Gotham is a bad enough show on its own. Its characters do and say stupid things, and its attempts at seriousness often result in cringe-inducing camp (looking at you, Jerome). It’s best to let it exist in a hermetically sealed bubble, because to compare Gotham to other, better shows is to look into the face of madness. So I’m completely baffled by “The Strike Force,” because who the hell thought the best way to inject some life into Gotham was to do an hour-long imitation of The Shield, one of the best shows in TV history?
This would be an obvious Shield ripoff even if Michael Chiklis weren’t involved, but there he is, Vic Mackey himself, throwing chairs and firing cops. Chiklis actually handles himself nicely, and his performance is one of the few things that keeps “The Strike Force” from being a total shitshow. But the first thing he does is establish a Strike Force, which is totally different from The Shield‘s Strike Team, you guys, in a Vanilla Ice/Queen sorta way. To be fair, the Strike Force is made up of uncorrupted rookies from the Academy, whereas the Strike Team was made up of the most corrupt cops in Los Angeles, but screenwriter Danny Cannon could have gone with any other name, and the show could have gone with any other guest star, and avoided the inevitable comparisons.
And that’s not even the stupidest part of “The Strike Force”! No, that honor goes to Theo Galavan, who summons the Penguin to his chambers and tells him his whole evil plan, which – surprise surprise – revolves around real estate.
Step one: evict thousands of families from their homes, bulldoze homes
Step two: build industrial high-rises
Step three: ???
Step four: Gotham is saved! (And now completely flooded with bums. Good plan, you fucking maniac.)
Theo aims to achieve this by running for mayor and having Penguin take out the competition, quite literally. I have two major problems with this. The first is: wouldn’t Theo’s constant, public heroics get a little suspicious after a while? First he stabs Jerome, then he narrowly avoids a drive-by shooting. As his opponents drop like flies, isn’t anyone going to put two and two together and think that maybe he staged the drive-by? Oh wait, no they won’t, because Gotham is full of morons.
My second major gripe is with the violence on this show. I’m certainly not squeamish at the sight of blood, but the sheer abundance of violence on Gotham is killing any potential impact. Once the Maniax (ugh) massacre an entire police precinct while Jerome laughs like a dumbass, everything just starts to seem like white noise. This is the same problem that plagued the final season of Sons of Anarchy, where every episode included a massacre of some kind. The viewers become inured, and as a result, we stop caring (assuming we cared about Gotham at all to begin with). Look at Goodfellas – a film with the reputation of being very violent, it doesn’t actually indulge in violence all that often. What Goodfellas does – and yes, I’m aware how unfair it is to compare Goodfellas to Gotham – is present the viewer with the constant threat of violence (this is something that Tarantino excels at too). Gotham doesn’t threaten violence, it wallows in it. Just constant bloodshed, producing boredom instead of thrills.
There was just way too much of this episode that I didn’t care about. I don’t care about Nygma’s relationship with Kristen Kringle, and I can’t imagine anyone who does. I really don’t care about Selina feeling sad, because she’s an unlikable character who treats Bruce like shit, and I could watch the scene where Alfred slaps her on a loop for the rest of the day. (Side note: it was nice to see that Alfred is still sore about Selina killing Reggie; it shows that Gotham at least has a sense of internal memory.)
Lastly, Robin Lord Taylor is finally becoming the interesting villain that Gotham thought he was this whole time. His performance has matured nicely, and there’s some real confidence in him now. It’s a good move to pit him against Theo, another ruthless villain, because Penguin vs. cops isn’t ever interesting since all the cops can be bought. I’m sure this will be short-lived, though, since the Strike Force has the Penguin case now, and at the rate Gotham is escalating, Penguin is going to set one of them on fire, eat another, bury one alive, and then Theo will drop an atom bomb on the city. This will take up one episode.
A Few Thoughts
- “Everybody knows you’re banging the M.E.”
- “We’ve been doing crazy stuff all day.” Butch was pretty good in this episode too
- Detective work, Harvey Bullock style: “Give us a name.” Wow, good luck with that one, gumshoe
- How does Gotham have the top police academy in the country? I mean, if you rank academies in terms of how many corrupt cops it produces, sure, but that’s like saying Slytherin is the top house at Hogwarts because of how many evil wizards it produces. Kind of a dubious honor
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