Anthony Stokes reviews episode 2 of FOX’s Batman prequel series Gotham….
After the disappointment of the pilot, I was reluctant tuning into Gotham’s second episode. So far aside from Arrow no superhero TV show has reached the heights of Smallville, which is a pretty low bar. Gotham’s first episode was especially mediocre, with shades of L.A. Confidential, Se7en, Sin City, and anything else that has to do with cops and dirty streets. But rather than merging these things, everything was kind of thrown together, clashing tonally between smirking at the audience and then trying to be dark and gritty.
Fortunately Episode 2 is an improvement over the pilot. Unfortunately, it’s not much of an improvement at all. And it’s not so much that the show is getting better – it’s more that it’s getting less worse. By any traditional TV standard this is garbage but because it’s about Gotham, it gets bumped a few notches. It still feels like any other cop drama about a clean cop and a dirty department, a genre FOX has done to death. This show gets so cheesy and ridiculous it’s almost a satire of bad cop dramas. NTSF:SD:SUV:: makes fun of these types of overblown shows.
The show can’t go a few minutes without hopping from one cliche to the next. At one point a character says “I’ll beat it out of you” during an interrogation to which another character says “go cool off”, which has been parodied by Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. A few members of the cast and their characters are interesting, but they’re balanced out by the bad performances. Jada Pinkett Smith is absolutely terrible and belongs in a completely different show. If Gotham was in black and white and titled Sin City she’d fit right in.
To switch to the positives, the plot involves here Catwoman’s character and it’s surprisingly not bad. Young actress Camren Bicondova isn’t great, but certainly has a bit more nuance then I expected. Except of course the forced-in nods to her character, constantly correcting people and telling them, “my name is Cat”. I wrote an article claiming the character was too young to be interesting and I was pleasantly surprised when I was only partially correct. But really she’s the only good thing about the episode, and she’s not even in it that much.
There are far more cringeworthy moments than good moments, so I’m going to just go ahead and call the show what it is: “Bad”. In the golden age of television there’s no reason the writers should be putting out something this bad. It would take one viewing of Breaking Bad to help them find the tone they should’ve been aiming for. Hell, even Arrow, which I’m not a particularly huge fan of, is much better than this and also has cliches, but delivers them in a way that’s satisfying and entertaining.
Bring on episode 3 and its Obligatory Batman Villain of the Week.
Anthony Stokes is a blogger and independent filmmaker who also hosts the podcast Delusional Losers.
Originally published September 30, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
