The important thing to remember about Gotham is that it’s not about Batman. Granted, Fox could have gone that route, because if Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy taught us anything, it’s that the Caped Crusader gives you a license to print money. No, Gotham is actually a police procedural, and a pretty straightforward one at that; it’s just gussied up in the DC Comics mythos, and the pilot episode acts as both a mystery and a race to see how many Easter eggs you can jam into one hour of television (There’s a street called Grundy! That forensic tech was Edward Nygma! Is that standup comedian the Joker? And so on).
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because Easter eggs are fun (remember how exciting it was to get that brief glimpse of Harley Quinn on Arrow last season?). Moreover, we all know Batman’s origin story, so it’s a wise move on showrunner Bruno Heller’s part to use Gotham as his sandbox, rather than telling us the same story we’ve heard over and over, and was done so well in Batman Begins (basically, if your Batman story doesn’t have Liam Neeson as a ninja, get the fuck out of my face). The city looks great: it has the dirty, muted color palette of Nolan’s film, plus the occasional, almost obscene splash of primary colors that so distinguished Tim Burton’s versions. It really looks like that New York-Chicago-Philadelphia hybrid that we’ve come to expect.
Gotham‘s main character is James Gordon, played by Southland‘s Ben McKenzie. McKenzie is fine, if a little wooden, but one wonders if that might be due to Heller’s script, which frankly does him no favors. It seems that every five minutes McKenzie says, almost directly into the camera, “I’m Detective James Gordon,” as if to remind us that, yes, we’re in Gotham and, yes, it’s very cool. McKenzie has the unenviable task of following in Gary Oldman’s footsteps; Oldman played Gordon like Atticus Finch with a badge, the paragon of decency in a decidedly indecent world, but McKenzie’s take is a little rougher around the edges, most likely because everything on TV is gritty now.
Donal Logue, as Gordon’s partner Harvey Bullock, is fantastic. Bullock was last played on screen by Sons of Anarchy‘s Mark Boone Junior, a filthy beast of a man eating falafel in the rain. Logue’s version achieves the same level of corruption (and perhaps surpasses it) but he balances it out by being a genuinely good detective with a skewed, if unshakable, sense of loyalty.
Gotham‘s pilot revolves around Gordon and Bullock investigating the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, which takes them all around the seedier parts of a city that seems to contain nothing but. They stop in to talk to gangster Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), who has an ambitious henchman named Oswald (Robin Lord Taylor). Mooney’s lackies call him “Penguin” more than once, which seems to enrage him, but I don’t see where the nickname comes from. Is it cause he wears bowties? Probably not, because he could control that. Oh, what about that weird duck-footed gait of his? No, that only happens after he gets his ass kicked, because we see him walking normally at several points. Oh, I know where the nickname comes from: Bruno Heller isn’t confident that everyone knows the name “Oswald Cobblepot,” so he wants to make sure that we know this is the Penguin here. (Batman’s stupidest villain, by the way, and yes I’m counting Calendar Man.) Taylor makes the strongest impression of all the Muppet Babies versions of Batman’s rogues gallery we see. Cory Michael Smith’s Edward Nygma is a little too on the nose, and Ivy Pepper (Clare Foley) looks to be about 12. We see glimpses of Camren Bicondova’s Selina Kyle, but she has no lines in the pilot, and furthermore kind of overdoes it on the feline posing and moving. We get it, you’re Catwoman, stop acting like a child actor. Oh, and The Wire‘s John Doman acquits himself nicely as Carmine Falcone.
So Gordon and Bullock find the killer – Mario Pepper, because non-canonical characters on Gotham have silly names – but it turns out Pepper was framed. None of this is really important, save for establishing McKenzie’s chemistry with Bruce Wayne (played nicely by Touch‘s David Mazouz). Side note: Alfred is a lot different this time around, acting more like a snide Cockney asshole. It’s awesome. “OY! Masta Wayne, I fotta told ya to get offa the roof, you fucking tosser!”
The problem with Gotham – for right now at least – is that it wants to be a show that is and isn’t about Batman. You can’t separate Batman from Gotham; the two are inexorably linked. It’s a smart move having a teenage Bruce Wayne, because that will keep Batman off the table for a good while, but how creative Heller can get in this world remains to be seen. I’m optimistic, though.
About Author
