Harvey Dent makes his “Gotham” bow as Gordon finds a safe haven for Selina.

FOX

“AS LONG AS IT TAKES”

Note: The following review goes into detail about the episode. SPOILER ALERT!

After its best run of episodes so far, Gotham took a noticeable step backwards with this week’s “Harvey Dent.” The episode wasn’t terrible by any means, it just wasn’t very interesting. A couple of things just didn’t fit properly and felt out of place, while the show featured another predictable and bland case of the week. “Case of the week” can be good when a show provides an interesting foe for the heroes to face off against (Supernatural, Person of Interest), but Gotham has failed to provide a single, one-shot villain that I’d like to see return in the future.

For an episode titled “Harvey Dent,” Dent himself had very little to do. His short screen time this week had a couple of cheesy moments, but I did like seeing that a darker side of him is already present. While I’m a little worried about what exactly would have happened if that kid had called tails when Dent flipped the coin, the later conversation with new villain Dick Lovecraft (Person of Interest’s Al Sapienza) was a lot better. Watching Dent flip out like that shows us that his impeccable image is already a bit of a lie. The lighting was also pretty great in these scenes, foreshadowing his future villainous turn fairly well. It’s hard to get a read on Lovecraft so far. On the one hand, he seems like he’ll be an interesting foe for Gordon and Dent, on the other, I’m not sure how he’s going to tie into our other ongoing plotlines.

FOX

The mad bomber case was fine, but it was mostly predictable and not very interesting to watch at all. It was fairly obvious from the off that Hargrove wasn’t out to kill a lot of people, so the twist that his brother was being threatened held no weight. It all ended up tying back into the Mooney/Falcone power struggle which gave it some meaning a least, but the road to get there was pretty boring. The biggest thing to come from this plot was that all of Gotham’s criminally insane inmates were transferred from Blackgate Prison to Arkham Asylum. Arkham looks like it’s going to play an important part in the struggle for control of Gotham, so this was a welcome turn of events.

My favorite part of the episode was the Bruce and Selina interactions, although that wasn’t without its problems either. Their time together here was pretty fun, and I also enjoyed seeing Alfred warm up to “Cat” before the end of the episode. Some of the dialogue was a little corny though, but I’m willing to just put that down to two very different kids getting to know each other. It was good to see Selina tear holes in Bruce’s training regimen though. As she rightfully pointed out, the people Bruce might end up fighting on the streets of Gotham won’t be wearing boxing gloves.

THE BREAKDOWN

To my dismay, Barbara showed up for a solitary scene here, and it appears like she has gone back to her old flame Montoya. The worst sin this episode committed may turn out to be reigniting the Gordon/Barbara/Montoya love triangle that absolutely nobody is interested in. Everything else in the episode was just OK, with a boring case and an uninspiring debut of Harvey Dent. Cobblepot discovering that Liza was Mooney’s mole does give us something to look forward to next week though, with his game with Mooney being taken to the next level. While Dent and the Arkham proceedings will be more important down the line, it’s probably best to forget about mostly everything else from this episode.

How did you find Bruce’s time with Selina this week? Was it pretty fun, or did you find it all a little too forced and cheesy? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

68/100 – ‘Decent’

*We do not comment on anything relating to previews for the next episode and beyond.