Gotham Review: “Harvey Dent” (Season 1, Episode 9)

As I said, Harvey unfortunately doesn’t get much screentime this week, and I feel that the episode suffers for it. His involvement, while immensely important for what’s to come this season, had little bearing on the rest of what was going on. And, as luck would have it, the rest of the episode wasn’t really that interesting.

We get another throwaway case-of-the-week, this time showing Gordon and the other Harvey, Bullock, chasing a bomb expert who was broken out of Blackgate Prison. As it turns out, the goons that broke him out are forcing him to make bombs for them, under the guidance of Fish Mooney, to somehow hurt Carmine Falcone. Falcone isn’t seen in this episode, which makes that little tidbit fall flat, and the case itself wasn’t very engaging. However, I do like that it led to the Mayor shipping all of Blackgate’s “criminally insane” patients off to the newly-refurbished Arkham Asylum. Again, it’s an understated moment that really rang true to the Batman fan in me, and a cool little origin of the Asylum itself.

Meanwhile, Selina Kyle, who the series still doesn’t know what to do with, is shipped off to Wayne Manor, where Gordon thinks she’ll be safest. She says she knows who killed the Waynes, and has provided a sketch artist with a description of the man she saw do it. Until Gordon, Harvey (Dent) and the now-friendly MCU detectives find the guy, Selina needs to be kept safe (and kept from running away. Again).

I find it strange that Gordon is keeping this little development from Bullock; the two have grown rather close over the last few weeks, after their little standoff with Zsasz and Falcone in “The Penguin’s Umbrella,” so why not let him in on the Selina secret? He must not trust him fully, or is trying to keep things as close to the vest as possible in case something goes wrong (which, let’s face it, it probably will).

Selina is given a ton of screentime in this episode, far more than she’s been given so far, and each and every one of her scenes is pretty bad. Camren Bicondova is clearly a novice actress (this is the child dancer’s first big gig), and it shows, especially when sharing the screen with the much more talented David Mazouz, who plays a fantastic young Bruce Wayne.

I’ve loved the Bruce/Alfred storylines in the show thus far (with the exception of that little violent life lesson Alfred taught him last week), and feel that Selina is an unwarranted thorn in the side of that side of the series. I get why it’s happening, but don’t like it at all. All of her scenes with Bruce feel forced, and pairing the future Bat and Cat together this early on just feels unnatural, even for a show like Gotham. 

I wonder what larger story benefits the Bruce/Selina connection will have, if any. So far, the two have had little poorly-worded squabbles (“You’re dreamin’ kid!”), promises of kisses, and a food fight. One one level, it was nice to see Bruce lighten up, and have what could very well be his first laugh since his parents died. But he could have shared that with Alfred, and arguably should have had that moment with his future accomplice in vigilantism. I want to see more sparring lessons, not Catwoman talking to Bruce about her secret-spy-obviously-absentee mother.