Gotham Season 4 Episode 13: A Dark Knight: A Beautiful Darkness Review

Keith NoakesMarch 9, 20185006 min

If you would like to read my review of the last episode, click here.

Synopsis: Ivy tracks a secret project on which Wayne Enterprises is working and begins to target anyone that can give her information. Meanwhile, Jerome becomes obsessed with Penguin in Arkham. (IMDB)

Writer: Tze Chun

Director: John Stephens

Rating: TV-14

Running Time: 42mins

This was an actual good episode for once, despite having Jerome and Ivy. The story was actually focused and not scattered for once with most of the threads connected by Ivy. She’s actually a decent villain for now. Bruce is back too and not a moment too soon.

The main storyline in this episode was Ivy’s quest to find out about a secret Wayne Enterprises project known as Project M. The episode started with Selina witnessing Ivy murder a scientist in pursuit of information. When they found the body, Lucius knew more than what he was leading on. Ivy’s next visit was to Bruce who she tried to get information from and when he didn’t have it, she scratched him, leading to an extended hallucination sequence ending with Alfred taking him to see his future self (aka Batman). Bruce’s hallucination got him out of his current douchey state, enough so that he called Alfred for help.

While looking for Selina, James ran into Sophia who wanted to assure his loyalty to her. She threatened to take him down if he didn’t cooperate but he could take her down as well. He called her bluff. Ivy found Lucius and used her perfume to get him to take her where Project M was located. When Gordon and Selina returned to the GCPD, they found a hypnotized GCPD who didn’t appreciate what Gordon was saying about her.

Project M was Wayne Enterprises’ attempt at recreating the effects of the Lazarus Pit. Gordon arrived soon after and in order for Ivy to escape, she made Gordon choose between pursuing her or saving Bruce so of course he chose saving Bruce. This meant having to defeat Lucius and his jiu jitsu.

Meanwhile in the midseason finale, we saw Jerome interact with Penguin. In this episode, Jerome tried to recruit him to his side to join his crazy team and bring the asylum to the real world. Penguin was hesitant but Jerome kept breaking him down. Ed also visited to gloat which ultimately fueled his wanting of revenge. Penguin was becoming unhinged, however, he wasn’t quite on Jerome’s side, at least not yet.

Sophia called to tell Gordon that she knew other ways to hurt Gordon which may or may not include Lee who she invited over. Now with Project M, Ivy could release spores that make plants grow out of people.

Overall, this was actually a good episode that offered a story that mostly focused on Ivy which affected Gordon and Bruce by giving Gordon a decent story and effectively setting Bruce back on track by reminding him of his inevitable future. The Jerome and Penguin subplot was okay but the show has done villain teamups already so hopefully it won’t be something we’ve seen already. Speaking of things we’ve seen already, enough with using women romantically linked to Gordon as leverage because it’s just lazy at this point. Despite being a good episode, there’s little reason why this will continue. I really hope I’m wrong about that.

Score: 8/10

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