Gotham - Season 1
- Thread starter Agent Richard07
- Start date
Season 1 Roundup.
- This is not a very good show. It's trying to be everything from a police procedural to a campy comic book show and it suffers from prequelitis. Too many later story elements and characters are coming together too soon.
- On the plus side, we're getting to see a young Bruce Wayne in the aftermath of his parents' death and his early development into Batman. I don't think we've ever seen that before, at least not so extensively.
- I was shocked to see Fish gouge her own eye out, then disappointed that a new one got put in by the beginning of the next episode. Stuff like that renders major incidents inconsequential.
- I plan to continue 'til the bitter end just because it's Batman and because it does have a few bright spots here and there like the afore mentioned young Bruce and Nygma's little romance.
We are still getting season 1 down here. The show has definitely picked up after a wobbly beginning. The two most recent I've seen (Jerome the Joker, followed by Red Hood) were both very good. I really liked the connotations of the Red Hood episode, the idea that a mask can have a powerful identity. Gordon is growing on me, with his wry, slightly tired look (there's a limit to what he can do given the later Gordon's unexpressive character), and Boccarin, who I hated in Firefly, is enjoyable here. The weakest part of the show is the kids.
I am also wondering if Cat is a red herring, and Fish will be the mother of an Eartha Kitt-style catwoman.
I was glad to see Cat squash Barbara's "Every girl can be a princess" BS.
I am also wondering if Cat is a red herring, and Fish will be the mother of an Eartha Kitt-style catwoman.
I was glad to see Cat squash Barbara's "Every girl can be a princess" BS.
They had their own separate little romances you perv.
Nygma is going to finally decide to murder Christine to cover up his murder of her dead beat boyfriend, but she'll think it's a date, so then he'll be at this crux where he's allowed to get to third base, but he needs to kill her.
It's an ancient question: "Under the bra, or through the thorax?"
Nygma is going to finally decide to murder Christine to cover up his murder of her dead beat boyfriend, but she'll think it's a date, so then he'll be at this crux where he's allowed to get to third base, but he needs to kill her.
It's an ancient question: "Under the bra, or through the thorax?"
Sorry to bump this thread after nearly 5 months.
I just finished Season 1, and while I hadn't seen 3/4s of it previously, I was aware of some of the things that happened in it, which made for some interesting viewing and made me care about and 'glom' on to the stories of certain characters more than I might've had I not been aware of where said stories were ultimately heading.
A perfect example of this is Erin Richards' Barbara Kean. It'd be easy to dismiss her as either annoying, superfluous, or the classic stereotypical 'damsel in distress' and dislike her, but when you understand where her arc is going and what's actually brewing 'behind [her] blue eyes' in pretty much every single scene she's in, she honestly becomes one of the most fascinating characters in the series. Erin Richards gave a phenomenal performance throughout the entire season, especially as we started to see the character slowly fall apart after the trauma of being nearly killed by Falcone and in the final few episodes when she was targeted - and transformed - by The Ogre.
The scene in the finale, "All Happy Families are Alike", where she confesses to killing her parents and then tries to kill Leslie was so brilliantly played that it was like watching a chessmaster slowly and calmly go in for the 'kill', and completely encapsulated everything that Gotham's writers were able to do so very, very well with practically every aspect of the series and practically every character, which is to play the "shades of grey" (or in Barbara's case, the "shades of black" masquerading as "shades of grey") and take full advantage of the series' classic Noir style.
Jim and Harvey (Bullock)'s arcs were also fascinating to watch over the course of the season as we started to see the two characters start to invert a bit, with Gordon becoming more like Harvey by slowly embracing the "shades of grey" and Harvey becoming more like Gordon by slowly embracing (or re-embracing, more accurately) the "white light". This is particularly evident in the episodes "Spirit of the Goat", "Penguin's Umbrella", "Welcome Back, Jim Gordon", "Everyone Has a Cobblepot", "Beasts of Prey", and "All Happy Families are Alike", and it will be interesting to watch how this ends up unfolding as we go into Season 2 (since I haven't seen any of it yet).
I know that one of the most loudly and frequently voiced complaints about the series, beyond the fact that it ought to not have so heavy-handedly utilized the Batman license (even though that's the entire point of the series), is the way Jada Pinkett Smith played the character of Fish Mooney, but I will unapologetically and unabashedly proclaim that she was by far my favorite character in the entire season from beginning to end, even if I didn't always quite 'get' where the writers were going with her character (particularly during the Dollmaker arc). Jada's approach to the character was so deliciously and straightforwardly over-the-top and 'in-your-face' that she put me in mind of Eartha Kitt and Michelle Pfeiffer's versions of Selina Kyle, mixed together with a bit of Mia Sara's Harley Quinn (from Birds of Prey) and The Goonies' Mama Fretelli - especially when she scooped her own eye out and stomped on it in "Red Hood" - and was an absolute joy to watch in pretty much every scene she was in.
I mentioned her earlier in passing, but I really liked the character of Leslie Thompkins. Morena Baccarin is one of my favorite actresses in the world and has a grace and charm about her that makes it very easy for you to root for whatever character she might be playing, even if said character is a complete villain (hello, Anna from V), and her chemistry with Ben McKenzie was off-the-charts (which is why it comes as no surprise that they hooked up in real life and she's now his baby mama). I do wish we'd seen a bit more of her outside of her relationship with Jim (i.e. a bit more of her doing her job as the G.C.P.D.'s ME), but that's a minor gripe, especially since her relationship with Jim did give us one of the best sequences in the entirety of the season in the aforementioned sequence where Barbara slowly lures her into her web and then tries to kill her after confessing to her that she'd killed her parents.
I know a lot of people will list Oswald Cobblepot as their favorite character from the season, and I completely understand why. However, when you look at the arcs he got in comparison to what they did with certain other characters (such as Barbara, Bruce Wayne, Jim, and Harvey), he didn't really go much of anywhere, since he was essentially the same character at the end of "All Happy Families are Alike" as he was at the end of the Pilot. I did enjoy getting to see him masterfully 'play' pretty much every person he interacted with (with the exception of his mother and Jim Gordon), but would've liked a bit more variety in terms of the 'character' beats we got from him.
Although he's not my favorite character in Batman's Rogues Gallery (that honor goes to Ra's al Ghul), I've always rather enjoyed The Riddler in pretty much every incarnation we've ever seen of him, but I honestly think Gotham's version is my second-favorite of all time (second only to Jim Carrey's "Gorshin!Riddler on steroids" take on the character from Batman Forever), embodying certain elements of both Carrey and Gorshin's performances while also giving us just enough 'normalcy' to make the moments in "Under the Knife", "The Anvil or the Hammer", and "All Happy Families are Alike" where we finally see the classic "Riddler" persona emerge in its fullest form truly 'sing', and it's going to be really fun seeing where he goes moving forward.
I have very mixed feelings on Bruce Wayne's storyline from the first season, as I enjoyed what they were doing but also felt like they should've built that arc to its crescendo a bit faster than they did. I also felt like there wasn't enough done with regards to his relationship with Selina, especially not in light of him inviting her to the Wayne Enterprises Charity Ball, since I felt like the whole thing of her stealing the keys from Sid Bunderslaw was more or less just an excuse for him to invite her, and I would've liked a bit more buildup to that moment.
Speaking of Selina, I also have mixed feelings on her arc as well, especially since it didn't seem like she had much direction after the events of "Lovecraft". I did like the way that they paired her up with Barbara and Ivy, though, especially since doing so allowed them to plant the seeds for the public persona she ultimately adopts in the future in a way that wouldn't really have been possible to accomplish any other way given the background they've given her for the series. I also didn't really understand why she hooked up with Fish Mooney in the finale, but did like getting to see her in a 'street outfit' that was different than her "Goggle Girl" gear.
All in all, Season 1 of Gotham more than justified my placing the series in my list of the Top 7 Television Series currently airing (along with its DCTV brethren The Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl, its Vertigo 'brother' iZombie, and ABC's Quantico and Once Upon a Time), completely living up to and justifying its purpose as a present-day Noir take on the Batman mythos that offered up a take on said mythos that was both fresh and simultaneously familiar.
I just finished Season 1, and while I hadn't seen 3/4s of it previously, I was aware of some of the things that happened in it, which made for some interesting viewing and made me care about and 'glom' on to the stories of certain characters more than I might've had I not been aware of where said stories were ultimately heading.
A perfect example of this is Erin Richards' Barbara Kean. It'd be easy to dismiss her as either annoying, superfluous, or the classic stereotypical 'damsel in distress' and dislike her, but when you understand where her arc is going and what's actually brewing 'behind [her] blue eyes' in pretty much every single scene she's in, she honestly becomes one of the most fascinating characters in the series. Erin Richards gave a phenomenal performance throughout the entire season, especially as we started to see the character slowly fall apart after the trauma of being nearly killed by Falcone and in the final few episodes when she was targeted - and transformed - by The Ogre.
The scene in the finale, "All Happy Families are Alike", where she confesses to killing her parents and then tries to kill Leslie was so brilliantly played that it was like watching a chessmaster slowly and calmly go in for the 'kill', and completely encapsulated everything that Gotham's writers were able to do so very, very well with practically every aspect of the series and practically every character, which is to play the "shades of grey" (or in Barbara's case, the "shades of black" masquerading as "shades of grey") and take full advantage of the series' classic Noir style.
Jim and Harvey (Bullock)'s arcs were also fascinating to watch over the course of the season as we started to see the two characters start to invert a bit, with Gordon becoming more like Harvey by slowly embracing the "shades of grey" and Harvey becoming more like Gordon by slowly embracing (or re-embracing, more accurately) the "white light". This is particularly evident in the episodes "Spirit of the Goat", "Penguin's Umbrella", "Welcome Back, Jim Gordon", "Everyone Has a Cobblepot", "Beasts of Prey", and "All Happy Families are Alike", and it will be interesting to watch how this ends up unfolding as we go into Season 2 (since I haven't seen any of it yet).
I know that one of the most loudly and frequently voiced complaints about the series, beyond the fact that it ought to not have so heavy-handedly utilized the Batman license (even though that's the entire point of the series), is the way Jada Pinkett Smith played the character of Fish Mooney, but I will unapologetically and unabashedly proclaim that she was by far my favorite character in the entire season from beginning to end, even if I didn't always quite 'get' where the writers were going with her character (particularly during the Dollmaker arc). Jada's approach to the character was so deliciously and straightforwardly over-the-top and 'in-your-face' that she put me in mind of Eartha Kitt and Michelle Pfeiffer's versions of Selina Kyle, mixed together with a bit of Mia Sara's Harley Quinn (from Birds of Prey) and The Goonies' Mama Fretelli - especially when she scooped her own eye out and stomped on it in "Red Hood" - and was an absolute joy to watch in pretty much every scene she was in.
I mentioned her earlier in passing, but I really liked the character of Leslie Thompkins. Morena Baccarin is one of my favorite actresses in the world and has a grace and charm about her that makes it very easy for you to root for whatever character she might be playing, even if said character is a complete villain (hello, Anna from V), and her chemistry with Ben McKenzie was off-the-charts (which is why it comes as no surprise that they hooked up in real life and she's now his baby mama). I do wish we'd seen a bit more of her outside of her relationship with Jim (i.e. a bit more of her doing her job as the G.C.P.D.'s ME), but that's a minor gripe, especially since her relationship with Jim did give us one of the best sequences in the entirety of the season in the aforementioned sequence where Barbara slowly lures her into her web and then tries to kill her after confessing to her that she'd killed her parents.
I know a lot of people will list Oswald Cobblepot as their favorite character from the season, and I completely understand why. However, when you look at the arcs he got in comparison to what they did with certain other characters (such as Barbara, Bruce Wayne, Jim, and Harvey), he didn't really go much of anywhere, since he was essentially the same character at the end of "All Happy Families are Alike" as he was at the end of the Pilot. I did enjoy getting to see him masterfully 'play' pretty much every person he interacted with (with the exception of his mother and Jim Gordon), but would've liked a bit more variety in terms of the 'character' beats we got from him.
Although he's not my favorite character in Batman's Rogues Gallery (that honor goes to Ra's al Ghul), I've always rather enjoyed The Riddler in pretty much every incarnation we've ever seen of him, but I honestly think Gotham's version is my second-favorite of all time (second only to Jim Carrey's "Gorshin!Riddler on steroids" take on the character from Batman Forever), embodying certain elements of both Carrey and Gorshin's performances while also giving us just enough 'normalcy' to make the moments in "Under the Knife", "The Anvil or the Hammer", and "All Happy Families are Alike" where we finally see the classic "Riddler" persona emerge in its fullest form truly 'sing', and it's going to be really fun seeing where he goes moving forward.
I have very mixed feelings on Bruce Wayne's storyline from the first season, as I enjoyed what they were doing but also felt like they should've built that arc to its crescendo a bit faster than they did. I also felt like there wasn't enough done with regards to his relationship with Selina, especially not in light of him inviting her to the Wayne Enterprises Charity Ball, since I felt like the whole thing of her stealing the keys from Sid Bunderslaw was more or less just an excuse for him to invite her, and I would've liked a bit more buildup to that moment.
Speaking of Selina, I also have mixed feelings on her arc as well, especially since it didn't seem like she had much direction after the events of "Lovecraft". I did like the way that they paired her up with Barbara and Ivy, though, especially since doing so allowed them to plant the seeds for the public persona she ultimately adopts in the future in a way that wouldn't really have been possible to accomplish any other way given the background they've given her for the series. I also didn't really understand why she hooked up with Fish Mooney in the finale, but did like getting to see her in a 'street outfit' that was different than her "Goggle Girl" gear.
All in all, Season 1 of Gotham more than justified my placing the series in my list of the Top 7 Television Series currently airing (along with its DCTV brethren The Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl, its Vertigo 'brother' iZombie, and ABC's Quantico and Once Upon a Time), completely living up to and justifying its purpose as a present-day Noir take on the Batman mythos that offered up a take on said mythos that was both fresh and simultaneously familiar.
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