Gotham Episode 9: Harvey Dent

This week on Gotham: A young A.D.A enters the stage. Fish continues her plot to dethrone Falcone. Meanwhile, Gordon hides his star witness at Wayne Manor.

Well folks, I knew it was coming. After weeks of improvement,”Gotham” has finally dipped. That is not to say this episode was horrible, but rather it did not live up to expectations. The plot was nothing new and some character interactions were forced. Even still, let’s take a look at this week’s high and low points.

Harvey Dent

Without a doubt this was the episode’s “high” point. Harvey Dent/Two-Face has always been an important part of the comics yet he has been horribly portrayed in live-action iterations. Tommy Lee Jones played a campy, wisecracking version of this serious character in Batman Forever. On the other hand, Aaron Eckhart played an amazing Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight though his “Two Face” character was undeveloped. Thus, I was very excited to see “Gotham’s” take on a character that has not been depicted quite right in film. I’m happy to say that I was not disappointed. Despite his small amount of screen time Nicholas D’Agosto presents everything that is “Harvey Dent.” He was handsome, charming, always flashing a smile and yet still “two faced” (pun intended). Take for example the scene where he confronts Lovecraft (a corrupt businessman); Harvey goes from mild mannered lawyer to angry psychopath in a flash, only to return to his calm demeanor. The foundation has been set for Dent’s split personality, and I hope to see him lose  more control in the coming episodes.

Vigilantes

If Harvey was the good, then this was the bad and the ugly. I understand “Gotham” is trying to establish the ideas of vigilantes in the city before Batman, but the show is beating this point to death. So far we have had the “Balloon Man”, the psychologist that convinces her patients to kill rich people and now we have Ian: the peace loving demolition-expert. The significance is that this plot point has become cliche, and we aren’t even at ten episodes. “Gotham” needs to give the vigilantes a break and focus on some of the other characters it has barely even touched. What happened to Ivy? Where in the world is the Dollmaker? Will Nygma ever find love? With all the interesting avenues to explore it baffles me as to why the show continues to return to the vigilantes.

This was not “Gotham’s” best week and amounted to little more than filler. This being said, the fall finale does look very interesting and I am ready to see if the show will keep us at the edge of our seats.

CBH Score: 2.0 out of 5

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