Gotham S04E13 Review: The Hallucination of the Beginning of the Bat-Man

Gotham, Season 4, Episode 13: A Beautiful Darkness

This episode isn't quite as engaging as the previous episode, because it's just kind of.. trods on and on. The main story this time around is Poison Ivy's continued rampage across Gotham City, and in her quest to murder people who experiment on plants, she stumbles on a Wayne Enterprises scientist dude who is working on an ever-so mysterious Project M. While doing all this, Ivy ends up alienating Selina (who thought they were just going to have a good old time robbing the rich and not turn them into compost) and attracting the attention of the GCPD. It's neat stuff, and Ivy's abilities are simple yet pretty nightmarish.


This ends up leading to Ivy attacking Bruce with a slow-acting poison (we can't have Batman die, after all), which leads to the titular "Beautiful Darkness", where Bruce goes through some weird-ass trippy mind-world where Ra's Al Ghul (sorry, Mr. Greenhands) slices off his face, he has to face his "jackass rich brat persona" in a party with Penguin!Oswald, mustachioed!Gordon, Chicken!Gordon and Cleopatra!Lee Thompkins. And then he gets confronted in Crime Alley by the specter of his 'true self', which, of course, is a trademark-friendly-Batman-because-we-can't-say-his-name.  It's... it's okay, I guess. Crazy party-boy Bruce has been fun but a well-tired trope, and this does pass off as a sort of a character development. It doesn't feel particularly satisfying, though, as it ends up with Bruce just going through a hallucinogenic trip to accept who he is and apologize to Alfred instead of actually growing.

Meanwhile, the chase for Ivy is... serviceable, but ultimately not as interesting as the actual tension of the next episode or the horror of the previous episode. We do get a fair bit more Lucius Fox, which is welcome, and apparently Project M is Lazarus Pit water who gives Poison Ivy a power-up in her plant-manipulating abilities.

Oswald and Jerome form the B-plot of this episode, where the two are just... kind of eating time, honestly. Jerome tries to get Oswald out of his funk, and it's just similar to Bruce's storyline. Sad, morose Oswald is not particularly interesting, so he quickly focuses his anger towards Jerome. Jerome tries to make Penguin 'entertain' him, and the only way Oswald is entertaining is if he grows a backbone. So he does, culminating in a mime dance-off before a beatdown, and it ends up being pretty fun if ultimately inconsequential. Because Oswald actually ends up refusing a team-up with Jerome, which I thought would've been the predictable solution. Okay, then? Jerome's apparently able to escape any time, but he's just biding his time until there's some huge, fun reason to do so. It's a bit predictable since we've got the "Arkham Crazies Squad" storyline a couple of times, but eh.

Nygma and Ed continue to vie over ownership of their body and it's acted well for what little we see here. Nygma really wants to stay and hang out with Leslie, but Riddler ends up manipulating them to visiting Oswald in jail, ostensibly to gloat, but is secretly leaving messages. So the real villain team-up is going to be Penguin/Riddler as opposed to Penguin/Joker? I can dig. It certainly adds an extra layer of neatness to the whole Riddler storyline.

There's a couple of B-plots involving the others, I guess. Sofia apparently ends up going to meet Leslie and use her as leverage over Gordon, but it's not that interesting of a plot thread, I must admit. Selina is just... kinda there, jumping from one storyline to the other, interacting with Ivy and Gordon as needed. Poor girl's just criminally underused, huh?

Overall, a solid, if ultimately sub-par episode.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Jerome slaps a Joker card on the table during the conversation with Oswald, obviously a reference to his real identity as the Joker. 
• That flashback...
• Jim Gordon in Bruce's hallucination has a mustache, something Bruce notes when he talks to Gordon at the end of the episode. Of course, in the comics, Gordon's most iconic feature is his mustache, and Gotham's Gordon not having a mustache has been a point of mockery and contention among the fandom. 
• While Robin Lord-Taylor had worn the top-hat and black suit in a past hallucination, here he dresses up in proper comic-book Penguin attire in Bruce's hallucination.
• Batman himself appears in the flashback, albeit always in blurs and without the trademark bat-ears. It's always been noted in the comics how Batman is the 'real' Bruce Wayne, and that the boy that was Bruce died in Crime Alley so Batman can be born.