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Spoilers Gotham - Season 2

"incorruptible". What in the hell are y'all talking about?! I'm not saying that the Jim Gordon we have known from the comics is a BAD guy, or even that he isn't justified in a lot of what he does, BUT, he's the police commissioner, sworn to uphold the law, and he actively cooperates with a man dressed as a bat who breaks and enters, commits assaults and any number of other crimes, while operating illegal military grade equipment inside Gotham.

But he's not spending his entire career covering up his own past MURDERS. Why does nobody understand my point that this is a matter of degree, that there is a line between being a morally compromised good guy and being a straight-up criminal? The Gordon of the first season could be plausibly described as the former, but the Gordon of the second season has crossed the line into the latter category.

Look at it this way -- a lot of drinking water has trace amounts of arsenic in it, but that's considered safe if it's below a certain acceptable amount. It's a little bit impure, but not so much that it isn't still acceptable. But if the people in charge of the quality of the drinking water allow the arsenic to rise beyond a certain level, then it become poisoned and they've failed in their job. The same is true here. In the first season, this was a show about Gordon making slight moral compromises, but the levels of impurity were low enough that he could still be considered acceptably heroic. In the second season, though, the writers have allowed that corruption to escalate to an unacceptably high level that has outright poisoned the character. And that means they've failed in their job. They've lost all sense of proportion and taken things way too far.

Although that's part and parcel of the ludicrously high body count that practically every character on the show contributes to. The Penguin is a casual and frequent killer. The Riddler is a repeat killer, even though he isn't in the comics. Even Selina has committed murder, even though Catwoman is generally no worse than a thief and an antihero. The writers on this show can't seem to think of any way to generate drama or tension other than with killing.
 
But if the people in charge of the quality of the drinking water allow the arsenic to rise beyond a certain level, then it become poisoned and they've failed in their job.

Their job is to entertain the viewers, the death count on Gotham is no higher than it was on Smallville or Doctor Who for that matter. The writers had written themselves into a corner after Gordon lost his job, by just doing his job because the then Commissioner hated him.
 
No. He lost his job briefly to get Lee.

I suppose they could have just "assigned" her to the GCPD morgue, but it was nice that some effort was made.
 
"incorruptible". What in the hell are y'all talking about?! I'm not saying that the Jim Gordon we have known from the comics is a BAD guy, or even that he isn't justified in a lot of what he does, BUT, he's the police commissioner, sworn to uphold the law, and he actively cooperates with a man dressed as a bat who breaks and enters, commits assaults and any number of other crimes, while operating illegal military grade equipment inside Gotham.

I think the corruption ship sailed a loooong time ago. :lol:

That's right -- and doesn't he pass on confidential information on a regular basis? I mean, not equal to murder, but add up all the crimes, and it'd add up to the punishment for the 2 murders Jim committed (maybe even more; i'm sure he'd get lesser sentences from most juries/judges, based on the victims)
 
That's right -- and doesn't he pass on confidential information on a regular basis? I mean, not equal to murder, but add up all the crimes, and it'd add up to the punishment for the 2 murders Jim committed (maybe even more; i'm sure he'd get lesser sentences from most juries/judges, based on the victims)

I reject that equivalency. Murder is a fundamentally different category of crime, a more profoundly immoral act for reasons far deeper than some kind of crude bookkeeping of days in prison. You can't just add up a certain number of misdemeanors or nonviolent felonies or whatever and say they're cumulatively just as bad as killing someone. Morality is not about arithmetic. And it's certainly not just about whether you get punished or not. A Jim Gordon who only cared about his own ability to stay out of prison, who perceived no other reason why killing someone was a bad thing, would be a psychopath by definition.

That's why this isn't just about sentences. It's about the man's own moral compass and sense of decency, the kind of person that he is. The Jim Gordon of the comics only bends what rules he has to for the greater good. He works with Batman because he knows that Batman supports justice and fights for life and never, ever kills. The Jim Gordon of Gotham is in the pocket of the mob, is fraternizing with mass murderers, and has taken it upon himself to be judge, jury, and executioner. He's not just a good cop bending the rules, he's a flat-out gangster now.
 
"incorruptible". What in the hell are y'all talking about?! I'm not saying that the Jim Gordon we have known from the comics is a BAD guy, or even that he isn't justified in a lot of what he does, BUT, he's the police commissioner, sworn to uphold the law, and he actively cooperates with a man dressed as a bat who breaks and enters, commits assaults and any number of other crimes, while operating illegal military grade equipment inside Gotham.

But he's not spending his entire career covering up his own past MURDERS. Why does nobody understand my point that this is a matter of degree, that there is a line between being a morally compromised good guy and being a straight-up criminal? The Gordon of the first season could be plausibly described as the former, but the Gordon of the second season has crossed the line into the latter category.

Look at it this way -- a lot of drinking water has trace amounts of arsenic in it, but that's considered safe if it's below a certain acceptable amount. It's a little bit impure, but not so much that it isn't still acceptable. But if the people in charge of the quality of the drinking water allow the arsenic to rise beyond a certain level, then it become poisoned and they've failed in their job. The same is true here. In the first season, this was a show about Gordon making slight moral compromises, but the levels of impurity were low enough that he could still be considered acceptably heroic. In the second season, though, the writers have allowed that corruption to escalate to an unacceptably high level that has outright poisoned the character. And that means they've failed in their job. They've lost all sense of proportion and taken things way too far.

Although that's part and parcel of the ludicrously high body count that practically every character on the show contributes to. The Penguin is a casual and frequent killer. The Riddler is a repeat killer, even though he isn't in the comics. Even Selina has committed murder, even though Catwoman is generally no worse than a thief and an antihero. The writers on this show can't seem to think of any way to generate drama or tension other than with killing.

I definitely agree with yo on that last point. I calculated that Penguin seemed to have literally 1 murder per episode, at least in the first season. That by itself seems insane, and that not one seems to be blamed on him.

And yeah, the Riddler did NOT need to be a killer. And for Catwoman...It might not have been so bad if she did it in self defense (like a little more clearly)...it would have been one of the differences of the 2 over the years

And for Gordon...I too would have preferred he NOT be the actual killer...but how about being aware of them and covering them up? So say a different superior officer to Gordon is the one who does a murder, in the name of say convenience or to "get the bad guy"... Gordon is aware of it, but doesn't say anything. He learns that such a way is NOT worth it, but witnesses nonetheless....
 
And for Gordon...I too would have preferred he NOT be the actual killer...but how about being aware of them and covering them up? So say a different superior officer to Gordon is the one who does a murder, in the name of say convenience or to "get the bad guy"... Gordon is aware of it, but doesn't say anything. He learns that such a way is NOT worth it, but witnesses nonetheless....

Or how about not? There are other ways to tell a story than just using murder as your only plot device. Heck, even Frank Miller never had Gordon do anything worse than beating up his corrupt partner with a baseball bat. And his Gordon brought down the cops who were killing people; he didn't become an accomplice to them, let alone become one himself. When you're making Frank Miller look like a paragon of subtlety and restraint, then you've got problems.
 
Finally caught up with the rest of the Gotham episodes and all I took away from it was: "Good thing I've been having Galavan followed so I could save your life. Now, unconscious Jim Gordon, tell me where Galavan is!"
 
Perhaps this is Gordon on his way to becoming the man we're used to by way of finding out the hard way what is wrong, what is unacceptable, and what works in law enforcement in Gotham? I mean, yes, he's done some pretty bad things, but his goal hasn't changed that I have seen.

On another topic, I have to say that I LOVED the Penguin's attack on the party using lookalikes a few episodes back. I busted up laughing, and the other people in my living room were looking at me like I was insane (not unusual, to be honest) until I pointed out that he was doing something the Penguin did in both the Adam West Batman series and in the second Keaton movie - using an army of penguins to do his bidding! :D
 
I know it's not really justification, but I do think it's worth keeping in mind that it was Galavan who he killed. In this kind of a show, I think his killing of Galavan was justified, on a moral level, though most likely not legal one. In a show like this, things are taken to a bigger extreme than what we see in the real world, so you really can't really judge things the way you would in the real world.
In the real world Galavan's murder might make Gordon irredeemable, but not in the world of Gotham.
You really just can't take this show that seriously, you just have to turn your brain off and enjoy the craziness.
 
I have no confidence in the producers or writers of this show to "redeem" Gordon. From what they have done so far, they don't have it in them.
 
Maybe Gordon can be really really sorry and vow never to murder again.

Or maybe he can turn himself in and through a series of events, end up exonerated so that he can get back to work.

Looks like Galavan could come back though, so regardless of what any real-world laws say, Gordon won't have a murder behind him if that happens. Maybe that's what the writers were thinking.
 
Perhaps this is Gordon on his way to becoming the man we're used to by way of finding out the hard way what is wrong, what is unacceptable, and what works in law enforcement in Gotham? I mean, yes, he's done some pretty bad things, but his goal hasn't changed that I have seen.

That's what I keep saying -- he can't be that. It won't work anymore, not now that he has at least two counts of murder to his name. If they hadn't had him cross that line, then what you suggest would still be possible, but it isn't anymore. He can't become the commissioner without spending the rest of his life lying and hiding and covering up his crimes, and that means everything he would do as commissioner would be predicated on acts of corruption and injustice. And no matter how much good he tried to do, he'd still be a liar and a hypocrite and a murderer hiding from prosecution. If anyone under his command ever tried to reopen those cold cases, or found a lead that would incriminate him, he'd have to shut down the investigation or falsify evidence or otherwise commit more acts of corruption that would taint him even worse. Something like this just does not go away. That's wishful thinking -- or bad writing.


On another topic, I have to say that I LOVED the Penguin's attack on the party using lookalikes a few episodes back. I busted up laughing, and the other people in my living room were looking at me like I was insane (not unusual, to be honest) until I pointed out that he was doing something the Penguin did in both the Adam West Batman series and in the second Keaton movie - using an army of penguins to do his bidding! :D

When did he have an army of penguins in the '66 series?



I have no confidence in the producers or writers of this show to "redeem" Gordon. From what they have done so far, they don't have it in them.

Indeed, they seem to be more interested in seeing how dark they can make him. They'd rather do a mob show or The Shield than a Batman origin. I read that they recognized that having Gordon kill Galavan would be a major departure from the expected path for the character, but that they chose to take it anyway. Being true to the Gordon we know is clearly not their primary goal anymore. They're telling their own story in their own way.

Which is something I respect in principle; really, the makers of an adaptation should feel free to reinvent the story in their own way, because there's no point in just copying what already exists. But the story they've decided to tell, a story about a good cop being irredeemably corrupted by an unbeatably evil city, is too depressing and unheroic to have any appeal for me. I don't like stories about people failing to be better. That's why I lost interest in LOST. At first, it was an interesting series about flawed characters working to redeem themselves and make amends for their past mistakes, but then it became so successful that the producers had to stretch out their planned story arc to fit a longer run, so they trapped the characters in holding patterns or regressed them to repeat the same bad behaviors they had been outgrowing. So a story of people redeeming themselves became a story of people just endlessly screwing up and failing to learn, and that was not at all interesting to me.


Looks like Galavan could come back though, so regardless of what any real-world laws say, Gordon won't have a murder behind him if that happens. Maybe that's what the writers were thinking.

Except there's still the felony murder he committed in the pilot. Again, they'd have to completely ignore how laws really work. But then, it's not like they bother to respect how anything really works, like dialogue or characterization or human emotion.
 
When did he have an army of penguins in the '66 series?
Didn't he use an army of wind-up penguins with explosives in them at one point? I seem to remember Burgess Meredith winding one up and adding it to a group of them. Googling is showing a replica of the wind-up for sale, but I can't find the entry in the episode guide.
 
I was just watching "The Last Laugh", since I'm just watching the fall shows that I recorded on the PVR, and during the Children's Ball (about 38 minutes in) I had to laugh, as the Gotham TV camera guys were using S-VHS camera's to broadcast the ball. (When Galavant is asking whether Jerome has any human dignity left, one shot of the stage has the camera guy's back in it, and you are able to see on the tape door of the camera the S-VHS logo, and even a few seconds earlier there was a close up of a camera guy from the front, and I could just barely make out the logo on his camera). It's interesting that the producers weren't able to track down any Betacam SP camcorders (or even the JVC GY-DV500 Mini-DV or another DV camcorder), as those were more widely used for news. S-VHS was still used by smaller stations and community stations for broadcast, and even universities and colleges for training, but it was mostly used by wedding videographers, as it gave a great first generation image, but the quality was reduced when you went to the second generation (of course with weddings, most people wanted their video on VHS, so losing quality at a higher generation didn't matter as it wouldn't really show on VHS).

Just recently I had to use footage from S-VHS masters for events that were recorded LIVE years ago that a station had for a documentary that I was working on, so while it is Broadcast quality, and better than VHS, and it does give a very good image, Betacam SP and Mini-DV give a better image for standard-definition. Of course, I guess this is a situation like in Fringe where the producers had the characters watching Betamax footage on a Betamax camera that only had a record head and no playback head (after the first Betamax camcorder, Sony removed the playback head in order to shrink the size of the camera, suffice it to say it drove camcorder buyers towards VHS and Video8 as those could playback in camera).
 
I know it's not really justification, but I do think it's worth keeping in mind that it was Galavan who he killed. In this kind of a show, I think his killing of Galavan was justified, on a moral level, though most likely not legal one. In a show like this, things are taken to a bigger extreme than what we see in the real world, so you really can't really judge things the way you would in the real world.
In the real world Galavan's murder might make Gordon irredeemable, but not in the world of Gotham.
You really just can't take this show that seriously, you just have to turn your brain off and enjoy the craziness.

Chrisopher - please read this and understand it. If you can't, please refrain from posting here again.
 
I was just watching "The Last Laugh", since I'm just watching the fall shows that I recorded on the PVR, and during the Children's Ball (about 38 minutes in) I had to laugh, as the Gotham TV camera guys were using S-VHS camera's to broadcast the ball. (When Galavant is asking whether Jerome has any human dignity left, one shot of the stage has the camera guy's back in it, and you are able to see on the tape door of the camera the S-VHS logo, and even a few seconds earlier there was a close up of a camera guy from the front, and I could just barely make out the logo on his camera). It's interesting that the producers weren't able to track down any Betacam SP camcorders (or even the JVC GY-DV500 Mini-DV or another DV camcorder), as those were more widely used for news. S-VHS was still used by smaller stations and community stations for broadcast, and even universities and colleges for training, but it was mostly used by wedding videographers, as it gave a great first generation image, but the quality was reduced when you went to the second generation (of course with weddings, most people wanted their video on VHS, so losing quality at a higher generation didn't matter as it wouldn't really show on VHS).

Just recently I had to use footage from S-VHS masters for events that were recorded LIVE years ago that a station had for a documentary that I was working on, so while it is Broadcast quality, and better than VHS, and it does give a very good image, Betacam SP and Mini-DV give a better image for standard-definition. Of course, I guess this is a situation like in Fringe where the producers had the characters watching Betamax footage on a Betamax camera that only had a record head and no playback head (after the first Betamax camcorder, Sony removed the playback head in order to shrink the size of the camera, suffice it to say it drove camcorder buyers towards VHS and Video8 as those could playback in camera).

Yeah, this is obviously REALLY important.
 
I know it's not really justification, but I do think it's worth keeping in mind that it was Galavan who he killed. In this kind of a show, I think his killing of Galavan was justified, on a moral level, though most likely not legal one. In a show like this, things are taken to a bigger extreme than what we see in the real world, so you really can't really judge things the way you would in the real world.
In the real world Galavan's murder might make Gordon irredeemable, but not in the world of Gotham.
You really just can't take this show that seriously, you just have to turn your brain off and enjoy the craziness.

Very true statement. It's mindless entertainment at this point, but I have to admit I'm losing interest fast.
 
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