Gotham - Season 1

[The Old Mixer]

Maybe Leslie is the girlfriend Jim deserves, but not the one he needs right now...or something like that.

 

[Mr Light]

Holy crap. I forgot about Montoya and Allen. Are they still on the show or what?

According to IMDB there are THIRTEEN regular cast members credited for all 22 episodes

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3749900/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

 

[Christopher]

Holy crap. I forgot about Montoya and Allen. Are they still on the show or what?http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3749900/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

I think I saw a recent interview with Victoria Cartagena confirming that she has more appearances ahead.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Holy crap. I forgot about Montoya and Allen. Are they still on the show or what?

They're held in the Ivy Tower where sidelined characters await their chance to return to the show for a quick appearance.

I wonder how much of the Penguin/Fish/etc. storyline they had fleshed out in the beginning or if that just started to take over as they went. Though I kid it I've kind of liked all the disparate stuff going on, some series don't feel like they go anywhere and Gotham feels like it's hit a lot of stuff for only 16 episodes.

 

[Crusher Disciple]

Man, things are going to get rough soon. People are going to wind up in ditches, the ICU, without adult supervision, dogs and cats...living together!

 

[JD]

Didn't someone say that in some version of the comics continuity, Barbara was Jim's niece and not daughter? If so I guess that means they could have Jim not get back together with Barbara and not completely eliminate the chances of her existing in the future.

I have to admit, I'm usually the one who likes characters most people don't (like Katrina in Sleepy Hollow), but in Barbara's case, even I don't like her.

 

[Christopher]

Didn't someone say that in some version of the comics continuity, Barbara was Jim's niece and not daughter?

That's right. In Miller's Batman: Year One, Barbara Kean Gordon was pregnant with a son (James Jr.) and Babs/Batgirl wasn't in the picture at all. Apparently he intended Babs to be conceived later; but since that was, well, Batman's first year, the timing didn't work out. So when they did bring Batgirl into the post-Crisis continuity, they retconned her into a niece (Jim's brother's daughter) who was some years older than James Jr. and whom Jim and Sarah Essen adopted as their daughter. However, it was subsequently retconned that Jim's "niece" Barbara was actually his biological daughter through an affair years earlier with his brother's future wife, Thelma. Comics, everybody!

I have to admit, I'm usually the one who likes characters most people don't (like Katrina in Sleepy Hollow), but in Barbara's case, even I don't like her.

She's pretty hot, which predisposed me to like her, but they haven't really done much with her as a character and she seems gratuitous at this point. Besides, Morena Baccarin is hotter.

 

[Vendikarr]

I made a quip about Morena Baccarin's acting a few weeks back, but she's really grown on me as Thompkins. If she's supposed to be the complication and we're supposed to be rooting for Jim and Barbara, the show's messing it up.

Like I said, Barbara's role in the comics was basically to be dumped, so I think her relationship with Jim here was specifically set up to fail. I'm not sure why they still have her in the cast, though. Unless it's so they'll have an excuse to keep using that big, expensive apartment set. Or maybe they have some storyline in mind for her and Montoya.

The only reason I can see for Barbara still being around is they will introduce that she's already pregnant. How long in show time has it been since she left him, a month or so?

Is this Jim Gordon the type to go back to her out of obligation since she is carrying his child? They want to hit all the right notes, so if Barbara Kean is here to bring about Barbara Gordon, that would have to happen around this time. At least in pre-Crisis days, Barbara Gordon was always older than Dick Grayson.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^I think you've got something there.

That's right. In Miller's Batman: Year One, Barbara Kean Gordon was pregnant with a son (James Jr.) and Babs/Batgirl wasn't in the picture at all. Apparently he intended Babs to be conceived later; but since that was, well, Batman's first year, the timing didn't work out.

I was under the impression that Miller was trying to retcon Batgirl out of existence entirely. It didn't take, as Denny O'Neil quickly retconned her back in with the more convoluted family connection.

 

[Morpheus 02]

And man, Morena Baccarin is gorgeous. I haven't seen her play a character this cheerful and enthusiastic before, and I really like it.

She really is...

I got to wondering... Almost no comic storyline that *I* recall has Jim Gordon getting pally with Leslie Thompkins, is there? I remember there were some were Leslie and Alfred got together. But not Jim and Leslie.

Also - did I miss Blackmask? Who was he? I think we've seen Zsasz, Riddler, Penguin, Two-face, Catwoman, Joker, Scarecrow and maybe even the Professor Pyg guy ( I really don't like Grant Morrison's additions to the Rogue Gallery - tho' I like Damien Wayne). Who else have we seen? Fish/Butch are new to the Bat-universe, right?

I like Morena's character -- i just don't like that her name is Leslie Thompkins (eliminates a needed motherly role for Bruce, to help him stay focused on true justice, and not get any crazy-crazy ideas). . I think she seems like a logical choice for Gordon's wife, and inspire him to become commissioner, and help him figure out who to trust.



Would it be possible for someone in "Gotham" to kidnap Barbara, thinking she was still Gordon's girlfriend, and then in some convoluted dramatic plot with Jim hunting for her, kill her off? Then he could name his daughter after Barbara, in honor of her?

I got a kick out of the stuff with the circus. The Grayson stuff was fun, and I liked the Jerome story. They keep talking about the saga of the Joker beginning, so it sounds like there's a pretty good chance we haven't seen the last of him.

Honestly, I'm not sure it was a good idea to bring in the proto-Joker this early. What can they do with him from here? If he's already a murderous psychopath with a twisted sense of humor, where else can they take him as a character? Plus, giving the Joker a name and an origin at all is kind of demystifying.

i see what you're saying...but maybe they can show why he's a criminal genius....i liked the theory (at least form the recent trilogy) where the Joker was a vet, so it explains his abilities with explosives & evading police & such), but that can't fit here.

I don't mind him having a "human" identity, though.

The Joker already had an origin story in the comics- he was the Red Hood. Who coincidentally will be showing up this season.

Based on this week's episode, i don't see how Jerome (J = J??) will connect with the gang, since presumably, he's in jail.

 

[Christopher]

Is this Jim Gordon the type to go back to her out of obligation since she is carrying his child? They want to hit all the right notes, so if Barbara Kean is here to bring about Barbara Gordon, that would have to happen around this time. At least in pre-Crisis days, Barbara Gordon was always older than Dick Grayson.

As I said, there have been different interpretations of just who Barbara Kean is the mother of. When the character was first introduced by Alan Brennert and Dick Giordano in the 1981 story "To Kill a Legend," she was no doubt meant to be Barbara's future mother in an alternate timeline that was running two decades behind the main universe; she had the same coloring as Babs and worked in a library. But Frank Miller pretty much scuttled that idea, as discussed below:

I was under the impression that Miller was trying to retcon Batgirl out of existence entirely. It didn't take, as Denny O'Neil quickly retconned her back in with the more convoluted family connection.

From the link above, according to Bob Greenberger, who was a DC editor at the time:

For the record, Frank Miller and Denny O’Neil both forgot about daughter Barbara when Batman: Year One was being produced and Frank told Barbara Randall Kesel that he named the character of Gordon’s wife after her without referencing Alan’s story. When that error saw print, Barbara and I quickly prepped a retcon patch making young Barbara Jim’s niece, something which stuck until the New 52 revised history. In the current continuity, Barbara was mother to both James Jr. and Barbara, unusual in having both children named after each parent.

So there are three possibilities: The implied Brennert version where she's Babs's mother; the post-Miller version where she's James Jr.'s mother; and the New 52 version where she's the mother to both of them.

I like Morena's character -- i just don't like that her name is Leslie Thompkins (eliminates a needed motherly role for Bruce, to help him stay focused on true justice, and not get any crazy-crazy ideas).

Again, there have been different interpretations of Leslie's role over time. Pre-Crisis, she was just a woman who had comforted Bruce after the murder, and who didn't understand why Batman took a particular interest in her on that night every year. Post-Crisis, I think it was Mike Barr's Batman: Year Two that elevated her into a key confidante and lifelong influence for Bruce. I'm not sure where she stands in the New 52 continuity.

The Joker already had an origin story in the comics- he was the Red Hood. Who coincidentally will be showing up this season.

Well, we know he was associated with the Red Hood gang, but we never learned his name or who he was before that. The Killing Joke offered a version of his origin, but still left him nameless, and later stories suggested that was just one of many fabricated origin stories the Joker told -- an idea that was used in The Dark Knight for Heath Ledger's Joker. Until now, only the '89 movie ever attempted to assert a civilian name for the Joker, Jack Napier. Batman:TAS unfortunately used the Napier name a couple of times, but the New Batman Adventures episode "Beware the Creeper" retconned that as an alias, restoring the Joker to his proper anonymity.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Would it be possible for someone in "Gotham" to kidnap Barbara, thinking she was still Gordon's girlfriend, and then in some convoluted dramatic plot with Jim hunting for her, kill her off? Then he could name his daughter after Barbara, in honor of her?

I was thinking along those lines at the suggestion that Barbara was pregnant. However, I don't know if Gotham really needs Jim having to take care of a baby.

 

[Marc]

Holy crap. I forgot about Montoya and Allen. Are they still on the show or what?

According to IMDB there are THIRTEEN regular cast members credited for all 22 episodes

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3749900/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

Isn't there a rule from the actors guild or something that if an actor appears in more than 7 eps of a season they get billing as a regular even if they don't appear in all of the eps?

 

[Christopher]

Isn't there a rule from the actors guild or something that if an actor appears in more than 7 eps of a season they get billing as a regular even if they don't appear in all of the eps?

I never heard that one before. Maybe it's a recent rule.

 

[Captain Craig]

Isn't there a rule from the actors guild or something that if an actor appears in more than 7 eps of a season they get billing as a regular even if they don't appear in all of the eps?

I never heard that one before. Maybe it's a recent rule.

If that's true does the Guild have a definition for what constitutes a season? Is it a percentage of episodes for any given show? I've got to think if there is such a rule it's got to have flexibility since cable and network have a different standards for a "regular season"..

 

[JD]

Holy crap. I forgot about Montoya and Allen. Are they still on the show or what?

According to IMDB there are THIRTEEN regular cast members credited for all 22 episodes

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3749900/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast

Isn't there a rule from the actors guild or something that if an actor appears in more than 7 eps of a season they get billing as a regular even if they don't appear in all of the eps?

I find that kind of hard to believe. I've seen recent shows were an actors has been in every or at least most of the episodes of a 22 episode season, and was still just credited as a guest star.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I like Morena's character -- i just don't like that her name is Leslie Thompkins (eliminates a needed motherly role for Bruce, to help him stay focused on true justice, and not get any crazy-crazy ideas).

It's still early...for all we know, Bruce will be meeting Leslie via Gordon, and she'll wind up becoming an important figure in his life.

 

[Morpheus 02]

I like Morena's character -- i just don't like that her name is Leslie Thompkins (eliminates a needed motherly role for Bruce, to help him stay focused on true justice, and not get any crazy-crazy ideas).

It's still early...for all we know, Bruce will be meeting Leslie via Gordon, and she'll wind up becoming an important figure in his life.

You're probably right...but i don't see Morena's Leslie as being specifically the type to help young Bruce to stay morally grounded in his crusade...i still would rather have an elderly (or middle aged) social worker.

But like i said, I like her character...

 

[The Old Mixer]

She meets Bruce, her mommy hormones will kick in.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Bruce is going to get hurt.

Highwire kung fu, whatever?

Leslie is going to fix him, and then declare Alfred an unfit parent.