To all you folks watching the blogoshpere and stopping in, welcome! My regulars may have noticed that I’m a day late once again, but I’m thinking that Thursdays might just become the new release day as I have far less conflicts in my schedule and more time to really dwell on what it is that I want to tell you guys.
This week, I take a contrarian stance simply for the sake thereof, but also because I think it’s a point of view that gets overlooked quite a bit. By the title you already know that this entry is all about the hit TV series Gotham. As a disclaimer, I just want to say that I really enjoy the show. I find that period of Batman mythology severely overlooked and quite fascinating. However, that does not mean that I find it totally without fault so we’re going to look at one that left me feeling really disappointed after the first season.
For those who aren’t familiar, Gotham is the story of Jim Gordon and his time as a beat detective for the GCPD before he began to move up the ranks, eventually becoming commissioner. Again, it’s a period in Batman mythology that is widely unexplored. This brings me already to the main point that I’d like you to dwell on (It’s going to be a really short article.). Jim Gordon is not a superhero per se. He’s a regular guy. The closest thing that he has to a superpower is his ability to seem incorruptible.
The first season of the show followed this train of thought and as a result, Gotham felt more like a procedural drama than a comic book show. “But wait! It’s about a comic book universe! Shouldn’t it be a comic book show,” you maybe saying. Well, yes, it should be a comic book show, but that doesn’t mean that it has to feel like a comic book show. The first season did a really great job incorporating elements of the Batman mythology while still managing to remain grounded in the idea that the things happening in the show are not so farfetched that they couldn’t happen in our own world. This approach was fresh and exciting, at least to me.
Let me just say that I love procedural crime dramas. I grew up on Law & Order, NYPD Blue, In the Heat of the Night, and various others. These days, I really enjoy NCIS, Criminal Minds, Lie to Me, and a whole slew more and there’s definitely a reason for that. The procedural part of the genre designation entails that the viewer is going to work through the mystery with the characters as the episode unfolds. I really enjoy brain teasers and so I take a great deal of satisfaction from that aspect of those types of shows. And for the first season of Gotham, that’s how the show felt. There were mysteries to be solved each episode and I felt like I was invited to work through the cases alongside the character. Again, a really fresh take on the Batman mythos.
Then season two happened. The producers of the show were getting pressure from the network to make it feel more like the comics and the films and that’s where the show kind of died. It lost that unique identity that only a Batman show could assume and it became just another humdrum comic show. The show jumped the shark with the introduction of Mr. Freeze. He’s a great villain in his own right, but using him as a character in the second season just seems a little too soon in the show’s progression. But the entire tone of the show changed with that move. Now it feels like writers and producers are just trying to shoehorn in all of these villains that we’ve come to love for no other reason than to attract more viewers and that’s pretty sad.
I do have other grievances with the show as well. For instance, I’ve always liked the idea that Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent were roughly the same age, as in Batman:The Animated Series because this gave them an invested relationship and upped the dramatic tension between the two characters. I’m also not a huge fan of Fish Mooney. I feel like the character is just a boldfaced attempt to pull a Harley Quinn and introduce a show character that gets adopted into the comic mythos. The character is not even terribly interesting to watch after the first dozen episodes or so.
That’s not to say that Gotham isn’t without its strengths. I appreciate the ambiance that the show creates with each episode. The sets and locations, the lighting and the music all make for a very Batman-esque atmosphere. The focus on the Penguin was a brilliant idea from the start and Robin Lord Taylor plays him exceptionally well. Along that line, the inclusion of Edward Nigma was also a brilliant idea as seeing his progression from mild mannered clerk to criminal mastermind is really interesting. The use of the (presumed) Joker was a ton of fun because having those red herrings hinting at Batman’s greatest foe kept me wanting to see what happened next. These are all elements that started in the first season. The only element that was lacking emphasis at that point was a metaplot arc, but even then, between Gordon’s work as a detective week-to-week, Penguin’s rise to power within the criminal underground and mystery of the Wayne murders, there was plenty to go around.
Am I saying that Gotham is inherently a bad show? No. In fact, it’s still an entertaining show to watch. What I am saying is that there was an experimental Batman show being produced last season that, unfortunately, died a rather quick death and that’s a tragedy. I think if the experiment had been able to continue unaltered, we would have eventually ended up with a great show instead of one that’s just good. So here’s to the Batman show that we all need, but not the one that we actually deserve.
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