Gotham, Season 1, Episode 4: Arkham
A good bit more focused than the last three episodes, and a lot more intrigue about this whole 'war' thing that's coming. The episode still does this police/detective thing of tracking down a serial murderer as the main thing, which I suppose is still tolerable. There is still a fair amount of cringeworthy moments in this episode, though.
Let's start with Oswald Cobblepot, who is still the most awesome character in the series. He's stringing everyone along, pretending to be Gordon's friend and giving him information, sneaking around and eavesdropping on Maroni... and he apparently hired three hitman to hit the Maroni-affiliated restaurant both to get a promotion within Maroni's ranks as well as to make the Maroni-Falcone war get even more heated up. I do like how Penguin's starting to do some manipulation, how he's starting to rise up in the Gotham underworld, and how he's just fooling the likes of Maroni into thinking he's a harmless fellow. That scene with him just begging not to be shot as he clutches that bag of money was pretty nice, and of course, he kills his partners with poisoned cakes and takes the rest of the money for himself.
Oswald seems to want to plunge the city into a war, except he's telling Gordon that he wants to prevent it. Dude's a bit crazy, and I'm interested what his endgame plans are.
There's a big talk about war, and we get our first good look at Arkham Asylum, and that gate does look like what Arkham Asylum's gate is in my mind, and it makes me happy. Gotham City's been extremely generic (note the lack of gargoyles for a certain man dressed in a bat to lurk upon) and it's nice to see something more faithful to the source material.
There's a big plot about how the Arkham district is being fought over by the Falcone and Maroni factions, with Falcone wanting to have it all as a show of power (and doing what the Waynes want and convert the Asylum into a brand-new thing) whereas Maroni wants to build a waste disposal place as a big 'up yours' to Falcone and show that he's weakening. It's got a pretty nice crime/politics vibe going on.
And to this end, both Falcone and Maroni hired this villain of the week, this black dude who takes up the identity of 'Richard Gladwell' as a cover and kills people with this weird-looking steel spear weapon. I'm not aware of any Batman villain with the same M.O. or name, so I'm going to assume that like the Balloon Man, he's a brand-new character created for the show. The eyeball stabbing thing is a bit gruesome, and his little gimmick does make him kind of stand out, and he ends up going after the mayor and shot all sorts to hell by Bullock and Gordon. He's a serviceable villain, memorable enough with his little gimmick but ultimately not interesting enough to keep around.
And I do like the squeaky-voiced mayor getting turned into a target, because I do like the mayor somewhat. The mayor ends up pulling a compromise, which is kind of an insult to Falcone. Also apparently Arkham Asylum isn't going to be replaced with a high-tech one like the Waynes wanted, but instead refurbished or something like that.
Gordon doesn't really do much in this episode other than his regular shtick of being the only good cop in Gotham that's doing the right thing, though notably he kills another fellow, showing that despite his distaste of violence he's not above riddling someone with bullets if that means saving an innocent live. There is this moment between Gordon and Barbara where they really fight over secrets and whatnot. Thanks to the Montoya jealous-ex-driving-a-stake thing, Barbara finally doubts Gordon enough to confront him about who 'Oswald Cobblepot' is. And Gordon, y'know, he's smart enough to remember the events of a couple episodes ago where the moment he lets slip something about work, Barbara immediately tells it to the freaking news, and thereby not only nearly costing Gordon his job, but also possibly puts them in danger.
And Barbara had the gall to pull the guilt-trip trigger, and the 'choose me or work' trigger, despite past events. And as it turns out, Barbara herself is a hypocrite over the whole secrets thing, since she ended up having to reveal to Gordon about the whole lesbians-with-Montoya thing, which ends up, as predicted, to be another can of worms that adds needless drama. And since she has let out that one relatively harmless secret, she demands Gordon tell her all about his potentially life-damaging secret despite her track record of being this bitch who can't keep secrets.
Man, Barbara is a massive hypocritical bitch.
Bullock, well... he doesn't really do much other than being lazy and pulling off that big damn heroes moment at the end, and he's at least competent enough to be afraid of a gang war. Nothing to hate about him, so there's that.
Fish is the character that receives the most screentime, and she's apparently recruiting some girl who can seduce and sing for a plan, presumably to bring down Falcone. And while that is interesting I guess, the episode spends way too long on the girls just singing and not really doing anything interesting, and do we really need that long to see Fish ask these girls to seduce her? It's weird. The fight-for-the-job was relatively brutal and I liked it, but this whole side-plot feels like a massive waste of time just to have girls in really short skirts kiss each other and whatnot. Still not really liking Fish -- though she's at least supposed to be sort of unlikable as a villain, and she's still better than Barbara. No reason for Fish's agent not to just show up to do her stuff, or for some trimming to be done.
Essen and Nygma show up each for a bit before disappearing again, just to remind us that they exist.
Maroni is quite fun to watch, and I do like his scenes. They aren't anything special, but they're fun to listen to thanks to Maroni's accent. And he does have a couple of nice scenes with Oswald and we get to know that he's at least pretty fair among his men.
We get Alfred and Bruce, who also feel like a bit of a distraction. Sure, we get that whole point where the Wayne legacy is connected to the Arkham Asylum rebuilding or something along those lines, but again do we really need Alfred and Bruce? They're relatively harmless and I don't hate them, but like the scenes of Fish's singers, they feel like nothing but padding... though they're at least talking about stuff instead of just singing and doing nothing.
Also, who's the random bearded dude that Bullock asked information out of? I thought he was interesting. Why couldn't we have a scene with him?
Overall there's still a fair amount of things I don't like in this show, the main offender being that massive bitch Barbara, but it's still building on the good things that I like from the past episodes. The fight scene between Gordon and Gladwell was relatively nicer to look at than the action scenes of past episodes, so at least they're improving. There's the intrigue over who actually hired "Gladwell" and Hopefully we can get something more interesting than just your regular cop show, though.
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