The episode was watched by 4.57 million viewers, and received positive reviews, with critics praising the new tone set for the season.
Picking up where the last season left, Bruce (David Mazouz) and Alfred (Sean Pertwee) discover a hideout behind the fireplace with secret stairs.
One month later, Gordon (Benjamin McKenzie) has been reassigned from the GCPD to traffic duty; Bullock (Donal Logue) is retired, working in a bar; Cobblepot is now the boss of organized crime of Gotham City; and Barbara (Erin Richards) is incarcerated in Arkham Asylum.
During a shift, Gordon arrests a man calling himself "Zaardon the Soul Reaper" (David Fierro) when he wreaks havoc.
Commissioner Loeb (Peter Scolari) fires Gordon for punishing an officer for showing up late to work.
In Arkham, Jerome Valeska (Cameron Monaghan) approaches Barbara, telling her that Richard Sionis (Todd Stashwick) can give her anything she wants.
A woman and her cohorts appear in Arkham, kills the asylum guards and subdues Barbara, Jerome, Sionis, Aaron Helzinger (Stink Fisher), Robert Greenwood (Dustin Ybarra) and Arnold Dobkins (Will Brill).
Bruce decides to create a homemade fertilizer bomb to open the door, to Alfred's shock.
The episode received a rating of 79% with an average score of 7.7 out of 10 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with the site's consensus stating: "'Damned if You Do...' signals a potential reinvention by shifting Gotham's focus away from weekly procedural cases and toward more substantial serialized story arcs.
[3] Matt Fowler of IGN gave the episode a "good" 7.5 out of 10 and wrote in his verdict, "Gotham still has silliness to smooth out (that Gordon close-up running cam again, like in the pilot?)