Gotham S1x04 “Arkham”

WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS!

Gotham has continued its run fairly strongly so far, with episode four being a bigger improvement on the previous one as it turned its attention to the one major thing that hadn’t yet really been discussed in detail, that is arguably one of the most important things of the Batman mythos. Arkham Asylum. It was great to see an episode focused on it here and although it wasn’t quite the best one yet, (with the pilot and Selina Kyle currently being the strongest ones so far) Arkham continued to solidify Gotham as a strong show with plenty of potential to get even better, now that it has been picked up for a full 22 episode order by Fox.

The future of Arkham meant that this episode was about the land grabbing of Maroni and Falcone this week as they came close to pulling the city into an all out gang war. It was a battle between the expansion of Arkham versus its destruction, and it was handled incredibly well, mainly because of the already cool factor of just simply having Arkham on TV. Hopefully it should be something interesting to return further down the line, and it could allow the series to tread into horror territory should it so wish.

We also got to see some threads building on multiple areas. Cobblepot came back to Gotham and showed up at Gordon’s front door last week, and it was fun to witness the fallout here. Robin Lord-Taylor continues to be one of the best parts of the series and we also got to see him start to move further up the chain of the criminal underworld after saving some mob money from being captured by another side. The consequences of Cobblepot’s meeting with Gordon are becoming quickly apparent as we finally got to see Barbara Keen in action outside of their apartment, with an new dilemma presented with their breakup at the end of the episode.

Even if the mystery of the week this time around was somewhat lacking, with the villain not really being developed and not really offering anything that we haven’t seen before.  Much like Arrow and The Flash, Gladwell disappointed in this regard but aside from that, this episode still mostly impressed as it did have another thing going for it this week, the lack of the usually blindingly obvious foreshadowing that this show has given us so far, which is hopefully a trend that will continue in the coming weeks

Somewhere else where this show continues to entertain is Fish Mooney, who’s constantly been a source of over-the-top scenery-chewing drama in this episode, with the actress clearly having a lot of fun. This week, she hosted Gotham’s version of a talent show to find out who her latest recruit would be, and it was handled very well indeed with it being arguably one of the stronger parts of the episode.

Even if the police elements of this drama were the most boring this week, Arkham was still a relatively solid episode that continues to further progress the series on an interesting course. We’re still getting to know these characters yet the show has at least managed to pass the four-episode test, meaning that I will almost certainly now be sticking around for at least the rest of the season. Along with the excellent The Blacklist and The Originals, Monday nights are continuing to be incredibly fun TV-wise and Gotham is rapidly establishing itself as a great new addition to that line-up despite its problems. Next week can’t come quickly enough.