A win for Robin sets in motion a chain of events that could spell catastrophe for Gotham’s elite. Harvey Dent makes a big decision. Turner and the Gang spot another possible connection between the Wayne family and the Court of Owls.

Gotham Knights is such an odd show. On the one hand, it genuinely does deliver some very decent character work – Misha Collins is never less than excellent as Harvey Dent and Olivia Rose Keegan is every bit as unpredictable as she is watchable as Duela. The issue is the show’s habit, which is starting to become more obvious as time goes on, of waving its hand narratively when its plots hinge on more far-fetched details.

Take this week – the gang figure out that a long-dead Wayne ancestor may also have fallen victim to the Court of Owls, and decide they’ll need all the police files from his death to check. Let’s breeze past that this was a murder in the nineteenth century, and the sheer unlikelihood of anything approaching a police file having been made, much less kept in a local precinct station’s basement. Let’s move straight to the idea that Cullen will infiltrate said station disguised as a rookie officer to retrieve said file with a forged request. How does he get the uniform required? Don’t worry about it. When did he become a master forger? Shrugs. How will he negotiate the unfamiliar environment and remain undiscovered even when things escalate and suddenly it’s an all hands on deck situation with the GCPD? Who knows?

It’s not that these details are necessarily important in and of themselves, it just starts to become increasingly noticeable that the show breezes past any of them in order to tell its story and they start to stack up.

Anyway, that situation involving all the police relates to Robin having taken down the leader of the ‘Mutant Gang’, who then decide to stage a massive hostage situation in order to get their boss out. Assisted by a mayor who couldn’t look more corrupt at this point if he wore a neon badge announcing the fact, the only thing standing between the Mutant Gang and their prize is Turner and his friends, ably assisted by Stephanie who just happens to have been invited to the very party where all this is happening. As Harper and Stephanie have the most cliched argument ever about who’s the biggest expert (which has a frustratingly unsatisfactory resolution and another bit of handwaving), Tyler must warn Harvey Dent of the real threat and convince his old friend to trust him. This… goes better than you might realistically expect as the show sprinkles on a little more Don’t Worry About It and Harvey gets the opportunity to look tough and announce the least surprising job candidacy of all time.

Verdict: There’s good ideas here, and great characters. Genuine potential. It maybe just needs to rein itself in a little so it doesn’t keep needing to shorthand its way past obstacles in its own plotting. 6/10

Greg D. Smith