So after giving up on
Gotham after reaching the penultimate episode of the show's first season, I recently jumped back into the show upon the encouragement of some people here on the forum who assured me the second season was a significant step-up in quality. As such, I finally got around to finishing the first season before binge-watching the entire second season over the last few days.
This show man, it really frustrates me. There are so many really fun things about it, but at the same time the writing is just so schizophrenic tonally and suffers from so much clunky characterisation and plotting. Whenever I feel like giving up on the show, it'll throw in a couple of really fun and largely well-put together episodes to keep me hooked before quickly reverting back to it's old ways. I think mostly, I've managed to make it this far because I know this show has so much potential to be a legitimately great show, as opposed to a sloppy, meandering mess that audiences would have abandoned a few episodes into it's first season if it wasn't based on a beloved franchise. In a way, it's actually really unfair to all those really great, original television shows out there that never got greenlit for a second season just because they could never get that kind of audience right off the bat.
As a die-hard
Batman fan, there are a lot of things I really like about the show. It absolutely
nails the visual asthetic of Gotham City, with a lot of really impressive looking sets and scenery that totally encapsulate the darkly gothic of Batman's world. For the most part, the casting is also largely fantastic: Donal Logue, Robin Lord Taylor, David Mazouz as Baby Bruce, even Ben McKenzie, whilst not the most charismatic actor in the world, delivers a really solid turn as Gordon. The acting for the most part really works, and the actors themselves really seem to be having fun in their roles. In addition, a lot of the original music is really lovely and the majority of the special effects work is largely top notch.
But at the same time, this show just has such a piss-poor understanding of the positive wealth of source material it's trying to play around with, in addition to any kind of fundamental understanding of the characters their trying to adapt from the Batman mythos. My criticism doesn't stem from the show deviating from the Batman canon (for instance, I really enjoy this show's take on Bruce and Selina as childhood friends from the off-set as opposed to only meeting as adults like in the comics). I'm mostly frustrated on account of the fact that the writers don't really seem to understand what makes characters like James Gordon, Alfred Pennyworth and Edward Nygma
work the way the do, or what makes them special. Instead of being a rare cop of principal working within a corrupt and rotting justice system like in the comics, Gordon from the show is depicted as "the one bad egg" in the prescient, who beats suspects and murders people before nervously trying to cover up his actions. Likewise Renee Montoya, a hard-working police detective who just so
happens to be gay in the comics, is depicted in the show only as
LESBIAN WOMAN...turning up in the show just long enough to fuck Barbara before roundly fucking off only never to be seen again. It's as if a producer for the show just so happened to pick up a copy of
Gotham Central only to spot Renee kissing a woman in one of the panels, before going "Shit, that's exactly what we need in
our show! A bit of lesbian action!" before ordering one of the writers to write her into the season. Same thing with Sara Essen. In the comics, she was a complicated, troubled young detective who engaged in a romantic relationship with Jim. In the show, she's adapted into a commissioner who barely says a word before quickly getting killed off before the writers can give her anything interesting to do. It's just such a
waste.
And as for Alfred....
...the dude is just a cockney thug who's nothing more than an outdated Dick Van Dyke impression, only much more sweary and threatening, more than willing to engage in murder and violence as long as it's a means to an end. I'm all up for reinterpreting these characters from the comics, but they're all just such shitty and thoroughly uninspired directions to take them in.
And now we have
Gotham simplifying some of the most psychologically nuanced and engaging super-villains in comic book history into base, underwritten clichés who limp into the story for torturous cameos before quickly limping off. Instead of falling into crime on account of their own personal mistakes or psychological compulsions, half of Gotham's criminals are now only superv-illains because Hugo Strange told them so, Clayface being just the latest example. Instead of a tortured, once classically handsome film actor desperately searching for a cure for his condition, Clayface is now just some henchman called Basil who is offhandedly introduced halfway through an episode, pretends to be Gordon for five minutes before then disappearing into thin air. It's just so frustrating. The show has such a wealth of engaging characters and interesting storylines to play around with, but instead it satisfies itself by re-interpreting them in the most lazy and uninteresting fashion imaginable.
On account of slightly more focused plotting in comparison to the first season, Season 2 was basically a baby-step up from the first. But I'll keep watching. Unlike seemingly most people currently watching the show, I liked the introduction of Barnes,who at least provides some momentum to the GCPD storylines, and I continue to enjoy the antics of Riddler and Penguin, not to mention Bullock's continuing world-weary shtick. I just hope Season 3 will show more obvious signs of improvement down the line.
EDIT: Holy wall of text, Batman!