What just happened?

No matter what you may have witnessed on Gotham Season 5 Episode 9, Jim Gordon did not marry Lee Thompkins.

It was all a dream. It had to be. One month later placard or not, these two lovebirds are not married.

I know Gotham is moving at breakneck speed. It has to now that there are only three episodes left. If anyone needed any proof, all they'd have to look at is how Barbara's pregnancy is progressing so rapidly.

But even if Jim did recover from his gunshot wound, Lee isn't that desperate to just jump the gun with Jim. There is so much for her to consider first like how to deal with Barbara and the baby.

We all know Babs wouldn't just sit by and let Jim marry Lee so easily when she's carrying his baby. She would have fought tooth and nail to stop the wedding.

Penguin was right when he told Barbara that the only reason she was working on Jim's behalf for a ceasefire in the city was to get on Jim's good side. And I think the story he was telling her was her worst nightmare.

So what was happening this hour was a combination of Poison Ivy's craziness, Jim's near-death hallucination, and a future prediction as told by Penguin to Barbara.

It was a mixed-up mess for sure that makes me wonder if any of it was real.

Jim trying to bring a ceasefire might have been the only real thing that happened but let's talk about Ivy's reappearance for a moment and how it fits into the reality of the narrative.

The last time we saw Ivy was after she gave Bruce the magic root that saved Selina and turned her into Catwoman.

She promised Bruce she'd disappear, but her promise probably meant nothing. Where would she have been able to go considering she was stuck in the city like everyone else?

What is head-scratching is why she decided to target Jim. The only logical reason is that she needed him out of the way in order to get her toxin into the city's system.

There is a possibility that everything on "The Trial of Jim Gordon" was hallucinatory, including Ivy's story. Or maybe some of it was real at least the part about Jim being shot.

If you look at it from the angle of everything being a dream, it would make sense because every aspect of what happened this hour was odd.

Bruce taking Selina to an abandoned house for a romantic canned food dinner seemed out of place.

Their conversation about Bruce's future was interesting, but them just taking a day off for a night out didn' t seem right considering all the craziness happening between Jeremiah and the crazy tunnel guy from earlier episodes.

While I know everyone swooned at Bruce kissing Selina at the end of Jim and Lee's wedding, sorry folks, it didn't happen.

Harvey might have been upset about Jim being shot, but him taking over as captain was out of character. He's had opportunities like that before and backed down from them.

How was it that he was so quick to figure out Ivy was the culprit behind Zsasz's spell? He solved it lickety-split and as much as I like Harvey, that is not how he operates.

Plus, Harvey conducting the wedding ceremony? He himself said he wasn't authorized to do such a thing so there's a big clue right there that none of it was real.

Lucius is way too smart to not have noticed Bruce looked as high as a kite. He would have taken action before Bruce had a chance to spray him with Ivy's toxin.

And where was Ed during this whole debacle?

No, what happened was Penguin crafted an entire story for Barbara on what would happen if she got all the gangs to cooperate.

Jim getting shot by Zsasz, Ivy infecting everyone, Lee saving Jim's life and marrying him were all from Penguin's imagination.

The only thing that was real was Barbara's desire to leave Gotham.

She knows that she'll never be with Jim now that Lee's back on the scene and the only way she can think of to punish him is to take his baby and disappear.

Barbara is also afraid that Jim is going to send her to prison and take her baby away from her which is why she was trying to come up with some sort of plan to get on Jim's good side.

A ceasefire between the gangs might have accomplished this, but Penguin squashed that dream with his elaborate story, and it was a good one!

Besides, he wants to get out of Gotham, and he can't do it without Barbara's help.

If she can't focus on the job at hand, he'll never get out of Gotham, so he needed to give her a reason why building the submarine needed to become her top priority.

That's my take, and I'm sticking by it.

On a side note, "The Trial of Jim Gordon" was written by Ben MacKenzie and directed by none other than Babs herself, Erin Richards. It was one of Gotham's most bizarre episodes ever. Whatever these two were smoking when they put this together, I ask that they please send some my way.