Anghus Houvouras shares his disappointment over the first episode of Gotham….
Origin stories. They are the bane of this current wave of comic book culture. You can’t turn on a television this year without seeing a comic book adaptation. Arrow, Flash, Constantine, and the most high profile of them is Fox’s attempt at bandwagon jumping: Gotham.
The critics have been lauding praise upon the pilot since it first started making the rounds. I was immediately skeptical of the concept of a series that serves as one long origin story. The idea of a police procedural series dealing with the gutters of Gotham that would eventually spawn the Dark Knight is something I’d like. But not this. Not Gotham. Not this poor excuse for a show.
As I watched the pilot, I marveled at just how terrible this show is at an almost molecular level. The wooden, one-dimensional acting. The absolutely wretched dialogue.
But the biggest fundamental flaws that make this show practically unwatchable (for me at least) was:
1. The show’s inability to deviate from a known mythology.
2. The interconnection of every major character.
Let’s address these one point at a time.
1. The show’s inability to deviate from a known mythology.
Wouldn’t Gotham as a series been infinitely more interesting if they had started a year before Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered? Wouldn’t that have made an exceptional year one season finale? This thought plagued me as I watched the show, which starts with the very well chronicled death of Thomas and Martha Wayne. I knew I was immediately in trouble when I saw young Selina Kyle making her way through the city just in time to witness the Wayne’s biting the bullet. I had the same chill run up my spine later in the episode when i saw the daughter of the framed murder was apparently an 8-year-old Poison Ivy.
This wasn’t the Gotham show I was hoping for. This was Batman Babies.
The Batman story is so well-known, which is why a series like Gotham initially appealed to me. I would love to see a series that delved into the unexplored corners of Gotham. All I got were the already explored stories and characters in new arrangements. As if I’m supposed to marvel at the idea that Edward Nygma is a forensic scientist working with the Gotham Police Department. Or that young Oswald Cobblepot is a low level thug and not the criminal kingpin known as the Penguin just yet.
It feels like a Patton Oswalt bit where he talks about murdering George Lucas before the Prequels were put into production. The notion that origin stories exist to simply explain how a character got from ‘Point A’ to ‘Point B’ is creatively bankrupt. Like Oswalt, I don’t care where Boba Fett came from. Learning that he was a little clone kid did nothing to help make the character better or even more three-dimensional. It just made a Galaxy Far, Far Away feel very small. Gotham suffers from a similar design flaw which leads into point number two.
2. The interconnection of every major character
One of the things I loved about HBO’s masterful series The Wire was how every character and plot felt connected thematically even though some of the storylines and character were far removed from one another. Over the course of the season they are woven together. The producers of Gotham decided to go with immediate satisfaction. You’re watching a show about Gotham, so you’re going to meet Bruce Wayne in the first five minutes, and god dammit Thomas and Martha Wayne are going to die before the title card goes up. Gotham suffers from shrinking the world of Batman into a very small circle of associates.
Like the aforementioned comment about the ‘Batman Babies’, young Selina Kyle witnessing young Bruce Wayne’s tragic origins feels like the most spurious of connections. As if the characters are intertwined from the very beginning, destined to cross paths. This might be the laziest of creative principles. Gotham has a spooky level of predetermination.
The first episode of Gotham is a major disappointment. A show that doesn’t trust its audience and refuses to accept that there was ever a Gotham City before Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed. Like the city was nothing more than a fevered dream until a young boy suffered a horrible tragedy, and every other character in the city is no more than two degrees of separation away.
I suppose the idea of Gotham without Batman is ridiculous in an era where network television shows must immediately justify their existence. There’s no time to build up a story or develop unfamiliar characters.
There is only fan service and immediate gratification. And that, is disappointing.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
Originally published September 24, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
