Lately I’ve been reading a lot of reviews about Gotham, Fox’s new television series about the origins of the entire Batman-related universe. The one that struck me the most was this review by Bustle complaining about the show’s erratic development of the villain characters. Specifically, that Penguin and the Riddler had both been introduced right out of the gate but that “Gotham is trying to gain all the weight and importance of introducing the Joker without having the writing to back it up.”
I am a HUGE DC Comics fan. I read the comics religiously and watch most of the DC related tv shows: Flash, Arrow, and Gotham. I’m looking forward to Supergirl (CBS), the Teen Titans series, the possibility of a Flash / Arrow Justice League or Birds of Prey spin off. But I don’t just watch as a fan. I look at these shows as a writer and a theatre veteran. I examine the costumes, critique the characters, and pay close attention to the story beats and plot lines as training and research for my own writing career. So when Bustle came out with their complaint about how poorly the Gotham writers were handling the villains, I had to stop and think about it.
I’m a little behind on Gotham. I just watched “The Red Hood Gang” this morning. Angelica Bastién‘s (Bustle’s reviewer) review stuck in my head as halfway through the show I realized something.
Gotham isn’t about the origin of Batman villains, or even of Batman himself (although there’s a little bit about him in here). Batman is a foregone conclusion. We know what’s coming for him, how he turns out. What the writers sprinkle into the show about him is just topping on that particular cake. No. This show gives us the evolution of his allies and his city. Gotham shows us why Batman IS the foregone conclusion, and it only has a little bit to do with the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents.
So, yes, I get why Angelica is so out of joint about the writing for Gotham’s villains. She’s right. There are things missing. The development is not smooth and it smacks you upside the back of the head with a baseball bat screaming “HEY! BATMAN MOMENT HERE!” Television shows are designed to be episodic, to allow just any watcher to step in for a single episode in the middle of the season and not feel like they have to have know the entire series background. So the writers have a choice. Either use the baseball bat or pull the series so tight that no new fans can come into it at the middle of a season or the middle of the series. It’s a tough choice and rare is the series that can pull tight and survive multiple seasons at the top.
It’s not just Angelica’s opinion, though. There are a lot of critics who disagree with the villain arcs (how they’re set up, what they’re accomplishing, etc.). In my opinion, though, the bad guys are just set dressing. They are eye-candy, setting the most important story element of all:
What kind of city needs a caped crusader to strike terror into the hearts of bad guys?
Welcome to Gotham. It’s like Bête Noire, only Batman-flavored.
So, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Have a different take?
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One Response
We started recording it on our DVR a few weeks ago and have watched one ep. I do find it a difficult series to drop in on the middle of, even though we’re both very familiar with the Batman universe. Though I no longer buy comics regularly, I was a pretty heavy buyer in the ’80s and ’90s, including two complete sets of the original run of the Dark Knight four-parter, also original Watchmen series.
So I’ve been there.
We found the non-Bruce character build-up to be interesting, but we’re not sure if it’s enough to hold us. Partly it’s a matter of a limited amount of hours that we have to watch TV: I started working full-time, so I’m lucky to have three hours to me and my wife when I get home before I have to get to bed. I didn’t care for Arrow, and though I wanted to get in to Flash, it didn’t happen. I have the ’90s (or was it ’80s?) TV series on DVD that I really liked, and that’s good enough for me if I want to re-visit it.
If they did another Bird of Pray or JLAish series, I’d watch that. But I don’t know that Gotham is going to get a lot more of my time, again, largely because of limited resources. And now I have a new game design clamoring for attention, so further demands on a limited resource. (but what’s really cool is my MS Access design is going to make it SO MUCH EASIER to print the tiles!)