We break down the newest episode from the Fox series.
TV Review: Gotham “Harvey Dent”
By: Brandon Wolfe
By: Brandon Wolfe
“Harvey Dent” introduces to the ‘Gotham’ world Harvey Dent, since it would be weird to call the episode that had it not. Portrayed by Nicholas D’Agosto as a slightly manic, eager-beaver lawyer itching to take on Gotham’s corrupt upper class, Dent is constantly flipping that iconic coin of his. Of course he is. ‘Gotham’ would never resist the temptation to hammer us with iconography like its life depended on it. Edward Nygma offers riddles every time he pops on screen, Young Selina Kyle already has the nickname “Cat,” so why wouldn’t the show hit us with Dent’s coin repeatedly? Given how the show operates, it’s surprising they haven’t also given Dent eczema on the right side of his face. For an episode that bears Dent’s name, this is not really his showcase. He’s just a spoke on the wheel, though the initial impression of Dent offered here already hints that the guy might have a screw loose beneath that crusader-for-justice exterior.
Gordon has taken Selina Kyle under his wing, intending to use her convenient eyewitness account of the Wayne murders to crack that case. But Gordon has to keep her safe, so he takes her to the one place he can trust she will be kept out of harm’s way: stately Wayne Manor. This is ridiculous for a number of reasons. First off, I don’t think a cop can just decide to use a private citizen’s residence as a safe house, especially when the residents of the home were the ones directly affected by the murders this witness observed. Also, placing a known cat burglar into the wealthiest home in town seems like a recipe for disaster (to the show’s credit, at least it has Alfred voice some of these objections). But Selina is really put in Wayne Manor because ‘Gotham’ visibly has no clue what to do with these two young characters, so the strategy, I suppose, has become to tie the loose threads together to make one big loose thread. I don’t know that budding preteen romance is the thing a would-be gritty police thriller needs, but at least Bruce and Selina’s playful food-fight bonding is endearing. And Sean Pertwee as Alfred is proving to be a stealth weapon for the show, offering a prickly, likably gruff presence to these scenes.
The A-plot of “Harvey Dent” concerns an incarcerated bomber named Hargrove (but a nice bomber, the show takes pains to let us know) who is broken out of custody by a group of Russian criminals. The Russians use Hargrove’s expertise to bomb a munitions factory (protected by a crack security team who don’t question why the gift basket they’ve just received is ticking). From there, the group obtains materials needed to mount an assault on a vault full of cash belonging to Falcone, which is blown up. This plot was masterminded by Fish Mooney as a further strike in her surreptitious insurrection against Falcone, but it’s all very uninvolving. The big takeaway here is that Gordon uses this chain of events to successfully advocate for more sufficient means of dealing with the criminally insane, leading the mayor to reopen Arkham Asylum. That should keep the show awash in cameo-artillery for a good long while.
Usually the Penguin is the saving grace of most episodes of ‘Gotham,’ but even he doesn’t get up to anything of interest this week. His contribution to “Harvey Dent” is to snoop around the apartment of Liza, the secret assassin Mooney hired to get in good with Falcone to eventually eliminate him. Cobblepot sniffs Liza’s clothes like a huge creep, but his creepiness has a method behind it as he picks up the scent of perfume that he suspects belongs to Mooney, which a quick popover to her apartment for some additional sniffing confirms. This all serves to advance the growing battle between the two lieutenants as they grab at the Falcone crown, but it is starting to become tedious.
But tedious is simply where ‘Gotham’ is at right now. There are half a dozen different story threads wafting around this episode, which has the effect of the show going too many places at once and therefore nowhere at all. The lack of strong focus dilutes everything, making it difficult to care about anything. The worst offense this week lies with Barbara, the show’s anti-Penguin in terms of generating interest. She has left Gordon and fallen back into the bed of her previous lover, Detective Montoya, sending us off with a little girl-on-girl action. This is a story development that fell out of a wormhole from 1991 where it was once attached to an episode of ‘Melrose Place.’ Come on, ‘Gotham.’ You can do better. I know you can.
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