Gotham - 'The Mask' and 'Harvey Dent'

"I confess, some find my management style... eccentric."

Gotham continues with a one-off episode introducing a long-standing but less well-known Batman villain, Black Mask.

The comics' brutally theatrical mob boss, Roman Sionis, is here portrayed as Richard Sionis, a businessman with a fetish for Japanese masks and a warrior ethos. In order to recruit the best candidates for his company, he forces applicants to fight to the death in an abandoned office space, because physical strength, flexible morality and a guilty conscience are of course vital character traits in an executive.

Whatever; the point is of course that the prominent mask symbolism allows the show to take a bite at one of the Batman franchise's prevailing themes of the physical and psychological masks that people wear. Is Jim Gordon truly a good cop, or is he a vicious killer who wears the white hat as a figurative mask to let him do violence without becoming the villain? Similarly, we see more of the mask worn by Cobblepot in his relationships with Fish Mooney and his mother, who incidentally takes the line of the week trophy in discussing how she dealt with a bully who envied her dancing and was sleeping with the teacher.

Cobblepot: You told on them?
Mrs Kapelput: No. I denounced her family to secret police.

Speaking of bullies, Bruce's return to mainstream education sees a confrontation with the school's government issue bully, resolved with a little help from Alfred, who continues to get cooler and cooler as his propriety slips.

The episode also has a nice showcase for Bullock, both as he tries to moderate Gordon's boat-rocking tendencies and in taking the other officers of the GCPD to task for leaving him to face Zsasz alone. 'The Mask' provides a bit of redemption for the Department as a whole, by way of Bullock's rallying of the troops.

"This is my schtick. Without the scars, it's about all I got."

Moving swiftly on, 'Harvey Dent' introduces another familiar face; Killer Croc.

Yeah, okay; it's Harvey Dent, as yet single of face, and presented to Gordon as the DA who can get shit done. Dent has a plan to dangle the existence - but not the identity - of eye witness Selina Kyle (currently in protective custody at Wayne Manor, the better to stalk Bruce) in front of the city's gangland to create pressure until someone gives up the Waynes' killer.

Dent is a cool customer, at least on the surface, but there are those masks again. We are shown from the start that he's a risk taker, and a confrontation with one of his key suspects reveals a fierce temper under the button-down, terrycloth exterior. The teaser for next week also indicates that his risk-taking will lead to trouble.

Meanwhile, gangland machinations continue, with Mooney moving against Falcone in secret and Cobblepot seeking to flip her already doubtful 'weapon'.

Across the two episodes, perhaps the most interesting developments are the triangle being formed between Alfred, Bruce and Selina and Edward Nygma. In the former instance, the tension between Alfred's focus on discipline and strength and Selina's on wits and ruthlessness finally provide an impetus towards what will become the Batman. In the latter, Nygma continues to be creepy, even performing an illegally autopsy because he thinks the ME has screwed up (which in fairness, he has.)

Barbara continues to be the least interesting thing about the series, and having her leave Gordon because she can't stomach life with a crusading cop in Gotham only to jump into bed with Montoya, a crusading cop in Gotham, just makes me like her less.