately professional and less gangster than in the comics, but the Black Mask nonetheless.  Given this evidence of employee fighting written all over the faces of every black-eyed worker, Gordon tells Sionis that it’s time to come clean. Sionis tells him to prove it and looks to welcome a potential confrontation (he’s clearly into fighting, after all). Sionis says he can tell that Gordon has been in combat before; he seems to admire the fact that he’s had to kill to survive. He says to Gordon that true killers are easy to spot. Gordon looks Sionis dead in the eye and says, “Yes, they are.” Gordon has had enough games and grabs Sionis by the neck. He wants to know whether Sionis is in on the murders. Sionis says there’s no proof. Gordon and Bullock have to go. Bullock gets in his weekly zing by telling Sionis that he’d give him a good-cop routine, but it’s not in his toolkit. This is a great scene that completely overshadows the fact that Gordon finds the thumbless guy they’re looking for when he follows a trail of blood into a bathroom (literally everyone in this place is bleeding). Black Mask needs some human resources.  8. Hush your mouth: The punch that started it all  Tommy (although the kid is so clearly not nice, we might as well call him Hush, Hushy, Hush Puppy — something) is still pestering Bruce at school, now asking Bruce questions about his dead mother. Bruce smacks Tommy and tells him never to mention his mother again. When Alfred picks up Bruce from school, Bruce is bruised from a fight. Alfred demands to know what happened, and when Bruce tells him, well, Alfred doesn’t take him to the principal’s office, that’s for sure. Instead, Alfred drives him to Tommy’s house, hands Bruce an old watch worn by his father and points to the door where Tommy lives. Bruce knocks on the door, and — when Tommy answers — Bruce delivers a right cross, with his father’s watch serving as brass knuckles. Tommy looks at Bruce as if he’s crazy. Alfred comes to break things up, but not before reminding Tommy that he was the one who allowed Bruce to pound his face in. Only two things can happen here: Either Tommy will apologize in a future episode and they’ll build an awkward friendship (like in the comics), or Tommy will be a soon-to-be Bat-villain and constant rival to Bruce for the rest of this series.  9. If Gordon goes missing, does anybody care?  Gordon finds Black Mask’s corporate arena — and falls right into a trap. The Black Mask sends three goons to take down Gordon. Meanwhile at the GCPD, Bullock notices that Gordon has been gone too long (basically by now, if Gordon doesn’t answer his cell by the first ring, he’s been kidnapped). No one at GCPD wants to help Bullock look at potential addresses where Gordon could be held captive. So Bullock decides to shout to the heavens that the entire GCPD is full of crap and that whatever anyone thinks of Jim Gordon, he’s one of them and needs help. Captain Essen leads the way by volunteering to help, knowing that when everyone on the force sees her involved, others will follow — and they do. Soon, everyone is helping Bullock. Essen leads the way to rescue Gordon from the Black Mask, but not before Gordon almost kills him, almost returning to being the man who had to take lives to survive on the battlefield — but instead, Gordon doesn’t kill. He’s a good cop, and he’ll take the Black Mask in the right way. Slowly but surely, an alliance among Captain Essen, Bullock and Gordon is forming. Essen apologized to Gordon for not being there for him when he fought Victor Zsasz — she’s clearly trying to show that she won’t leave Gordon hanging ever again.  10. Penguin gets his info  Penguin gets ahold of the man who now has Penguin’s old job with Fish. He has his goons rough the guy up before demanding info. Penguin specializes in secrets. He knows that Fish has one that he doesn’t know, and he wants it now. Fish’s man won’t talk, but after Penguin hangs him upside-down after more roughing-up, Fish’s goon reveals to Penguin that Fish might have a person on the inside of Falcone’s crew. Oswald is pleased — this is info he can use (and we know he will). He orders Fish’s goon to be disposed of so that no one finds him. There’s a truce between gangs in Gotham. No blood can (appear to) be shed.  11 A quick catnip: Barbara’s outta here?  Selina makes a brief appearance. She’s stealing furs and is caught by the GCPD. We know what happens whenever she’s arrested. She demands to speak to Gordon. Gordon was on his way to see Barbara (whom he hung up on earlier while chasing down the Black Mask case). Gordon is frustrated, but agrees to see Selina. Meanwhile, Barbara is frustrated and walks out the door, leaving Jim what looks like a “Dear John” note. This seems a little forced, considering they just made up. And we all know Montoya (Barbara’s former girlfriend) is still out there, although she’s an ally of Jim’s now, so who knows where this is going? If you read the comics, you know that Jim doesn’t have the best luck with relationships. But they have to at least conceive Batgirl first, right?  12. Teach me to fight  Bruce tells Alfred that he enjoyed hurting Tommy and that he doesn’t know what to do with anger that constantly consumes him. He asks Alfred to teach him how to fight. Alfred, without hesitation, says yes. Looks as if Bruce will have a jab to go along with that right cross in no time.
Young Bruce Wayne lands his first punch -- and with the Mask, landing a jab may just land you a job.