REVIEW: Gotham (Season 1)

     Well, I've spent enough time across the street for the moment; time to go back to my own yard.  So let's take a look at the first season of Fox's Gotham series, which ended last week.

   Right off the bat (ahem), allow me for the sake of integrity to mention that of all the many, many subjects in the worlds of science-fiction, fantasy, comic books, etc., none is so near or dear to me as Batman.  I literally cannot remember a time in my life when before I was a Batfan, going all the way back to toddler-dom.  I will not attempt to flog my credentials, but suffice it to say, I am rather well-versed in this particular corner of fiction.  Just a tad.  (If I manage to maintain this blog and you, whoever you are, manage to keep reading it, you'll probably hear me say this again, just a word of warning.)

     Gotham is a weekly TV series, airing 8PM on Monday nights on Fox, which purports to be the 'beginning' of the stories of Batman and his cast of allies and enemies.  The show's opening scene is the iconic and infamous murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne in Crime Alley, which is as good a starting point for jumping into this world as any.  However, while a young Bruce Wayne is one of the show's principal cast, the series primarily follows Detective James Gordon, years before he becomes the police commissioner, and it is through Gordon that we come to meet many of the famous personalities that make Gotham City so memorable.  So Gotham isn't necessarily the story of Batman, so much as it is the tale of everybody Batman knows later on, and how they all come to be the recognizable figures we all know and love.

    And that, right there, is the biggest problem the show has: it's effectively a prequel, and we are already aware of much of what must happen in order for the story to take the form we know.  There's a certain inevitability to the premise, and any thoughts of carving out a totally new track are negated somewhat by the show's marketing and promotions, which clearly let the audience know that these are the characters we know - or at least, they are destined to be so.    Anyone who has any sense at all of these characters isn't going to be terribly surprised by the developments on the show; rather, it becomes a question of when certain beats will happen, not if.  Admittedly, later in the season the show seems to become more comfortable with going outside the realm of comics continuity, but so far, the show has tended to lack spontaneity, surprise, or novelty.

   That lack is due to the simple fact that we're dealing with fascinating characters at points in their life before they become interesting.  There hasn't been a ton written about this part of the Batman story in comics or other media, so there are definitely details which can be filled in, but that doesn't always make for exciting television.  I think whenever audiences get to meet a compelling character, there's always eventually a desire to understand how that character became who they are, but that doesn't generally require a prequel to tell that part of the story.  Often, a single flashback will do.

   So Gotham, in order to compensate for this relative paucity of storyline, has begun introducing quite a significant number of Batman's supporting cast, including a large number of villains, with even more confirmed to appear in Season 2.  This has ended up giving the show a 'villain of the week' flair, and is a little odd, in that a number of Batman's foes are on their way to being established years before there IS a Batman...and quite a few are also considerably older than he is.  Now again, as a fan, this might be bothering me more than a casual viewer, but since we are talking about fairly well-known characters, it's hard to overlook.

  

Gordon and Bullock learn There Is No Hope In Crime Alley

     The other general issue shadowing the show is that it can't really decide what it wants to be - a police procedural, a buddy-cop drama about corruption, a soap opera, a mystery, a tribute (or pastiche) of other mob shows, or a straight-up adventure show about a superhero.  So it tries to be all of these things, and while it doesn't exactly fail at any of them entirely, it also doesn't quite succeed, either.  Instead, it creates a bit of a mash which leaves the show feeling uneven on a week-to-week basis, with some episodes far outstripping others in quality.  Initially the show leaned more towards grit and vice, with later episodes becoming proto-villain showcases, then finding a balancing act in the last few weeks, before stumbling in the finale.

     With that said, I actually do rather like and enjoy the show.  It's definitely been a messy first season, but I think a lot of that may be growing pains, and partially due to the series being extended after initially being picked up for only sixteen episodes.  My hope would be that it gets some sea legs now that they have a season under their belt, and can properly plan out a sophomore year.  At its worse, it's not so much bad as it is awkward or unwieldy, and if showrunner Bruno Heller and crew can do some judicious planning, they can get it running more smoothly.  In order to do so, they need to have some sharper scripts - some of the dialogue is snappy and on point, but a lot of it could stand to be cleaned up and energized, and they need to make some cast changes, and do a better job of balancing the characters.  Indeed, one character - she who will eventually become Poison Ivy - was touted as being a principal character in the lead-up to the show, but all but vanished after one early, minor appearance.   Two other supporting characters with a major plot thread disappeared at the mid-season break, and I don't believe have been seen or mentioned since.

    The elements are certainly there; obviously, we know the story and we know it works, so they just have to find ways to make it engaging on a consistent basis.   It certainly looks very slick - the show is filmed in New York, which has been digitally altered to make it familiar without being obviously recognizable, which is the only 'real life' place that works for Gotham.  The city appears seedy, faded, shadowy, scarred, and grim, but the energy comes through.  The designers have also opted to take a page out of Batman: The Animated Series designer Bruce Timm's playbook, by giving the costumes, sets, cars, etc, a timeless feel with cues and styles taken from multiple decades without clearly tying it to any.  Technology, while present, is not prevalent, and there are a lot of papers and books visible, while cellphones, personal computers, and the like, are generally not.  It gives the series something of a late '70s vibe, reminiscent of the French Connection or films of that era, which works beautifully.  Many of the principal characters' costumes have visual nods to their more iconic looks, some more subtle than others, enough to give a flavor of the characters without a full serving.

Carmine Falcone, Selina Kyle, Fish Mooney, Oswald Cobblepot, Edward Nygma

     For most part, the cast is very good, but again, suffers from some unevenness.  Ben McKenzie stars as Jim Gordon, and he makes for a likeable, supportable protagonist, but he does have a tendency to overact, even to bluster.  McKenzie seems to be growing into the role; certainly, his biggest help is Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock's initially-reluctant partner.  Logue has a style and charm all his own, and his performance brings life and energy to the cast around him.   The Gordon/Bullock dynamic grows and evolves over the season, as the characters come to understand and even like each other, and is one of the better relationships on the show.

     David Mazouz plays Bruce Wayne, who here is actually a bit older than his comics counterpart when his parents are killed, about thirteen as opposed to eight.  There's a certain awkwardness to Mazouz that's not quite natural, and I suspect that may simply be due to his age.  The same can be said of Camren Bicondova, who plays Selina Kyle, already heavily foreshadowing her future as Catwoman...actually, there's a certain resemblance to a young Michelle Pfeiffer which I have to assume is intentional.   Both Mazouz and Bicondova suffer a bit from 'obvious' acting, but in time I think they'll become less uncomfortable.   Sean Pertwee plays Alfred Pennyworth, in a much harder-edged, British-stiff-upper-lip portrayal of the character than audiences are used to seeing, but given the amount of focus on a violently-orphaned pre-teen, having a more stern father figure makes a great deal of sense.  Even so, Pertwee does still manages to work in a bit of charm and wry humor beneath the harder exterior.

    Gotham focuses as much on they who will someday be the villains as it does the heroes, and most central of these is Oswald Cobblepot, who quickly takes on the Penguin moniker here.  He's portrayed by Robin Lord Taylor, and the character is a far cry from the more traditional approaches to Penguin, but surprisingly it works rather well.  By starting the character off as a nervous, awkward, sycophantic yet ambitious mob flunky, it gives Taylor lots of room to grow the role and offers a clear trajectory for his character, rather than have him already established.   The Riddler, or rather, Edward Nygma, is also present, portrayed by Cory Michael Smith, but is actually on the side of the law when we first encounter him, as an almost hopelessly nerdy medical examiner's assistant working alongside Gordon.  Nygma is mostly played for laughs, but there's a definite arc in place for him, and as the season progresses we begin to see an unsettling darkness in the character that I suspect will make for fascinating viewing as the series progresses. 

   As with many other adaptations of the Batman mythos, Gotham also creates new characters, and none are more prominent than Fish Mooney, played by Jada Pinkett Smith.  Fish is a mob caporegime, plotting her own rise even as Penguin plots against her.  Fish is an interesting character, and Smith is clearly enjoying herself, playing the role in a melodramatic fashion that's actually quite entertaining.  She fits in well as a Batman villain, but a problem arises about halfway through the season (around the point at which I suspect the writers had to begin improvising when they realized they were getting a full order of episodes) when Fish's major arc ends.  She spends most of the second half of the season in a bizarre organ-trafficking subplot that ultimately goes nowhere, and renders her character - and screentime - somewhat pointless.   She's fun, but the writers clearly weren't sure what to do with Fish past a certain point.

David Mazouz as The Boy Who Would Be Bat.

   The most glaring problem in the cast, however, is Erin Richards as Barbara Kean, Gordon's fiancee.  A number of people have been suffering from the misconception that this Barbara is the future Batgirl, but that character is Jim Gordon's adopted daughter; Richards is in fact playing the character who becomes Gordon's first wife in the comics, and who happens to share a first name with her more famous niece.  Almost from the start, Barbara is a useless character, who serves only to cause soap-opera drama for her fiancee, including the requisite 'keeping secrets' trope of superhero adaptations, and a contrived romantic subplot involving lesbianism and drug use.  This subplot provides no practical purpose, and indeed seems only included in an attempt to be shocking, but is just plain bland, and eventually peters out.  Richards's role after the first few episodes seems forced, but rather than write her out, the show continues to give her screen time.  Mercifully, she vanishes for a stretch around mid-season, but returns with a vengeance embroiled in a late plotline that riffs off of Fifty Shades of Grey before dissolving into a laughably nonsensical component of the finale that sees her waving a knife around and babbling like a loon.  To be fair, much of the problem with Barbara lies in the hands of the writers, but Richards is a rather wooden performer who only serves to make Barbara brittle and obnoxious.

   Those represent the core characters, but there's a fairly large supporting cast, replete with names that will be familiar to casual viewers, and even more to comics fans:  The Flying Graysons, Leslie Thompkins, Lucius Fox, Sara Essen, Renee Montoya, Crispus Allen, Gillian Loeb, Ned Flass, Harvey Dent, Jonathan Crane, Tommy Elliot, Carmine Falcone, Sal Maroni, Victor Zsasz, Sionis, Buchinsky, The Red Hood Gang, and probably others I'm forgetting.  There's also a young man introduced who may or may not become The Joker, which frankly is a little heavy-handed, and rather unnecessary.

     Ultimately, Gotham's first season is one of schizophrenia, stemming largely from a lack of a clear idea of what it wants to be.  The whole show is predicated on the inevitable failure of its protagonists - for if Gordon and the police are successful, then what purpose would Batman serve?  As a result, we have characters who don't know what to do with themselves, for to do what would serve any other show would here render that same show moot.  The show struggles with a self-consciousness, and instead of being content to let the story flow, continues to introduce a succession of 'name' characters to hold attention, without regard to how inorganically it does so.  What this reveals, I'm afraid, is the weakness of the overall premise, because without all those names, there's simply not enough story to hold an audience's focus.  It might be a smart move to simply jump the story ahead a few years, rather than trying to move on a week-to-week basis, if the creators really feel they need to insert as many Batman elements into the show as they do.  In order for the show to feel natural and unforced, it would pretty much have to be a police procedural with mob story elements.  In order to keep the audience, it has to keep name-dropping in an artificial manner.   It ends up trying to be all things, but not really succeeding well at any of them.  Rather than a tapestry, it's more of a crazy quilt.
    

     In spite of all that, there's still something fun about the show, and it may just be that as someone who has a fairly well-established idea of what Gotham City is 'supposed' to be, I'm expecting too much.  There are certainly things to like, it's just tough to like most of them unequivocally.  I am, I fully admit, predisposed to like the show anyway, and I'll definitely keep watching, but I hope the show manages to get a better sense of self heading into the second season, and can make itself sharper, smarter, and cleaner. 

FINAL RATING: 5 PAWS (OUT OF 10)