Gotham - Season 1

[DigificWriter]

I find it incredibly baffling and flabbergasting that people have such a problem with the whole concept of Gotham telling the origin stories of Batman's Rogues gallery in an era that is pre-Batman when said concept has been known to be a key piece of the series' conceptual DNA since it was first announced last year.

 

[Icemizer]

I think watching the Penguin rise to power might be my favorite story going forward. Nigma had one scene and it was ok and his look at Gordon solving the riddle was well handled but he is just not going to be interesting right away. The Ivy intro was meaningless. Catkid could be cool but unless she brcomes friends with Bruce quickly I will grow bored with her just being there in the distance.
I will also be interested in watching Gordon become consumed by the job to the point of it wrecking his personal life(if they go that route)
In any event its a show that worked well for me as a pilot.

 

[sojourner]

I find it incredibly baffling and flabbergasting that people have such a problem with the whole concept of Gotham telling the origin stories of Batman's Rogues gallery in an era that is pre-Batman when said concept has been known to be a key piece of the series' conceptual DNA since it was first announced last year.

I think the problem people here are generally having is the amount of it they shoved into the first episode.

 

[Guy Gardener]

This is how they did The Penguin on Ally McBeal.

They took a bloke outside, side of the road, and convinced him that oral sex was imminent. After his pants were pulled down to his ankles, they would drive away slowly from him in a car, convincing him loudly and urgently that if he ran with his pants around his ankles that he would catch up and not be abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Christopher]

I find it incredibly baffling and flabbergasting that people have such a problem with the whole concept of Gotham telling the origin stories of Batman's Rogues gallery in an era that is pre-Batman when said concept has been known to be a key piece of the series' conceptual DNA since it was first announced last year.

I think davejames explained it very well. It's not that we were unaware the show was going to go in this direction -- it's that we don't think it should have. Awareness of someone else's intentions does not compel agreement with them.

In fact, when it was first announced, it was described as a show about Jim Gordon and the GCPD, and it was unclear what role, if any, Bruce Wayne would play. It was in subsequent announcements that they started to spin it more as a "Smallville for Batman" show and play that aspect up over the GCPD aspects. Which led me to suspect that the original intent was to have a stronger GCPD focus but that they were pressured to include more familiar Batman elements -- much like how the creators of Star Trek: Enterprise initially wanted to avoid things like transporters and Klingons or just gradually work them in, but were pressured by UPN to introduce those elements sooner and more prominently.

 

[DigificWriter]

^ That impression is very quickly dispelled if you take the time to listen to Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon talk about the series and its goals and intent.

When you listen to Heller and Cannon speak about the series, it becomes clear very quickly that it is and always was intended to be about 3 things:
1) exploring why a city like Gotham comes to need Batman
2) exploring the largely untold origin stories of Batman's iconic Rogues gallery
3) answering the question 'What if a rookie James Gordon was one of the people responsible for investigating the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne?'

Certain aspects of the above might not have been present in the information we initially received about the series, but they were always there and were always going to BE there.

 

[davejames]

Well even if they did say beforehand that they'd be squeezing in all these character origins, I still expected and hoped it would be done in a much more subtle and less ham-handed way than this.

Instead from the very start we see Selina jumping around rooftops, we see Penguin acting crazy and waddling around, we see Nigma speaking in riddles... They all but have giant blinking signs over their heads saying "Future Batman Villain."

 

[DigificWriter]

Well even if they did say beforehand that they'd be squeezing in all these character origins, I still expected and hoped it would be done in a much more subtle and less ham-handed way than this.

Instead from the very start we see Selina jumping around rooftops, we see Penguin acting crazy and waddling around, we see Nigma speaking in riddles... They all but have giant blinking signs over their heads saying "Future Batman Villain."

That's the entire point. People know these characters, and with one of the series' 3 conceptual cornerstones being to explore their origin stories, there's no reason for Heller and Co. to beat around the bush in introducing them and planting the seeds for who they either are or will become.

 

[Servo]

The same with Selina. Sure, she can be a pickpocket, but not nearly at the skill-level she was shown in the teaser.

She didn't strike me as highly skilled. So she managed to run around an old woman quick enough to lift a bottle of milk, but her pickpocketing wasn't exactly smooth. The guy noticed straight away after she practically delved into his pocket for the wallet, and the only reason she got away is because she was small and more agile. Good basis for what she's due to become, but hardly a ninja kid. More like an opportunist riding her luck.

 

[Greg Cox]

And let's be honest. If they hadn't packed the first ep with Bat-references, some people would be complaining that "This is just another gritty cop show! Why bother setting it in Gotham if we don't get stuff from the comics?"

 

[Guy Gardener]

What people say and what people do can be very different.

I waited for Red John to be run to ground patiently for 6 years.

Heller got heller distracted with the murder mystery of the week and barely apologised each year for stringing me along for another 24 episodes, the prick.

 

[Christopher]

^ That impression is very quickly dispelled if you take the time to listen to Bruno Heller and Danny Cannon talk about the series and its goals and intent.

I'm aware of what they've said in promotional videos and interviews, but surely you must realize that those aren't guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate, since they're about encouraging people to watch the show as it exists now, not chronicling its origins with historical precision. And certainly such interviews would gloss over initial debates and network pressures, if they existed, and put up a front of "Yes, this is the show as we always intended it." So the interviews are not necessarily probative. Of course, you could be right, but we can't really rely on promotional, advertising-oriented materials to be absolutely truthful. To be sure, we'd need access to more firsthand information, such as the original pitch document or early correspondence. Or interviews geared more toward behind-the-scenes analysis than show promotion.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

Again, if you are only casually acquainted with the comics it doesn't seem so heavy handed. I didn't even know whatshisname was supposed to be the riddler and I didn't know that little girl was supposed to be anybody at all. She grows up to be some criminal? For the casual fan of the Batman mythos, it works very, very well.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

What people say and what people do can be very different.

I waited for Red John to be run to ground patiently for 6 years.

Heller got heller distracted with the murder mystery of the week and barely apologised each year for stringing me along for another 24 episodes, the prick.

lmao

 

[DigificWriter]

I'm aware of what they've said in promotional videos and interviews, but surely you must realize that those aren't guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate, since they're about encouraging people to watch the show as it exists now, not chronicling its origins with historical precision. And certainly such interviews would gloss over initial debates and network pressures, if they existed, and put up a front of "Yes, this is the show as we always intended it." So the interviews are not necessarily probative. Of course, you could be right, but we can't really rely on promotional, advertising-oriented materials to be absolutely truthful. To be sure, we'd need access to more firsthand information, such as the original pitch document or early correspondence. Or interviews geared more toward behind-the-scenes analysis than show promotion.

I wouldn't consider the "Legend Reborn" Behind-the-Scenes featurette to be 'promotional', and that is once place where Heller and Cannon specifically outline the 3 conceptual cornerstones for the series, with the first thing out of Heller's mouth in that video being focused on telling the origin stories of Batman's iconic Rogues gallery.

 

[Greg Cox]

Again, if you are only casually acquainted with the comics it doesn't seem so heavy handed. I didn't even know whatshisname was supposed to be the riddler and I didn't know that little girl was supposed to be anybody at all. She grows up to be some criminal? For the casual fan of the Batman mythos, it works very, very well.

Good point. Not everybody has the names "Edward Nigma" or "Oswald Cobblepot" burned into their brains, let alone "Renee Montoya" or "Harvey Bullock."

You can't be so subtle that the Bat-references fly completely over the heads of the average TV viewer . . . which is who such shows are really aimed at, not the hardcore Comic-Con crowd.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

I didn't even know that Harvey Bullock was a character from the comics. I thought the writers just made him up for the series.

IMHO, the most important things that TPTB needed to hit a home run on were the casting of Penguin and of Jim Gordon. They hit it out of the park both times.

 

[davejames]

Well I'm not sure you really needed to be a hardcore fan to get the references they included (Nigma talks in riddles, Poison Ivy is called... Ivy). Maybe if you're just completely unfamiliar with the Batman world, but I'm not sure many would really be tuning in to Gotham if they've never had any interest whatsoever before.

 

[Dorian Thompson]

Apparently I do need to be a hardcore fan because the riddler dude flew completely over my head, and I've never seen any incarnation of Batman with Poison Ivy. I've watched the reruns of the 60s series; I saw the first Tim Burton movie with Jack Nicholson and I saw two of the Nolan movies. I didn't read comics. I have a basic familiarity-the murder of the Wayne's, Alfred the Butler, Joker, Catwoman being named Selina Kyle, the Riddler, and batgirl being Barbara Gordon.

 

[Greg Cox]

But why bother being tricky or subtle about it if people are tuning in to see Batman characters? Sometimes a blunt force approach is just what the job calls for.