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Spoilers Gotham - Season 2

Finally caught last week's episode online. I dunno, I may have to follow Christopher's lead...this show has just become weird in a way that's unpleasant to watch. There's a better show in there somewhere wanting to get out.
 
The Dead Mixer said:
Finally caught last week's episode online. I dunno, I may have to follow Christopher's lead...this show has just become weird in a way that's unpleasant to watch. There's a better show in there somewhere wanting to get out.
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Given that Supergirl is in the same time slot and that its pilot got rave reviews and humongonormous ratings, I have to wonder if Gotham will be around much longer. Granted, there's probably not much overlap in their target audiences aside from the devoted superhero fanbase, but I'd think it'd still have an impact.

It'd be kinda nice to see something Super beat out something Batty for a change.
 
I love the show. Any show that his this kind of production value and feels like a comic book in the true sense of the word (not a superhero comic book, but a noir-ish one) has my attention.

And I love that hardware store form a few episodes ago that sells weapons and explosives. "Can we get a price check on brass knuckles in Toxic Green."

I tried to watch The Flash recently. The directing, blocking and line deliveries ranged from uninspired to atrocious; whenever there were more than two characters ina shot, they all stood in a half circle and kept their arms at their sides and spewed cliche superhero crap lines "is he a speedster from another dimension." Gotham isn't afraid to be a twisted, edgier satire.
 
Flying Spaghetti Monster said:
I love the show. Any show that his this kind of production value and feels like a comic book in the true sense of the word (not a superhero comic book, but a noir-ish one) has my attention.
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I'm not aware of any modern comics that embrace quite this show's level of campy absurdity, particularly alongside such graphic violence. Except maybe something like Judge Dredd, I suppose, but that's more satire than camp.


Gotham isn't afraid to be a twisted, edgier satire.
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Okay, so you think it is satire. I don't see that. What is it satirizing, and how?
 
Flying Spaghetti Monster said:
I love the show. Any show that his this kind of production value and feels like a comic book in the true sense of the word (not a superhero comic book, but a noir-ish one) has my attention.

And I love that hardware store form a few episodes ago that sells weapons and explosives. "Can we get a price check on brass knuckles in Toxic Green."

I tried to watch The Flash recently. The directing, blocking and line deliveries ranged from uninspired to atrocious; whenever there were more than two characters ina shot, they all stood in a half circle and kept their arms at their sides and spewed cliche superhero crap lines "is he a speedster from another dimension." Gotham isn't afraid to be a twisted, edgier satire.
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I am sure there is an empty cell in Arkham waiting for you! ;)
 
I wrote a review of a recent episode and tried to articulate just what the show is satirizing when I say it's a satire. So here
There’s a new film called The Walk, in which recounts a man’s dangerous tightrope walk across the Twin Towers way back when. I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure the man falters at least once during the walk. Gotham’s producers have also been balancing a pretty thin tightrope since the show’s inception. They have hard-boiled and cliched cop procedural stuff, balanced with a few characters whom we care about and are forced to make really tough choices, all set in a gritty world that occasionally embraces a wild overly comic cook type of feel. More to the point, the producers were able to use these rather disparate elements to satirize modern serialized storytelling, and somehow they’ve been subtle enough about it that viewers could get invested into these convoluted story-lines without even realizing that it was all a satire. It was the producers and creators of this show, then, who would have the last laugh (to take the title of the previous episode) when they’d look at who’s still watching this thing week after week and they’d sit back in satisfaction, having lured them in. The insidious nature of satire works when it convinces it audience that it isn’t satire.
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I hear a lot of hate toward Gotham, and that’s fine. Really. It is. I could say “go away.” After all, there are a lot of other comic book-based live action television shows out there, and what makes them popular is that deliver not just that they advertise, but they also deliver exactly what people want. You want to see the Flash in live action show? Watch the aptly named The Flash. If you know the mythology of the character, you are (I think – I haven’t watched) going to something pretty close to what you wanted. Marvel’s Daredevil is a good show about – dare I say it – Daredevil! Supergirl is a pretty faithful update of… Supergirl. These shows are literally taking the comic book characters that they are about and putting them on screen in ways that are generally faithful. But what about Gotham? It’s not a show about Batman. Though the show takes place in Gotham City and is called Gotham, simply saying it’s about Gotham City doesn’t tell us a lot about what kind of show it is. As we all learned in the first season, the show is a both a gloriously cliched hard-boiled cop show that follows the model of the police procedural, while at the same time it’s an over-stylized and ludicrous live-action comic book. Some might say that it switches from one to the other just to keep itself interesting, but there’s more to it than that.
So I won’t say “go away.” Stick around. Please.
So… about that first season of Gotham. By the time the “Balloonman” (one of the early episodes) came around a lot of people had tuned out. They were like “what the hell is this?” There’s certainly sincerity in asking that question. What they maybe really wanted was a tried-and-true Batman show; something with Batman as an actual character! Maybe it would a street-level crime show with Bats in his early years kicking ass and taking names. That wasn’t going to happen, but those folks who wanted only that will probably be happy with Daredevil, since the show is exactly that, a poor man’s Batman street-level crime show of a hero kicking ass and taking names (bonus- he even gets those stupid ears, uh, horns at then end of the season). Since that show gives fans exactly what they want, the rave reviews it’s gotten are not all that surprising. Yet despite it’s grit, is a show that is just about the hero as we know him and as a result maybe it’s not all that surprising. (Again, I’m not one to talk, as I only watched the pilot).
Yet, when I think about it, I don’t really want “exactly what I want.” I would rather have something that is daring, something that isn’t guaranteed to be what I want or expect it to be, or that’s guaranteed to work. Bottom line: I want something that, whether it succeeds or fails, takes chances. I also want something that has something to say about the comic book movie/TV genre, instead of something that’s just another comic book show.
So people tuned out when they realized that this show was going to be a dark gritty narrative about the Gotham City underworld while at the same time it include outlandish characters such as the Balloonman and the Mark of the Goat? Is that what happened? They couldn’t process the fact that the new Penguin is psychotic and very cool but his mother (played by Carol Kane) looks like the Penguin’s mother exactly as you’d expect her to look in Tim Burton’s version of Gotham.
The creators of Gotham are not only unafraid to remind us once in a while that this show is, essentially, a moving comic book; unfortunately comic books are taken so seriously these days that people don’t want to know that in the past, they were never afraid to jolt – even shake – their readers awake with moments, ideas, and story twists that were often just insane and asinine at the same time, but the people that make this new show Gotham don’t mind going there just like the comic books of old did before the medium became “important.”.
What they also don’t want to consider is the fact that maybe – just maybe – this show is a satire of just how far (too far in fact) we’ve come with the live action comic book medium right now. Please note: the best way to do satire, is to know your material and replicate it perfectly – and this show largely feels like a real cop drama set in the familiar Gotham City that characters like Batman, the Penguin, and the Joker would indeed inhabit. But then, like any good satire, there are those few choice opportunities to take it too far, like someone screwing something together, and turning the screw a little too tight until the threads wear out. Like most shows on TV, they will allow plot threads to meander through many episodes, and sometimes they allow at least a few of these threads to pay off gloriously, and sometimes they don’t. Unlike those other shows, Gotham is satirizing how the viewer allows him or herself to get drawn into such stories, often waiting with baited breath for things to resolve only to realize that each season is just one continuous story. In some ways, it’s a bit unnerving that our entertainment is delivered to us in this way, and the people that make Gotham are more than happy to lure us through a labyrinth of often strange plots, mixing hardcore drama (remember that big choice Gordon had to make in the pilot?) to strange comedy (like how the Red Hood gang starts) to some actual insight (like how Falcone explains his role in grand scheme of things, also in the pilot) to just absurd strangeness (like the aforementioned Baloonman or a myriad of other off-the-wall episodes). This show can’t be pinned down. As I hinted above, maybe that’s what I was looking for, even if it fails.
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Dick Whitman said:
Flying Spaghetti Monster said:
I love the show. Any show that his this kind of production value and feels like a comic book in the true sense of the word (not a superhero comic book, but a noir-ish one) has my attention.

And I love that hardware store form a few episodes ago that sells weapons and explosives. "Can we get a price check on brass knuckles in Toxic Green."

I tried to watch The Flash recently. The directing, blocking and line deliveries ranged from uninspired to atrocious; whenever there were more than two characters ina shot, they all stood in a half circle and kept their arms at their sides and spewed cliche superhero crap lines "is he a speedster from another dimension." Gotham isn't afraid to be a twisted, edgier satire.
Click to expand...

I am sure there is an empty cell in Arkham waiting for you! ;)
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:)

Just want to add: I want to see that new Evil Dead show.. and it's interesting that (from the trailer) it seems to have a similar sense of humor to Gotham)
 
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So...Gotham's crappy storytelling is deliberately crappy as a satire of good storytelling? And the creators are trying to drive viewers away so they can have a laugh at the expense of the people who are crazy enough to keep watching? Mmkay.
 
Maybe that's just it. But at least it has an edge. At least it's inspired. To bring up the Evil Dead again.. is anyone really watching that for the story? I mean the story has to be good (or at least serviceable) but what people would really watch that show for is Ash.. his attitude. The humor, the edge, the approach. The stuff that makes that fun to watch.

There are a ton of subplots from Gotham that annoyed me. Really. Yet every time think I'm going to stop watching.. they lure me back in with a scene that is surprisingly fresh, or funny. In a way, I don't watch the show for the story (but if the story is good, it helps) I watch it for how the story is told.
 
No, FSM, just no, a 1,000 times no.
Even as someone who is still enjoying Gotham I can pretty confidently say that is not the case. It's just insane, campy, and over the top just for the hell of it. There is no deeper meaning here.
It is amusing at times the knots people to try to find deeper meaning for things that obviously have none.
The Flash is a great show, and Gotham is getting to be a so bad it's good kind of thing for me. I love how insane, and campy it is but I also don't take it that seriously.
I finally got caught up after falling behind, and I enjoyed the last couple of episodes. I thought the stuff with Firefly was pretty good. It was nice to get a story that focused so much on Selena.
I loved Butch's mallet hand. It's stuff like that that makes me love Gotham, it's just give so many great WTF moments each week. I'm curious to see where they are going to take him since the Galavans appear to have broken his brainwashing from Penguin.
I'm also curious to see what exactly Galavan has planned for Bruce and Wayne Enterprises.
 
I'm smelling a rape accusation from Silver, or maybe a pregnancy?

She's not a person, that kid is most certainly a tool to destroy or assimilate the Waynes.
 
I think they're a little young for either of those options. I know there's been some crazy stuff on Gotham but doubt they'd involve 14 year old David Mazouz and 15 year old Natalie Alyn Lind in a storyline like that. Maybe if this was HBO.
 
JD said:
No, FSM, just no, a 1,000 times no.
Even as someone who is still enjoying Gotham I can pretty confidently say that is not the case. It's just insane, campy, and over the top just for the hell of it. There is no deeper meaning here.
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I agree. The writing on this show is too fundamentally incompetent to have some brilliant satirical purpose behind it. It's just bad.
 
Silver is not a person, and I doubt that she's even Galavan's niece.

Silver was probably picked up off the street, thrown into a cage and then beaten and conditioned for months until she was brainwashed compliant just like Butch to do what she was told no matter the consequences.

She is a tricky deadly trap, not an innocent little ignorant girl.

OH!

Natalie is from the Goldbergs!

Basically, if I was Galavan I'd find a honeytrap (Silver) with a horrible genetic disorder, or the likelihood of passing on a horrible genetic disorder, so that the next and most likely last generation of Waynes were blind, deformed, mad and severely mentally challenged.

Galavan doesn't want to kill Bruce, he wants to destroy the Waynes and their legacy, and the weapon he's chosen to do that with is a pretty little blonde girl.

Something depraved is afoot.
 
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Even if that is true, which I doubt, that doesn't change the fact that the actress is only 15.
 
You know that Gotham is not real right?

Acting is not doing.

(A man called horse)

Silver is jerking on a pulley attached to nylon wire and fishhooks pierced into Bruce's nipples suspending him a couple feet off the ground.

Galavan is a bad man doing bad things, and if he's not doing bad things then he's not a bad guy. It's the difference between supervillainy and moderatevillainy. If Theo wants to half ass his crazy, then he should move to Metropolis or Central City where the super heroes are made out of rainbows and fluffy kitten smiles.

THISISGOTHAM!

Meanwhile just because the actress is 15, the character could be 23 pretending to be 15.

How old was Linda Blair when she said "Your mother sucks cocks in hell" to the world?

(She was 14.)
 
That was a movie 40 years ago, Gotham is a modern network TV show. I just don't see the Network letting them go that route with characters that young, especially when one of them is one of the show's main heroes.
 
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