Gotham S1x10 “Lovecraft”

WARNING! SPOILERS!

The tenth episode of Gotham was another winner, with Lovecraft being an excellent addition to the series that has until now, struggled to recapture the brilliance of The Penguin’s Umbrella. The episode itself sees contract killers on the hunt for Selina Kyle, forcing her and Bruce to abandon Wayne Manor in search of a safe haven on the streets. Meanwhile, Alfred and Bullock teamed up to search for the two missing children whilst Gordon faced the consequences of his alliance with Harvey Dent.

Unlike many child actors, David Mazouz’s Bruce Wayne is actually, like I’ve stated before, not annoying. He pulls off a good performance and handles the character very well which is great because the character plays a pretty heavy role in this episode. Bicondova’s Selina Kyle is also growing on me as well, and it was great to see Selina teaching Bruce how to survive on the mean streets of Gotham. Whilst some of her dialogue was poor, the moments between these two characters were pretty awesome and it was good to see that the show is consistently improving its handling of them.

The biggest success of this episode though, was Sean Pertwee’s Alfred Pennyworth. Sharing more in common with that of Geoff Johns’ Batman: Earth One’s as opposed to Michael Caine’s Alfred from Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, it was great to see Alfred in action here and the team-up with Bullock was great. I wouldn’t mind watching a whole show with these two characters as the main cast, which would have been good to see.

The third main storyline of Gotham this week was Jim Gordon investigating Lovecraft with the help from Harvey Dent, who got a reduced role after his introduction last week. Gordon got some one-on-one time with Lovecraft where he revealed that someone higher than him was behind the Wayne’s murder, but before we found out who, he was killed by the mercenary Copperhead, who fans will probably recognize from Batman: Arkham Origins. Whilst my initial thought on the people knocking on Lovecraft’s door would be the Court of Owls (which has been linked with a Season 2 storyline if the series gets renewed, which it should),the users lacked the traditional Owl costume that their Talons wear. It was still awesome to see Copperhead introduced to the show however and hopefully it won’t be the last we’ll see of her.

Were there problems, though? Yes. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Ivy in this episode (I’m still somewhat annoyed that they changed her name from  Pamela Isley), and there were a few other parts that didn’t quite hit the mark for me, but aside from that, it was mostly pretty strong. It’s not quite The Penguin’s Umbrella level, but it’s certainly up there with the best episodes of Gotham that we’ve had so far, and hopefully the show can return strongly in the new year with Gordon in Arkham allowing for a new status quo that should keep the episodes feeling very fresh and awesome indeed. Can’t wait.