In Review: Gotham: A Dark Knight: Pax Penguina

Synopsis: Gordon fears Jonathon Crane is still alive and back in Gotham when The Scarecrow’s signature MO is used in a series of bank jobs. Meanwhile, the Penguins licensing scheme for criminals backfires during a grand opening of his new Iceberg Lounge.

Also, in the aftermath of his encounter with Ra’s Al Ghul, Bruce begins his vigilante watch.

Review: Thus begins the fourth season of Gotham, which is as much about setting up the young Bruce Wayne as The Batman than it is the origin story of Police Chief Gordon. Add to that the real beginnings of Selena Kyle’s journey to become Cat Woman and it looks like we have a big season in store.

The question is. Will this be a season that flies by or one that sags in the middle like a badly made cake?

If this first episode is anything to go by. I’d say that it is difficult to predict how quick this year will go by. But it looks like it could be interesting.

The criminal licensing scheme by Penguin looks like it could well be too good to last and that’s in spite of him giving the Mayor and Commissioner of Police a cut of the pie.  It sure has Gordon pretty pissed. But it is a lot of fun watching Anthony Carrigan as Victor Zsasz enforce it with the criminal lowlifes of Gotham, but as always there are those who skirt the rules. 

When a gang of bank robbers gets hold of Scarecrows formula they seem to be able to go on a bit of a run, but eventually, get stopped by the very thing that they have used on others. The formula, which they had been forcing the son of the late Jonathan Crane to make for them. But as you’d expect. The son turns and eventually proclaims himself as the new scarecrow.

Continuing on from last year. We see Bruce Wayne starting to patrol the streets. He’s not carved out his identity yet, but we catch a few glimpses of him in action and so does Ra’s Al Ghul.

We also get to see some of Selina’s new moves as the result of a small training mission taking out some punks with a watchful Tabitha. Some of the moves are very reminiscent of the Cat Woman from the Batman video games, but nowhere near as fast or as exaggerated.

We get strong performances from the leads is what is mostly a setup episode for the season.

It will be fun to see how all of this turns out.